The Embedded Influencer Playbook

0:00Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch, where Ryan Dice has shown up, even though he told me he was here and then I looked and he wasn't. now he is actually here. I show up late for the power. I like it. I like it. I respect it. Now you know who the, who the important alpha, alpha dog is. I'm making sure you get that alpha dog energy. No one ever had any doubt. No one ever had any doubt. So this morning I watched a video from Gary V that I think has some really, really great insights into what to do now and where marketing is headed. And also it happens to track a session that you did at our founders board event last week on the embedded influencer.

0:43And we talk about this all the time, personal brand, the soundbite that I loved from the video was personal brand is the new marketing funnel. And I think that's really cool. And if you look at really successful companies, a lot of them are very tied to personalities these days. If you think about Elon Musk and Sarah Blakely at Spanx and even Warren Buffett at Berkshire and so on and so forth, they're definitely people that enhance brands. I think Jeff Bezos and now his crazy social life enhances the awareness about Amazon. Not that Amazon needs it, but it's added a new dimension to Amazon that wasn't really there before.

1:33And I think that's really cool. And you've got Richard Branson at Virgin. And so I don't think there's any question that it's helpful. There were a lot of things in the article that I thought were interesting that went beyond just that. But I thought it would be interesting to talk about. Did you get a chance to look at it at all? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but this is something that, like you said, that we've been studying for a while and a lot of people might be like, oh yeah, so personal brands, like this is anything new, But where I think the newness is actually in the necessity of it.

2:07But also it's in the ability to do it because of AI. Yeah. I think that the ability, and Gary was saying, what I used to be able to do that took a team of 100 people, I can do with five people 10 times more frequently. And that's the reason that I'm now willing to do it as well, right? Right. Because I've been very much a reluctant influencer, a reluctant kind of brand ambassador for, you know, my own stuff, because I don't like being a public figure. I don't like being out there. But also, if I'm being honest, it's just a lot of work. I mean, getting out there and creating content is an enormous amount of work to do it well.

2:51And so I've done it. We've done this podcast. And this is fun because this is just you and I getting to talk like we would over lunch. That's the whole point of the show. Yeah. But beyond that, like getting out there and dancing on TikTok and things like that, it's a big fact for me. That was when you had to dance on TikTok. Do you remember that? You had to dance like, cause it was music.ly before. And then, you know, then it was everybody's dancing. I'm like, and Gary V is like, you got to be on. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it. I don't, I don't, I don't want money that badly. I'm fine.

3:19But now when you look at Louis Vuitton hiring Pharrell Williams as their creative director, you look at the deal that Inter Miami did with Lionel Messi and actually giving him equity in the company. These big brands are realizing that it's not enough just to hire spokespeople. They need actual influencers that are connected to the brand. that their owners or their work there. Yeah, or tell a great story. And I think it's interesting in the alcohol space with celebrities to think about the ones that really work versus the ones that don't. And I don't have enough data because this just came into my head, but I read a lot about George Clooney's quest to find the perfect tequila.

4:13And he's a lover of tequila And, you know, he gets on his motorcycle with his buddy and cruises, you know, down throughout tequila territory and, you know, goes to all these places and tastes and finds what he likes and then creates something and then builds a billion dollar brand largely on the back of his fame, but not without his personality and celebrity being infused into the brand as opposed to, you know, people who are just basically lending their name as a spokesperson. And I think Kylie did a good job of that as well with, with makeup. Rihanna has done a good job for, you know, for Louis Vuitton as well, but, or Ryan Reynolds with mint and then aviator gin, you know, like those are much, much deeper than just the rapper slaps their name on champagne and then is popping bottles.

5:09And that like, how do you get, you remember the Matthew McConaughey Lincoln ads from like, but they got literally were mocked on Saturday night live. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you go to YouTube. And you know, he's like, nobody believes that he actually drives a Lincoln or if he does, it's like one of the old school town cars, like not one of these like modern things. So it just felt disingenuous. Like now what audiences, what consumers demand, they want their influencer. They want their brands to have embedded influencers. They want their brands to have somebody either who owns the company or who works for that company to be speaking on behalf of the company.

