Why 99% of Creators Fail to Build Real Businesses: Anastasia Shtompel Reveals The Truth

0:00Gary Lipovetsky: Do you think brands have their priorities straight between paid media and their own organic social media? Are they prioritizing correctly between the two? I don't think so. Yeah, they're prioritizing paid because they're used to it from decades of working with agencies and they're completely neglecting their own social media. Why do some creators build audiences that they never build businesses? What are they missing? I feel that a lot of people that even today I'm speaking to, they're a little bit confused, like why they need it for, I have this big asset of audience, but nothing I want to do is not exactly the fit of that.

0:33A lot of people rushing, especially now because they're looking at this industry and they're like, oh, it's so lucrative. I can make so much money. They're rushing into this idea of like, let me make money where they are really missing the time for building the foundation.

0:45Gary Lipovetsky: Do you believe that the model of affiliate marketing between brands and creators, do you feel that the compensation structure is fair to the creators?

0:59Gary Lipovetsky: Anastasia is an entrepreneur, a marketing strategist. She is a Forbes council member. She is the former head of marketing at a multi-million dollar company. She has built a premium D2C, which stands for direct to consumer, consumer brand. She advises leading consumer brands on growth. She is a creator with over 170 ,000 followers. She works with both brands and creators, which gives her a unique perspective that is closely aligned with our perspective, working with both creators and brands, and she creates thoughtful content about consumer behavior, marketing trends, creator partnerships, and where the industry is heading.

1:34Gary Lipovetsky: Anastasia, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very excited. It's, you know, we've been excited for a while, and I do have to apologize because the last time you had already, I believe, purchased your flight to come here, and I had a medical emergency. Yeah, I mean, it's an unexpected situation. It is, and you were such a good sport about it, so thank you for that. Of course. Thank you. So today we're going to be talking about the future of marketing, specifically as it pertains to creators and brands, which we are all very much immersed in, the future for creators and what we can expect to see there, and the biggest shifts happening in the creator economy as a whole.

2:09Gary Lipovetsky: So I'm going to jump right into it. And my first question, Anastasia, is for you. Has the creator economy fundamentally changed? Yes, I feel that it's changing right now a lot. I think there is a lot more to it. But for years, influencer marketing, creator marketing was treated as this shortcut, let's say, for brands. And for a while, it definitely worked. Right. So brands, they just found a person with the audience. They sent the product, they paid for a post and they basically hope that likes, you know, will and awareness and this reach will translate into sales eventually. And it worked for quite a while.

2:50Right. But right now we're seeing that the whole market is changing and the relationship between the influencers and brands are changing. But not because the creators are becoming less important. I would say that they are actually becoming even more important and they are becoming this essential growth asset, let's say, for brands. But at the same time, for the brands, it's becoming a little unsustainable to maintain this relationship in the format it is right now. When, let's be honest, influencer marketing became quite expensive, right? And for the limited marketing budgets, let's say, that brands work with, and they try to stretch every dollar the furthest it can go, it just becomes unsustainable, right?

3:40And it doesn't really mean that creators shouldn't be paid for the collaborations. It just means that this relationship that just unsustainable for one of the sites, it has to change. And right now we're just seeing that kind of like transformation.

3:58Gary Lipovetsky: Yeah, that's a really interesting observation. You know, from what I can see and kind of my observation is that there's a bit of a spectrum when it comes to brands, right? There are brands who they absolutely, it's too expensive, right? So it's too expensive. They need performance marketing. They need an arbitrage, which we're going to be talking about because the affiliate model is something that's really interesting. And I think you and I have different opinions on it. But really that spectrum is such that the brands who are more, let's say, you know, they're earlier along and maybe they haven't, maybe they're bootstrapped or maybe they've done a small raise.

4:27Gary Lipovetsky: They have to be super conscious and they have to do a real good, like they have to really find that blend between branding to really nurture that top of funnel and, you know, direct conversion. So I agree with you there that there's a bit of a kind of a separation now between the cost of influencer marketing and the earlier stage brands. We've been kind of in our business in the last 10 years, we deal with brands at various stages. And we find that the more mature brands from a, like chronologically who have just been around longer, who have maybe, you know, are working with larger budgets from doing raises, they're actually, they're better with, and they understand kind of the power of, of, of creator marketing and their budgets are a little more open for that.

5:11Gary Lipovetsky: So that's what I'm finding. But I think there is definitely a spectrum. Valeria, what's happening today that most creators haven't noticed yet? oh i think we're already noticing it where you are just moving away from just being a content creator to really becoming a media company there's a lot more conversations now about ownership i thought you were talking about different companies at various stages there are ways to work now with companies in a way that creates those ownerships right like i think a lot more creators and my peers are interested in like okay i really align with this brand they may not have the budget like like, barbadum for me, but what can I gain from it?

5:48What kind of a strategic partnership can I bring? What kind of, like, a bigger exploration of the opportunity is here? So I think a lot of creators are now looking at it at a different way.

6:02Gary Lipovetsky: But what would you say the creators have not yet noticed? That was the question. Well, that's what they, the ones that are, there's a lot of them that are still waking up to this. So that's the biggest thing. I think that there's still a big chunk of creators. They're still working with this very transactional work with other brands. And there's just bigger opportunities now. Remember, I was talking about this whole idea of creator board, right? Board of creator. A board of creators of the company, yeah. Board of creators. Sorry, I apologize. Are you seeing this concept of board of creators in the companies that you work with, where they actually get a board of creators to get?

6:40Yeah, I mean, this is definitely one of these new formats of collaboration with influencers. So you're seeing it too.

6:46Gary Lipovetsky: I just wanted to, because I know you've been seeing that and the conversation that we've been having and you've been having directly with some of the brands is they are forming these boards. Yeah. I want to be, I can speak to myself and I always share it with other peers that maybe still feel like either they're stuck or they're unfulfilled with the kind of partnerships that are happening. To your point, the model of revenue is changing, brands can't afford, you know, so there's unpredictability. What's the word? Impredictability? Uh, there's, well, not volatility, but yeah. There are, there is a volatility when it comes to, uh, revenue.

7:22So yeah, it's unpredictable. And, uh, they're just really understanding that there's other ways now to work, to think bigger. So I urge other creators to really zoom out and see the bigger picture and start looking at themselves as media, um, entities.

7:37Gary Lipovetsky: Yeah. Yeah. So for both of you, and there's something that all three of us can discuss. So if someone left the industry in 2023, right? So three years ago, somebody left the industry three years ago and came back today, what would shock them? I feel like the sheer amount of content. And I think that in the AI era, which was still in the beginning of it, I don't know if you agree, but I see people are now really being forced to like step it up. You know, it's no longer. Meaning the creators. The creators. You really have to be so clear on your perspective and your point of view and your value that I slowly see how some creators are going to fade away unless they're just really understanding what's their uniqueness.

8:28Gary Lipovetsky: Anastasia, what would you say is the most shocking thing, the most shocking change in the last three years in the creator economy and in marketing as it pertains to the creator economy? I think probably it's not necessarily the change of just three years, but it just slowly happens throughout several last years, let's say. And I think specifically talking about the creators and influencer marketing, right? It's the how central place they take right now in the brand growth. Because we started five years ago or let's say even 10 years ago, right? With influencers being this like media placement, let's say, rented attention, right?

9:00Right now, they're embedded, they're becoming even more embedded into the whole infrastructure of the brand growth, right? And I think from that, we also should discuss that what changes right now is relationship between both sides, right? But I think we still need to discuss how we measure this relationship, right? And how we measure the results, because I feel that in the industry right now, there is a lot of this conversation that is like, Like, should it be like who is wrong or right, let's say, right? Brands or like creators, should they be paid? I think it's not even the question. The question is that I feel that most of the brands, even small brands, will definitely agree that influencers are a very important part right now and they see the value of that.

9:46But to track that is quite, let's say, complicated, right? Because if you track it by just sales, limited like basically by time in this specific platform, it's very limited understanding of that, right? But if you're looking at that of what creator basically his, her input into the awareness, trust, social proof, cultural relevance, then you understand that they're a part of this bigger customer journey. That it's, in most of the cases, very hard to track back to a very specific influencer because it's more of a compound effect, let's say, right? Yeah.

10:26Gary Lipovetsky: You know, I had, so we had several years ago, six or seven years ago, we hired a VP of marketing for the clothing brand that we had for a couple of years. And we since, we, you know, we shuttered that. And this VP, and this was a big executive. He had come from a company that does, I think three, they were doing three or$400 million a year in revenue, also from kind of textiles clothing. And when we sat down at some of our initial meetings or even before he was hired to come and work for us, I would tell him, okay, what can we expect as an ROI? So as a prudent business owner, I would say, okay, well, this is the budget that you will have in order to push the brand forward.