5:51And if it's just somebody, if it's just merely a paid spokesperson, yeah, not good enough. Not good enough at all. I think, so to me, there's two episodes here. I think one is the takeaways from that video. but I actually think that it would maybe be more fun on this one, particularly since you just gave the presentation to talk about the embedded influencer. And so why don't we go that way with it? And then we'll do a separate one on the, cause it, cause his was more AI focused and, and I think that, that it merits two different episodes. Yeah. I mean, and I'll let you decide if you want to throw, throw some of that stuff in there, but, but yeah, I mean, this, this is definitely something that I know I'm passionate about.

6:34Sounds, sounds kind of lame. But cause I'm, it's not that I feel passionate about this. I feel forced into it. And as a result of that, I feel like, I feel, I feel it is so incredibly essential that I've become the ultimate ambassador and influencer. And dare I say, spokesperson for the necessity of this. And that's what I basically spent all last week trying to convince all of our clients that they need to do. You know, even if it's somebody who's doing environmental engineering, like you need to basically be an embedded influencer for your brand. You don't have a choice anymore. And I feel so strongly about that.

7:12We don't have choices anymore. Just it's too noisy out there. Traffic costs are too high. Trust, consumer trust is at an all time low. This is what we all need to be doing. It's just where the market is right now. Yep. I like it. I like it. So why don't we talk a little bit about what you talked about and I'll let you drive. Yeah. So this concept really, I mean, so I think first accepting just the necessity of it. And what I'll say is a lot of people, if you're resistant to it, then hopefully maybe we can give you some tips here that'll make it a little bit easier. I do think that AI, like you were saying in Gary's video, does make it a lot easier than it was in the past.

8:03The other big, I guess, pushback that I get on this is people saying it's not scalable. And so I want to address that right at the outset of people saying, yeah, but if I create my personal brand, if my personal brand is attached to this brand, then the brand can never be sold. So how do we do that? And so I think I do think it's important to factor that in because to address that, because it's a good point. But the good news is that it's not necessarily true, because when you have your own personal brand, when you are that embedded influencer, as long as you're pointing your influence at a separate brand, that separate brand is still sellable.

8:45it's really really important there's a big difference between being an embedded influencer within a brand where you have yeah then then being the brand itself and and that's the mistake that a lot of personal brands make and influencers make is they are the brand they are the product they are monetizing themselves right that's not what we're that's not what we're suggesting george Clooney didn't all of a sudden start just monetizing George Clooney. He didn't start selling ads on his own social channels. He didn't start selling, you know, speaking engagements and stuff like that. He also, and this is important, didn't call his tequila Clooney.

9:32Yeah. Right. And so as long as what you're doing is you're going out there and you're doing the types of things that we'll talk about to get the spotlight shined on you. If you then hold up a mirror and redirect that attention to your brand or, and this is important, brands, then it is scalable. And you don't have to worry as much about these other brands not being sellable beyond you. And the reason I say brands, if you think about somebody like Ryan Reynolds, you mentioned Aviator Jen. He also has MetMobile. He's able to do this across multiple brands because he's got such a bright spotlight shining on him.

10:09So anyway, anything else you want to add on this? I mean, because you're kind of the king of the whole goose and eggs concept. So no, I like it. I think that just the idea of and I like the example even, you know, of how originally it was like kind of Ryan Dice and digital marketer were one in the same. And then you did a good job of really kind of propping up other people, propping up the brand as a separate thing and creating value that was transferable there. And same thing with the event. It wasn't the Ryan Perry Rich show. It was Traffic and Conversion Summit and that created a brand. And what I liked about that too is it was completely separate from Digital Marketer.

10:51And so even within the same ecosphere, like the same environment, you were able to create separate brands that had value, but were all fed by your celebrity within the space? Because I would argue you're one of the more well-known people in the marketing space of digital marketing, right? And so how do people, like, what, is there a roadmap that you've got for kind of making that happen? I guess step one, get a personal brand. How do we do that most effectively? And then step two, how do I perpetuate that and then use that to prop up the other things that I want to prop up? Yeah. So you want to think about this in three pillars.