11:05Gary Lipovetsky: What is going to be the revenue as a result of that? And he said, Gary, you've got it all wrong. If you think that you can track every single dollar back to revenue, he said, you're going to be very disappointed. Marketing is a holistic thing. And so it's, it's just as much of an art as it is a science. And it's this constant conflict, I would say between like owner, like if you put in one camp, like the ownership of a company and the finance department of a company, and then you have in another camp, you have the, the CMOs and the influencer marketing people. And it's this conflict between them of measuring the result.

11:38Gary Lipovetsky: And when one side, just like our VP of marketing at the time told me, Gary, you cannot expect to be able to track everything as accurately as you want. That's just not how marketing works. That conversation really opened my eyes and actually contributed to our business model now. But I think at the same time, although a lot of executives and brand owners understand that this reality, you still try to do to basically measure as much as possible. And this is why when you are offering influencers and the basically the campaign that costs specific amount of money, still they understand that this is the reality.

12:11They understand that this doesn't it's not measured only by sales. But at the same time, it's very hard to say yes to a base budget when you can't basically track the value of that. Although you know there is a value.

12:22Gary Lipovetsky: But it's a pendulum. I also feel like I got really spoiled with this idea where back in the day with influencer marketing, you could… Like a magic pill, right? Yeah, because it was so new and so fresh and so powerful that it was so much easier to attribute it. Here, we put this tea in the influencer and it blew up, right? Now it's different. Consumers are smarter. We look at messaging in a different way. It's a more holistic thing as a whole. So now it's going kind of back to the days of how do you measure an ad in the magazine? And a lot of people are like, wait, wait, wait, how do we now bring these two worlds together?

12:59Because now it matured, right? And now there's a bit more of a, you know, there's a formula, but people are still thinking in those like early days, in my opinion.

13:08Gary Lipovetsky: It's always going to be this disagreement. The thing is, is that even the finance people, they understand that they could be doing performance marketing to their detriment. Meaning if all they do is put their budget into performance marketing or for every dollar they spend, they want$1.30 in gross margin. And, you know, so they can get their 30, like their 30 % or 1.3X, you know, ROI. They understand at some point fundamentally that they're not building a brand. And so if you don't build a brand and if you're only relying essentially on arbitrage, which is what this is, right? We're talking about an arbitrage model.

13:43Gary Lipovetsky: If all you're doing is relying on arbitrage, you're not moving the business forward. You don't actually have a, you don't have a business. Unless you can show as a brand, like any, any big, huge brand right now, if they turned off their marketing, sales would continue. Because people would be either be going directly to their website and making purchases. People would be going, walking into the store. That's without any marketing. And so that's where real value is created in a business, where you've built so much affinity that you no longer have a direct acquisition cost, right? You don't have a CAC in real time.

14:17Yeah, absolutely. But at the same time, again, while founders understand that, there is constant conversation, not only about the creators and influencer marketing, but also, okay, we spend money on events. Like, is it worth it? Right. We spend on PR. Is it worth it, right? And it creates, in a lot of cases, a lot of frustration, let's say, because you have X amount of budget. Small or big brand you are, you still have a specific amount. You always wish it would be bigger, right? And you need to decide where this budget goes, right? And which piece goes there. So I think if we don't find a way to measure it in some way, right, not measure by specific amount of sales limited in time by this campaign and this platform, it will be constant struggle to justify brand marketing.

15:04That is definitely, there is no question it's very important to build a brand.

15:08Gary Lipovetsky: Sorry, I apologize for interrupting you, but you just said something. You said, we know it's important, but then how do we justify it? So knowing that it's important, wouldn't that be justification or not? I mean, justified by numbers, let's say, right? By something that is measurable because definitely how like this compound trust and awareness around the brand that all the different influencers basically impact, right? It's not something that you can track back to a very specific influencer, right? Because some of them work better than others, right? And you did several campaigns, hopefully, and not hoping that one will do the whole thing.

15:44Exactly, exactly. Exactly. And then the next time when you're investing, you also need to make a decision which creators you're investing in, right? What campaign and approach you should be doing, right? For that, you need numbers. You need some way to measure that because overall, you understand that worked across the last three years. So then let me ask you this. Doesn't basically inform decisions. No, no, no. You're right.

16:07Gary Lipovetsky: But let me ask you this. So use McDonald's as an example. McDonald's has Big Macs on billboards all over the world. I don't know. How are they calculating the ROI on that? They still do it, and they're not stopping. How do they calculate? I mean, in advertising, there are other ways to basically calculate that, right? And they still calculate exactly what is the traffic that goes through next to this billboard and stuff like that. I mean, definitely, it's not a very specific, but at the same time, the way we are counting reach and views, it's not exactly, right? Like how many people exactly saw.

16:38Gary Lipovetsky: But hold on a second. It's a lot more closer to... For sure. Absolutely. The analysis is a lot closer. I think what it comes down to, and I want to get in later in this conversation, I want to get into kind of a fair compensation model for creators. And that's the affiliate kind of debate. But where I think this lands is that brands understand they have to have this. They don't like the fact that they have to do branding. They don't like the fact that they have to invest in marketing that doesn't necessarily give them a direct attributable ROI. But they also understand that they have to have it.

17:10Gary Lipovetsky: And so what we found, I mean, what I can see is that when we work with brands that are just have been around a long time that already have a brand, the type of brand that you would walk into the store and you would go and buy it tomorrow, not because you saw an ad, not because you saw something and clicked and bought, but because in your mind, if let's say it's jewelry and you know, okay, I want a piece of jewelry. I'm going to go to this neighborhood because I know that store is there and I'm going in. So in order to get that, you do have to do long-term unattributable marketing. So I think it's this, it's like a gift and a curse.

17:43Gary Lipovetsky: They know they want it, but they don't know how to pay for it. But the more mature brands are doing it anyways. That's what we see. That's what we see. All the brands are doing that anyway, because I think there is no debate. You need to build a brand. There's no other way. Yeah, exactly. There is no other way because people don't buy today the product, right? They buy into this world of the brand, right? Because you have so many different options right now that if you measure them by like features and like qualities and stuff like that right so brand definitely is like undeniably very important and i wouldn't say that brands like don't want to do it they want to do it but like at the same time you need to just find a way that like you can you can somehow work with that right without just basically uh working in the model that you feel that next time you're not sure you would be able to do that because you don't know you don't know how to understand if it worked or not right and i'm not here to say that creators you know like literally i'm a creator myself and like it's very very important to have creators in your system i'm just saying that would definitely as as the market as the industry the whole thing right we should discuss okay like how we can track something that we're not tracking at all right now right and then maybe that actually helps us to kind of like justify also the yeah yeah i look i so look we agree we we welcome we welcome kind of you know opposing opposing opinions on this and that and it's fine as we should definitely you know i'll be talking about this but let me give you just another example when you purchase a vehicle that vehicle has a certain brand right there's a certain way that you feel as a consumer when owning that vehicle right how was that established it wasn't through it wasn't it wasn't through uh it wasn't through performance marketing of course of course i'm a brand marketer first of all right so like you don't need to convince me in that but they got there by doing very specific campaigns, try to measure each one of them, double down on what worked, right?

19:34It's not like a magic, just something happened and they're cool right now and we want to buy them, right? Like it's, marketing is a very specific, let's say steps, right? You just definitely need to approach that in this holistic, let's say manner, right?

19:46Gary Lipovetsky: You know, like there are brands over time that they have this like, these viral moments. So what comes to my mind, I don't know if you guys remember like Von Dutch. Do you guys remember these hats, these Von Dutch hats? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was very, there was that one with the sweats was like, oh, one color. I remember I bought a few sets and it was like a little bit. Oh my God, Pangea. Pangea. Did you ever hear of Pangea? Of course. So with Pangea, I mean, are they still selling now? I don't think so. So when they had their viral moment because a couple of creators said, oh, this is cool and they posted about them and all of a sudden they had, they were reporting like millions of dollars, you know, in revenue in a couple of days, but then it goes away because they didn't continue.

20:25Gary Lipovetsky: They didn't take that money and reinvested back into branding. They thought they could ride that wave. And then the other thing that I wanted to say when it comes to this is that I often use the analogy, and by the way, I'm saying that I recognize that this is not a problem in the industry, but it's just a reality. And it's counterintuitive. You have to invest, brands need to invest, in the unattributable, in the untrackable. They have to invest in culture. Because when a brand invests into a creator, if they're looking at this strictly as an arbitrage, like they equate them to like a list of email addresses that they can just send a blast to and make a profit on that one thing, they're missing the bigger moment.

21:13Gary Lipovetsky: They're missing the bigger opportunity to really be part of culture. So I believe brands should be looking at creators culturally. Like how do they fit in in culture? Are they making a statement? And then one last thing I want to say before we move on to this, because then I want to talk about later on, I want to ask you about the compensation model for creators on the affiliate side, because I have some opinions on that. But just to prime that conversation, I'll say that when you are selling things in general, let's say in a store, if the person, if it's true that brands should be doing, you know, really rewarding that kind of last click final attribution, then the CEO should be at the cash register.

21:53Gary Lipovetsky: Do you see what I mean? I get what you're saying. I think that just the only difference between what we're saying, you're saying that brands should be okay investing in something that you can't measure. I'm saying we should start thinking about how we can measure that, right? So it's sustainable. Exactly. So the whole conversation is just like more tangible, let's say. Because, of course, we can talk about big brands having budgets to do that. But at the end, then creator marketing, influencer marketing would become billboards. Yeah, exactly. Like billboards that are basically only big brands are doing that, right?

22:32You don't want the whole industry to become that. And I don't think it's like even realistic because literally creators, they take a very important part in this consumer, let's say, journey, right?

22:41Gary Lipovetsky: I think the measurement is there because when you look at the social data that's available now, in any post, let's say, that Valeria creates for a brand, the amount of rich data that's in there. And again, they're just upset that it's not the conversion data. They're upset that on a video that gets 500 ,000 views, they don't know how many of them actually purchased. But there's value in the fact that we know that it reached 500 ,000 people. There's value that we know all of the engagement data, the likes, saves, shares. That's valuable as well. And I think what the bridge that needs to be kind of closed, the gap that needs to be closed, is that a marketer needs to look and say, okay, this is a win.

23:17Gary Lipovetsky: like establish a baseline and say this yeah but listen the conversation is already changing because you know we're talking now about culture about perspective about taste about you know that's the measure of success for a lot of brands because if they're trying to stay stick around they understand that it's really not about distribution is obviously important but the right distribution the right alignment context we're going to get right so i think that that's those conversations are already happening yeah yeah okay i want to move on because we're going to be getting back to these conversations.

23:47Gary Lipovetsky: We just jumped into them because I think it's on the forefront of everyone's mind. But Anastasia, I want to ask you, has AI made creators more valuable or more replaceable? It's an interesting question. I think that there's kind of like two sides to that, right? Definitely content in general became much more accessible for brands, right? So instead of just relying fully, let's say, on a human labor to create every piece of content, every visual for your brand, you can go to AI and do that with AI. And, you know, AI becomes even better. And sometimes you can't say even that it's AI, right? And very soon we will see the same with videos and like, you know, people actually looking like real people, right?

24:27But at the same time, we right now already see on the market that while AI was just introduced, everybody were like crazy about AI and every brand using AI, like it felt you know cool right innovative right now consumers start to feel like this ick you know towards the ai let's say and we as just human beings craving this more human and real interaction right and representation of like of some message so we right now see that you know this kind of like human side something that ai can't really create right like with this perfect skin perfect faces perfect like people let's say saying something kind of in front of the camera right we see those like real creators being very very human and relatable gaining even more power because like we as just human beings craving that in any case you know yeah when ai started happening

25:18Gary Lipovetsky: and you started seeing all of this i mean you you know anastasia you're talking about the perfect aesthetic the perfect skin the perfect lighting ai is just as capable as creating the type of content the flawed content the uh the authentic content that creators are creating like from their closets. It's just as capable as doing that. So I'm sure we're looking at, you know, we're all looking in our feeds at, you know, at that type of AI. But Larry, I wanted to ask you, are you or were you concerned when you started seeing this as a creator, as a veteran in this industry, were you concerned that, you know, like a lot of other, like, were you concerned like taxi drivers were about the Uber when it first came around?

25:57Gary Lipovetsky: Did that cross your mind? no i think that they there was this forced fear that was trying to get to everyone but i don't know i didn't buy into it i didn't buy into it because i feel like there's room for both and i'm now the most excited about ai because the way it revolutionized the way i work like i'm able to be more of a creative and allocate all these other mundane stuff to the AI. So for me, in the beginning to answer your questions, I wasn't worried. I didn't understand what it can or cannot do, if I'm being honest. Okay. Okay. My next question, it's for both of you. Is content creation for both individual creators and brands still the greatest opportunity in modern business?

26:46Gary Lipovetsky: Who wants to answer that? um so from the creator side absolutely for sure i'll just even say as like me personally becoming a creator of course i worked with creators and i heard about you know amazing stories you know how it changes people's lives you know and careers and stuff like that but there are some things that you understand but you can't like really fully comprehend before you actually going through that yourself and for me when I became a creator it definitely changed my life and a lot in my career right so I didn't even fully realize how many opportunities it brings to you right and how many things it changes so absolutely for sure on creator side content creation I think in audience gaining your audience and trust of that audience is something huge opportunity on the brand side I mean, of course, of course, because if we're talking about brands looking at their marketing holistically, and it's definitely should be this way, right?

27:49Social media is a very integral, important part of that, right? Because even the way we are, like if we're looking at the marketing overall, right? Okay, let's say we're running ads on Meta as a brand, right? People click on the ad. They will always, always go to your social media first. they you like even as a consumer you never just click on the ad go to the website don't care about anything else and just purchase right you go to social media you scroll through social media and a big part of this trust towards the brand desire towards the product is actually built here so if your social media your content doesn't do a job then all the rest doesn't really matter do you

28:23Gary Lipovetsky: think do you think brands have their priorities straight between paid media and their own organic social media? Are they prioritizing correctly between the two? I don't think so. Yeah, they're prioritizing paid because they're used to it from decades of working with agencies and they're completely neglecting their own social media. Absolutely, for sure. And I think the problem is even a little bigger. I would say that the most common thing that I see as the problem when I'm talking to different brands, like from small brands, but up to huge brands, that still up to today, a lot of brands are not seeing their marketing and brand as this integrated infrastructure.

29:02They see it as this like isolated, let's say parts of even inside of the marketing. I'm not talking about finance and marketing. I'm talking about even specifically marketing. They see this like isolated, let's say parts to it. So there is advertising, right? Like paid media, right? Performance marketing, there is social media, there is influencer marketing, there is PR, There is IRL, for example, right? And different things like that. And basically the problem comes and it's not really a situation today, right? Because like maybe 10 years ago, basically the whole marketing, it was, you know, product plus website plus some ads behind that.

29:33And you had great results, right? Today, it's not the situation. And it's not the situation, not because we just want to be, you know, fancy in our marketing. It's not the situation because consumers' journey is like different, right? Consumers are not just having like seeing an ad and going to buy, right? They basically need to see your ad, then see your social media, then see the recommendation from their favorite influencer, then to see you in another social media, right? And then to see, let's say, go to your website and then to see a retargeting ad. And then maybe they see an IRL activation of that brand and then they buy, right?

30:08Gary Lipovetsky: Sounds like a lot of branding. Exactly, exactly. So it's kind of like this nonlinear loop, let's say, that all the different touch points across all of these parts of the marketing has to compound into decision to buy, right? But brands today, a lot of brands, of course, you know, not a lot of them starting to understand. But of course, I think that it's not enough of a conversation just yet that a lot of brands still basically treat these parts separately. And the problem that they're expecting their results in the vacuum of each specific platform coming back to influencers. I think we're coming back to the discussion that we're having.

30:41Gary Lipovetsky: Exactly. Because it's the same with ads. Like sometimes brands invest in performance marketing. They put money behind meta ads and they kind of like treat that as also like a magic pill because they remember that 15 years ago that was the situation, right? But today people click on the ad and then if their ads doesn't do the job, you know, traffic might be great. But where they're going to lose, I believe, is when they're relying on this performance advertising and they have a certain formula, the metrics look a certain way, meaning they have their acquisition cost, they have their ROAS. But what ends up happening is that ROAS, which is return on ad spend, it starts decreasing over time as more competitors enter the market, as the cost per impression goes up, the cost per click goes up, and just in general more competition.

31:23Gary Lipovetsky: but the thing that will save them is ironically the thing that they can't measure and that's doing the branding because the click-through rate on any performance ad dramatically goes up if it's a recognizable brand with established context. And that's where they're missing the boat. So today they may look at all sorts of advertising as performance advertising where they're calculating ROAS. ROAS goes to break even and goes to negative very quickly unless you do branding, which is kind of further to kind of the, you know, the point I was trying to make, but that, but just getting back to the question is, is content creation the greatest opportunity in modern business?

32:01Gary Lipovetsky: Valeria, you started doing this. It's now going on almost 10 years where you saw this opportunity, you got into it. And obviously from, you know, from, from those early days till now, we've built a 27 person organization. We have multiple interests. We invest in companies. We do a lot of stuff all based on that activity that you did almost 10 years ago. Would you say today that that opportunity is still as lucrative or, you know, what does it look like today versus when you started 10 years ago? I mean, I think today is it's a no brainer and I think it is more lucrative. A lot of people romanticize the days where it's like, oh, there wasn't a lot of creators.