11:35So pillar number one is your character. Pillar number two is the stage that you're performing on. And then pillar number three is your company, is the brand. So you got your character that you want to be intentional about, the stage, and then the company. So in terms of your character, It's important to remember that when you are out there, and we'll talk about what out there means in a second, but when you are out there, you need to make sure that you are playing a character, that you are being consistent. Because you're not the same person in all spheres. Like, I hope you're not. I hope you don't behave the same way when you're around like your high school and college friends as you do when you're around, you know, your mom and your kids and stuff like that.

12:22Right. Like we're going to be slightly different people depending on the sphere that we're in. And so making sure that we're intentional about the character that we're playing is really, really important. And where that starts with this, this is really important, is what is your unique point of view? I think one of the most important things that a character can have is a unique point of view. This is one of the things that makes a great character. There is some hill that they are prepared to die on. Okay. And so you need to be out there speaking in absolutes. And it can be frustrating. I know I get frustrated with this because anytime you're speaking in absolutes, it means you're not perfectly accurate.

13:03And if there's one person who is great at speaking in absolutes, we talked about him earlier. Gary Vaynerchuk has always spoken really well in absolutes. you know you've got to learn to to speak in absolutes and i'll tell you when you start maintaining a unique point of view you're going to get haters and that's when you know you're actually saying something that's worth saying if you have no haters i'm sorry but you don't have a very interesting character every comic book character has an arch enemy okay so you've got to be saying something. You've got to have a unique point of view that pisses someone off.

13:42If you don't, it's probably not worth saying. This is important though. You can't just say something merely to piss people off. You have to actually believe it. So what is your contrarian point of view? That's where it starts. What's that thing that you believe? What's that hill that you're prepared to die on. The next piece, and this is the other thing that nobody wants to do, but it's important. What is your quirk? What are some eccentricities? What are some flaws that make you you that you can put on display? And this is layered, right? But it's the unique point of view is what creates trust.

14:27The quirks and flaws and eccentricities is actually what creates liking because that's what makes you human. If you're too perfect all the time, we don't root for that person. So being intentional about the particular flaws and quirks and eccentricities that you're going to put on display is important. Let's go back to Gary as an example. When Gary was first doing Wine Library TV, he cussed like a sailor, right? Now, that isn't as weird right now because, frankly, it seems like everybody's out there cussing. But in the earlier days of the internet, certainly in the wine world, that was weird. It was weird for somebody to get out there and to be cussing like that.

15:08That wasn't a totally normal thing. I was looking at this one lady. She's a florist. Her name's Cheetah. And she's a florist out of Los Angeles. and she's the influencer for her brand. And this lady, she makes great floral arrangements and she's got a massive following on like Instagram and TikTok. But Cheetah will go off on a customer if the customer is mean and Cheetah will name names. Nice. Like Cheetah's got like some anger issues. You know what I'm saying? Like, and for me, like I'm kind of a walking dad joke. Right. And so it's important to understand, like, what are your quirks and flaws and eccentricities and also that it's layered.

15:58So there's the ones that are external that kind of everybody can see. And then maybe what are the deeper ones that that people are going to find out, you know, later on? So if you know anything about my story, you know that I almost ruined my marriage by basically being a toxic workaholic. And that's a story that I reveal at different points in time, depending on how you engage with my personal brand. So what is that for you? So that's kind of the second aspect of your character. The third one is brandable hooks. You got to have some type of visual and verbal brandable hooks. So what are the things that when people are scrolling through their feed, when they see it, they're going to immediately be able to identify you?

16:46So for our buddy Alex Hormozzi in the early days when he first launched himself onto social, it was his like creepy handlebar mustache. Right. He was the big jack dude with the handlebar mustache. Then he grew the full beard, you know, and he replaced the mustache with the with the nose strip. and the whole time it's been the the like muscle shirts and big muscles right yep exactly yeah he's kind of always had that going for him there's this dude who's got a really big following in the home inspector space and he just wears this kind of floppy dorky hat because he's he's in Arizona and it's just like this safari like hat so you're scrolling around you instantly recognize him Um, some people have like, you know, weird glasses.