32:45So it's easier to grow. But you also didn't have opportunities. I mean, I was getting$200, you know, sponsorships. And I was like, oh my God, I can't believe someone's making, you know, I can make a little bit of money out of this. And the opportunities didn't come because people didn't really understand the place for creators, for influencers. Influencers were like, I'm embarrassed to say that that's what I do. Brands are like, we don't know where to place them. It was a lot of, you know, a lot of people were doing a lot of trial and error. Today, I think the way creators are being welcome into every industry.

33:20Gary Lipovetsky: Look at Cairns. I mean, Cairns, did you see what happened in Cairns? It was like all creators this time. No, it was a creator, the Oscars of creators, 100%. But the way they're welcome in any industry, finance, you know, venture capital, like everything. They're everywhere. And I just think that it's a very exciting time for creators to get in there and truly pave whatever way you want for yourself. and you no longer have to be stuck in like a box. Yeah. So there's been some recent validation of the entire industry of the creator economy and that is the acquisition of Whaler by Accenture. So from your position, why did Accenture acquire Whaler and why should creators care?

34:03I think that this is just a big statement of what position right now, what place right now creators economy take in the overall enterprise, let's say, infrastructure, right? And the brand growth, right? It's really true. It's kind of a continuation to what Valeria mentioned. It came a long way from not understanding exactly what is the value of creators in the brand growth, right? Up to today, when it's very clear for everybody that it's a very integral part of that, right? So the Accenture's acquisition of Whaler, it basically kind of makes it, you know, it's like a statement on an enterprise enterprise level let's say of that so like it's there is no question anymore about that so um yeah i mean to give it to give it context so for those of you

34:50Gary Lipovetsky: who aren't familiar with the deal um accenture is a 70 billion dollar company and whaler has processed to date i'm not sure in what period of time but they've processed 600 million dollars in in uh in in creator deals um so yeah to me it's very validating but would you say that creator marketing has officially become enterprise marketing um i think it just became this very integral enterprise infrastructure i would say right um but i think that it keeps being let's say important on different levels but definitely right now it's kind of like validated on that enterprise level yeah yeah carrie what do you think they're going to be doing with it what what do you think was the the logic behind that except for validating well i think i don't necessarily, I don't believe that Accenture purchased Whaler because they just wanted to put them on their P &L to increase their valuation.

35:44Gary Lipovetsky: I don't believe that that's the case. It's a statement and it's their foot in the door for global expansion. So right now, if you take Whaler and you look at their infrastructure, I'm sure that they've got a lot of brands that they work with. Obviously, tons of brands that they work with. They work with tons of creators. They're reputable in the industry. They have systems. So between both sides of the coin in terms of the brands and the creators, and then they have their infrastructure in the middle, and they probably have some amazing technology that helps govern all of these deals. I believe that it's a platform that is a start, like it's a launching pad for them.

36:17Gary Lipovetsky: They've already processed$600 million worth of deals. So obviously they have infrastructure. So I believe that it's a launching pad. And so what this symbolizes to me, when a company that's a$70 billion Goliath is purchasing a company like this, that tells me that they see this, they're purchasing that infrastructure and those relationships, and it's going to go even more, you know, it's going to accelerate even more. And they're putting themselves in that position. Valeria, I wanted to ask you, do you believe that every major company will eventually become a creator-first company? It's a bold statement, but do you feel all companies in the world will at some point become creator-first organizations?

36:57I don't think that it's creator-first, but I definitely think that there's going to be a position that I'm already seeing CEOs being basically moved to becoming a creator you know officer if that makes sense there was a name for it chief creator officer and they're becoming the face the sound you see it actually with legacy companies like McDonald's or what was it where the CEO came and like ate the burger yeah you know that's what I'm talking it's already happening like I think that to uh to your point anastasia it's it's become such a important part that it's inevitable and people are actually getting it put into this situation you're not even bringing creators you're making a creator out of your ceo out of the people that are leading the company also yeah yeah exactly it's interesting because like so today i want to say every brand the future every brand as a media company in addition to whatever else they're doing?

37:58Gary Lipovetsky: So, yeah, I agree. So I think that every company will become a creator-led company, but I don't think they'll start as a creator-led company. So I believe that there will be, let's say, a company that has a bunch of restaurants. They have 100 location restaurants and they're doing really well and they understand that they're now competing with other restaurants that are using creators or that the CEO or the founder has a public profile. And so now what we're seeing, what I'm seeing is I'm seeing a race because a lot of the entrepreneurs that I speak with that are already at meaningful scale in their businesses, they're frantically trying to understand how do I become the face of this company?

38:35Gary Lipovetsky: Because if not them, then who? Yeah. So I believe it will become a creator. All businesses will become creator-led because at least most will. Like maybe the electric company won't, right? Like utilities won't. But any kind of consumer-facing or any B2B, I believe will. I want to change gears a little and I want to talk about the different types of creators that we've identified. So you've been really talking from the position of your brand knowledge. I want to talk to you more about and I want to pick your brain more on the creator side. So we've established that there's kind of three types of creators.

39:08Gary Lipovetsky: One is the beginner. This is someone who's starting from zero. They need to build their identity, their niche. They need to figure out how to be consistent. They need to understand kind of digital distribution and they need to build confidence and they need to be accountable. And then the second type of creator is what we call the intermediate. So this is somebody with some audience. They've achieved some influence. But they're seeing plateaus either in audience growth or revenue. And specifically with revenue, they're just finding inconsistent monetization, which is something we – and we've been through all of these stages, by the way.

39:38Gary Lipovetsky: So we're speaking from our experience. So they're seeing this inconsistency in monetization. And we're seeing it in our community, creator method. We work with all three of these types of creators. And then you've got your kind of advanced, for lack of a better term. We've got your advanced creator who they have systems. They potentially have products. They have teams such as us. We have a pretty big payroll. They have IP. They have memberships, as we do. They may have like a consumer-facing brand that they've created. Then there's some enterprise value. So I want to talk about each type of creator and kind of pick your brain about these types of creators.

40:16Gary Lipovetsky: So for the, well, we'll start actually with Valeria. Valeria, what advice would you give to someone starting today with zero audience? What advice would I give? I mean, I can only speak as a creative. I think that taking the time to really find your specific voice is extremely important because that's the foundation of everything you're going to build upon. You know, we're doing a lot of these exercises when it comes to identifying your pillars, understanding, and it's not niche picking because, you know, I'm very big into the conversation of you are the niche, just because if you want to be in this content game long enough, there is going to be constant evolution.

40:56So just like putting yourself in a, you know, pigeonhole yourself is just not, it's counterproductive.

41:01Gary Lipovetsky: I want to say on that point, I really like the way you do it. So you, your niche is very clear on your social media, on your Instagram, but the way that you insert your personality when you, like when you're on your on your reels that when you're talking like you were at uh uh kylie kendall jenner's uh party for her tequila and you were invited there and so you really showed up and your personality really came through so yeah you you do that which is that's your asset right like your expertise is another asset but you are the asset and i think that's what ai could never replace expertise ai can replace so uh to me i think that's where it's very important to develop those muscles i think a lot of people rushing especially now because they're looking at this industry and they're like, oh, it's so lucrative.

41:41I can make so much money. They're rushing into this idea of like, let me make money where they are really missing the time for building the foundation.

41:49Gary Lipovetsky: I think they're missing the bigger opportunity. But on that note, Anastasia, do you believe that this is with your influencer head on, does today's beginner have more opportunities or more competition than they did in the past? I think both can be true you know at the same time because definitely I feel as what Valeria mentioned previously there is definitely so much more space for that you don't need to explain anymore the value of that or the opportunity of that right but at the same time definitely there is huge competition so even when I was starting as a creator right you always go through those stages okay like I mean at least I did you know as a marketer you go and you think okay like how should I position myself that I'm just not lost in the noise of crazy competition, right?

42:37So if I go, let's say, if any creator goes specifically into the, for example, lifestyle niche, right, there is such a huge competition there right now, right? And you basically need to constantly shine with your personality that it's a hard thing to also do to entertain with your life everyday people, right? And sometimes it's a very hard thing to compete with others on, right? Because not everybody have the same resources especially starting when you kind of like just aspiring let's say creator comparing yourself to a huge creator who lives this let's say you know very beautiful life right but i think that kind of like two things are true at the same time you just need to understand the reality of that and probably just find the proper let's say positioning for yourself that is kind of like maybe on intersection of things that is not that you know crazy let's same competition yeah we're talking about i agree with you personality wise but you know what i gotta say um i do want to bring awareness to the people that found a way to differentiate themselves in the way they edit and the way they deliver a message it's not necessarily always just how big your life is right and i see now a lot of this is why i'm saying ai is really pushing you know the the efforts of other creators to shine because now they're playing around with like different edits So you tell a story or the visuals, because the yak gives you that opportunity.

43:59It's available for everyone. And that is, to me, is very interesting. I know we're now drowning in like the yak videos. Everybody's yapping. But I do think that even within that, I am attracted to different little like elements that people are bringing forward, you know? So I think there's a lot of different ways to differentiate yourself. Yeah, I think that, I mean, at the end, we're drawn to people, right? Yeah. To their personalities. But what to do if you were not confident enough to show this personality in front of the camera, right? Because maybe you are not the funniest one, right? Or not like, I don't know, the sharpest one on some insights.

44:39Or you just don't feel very confident sharing those insights into the environment that can be also very judgmental, right? Yeah. Like you are thinking twice what you're saying sometimes, right? but I think that's definitely you know we kind of like craving more and more there's like personal let's say element of life and it's not necessarily the beauty the beautiful luxury life but I mean at the same time for me as I see it right just as as a creator I would speak right I'm not sharing too much of my like personal life all the time because I'm personally not very comfortable with that I feel that I kind of like constantly need to like compete entertaining yeah my life right and a lot of my days are not really interesting it's like literally just sitting in front of the computer having meetings.

45:20Gary Lipovetsky: I want to say that you, so I found you, it was through my feed and it's like kind of any other funnel where I saw once and I was really intrigued by, especially your carousels. I think your carousels are like cutting edge. I think you're probably one of the best in the industry when it comes to conveying information through a combination of still photography and text on screen and the caption itself. Your carousels are always drawing me into the greater caption and i'm learning a lot about the industry uh you know from following your content but you know to your point like i found you because like the algorithm kept showing me to you until at some point i was like okay i keep seeing it yeah i gotta follow this girl no no no i fall and then i followed you then i saw that you followed me and then you followed valera so that was like a nice yeah kind of surprise but that's exactly to my point where it's not you're not pouring yourself out there personality wise but it's like your expertise in the way you presented you know there's like this touch where there's again so many people that may speak on the same thing but they're not able to create their own unique style yeah yeah but it takes time you know oh a hundred percent for me to tell like i i started doing that several years ago right and i started from a little bit being trying to be in a safe let's say place of just like talking about let's say safe topics right and talking about kind of like you know maybe news and marketing and stuff like that and it grew but it grew quite slowly let's say and only when I got my confidence just like sharing my own perspective and insights you know and something that maybe no one else said before right only then it started to take off actually and I understood that okay but with to do that you need to gain some confidence exactly you gotta do the reps absolutely absolutely and for me definitely I thought about this um this unique positioning right that it's going to to be a niche that is going to be marketing right but it's going to be also like a creator and marketing right so you have a lot of those like accounts like bof for example right or different marketing accounts that is more of a magazine let's say right they're amazing right but there is no person specific person attached to that let's say right i intentionally wanted to be a person behind that right i wanted people to basically you know trust me right and my recommendation this is why in each of my carousels the last slide is always my image right Because in carousels, you don't see too much my face.

47:45So how people will recognize me. I align with that completely.

47:51Gary Lipovetsky: Moving on, I want to talk about what we're describing as the intermediate creator who has an audience, who has influence, who's reaching a plateau from an audience and distribution perspective and who has inconsistent monetization. because that's like a key pain point that we're seeing with the creators we work with that being the case i wanted to ask you anastasia why do some creators build audiences but they never build businesses what are they missing i only can speak from just like a personal perspective and understanding of course i can speak for everybody but for me even in my own journey um for me from the very beginning was important to understand why i'm doing that so because definitely content creation it's it's a full-time job right you need to understand why you're doing that because if you don't if you just for gaining views i mean it's not gonna like keep you in that for a long time right uh you need to get some money out of that if you're investing a lot of your time into that and an energy right like energy wise you always have to get something out of that and for some time getting attention and views might work right but you need definitely everybody at this eventually look for the monetization right so I mean for me it kind of was very clear from the beginning that I need I thought about starting my own personal social media like taking it seriously for quite some time but I didn't quite like could justify that in my head the amount of work I would put into that before like understanding why I need that right like for attention I mean it's not worth the amount of work let's say right okay Like, why do I need that?

49:31And only when I realized like how I want to monetize my, let's say, why I need my social media. Right. Yeah. And I started building that specifically for gaining leads for my business. Right.

49:42Gary Lipovetsky: For your consulting business. Yes. Absolutely. So if I, if I may, then if I may step into your, to hijack your answer, are you saying that some creators, they build audiences and they don't build businesses because they went in without a clear kind of understanding or a path? Like you reversed engineered it. You said, I want to get more leads. I want to create a funnel for my consulting business because you consult, right? That's one of your ways that you monetize. So you went in saying, okay, I need to back out this content plan into my monetization model, which is consulting. So would you say that the reason that people are building audiences and not businesses is because they're going in, building an audience with no idea how they're going to monetize?

50:21I believe that for me personally, that would be the main reason to tell the truth. So I feel that a lot of people that even today I'm speaking to, I have quite, you know, a lot of different friends or people that I know that are creators. Right. And it definitely I feel that they're a little bit confused, like why they need it for. Of course, you have those paid collaborations with brands. Right. And but if they're inconsistent, you kind of like always constantly in this like space thinking like, like, should I continue investing my time and energy to grow in that more? but like subconsciously you don't really understand like like what is the reward for that yeah like or should i kind of like you know so it's kind of like in this weird place let's say i feel definitely that uh a lot of creators i mean some of them probably don't want a business they want to don't don't want this hustle let's say because you know not everybody love that let's be honest so maybe doing it as a creative outlet yeah exactly someone it's just like you know a creative communication of your yourself and art and that's totally totally fine but i mean those that actually seeking something, I feel that either they got into that without understanding why they're doing that and maybe they gained audience that is a very specific audience, but it's not a fit for whatever they're interested in doing, right?

51:33Maybe they gained audience on, I don't know, just saying financial topics, talking about finances of their family, but they actually want to build, I don't know, a beauty brand or vice versa, right? So there is a little bit of a mismatch and you kind of like in this weird place, I have this big asset of audience, but nothing I want to do is not exactly the fit of that, right? So I feel for me that it's kind of like this alignment.

51:56Gary Lipovetsky: I like the idea of reverse engineering it. I mean, there's a concept of like build it and the monetization model will reveal itself. Maybe for a lot of people, yeah. Maybe for some, maybe for some. But I think that the assumption that if you build a large audience and you will for sure get brand partnerships, I just don't believe that that's the case. Well, we actually have a great example. a good friend of mine she had a huge audience you know she has about 700 800 000 but it was from her previous job and it was mostly male audience and she's like okay now i want to build something that is true to me i'm now a mother and you know i'm interested in this and x and y and z and it was scary for her because i already have such an established thing but they're useless to me yeah right so it's like i have to now start over quote unquote and really build content to start the foundation of what is that i'm seeing my next move is yeah and it took her a little while but she got there and i think a lot of people are scared to also make those pivots because even if you build and it starts without any clarity the clarity can come at some point but then you have to like be okay with starting over again yeah you know proactively seeking that also right because i feel that a lot of people kind of like thinking that is just gonna supposed to happen let's say right that they see those big creators doing great job you know and they have a business out of that and they think that they should just like expect that let's say probably from uh paid collaborations with brands but you definitely can have your main you know great revenue from just paid collaborations right without having a business but it's also something that you need to do proactively take as a job and like you know actually think about that and build that not just like sit and wait yeah for attention you're Definitely at the mercy of the industry because it can change tomorrow like this.

53:44You know what I mean? If there's no added value or something that you're offering outside of just like a video, you never know.

53:51Gary Lipovetsky: Yes or no. Because if we look at what you've done in the last almost 10 years, at first it was inconsistent. So it was inconsistent and it was stressful because we immediately hire people. And so we had a payroll from day one and it was inconsistent, the brand deals coming in. And so most months there would be profit, but some months there would be a loss in the beginning. Now it's more stabilized because, again, going back to it, we've built a brand. So now when you build a hilarious personal brand, the flow of opportunities are more stable. So people have to understand that they're building for the long term.

54:27Absolutely. But at the same time, right, from month to month, you need to pay your bills.

54:33Gary Lipovetsky: And to be fair, I think it depends where a creator finds themselves, like what position that they're in. With Valeria and I, I mean, we had, you know, we didn't, it was okay for the business to lose a little bit of money along the way. Like we were relying on it to pay, you know, to pay rent every month. So we were okay from that perspective. And so we were in a fortunate position, you know, to do that. But I think that a lot of creators, what I believe that they should be doing is when they're starting out or whether when they're at that intermediate level and now they're trying to understand how to monetize, they should have a financial plan.

55:04Gary Lipovetsky: Meaning if like they have a partner, it's like, you know, to tell your spouse, Hey, just like if the spouse would go and create a startup, then the other spouse, they'd have to rely on that person's income. So it's kind of the same thing. So I think financial planning is important when you're starting out. I want to move on to the kind of the third type of creator, which is more like the enterprise level creator, the advanced creator that has the systems, the products, the payroll, you know, the branding, the IP, the memberships. So from your perspective, I mean, you work with brands and you work with them in a marketing capacity, you consult them.