17:39Some people say the same thing in the opening line. So having some kind of brandable hook is big. And then the fourth thing with the character is your narrative spine. So what is that? What's kind of the journey that you're on that you're leading people through? Um, that once they learn about you, they, they see this story that you're on and they can kind of watch you journey through it. That's, that's what the story that people want to follow. So maybe, you know, maybe you're launching a business and they're getting to watch you as you progress through that. Maybe you're, you know, trying to, you're on a health journey or something like that.

18:14But so those are the four, the four elements of the character. Anything, any thoughts, feelings, emotions about that before we move on to stage? No, no. Just, are there any more, like, are you going to talk about kind of the reluctance or the challenges that people who are not necessarily feeling camera friendly, um, might experience and how they overcome that or how they deal with it in kind of pursuing this track? What I will, so if you are, if you are reluctant to, you know, to doing this, I guess I'm operating under the assumption and I'm going to talk to you all. Like I talked to our clients.

18:57Um, it's your job, suck it up, buttercup, right? Like this is just your job now. And so if you're reluctant to do it, then that tells me that you haven't been doing it. If you haven't been doing it, then that means you don't have a following. If you don't have a following, then good news, when you start doing it, nobody's going to see that you suck. So start doing it right now. Nobody's paying attention. By the time anybody's watching, you will have gotten better because if you didn't get better, nobody ever watched. So how do you deal with now? How do you deal with like, when I first started, well, I decided I want to have a personal brand and cause I was always the guy behind the scenes.

19:41And I was like, you know, this seems like I probably, I felt kind of what we're all talking about, you know, like, like, and this was, you know, a while ago now. And I was like, so I want to be, I want to build this personal brand. And so I went on the socials and started posting videos and everything. It's actually kind of how business lunch started. It was easy to take people lunch and record the takeaways at the end. But my family absolutely does not want to be in anything. And so like a lot of, I spend a lot of time with my family. And so there's a lot of things that especially are personal, because I do believe that if you're just posting business content, It's something that I'm going to get back to doing personal stuff as well.

20:27But if you're just a business person and you're posting, like if George Clooney only posted, you know, this is the finest tequila and it's because it's from these ingredients, that's not going to be good enough without, you know, I'm out on the boat today and I'm having a glass of tequila, you know, or whatever. But my family is vehemently opposed to having anything included. And I did learn from, uh, fortunately not my own experience, but just like watching things that were happening to people, um, who were posting at places and posting immediately that you don't want to let people know where you are.

21:01Like I used to do hotel room tours and I'd like be like, here, this is the such and such suite at the blah, blah, blah hotel. And I just checked in. That's dumb because now you can be found and some crazy people, you know, I had a stalker, uh, will, will find you. so um how do you deal with that because i know your family's not particularly like excited about being that but you're posting primarily business stuff and not a lot of personal stuff but people want to see personal stuff so help me with that yeah i think i think you've got to have um you do need to decide again what what your barriers are and so for for me i will not my family's same way if i were to have a camera crew following my family around taking video all the time but even And you with your iPhone saying, you know, hey, here we are.

21:47We're at the, you know, whatever, the concert that you went to just recently. Right? Exactly. No freaking way. And so, you know, now could I take video and not have them in the frame and just say where I am and post it later? Yeah, fine. And so I might get into where I'm doing that from time to time. But I've just... Then what happens is they're like, why are you doing videos? I want you to be here with us. It's like, but it's only a five-minute video. Yeah. So what I've decided is I'm just not going to do that. I've decided that I'm basically just going to post business related content and that's going to have to be good enough.

22:25But what if I said you need to suck it up, buttercup? Yeah. So that you didn't let me. So you let me finish that part. So I'm a lawyer recovering, right? I only ask you the questions that move towards what I want. Yeah, I know. So what I will tell you is establish barriers. And so for me, I'm not going to put my family on. I'm not going to go film when we're on vacation and stuff like that. I'm just not. And I'm prepared to accept whatever downside that creates. Now, going back to what I said before about our clients, this is your job, suck it up, buttercup. What I then said was, and yet, it's also your business.