55:39Gary Lipovetsky: And a lot of that, I'm guessing, as per the general landscape, is you work with creators. You advise them to work with creators. So do you make a distinction with brands on how to approach creators that are a business, that are like a multi-person business, like their own media agency like Valeria, versus individual creators who are, let's say, solopreneurs? is there do you do you see a distinction there do you make a distinction i think that we're not looking at that from this angle i would say right because you at the end you're not thinking like definitely there is a prestige and image of working with some influencers more than others right uh that's for sure but we're not discussing that and that's let's say matter right like what What is the level of the creator that we're considering, right?

56:29Of course, I mean, that's measured by size and different things like that and the opportunity that is there and the investment that it requires and stuff like that, right? But I think what is more discussed and right now we're more discussed that those enterprise level creators there became in a way today more like a celebrities, right? With a very, very wide audience. audience and that means this kind of like a very mixed audience that sometimes it means lower engagement or it's a little bit of every audience that's only some of that is relevant for my brand for example right while maybe this intermediate creators when they have like more niche let's say audience they have more of what i'm looking for let's say right and here specifically i think we're starting to talk about about them more because we're also seeing this overall um society trend right that we're no longer living in this one shared culture right we kind of like living in this cultural bubbles right so let's say years ago we had this shared culture of watching the same tv listening to the same radio right the newsletter newspaper and everything right after that google came right and it's kind of like ruined this monopoly of the information but it's still kind of like some, let's say, gravitational centers remained, right?

57:50Like huge media. But then social media came with the personalized algorithm and feeds and everything, right? And right now we're seeing not like what is the internet, but our own version of internet, right? And sometimes something that you feel like it's everywhere, like it's invisible to someone else, right? So and then the Netflix came, of course, right? And all the streaming and like literally we're seeing different tv shows right so nothing is shared almost so it just created this like culture bubbles let's say and that we're living kind of like on parallel right and different people are like existing in on parallel in in them and what it created it basically impacts also the influencer and creator space right because right now you as a brand starting to think about okay like what is the cultural bubble let's say that i want to dominate let's say right i can't be everywhere were for everybody right yeah you need to understand what you want to dominate and right now you're thinking okay what is the creator who is like a leader of opinion in this specific let's say culture bubble right that is very relevant for these people that they trust this person like you know his hers recommendation and opinion let's say on different topics uh rather than just someone who is with very let's say vague audience and basically what we see right now that sometimes a very specific creator with let's say 300 000 followers but a very very like important for let's say this part of society for this bubble right it's very relevant with a very engaged audience sometimes outperforms like collaborations with 10 million followers again define performance yeah of course you're talking about direct roi uh i mean in different ways in different ways but even just if it's not something that is roi even just making your brand culturally relevant.

59:38If you're collaborating with someone very relevant for that culture, it makes bigger difference sometimes than someone, you're collaborating with someone big, right? There is maybe not that associated with that, let's say, right? So, for example, we are seeing different kind of collaborations happening like that. I love to bring the example of recent one of Salt and Stone that they're not collaborating with like huge... They're a clothing brand, right? No, no, Salt and Stone, it's a beauty brand. Body care, beauty. Yeah, yeah, body care. like kind of like on a premium site let's say with editorial beautiful let's say world building and they have they have the audience with that specific taste and they're not collaborating with this like huge celebrity level influencers they for example recently they collaborated with the like a singer that she has probably like over 100 000 followers or something like that but she's very relevant yeah like for the and she's a taste maker for those people let's say Like they're not going and collaborating with a Twitch influencer or someone who's like a live streamer.

1:00:37Gary Lipovetsky: That's not applicable at all. No. What do you mean? It can be because of distribution. It's much larger. Someone like that could be running for another brand. Right. And it's not about only ROI. You at the end, when you're collaborating, you're also borrowing this association with that person. Right. And the stronger the association and position of that person, and it means normally like niche, like a specific, a little smaller, smaller, smaller niche, let's say, the stronger the association that you're borrowing. Again, if you are trying to dominate a specific cultural, let's say bubble. Of course, if you were like tied laundry or something, right, you want to go like as mass market.

1:01:14Exactly. So I think right now we're not talking about, OK, like is it enterprise level or intermediate? That doesn't matter. I mean, it's not the angle we're thinking about that. We're thinking as a brand, we're thinking from the angle, okay, like how we want to strategize here our collaboration with an influencer. Maybe we can go, maybe we want to go like big and mainstream, right? Maybe this is our strategy, but maybe we want to dominate a very specific culture bubble and then we go to this like smaller influencers, right?

1:01:44Gary Lipovetsky: Yeah, I think I, you know, from what I'm kind of seeing in the industry, there's a couple of strategies that people use. So they'll, they'll engage with kind of like a mega influencer to have that kind of broad reach that gives them credibility. Yeah. Right. Because it's one thing when a brand engages with an influencer with a couple of hundred thousand followers that is in a specific niche that gives them real kind of relevance to that, to that, um, to that market. Yeah. And to that group of people, to that cohort of human beings that they're trying to sell to. But then in addition to that, working with a mega influencer, to your point, like kind of the celebrities, it gives them the.

1:02:20It gives them what Vogue and Forbes give them, basically trustworthiness. It's different. It's different, you know, different strategies.

1:02:28Gary Lipovetsky: But the other the other piece of it and what it's really surprising to me because there's so many conversations in the marketing world right now going on about this, whereas they're really not leveraging paid amplification of organic social. And I think this is the biggest opportunity that brands are missing. So for example, when a brand does and they do a collaboration and they have like a branded post go up with a creator, regardless of the scale of that creator, what they're then not doing is then they're not putting a sufficient amount of paid amplification behind that organic social post that's already proven itself.

1:03:00Gary Lipovetsky: And there's so many advantages to doing it because an organic social post with a big influencer, after let's say a week, it has massive engagement data on it. And so when that piece of content shows up as a paid piece of content, as a paid piece of content, as a sponsored post and feed, as a consumer who's watching that, the click-through rate is going to be so much higher because you place a link on it. Because when you see it right away, you can see, oh, this many likes, this many views. You don't see the view count in feed, but you see the likes, the comments, the saves, the shares. And so brands are missing out on this opportunity that if they spend X amount of dollars with a creator and they make this piece of content, they should be amplifying that piece of content in a big way because their cost per click will be so much lower.

1:03:48Gary Lipovetsky: So they can then have the combination. I think this kind of solves for what we were talking about, this dilemma between the brand marketing and the performance marketing. you start as a brand, you should start with brand marketing, meaning pay a creator to create a piece of organic social, have that piece of organic social gain a lot of engagement data, right? Public engagement data, then put paid amplification behind it. So you have the branding from the organic distribution, and then you've got the arbitrage, you've got your performance marketing from the amplification, because then you put a click to a sales page.

1:04:21Gary Lipovetsky: So I think everyone, not everyone, but so many brands are sleeping on this. We've seen a trend in the last, I would say three to five years of more and more brands asking either us to amplify through Valeria's ads manager or asking for usage and to be able to give them like that code so they can amplify it through their own. So I think that's kind of the best of both worlds. I think that it goes back again to the brand sometimes not understanding that you need to interconnect all of those pieces, right? that they're kind of like supposed to work together and you shouldn't be just expecting that it's like a magic pill.

1:04:58I think it also, you know, just brands investing sometimes in the creator and they just want it on its own to perform the best it can. And this is, you know, this is what it is, right? But at the same time, because I mean, to amplify this content through paid, you need usage rights, right? It's normally the amount of the time that you need. Sometimes it costs more than the post itself, right?

1:05:19Gary Lipovetsky: So - But if it's, sorry, but if it's performance marketing with a positive ROAS, then who cares? You know what I mean? No, but you don't know if you're going to earn money, like what is the ROAS of the ad before you are paying to creator for the usage rights, right? You pay before you're running this ad. But it's a game of probabilities, right? Absolutely. It's much more like... But you have the preliminary data of that paid post. You'll see how people react. Absolutely. I'm just thinking like it's there is no confusion that should be done right and for example me as a creator myself most of the collaborations I'm doing I'm also they're paying me for the usage right yeah I mean so definitely but I'm saying that I feel that this is because I know that this is because a lot of brands are still thinking okay this is influencer marketing okay this is in a lot of cases there are even different people responsible for that sometimes right like you're responsible this is the people who are responsible for influencer marketing and they talk in in reach and views and some sales you know maximum and there's a people who are responsible for performance marketing and yes there is a little bit of a connection of okay like we would test in different creatives that are generated by them right but there is not like a very unified infrastructure to kind of like have a very specific flywheel let's say uh in that i agree with you wholeheartedly and this is something that we've been working on with our clients over the years where we're trying to get to that other team.

1:06:45Gary Lipovetsky: So they, by default, put us in the kind of influencer marketing bucket. And then when we say, you know, not only do we tell them that, yes, you should have usage rights and you should give this to your paid media team, which there's a big disconnect. It's as if they're on separate sides of the world and they don't talk to each other. Sometimes it's true. Yeah. Sometimes it's actually, I was just exaggerating, but that's actually the reality in many cases. But even, I believe that there's an even bigger opportunity to run those paid amplification through the creator's ads manager directly so like even us we're now doing media buying for our clients so it goes to our ads manager yeah but i mean that's of course but i mean still it should be managed by the team of the brand because they need to track everything right you just give them the we would give them we would do both we would say here's usage so they can track it but the thing is when they're doing it they're doing it through their ads manager even though when they get usage from us unless you're giving sometimes the access right so for example like sometimes collaborate i'm basically even the access.

1:07:38Gary Lipovetsky: Okay, to your ads manager. Okay, okay, okay, fair enough. Also an option, but definitely not the most common one. But yeah, I think that even the one that is the most common one, just basically running it through there or amplifying your content through Instagram, right? Because you're just basically giving a code, right? And you can amplify that through Instagram, right? Even that, I agree that it's not always very intuitive, let's say, a thing for brands to do. But again, for me, it literally comes back to this lack of understanding that it should be cohesive and holistic. Well, I think not, I mean, look, we can sit here and kind of point the finger at the brands and say that this is, and we often do, but they're definitely not the bad guys in this.

1:08:20Gary Lipovetsky: And I also believe that a lot of the times it's just not their area of expertise. Like imagine like you're a brand, you've spent so much time in R &D and creating a product, making it perfect, making it amazing. You have so much expertise that you need to get on board. And this is still very much like a kind of a black hole and people just don't know. Like they don't, I agree with you on the holistic approach, but a lot of the times they just don't know and they don't know what they don't know. Yeah. Right. But, but it's, but it's, but it's evolving. They're, they're understanding the ecosystem is growing.

1:08:48Gary Lipovetsky: It's still all fairly new. It's only in the last 10 years. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, we see a lot of different transformations in that, right? And this is how we can start talking about the affiliate marketing or ambassadorship programs, right? And like different, let's say, variants to that when how brands are trying to integrate influencers like more embedded into their marketing system. Right. And this is exactly what what the brands are trying to do to kind of like bring them inside on board. So it doesn't feel like this is there is a brand and this is this media placement, like, you know, an influencer, you know, and there is a lot of kind of like disconnection, let's say, in between.

1:09:23Yeah. So it evolves. Yeah, and it will evolve.

1:09:26Gary Lipovetsky: So this morning I was speaking with Valeria and I was looking, I was sitting with her and I was looking at her social media and I saw that the, um, some of the sponsored, the last few sponsored posts, they weren't getting as much reach in terms of views as some of her previous sponsored posts. And I noticed that she was, she wasn't, cause before when we would ask our clients what they wanted, they would say, we want the maximum amount of views. And so Valeria, when she would put that together and she's leading all the, you know, the creative aspects of all of the branded content, she would put them into kind of, you know, trending kind of viral concepts to give them the maximum amount of views.

1:10:00Gary Lipovetsky: And I would see the last couple, just this morning we were talking about it and I said, Valeria, like these last few, you're not putting them in these kind of viral concepts, in these like trending concepts and it's getting less few. And Valeria said, yeah, because the clients don't want it. They wanted the context over the distribution. And so what we're finding now is brands before, they were all about distribution, views, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Now we're getting creative briefs. And Valeria can speak to this. We're getting creative briefs now they're talking about. They would rather have, let's say, for example, like 200 ,000 views that are relevant and on brand and contextual to insert themselves in than creating like a viral moment and get a million views.

1:10:45Gary Lipovetsky: So my question to you is, what do you believe from kind of working with brands, what's actually more valuable to brands today, reach or relevance? So, yeah, I think that's first the reason that that was a thing, let's say, before that basically all the brands were after the reach and views because there was like this consensus in the market, right, that views hopefully translate into sales, right? The more views you have, the more sales you have, right? With time, we as brands learned that it's not necessarily the reality, right? You can get million views, nothing out of that. You can get 10K views and sell out your product, right?

1:11:24So we started to understand that, right? And again, it really depends on your strategy. Maybe you're doing right now awareness campaign, right? And you're a brand with a very, let's say, wide audience, right? And then, of course, you can go and pay for basically for this additional awareness, like you're paying for awareness campaign in performance marketing, right? It just serves another purpose. But there are some times when you're doing a campaign that you actually want a conversion out of that. Or you want to build a specific association with the brand or you want to gain audience for your customer acquisition, let's say funnel.

1:11:58So then you are going and you're looking for those formats and those creators that can deliver you that. Rather than just this white exposure, let's say. So depending, of course, on your strategy. but what I recommend today to my clients for example again depending on their budget and coming back to something that you mentioned previously definitely the ideal situation when you do have enough money for proper influencer marketing on a big scale to have this combination let's say between this enterprise levels and intermediate because they serve a little different purposes sometimes right like literally I'm like bringing the example sometimes of like you know You pay to Vogue or Forbes or other different medias, right, to gain this additional trust.

1:12:42Then you put their logos on your website, right, of your brand. It builds this trust towards the brand, right? So right now, this enterprise level, very known faces and personalities, this is what they give you, right? But at the same time, if you want a very, very relevant audience and conversion, right, you need to balance it out with those more of an intermediate, sometimes creators, right? So, I mean, it really depends on your overall strategy. And I recommend my clients having this, let's say, a balance of two things and understanding that they serve different purposes sometimes. You need to understand the unique situation and what each one of them brings you and not basically comparing and expecting the same, let's say, results or comparing their results to each other, let's say.

1:13:25Gary Lipovetsky: You know what I find? That's really interesting. I find one of the biggest things that brands are sleeping on or that they just miss this opportunity is they will pay a creator and they will approve a creative brief for a piece of organic content. And part of the direction is that the creator – it's organic. I mean organic social. Just the post, right? So it's also agreed on that the creator will tag the brand as collaborator and they don't accept the tag. So there's a disconnect between the influencer marketing or the CMO, whoever's doing this contract with the creator directly or through an agency, and with the social media manager who doesn't accept that tag.

1:14:06Gary Lipovetsky: And so to your point that they should be using, like you gave the example of if you put an ad or you have an editorial in Forbes, that you should be mentioning that on your website. To me, the version of that for creators is accepting the collaboration tag, which they overwhelmingly are not doing because they have a disconnect internally. Because in theory, if the brand provided the creative brief, if the brand approved it, then you would think that they would approve it in their own grid. I understand what you're saying. It makes total sense. But at the same time, I think it also depends on the social media strategy.

1:14:47because there are sometimes brands that their social media strategy is a very thought out, editorial world building, that they're barely posting anything that is a lifestyle or content, like a creator created, right? So for this type of, let's say, brands, those feeds, this social media is very curated, right? And it kind of seems almost that they're not using influencer marketing everything is you know just like world building but it's what i'm also explaining sometimes to my clients when they're saying yeah but they're not doing that or not investing in that they're just having you know beautiful images and videos in most of the cases the fact that you don't see on a social media you know like it's posted and or tagged or something like that it doesn't it doesn't mean that they're not doing that just doing that on the platforms of other people right so for example like creating with a creator who is posting on the on his hers page right it gets views, it does the job, but you can't really, like, you know, if you are looking for that in a month or two, right, like, you can't really track that.

1:15:50Absolutely. Right. So, I mean, it really depends on your social media strategy and especially for those more luxury brands, let's say premium brands, they have a very specific positioning and the strategy that is not always, like, makes sense for them to do that. Although, like, to your question, like, why they're then, you know, basically asking for that, right? I feel that in a lot of cases, brands, I mean, as a creator, I failed to tell the truth, that in a lot of cases, brands, when they're having this, you know, discussion, negotiation about the collaboration, they try to get as many, you know, like freedom as possible.

1:16:20Basically, if we want to amplify, if we want to improve collaboration, if we want to, you know, see what's up and then decide, we want to have this option because this is something that you discuss before it goes live, right? So I think that they just like trying to have options and then decide like you know what to do it makes sense for them yeah for

1:16:39Gary Lipovetsky: sure um i want to talk about something that is a little con maybe a little controversial and i want to just dive right into it so when it comes to affiliate marketing right when we talk about affiliate marketing when brands are paying content creators for um for the conversion they're paying them for that last click conversion do you believe that the model of affiliate marketing between between brands and creators? Do you feel that the compensation structure is fair to the creators? So I would say that affiliate marketing today still kind of like evolving, although it's not a new thing at all, right?