23:02So if you don't want to do it, you don't have to, because it's your company. And so if you don't want to give yourself that job, you don't have to. That being said, the job needs to exist. So if my question is, if not you, then who? Okay. If not you, then, because it needs to be somebody, there's going to need to be somebody on the team. So Louis Vuitton went out there and they hired, you know, Pharrell Williams. And I bet that wasn't cheap. And I bet he got stock. You know, enter Miami, the football club went out there and hired Lionel Messi. And purportedly, that's a$400 million deal. You know, that wasn't cheap.

23:44Yeah. You know, so if not you, is there somebody on your team that perhaps you could, who already is doing stuff on social, who maybe they could be this person? It is possible to hire actors onto your team and to have them perform in these roles, to effectively have them on your team performing in this role. So like, let's say you're an HVAC company. You can hire an actor, put them in your uniform and have them go and teach them just enough about HVAC maybe and have them go through the training to know just enough to talk about this stuff. Brands have done that. there's a HVAC company out of Charlotte, North Carolina.

24:34Morris Jenkins, that is exactly what they did. They had this character, was in commercials for six, seven years named Bobby. And Bobby got so famous that Bobby got to be in the town parade. There were literally billboards put out there saying, we'll miss you, Bobby, when Bobby moved and went on to do other things. So it can be done. Like this can be hired. There are succession issues that need to be considered. But what I would say is the role is necessary. It's best if it is the founder, owner, CEO. If not them, it needs to be somebody. So who? What if it's a duck or a gecko? So I don't think a duck or a gecko is good enough anymore.

25:21Okay. I know, you know, we've talked about that in the past. I just, I don't think it's good enough anymore. It, um. What about a, is her name Flo? The one that's the, is it the car? Yeah. Flo for Progressive Insurance. That's Progressive, yeah. I think it's, I think it works for Progressive. I think it works. all these things work for insurance companies because they're there. It's a commodity. It's a commodity and it's something that you have to have. And so all I have to basically do is remember the name. And so if you made me laugh, I'll remember your name. But I think if any one of them came out and actually did this, if they had an actual embedded influencer, I think they would crush the gecko and they would crush flow.

26:10If it was, if it was actually a good embedded influencer, I'm sure the CEOs of these companies are boring as crap and would be the worst people to do this. And now terrified of being assassinated. Right, right. So I probably wouldn't recommend it for some of these public companies. They probably can't afford to do it for a variety of reasons. But if you're a smaller company, medium-sized company, up-and-comer, owner-operated, this is... And the other thing is they've got the budgets to do brand, large brand mass media. Yeah. So, yeah. Interesting. Okay. Now I interrupted you and got off on that tangent, but I did think it was important to kind of run down there.

26:51So what's, are we on the third pillar? No. So the second pillar. So that's, so that's the character you've got, you've decided who the character is going to be. And it's important. And it relates to that discussion because if If you do need to change the person, you should probably, the way that you deal with succession is whoever you swap them out for, they should have similar character traits, particular with the unique point of view. And where you see brands do this well is when they've done this with spokespeople, they've done this. The brands that do this well have done this well with spokespeople as well.

27:35there we go. Finally got that out. So when William Shatner, he was the, you know, the Priceline negotiator, right? As Priceline wanted to start phasing out Shatner, they brought in his daughter. It wasn't his actual daughter. I think they brought in his daughter for a while. At least she was supposed to, I don't know who his daughter is, but, but I'm pretty sure it was his actual daughter. It was a, she was an actress. I think she pretended to be his daughter on the thing, But anyway, it was the same. The reason that I think it was easy to like pretend whether she was or wasn't is because it was the same type of person.

28:11Right. So even though it was a female, much younger, she had the same kind of quirkiness that William Shatner had. And so that's why you want to be clear on who the character is, both so that you can be consistent, but also for succession reasons. If you want to swap out the person, the person that you swap in needs to have some of these same character traits. This is amusing to me. I had to look it up because I don't watch TV, right? So it said Priceline cast, Kaylee Cuoco, famous for the Big Bang Theory, to play William Shatner's fictional daughter in their negotiating campaign. But she's not actually his daughter in real life.