1:17:18But it's new how integrated it becomes right now in the creator economy, right? And definitely affiliate marketing as opposed to influencer marketing is such an amazing idea from the side of the brand, right? That like we're not paying until we're getting results right it's like the dream basically define results that comes back to the debate yeah sale yeah exactly i'm just saying you know like i'm talking to so many different brands from small to huge brands like i'm literally maybe up to date had like i don't know several thousand so calls with different brands and why i started even in social media talking about that topic because i just saw that it's everybody are talking right now about that in terms of like internally in brands, everybody discussing, okay, what, like, how we should approach influencer marketing, right?

1:18:04And I see that a lot of them are, like, literally reducing the amount of money they're spending on influencers or, like, you know, like, basically changing the way it happens. And this idea of affiliate marketing comes kind of, like, basically as, like, a hybrid, let's say, of, yes, we collaborate with influencers, but no, we don't pay big money before we get money out of that right so that definitely sounds a dream for a brand but i agree with you that it might create potentially a situation when creator is still putting a lot of hours and labor and you know all the effort in the audience building and maybe not getting paid let's say fairly for that work right so i agree with that and i mean you know for me as a creator it's also i know how uncomfortable this reality, let's say, can seem.

1:18:56But I think that right now what I see from brands, they are willing to be very generous with the commission structure. So like for a brand, when they're like sometimes stingy with the amount they're able to pay to influencers, right? They're very generous with the commission structure and they're ready to pay, you know, like let's say a big chunk of it, but to have something that is predictable in a way. Am I saying that it's the best, let's say, solution for both sides? I don't know to tell the truth. We need to test it enough of time to see, let's say, right? And definitely there is a lot of space for creators doing the right choice who to collaborate with, right?

1:19:32Because it's not anymore I just collaborate. I don't care what they're earning from that, right? Like you just see if it's a cultural fit to you, right? Right now you want to know if they're actually going to sell.

1:19:42Gary Lipovetsky: No, no, I understand that. But so here's, here's kind of from the creator side where I would advocate for the creators and I would say where I have kind of a, where it's a conflict for me is that first of all, when it comes to the brands, when, when a creator is doing all of this work and a creator puts up the content and not only the work in terms of creating the content, but the value that the creator gives with access to the audience, what's happening is, is that if the brand does not have a strong brand, if the brand is not known beforehand, then the conversion metrics are going to be low, not because it's the fault of the creator, but because the brand hasn't sufficiently invested into their brand from a branding perspective.

1:20:19Gary Lipovetsky: So that's one thing. The other thing is that creators are not getting compensated for the fact that, for example, they could put up a piece of content that could be viewed by a million people or let's say 10 ,000 people. It's a more common scenario. It can be viewed by 10 ,000 people. And those 10 ,000 people, they're not, some of them will click on the link that's provided. In the case of stories, there's no link provided in reels right so if you if they click on it they might purchase from that that that that you know they may purchase from there but what if they just go to the brands um you know the brand's instagram account and hate link in bio what if they just do a google search and find them online so the creator is not being paid for the unattributable conversion and i don't believe that that's a fair exchange of value between the brand and the creator because you can't track it and then the other point is that there's two technical problems and that one technical problem is that in a lot of cases, the brand's landing page or sales page is not correctly optimized.

1:21:14Gary Lipovetsky: They haven't invested enough in making sure the color schemes are the highest converting color schemes and that the positioning or maybe their artwork isn't good. So why should the creator who's driving traffic potentially to a brand page, whether it's directly through an attributable link or not an attributable link or a path that they can't attribute, and then once the buyer gets there, then they're not converting because it's a suboptimal page. And then the other component of that is technically what I've seen is that brands make so many errors on the reporting on the affiliate side. And we've seen these discrepancies where a brand that we've worked with, where we've sent traffic to them and they're saying, well, we're not converting, we're not converting.

1:21:57Gary Lipovetsky: And we say, what are you using? And they're using some kind of internal you know technology and we say you know what go to like a shop my go to shop my and set up an account because that it's they're in the business of making sure it's accurate and then they put it through shop my and they're like wow we messed up we had a technical error we weren't tracking it correctly so i think you know it's it's it's up in the air i think that a lot of creators don't understand the amount of value that they're truly providing um and i think that a lot of brands sure it's easy to say well only if you make a sale but there's so much value that the brand's getting unattributable conversion, branding, future conversion that might happen days, months, or years down the road.

1:22:36Gary Lipovetsky: So I believe we need to find a better solution. I think that's absolutely for sure. And it's like when there is some relationship or a model that evolves, it's not necessary that the next steps is the perfect step. It evolves. It's eventually going to get there. Right now, we're just in this phase of understanding, okay, what's the next model? What is the next version of that, let's say, model? But at the same time, you're talking definitely from the perspective of the creator, right? But what about, you know, you're doing your job, so it converts for us, right? Basically from us. And it's very, very true.

1:23:15And this is why you as a brand, when you were just paying for a collaboration, right, you had an access to a very big pool of creators that would be willing to collaborate with you on a paid base right now you as the brand definitely there are some brands that are like again looking at that as like a magic pill oh my god great let's just do affiliate network but what they're seeing next that they no one wants to onboard on that if you were if you were if you're not proving you can sell on the steps that are not responsibility of the of the but i think no no i agree with you but i think

1:23:48Gary Lipovetsky: there has to be a shift of some kind because when you look at meta buys like when people are buying just straight media meta doesn't doesn't get paid on conversion you can track what you're kind of what your what your acquisition cost is but you're paying on impression yeah i agree with you so i would say that first of all it's changed what i was like started saying basically is that um it also created a situation where you right now need to kind of like also compete for the creator's attention because the creator if he she joins the affiliate marketing program they can join million of brands, let's say, right?

1:24:23Because they also will just like basically ruin the trust of their audience, right? And they also can't do that much content for like so many different brands. So they're choosing very carefully who they want to invest their time in, right? And what those creators are looking for. They want basically a prior proof that this brand actually can convert on their side, right? That it's a known brand, right? They're doing their job. So there is kind of this competition, right? It's not a very easy, like, you know, like I'll just onboard affiliates, right? Not a lot of affiliates or good ones would want to work with you.

1:24:55You need to. It also makes the brand to step up and do their own job because they're realizing, OK, this is also the problem there is on our side. We need to basically compete on that right now. But what I think that when you just it's not about, OK, should we just do it or not do it? Right. It's about, OK, let's find a format that it works for both sides and in any relationships. Right. So, for example, even in affiliate marketing, we right now see that not all of the programs are commission exclusively. Sometimes you have a structure of the fee plus the commission, right? Or we also have in this ambassadorship programs, right?

1:25:30That, you know, we can discuss separately, but it's also sometimes that's kind of like this combination between fee and the commission, right? So definitely, definitely creators should be paid for the impact they're contributing, right? But at the same time, we need to find a better way to do it.

1:25:49Gary Lipovetsky: I think for creators, and this would be something for Valeria, is I believe that for creators, if they have, if the content that they've created and if the personal brands that they've established will convey to the brands that this is someone we want to pay flat rates to, then that will happen. And we see it with you all the time. You know, we've worked exclusively for almost a decade not doing affiliates. we do we've done a little bit but those are for actual clients who are paying like flat rates they're paying for traditional marketing with us um yeah so you're saying you had this kind of combination between so right we haven't had a combination it's it's they committed to normal so then like a normal um you know marketing campaign with us and then they would say but so when they would say when we're tracking conversion not that they're paying us on conversion they're tracking it just to see it for themselves and they understand that they're only tracking attributable conversion.

1:26:44Gary Lipovetsky: They're saying, we see the traffic coming in. It's not converting. And then we said, you should check. It's your tech that's the problem. No, the tech should be said, that's for sure. But it's another thing to discuss. It's not a hybrid. We actually turn them away. Like when people come and they say affiliate, we typically don't do it. But, well, we don't do it. But sometimes they'll say, let's do a combination where it's your flat rate. And then it's this percentage. And for us, we don't really have, not that we don't have the infrastructure. We don't really want to start chasing and start doing audits.

1:27:15Gary Lipovetsky: So we just say, no, no, this is our flat rate and it is what it is. But I can tell you that, and not to like kind of prop us up, but we have such a great retention rate with our clients that although they do pay for, you know, in the traditional way and they're not paying on performance, they continue to reinvest. But look, that's not everyone. And I understand that. So I think the industry will evolve and we're going to see a lot of different compensation models. but in any case Anastasia I want to thank you for being here this has been amazing this has been really informative can you tell us where people can find you well you're going to be you're going to be tagged this collaborator but where can people find you officially yeah or find me on Instagram Anastasia Stomfel or of course my website my name also and yeah I'll be amazing thank you for being here I want to thank the audience for tuning in and listening and I want to thank my lovely wife Valeria thank you I'm getting hangry so I need to leave now I see when she's getting hangry and i know i need to but this was this was fascinating thank you so much