Adapting Influencer Marketing for 2025 w/ Pierre-Loïc Assayag (Traackr)

0:00So you always have the dynamic in what platform should I be spending time on? what should I be doing as a creator and as a brand. And the very simple principle that we've always applied as the tech and data provider, and we recommend both creators and brands to do the same, is mindlessly simple. Don't put all of your eggs in the same basket.

0:23Hey, Piazza, welcome to the show. How are you? Thanks for having me. I'm great. Fantastic. Today, of course, we talk about influencer marketing, creators, global scale. You know, what is going on between trust and potential customers, thanks to influencers and so on. We're going to definitely dive in into that. But before we get started, usually ask my guests to present themselves in a way that is just like a couple of minutes about yourself, structure with a map. The map basically is divided in three main sections, the mission. What do you aim to achieve with your work? Achievements, anything that is notable milestones.

0:54Could be your career, your life or both. And the last one is the purpose. Why do you do what you do? For sure. I like your format, by the way. I think it's a great way to get people to introduce themselves. Why do I do what I do? Let me answer this in two different ways. One is that I started my career way back in marketing analytics. And around the time that I started Tracker, my co-founder and I identified the need for a new generation of marketing analytics tool that is much more adapted to the social web. And we were keen on seeing it through. We didn't identify per se influencer marketing as being a thing.

1:31at the time it did not really exist. But we did identify that authorship and the authors on social web were a key element of social content being shared, being viewed. And so we had this hunch that there was something there, but didn't really put our finger onto influencer marketing as it exists today. The other reason why I do what I do is that I'm passionate about creating new categories. And I did this a couple of times for the man, for large employers. And I was just, I was keen on doing this here and really disrupting, changing the way marketers think about marketing and building out this category around creative marketing.

2:12Amazing. And, you know, is there anything also there in addition to that about any other achievements or, you know, they are proud of to share with us? For sure. I mean, by far, my proudest achievement in this business is to not just build the business that we have today, that is a successful tech SaaS business that supports some of the largest programs around influencer marketing in the world, but also to do it as we were building the category around it. As I said at the beginning of Tracker, there was no such thing as in front of marketing. We were lucky enough and I guess smart enough to be able to identify the initial nuggets of value around the category and then grow it alongside our clients.

2:57Fantastic. And you know what? I'm asking that because I've been in the industry for 10 years or so and Tracker was one of the OG names. When I was doing my thesis about that, there were not that many, as you said, right? So that's why I'm right here. Talk with you because you've been seeing a lot of changes in the past, you know, 10 plus years, right? And we're going to talk a bit more about that. So let's jump into this, right? Both of us, we were at the South by Southwest. You spoke there a lot of focus on influencer marketing, about the critical economy this year, much than ever, I'd say. And you were on a panel there, right?

3:30For the people that were not able to attend, can you tell us just like a sort of overview of what we discussed then that we can go a bit more in detail? Yeah, so we spoke about the importance of transparency and equity around creator payments. So this is a hot topic with creators and with brands around influencer marketing. And because of our position in the market as a technology provider, as sort of the backbone of programs, we see the data. And often you will hear creators tell everybody around them and tell brands that they feel that they're being undervalued and underpaid. And we'll hear brands say that they feel that creators are taking advantage of them and that they overpaying them.

4:15And the irony of this whole thing is that when you look at the data, they're both right. And so this was the theme of our panel. And we brought both sides, brands and creators, to discuss the topic. You know, I'm very interested about this topic because, again, when I got started in the industry, I actually wrote my thesis on how much to pay influencers. Based on an algorithm, based on like a lot of data, at the time was not that much, right? Especially in academia and SaaS, there was not that many. It was the Wild West. So have you identified a way, actually? Because as you said, right, brands are saying sometimes we're overpaying.

4:48Creators are like, I'm not like, you know, valued enough. This price should be more than that. What is the best way to find really a middle ground where everyone is happy? Well, I don't think we need to try to be too smart about this. Right now, the problem that lays in front of us is that there's a sheer lack of transparency. There isn't a standard in the market. And so anyone can propose any price and have a conversation around it. The way these pricings are often set, very tactically, are absurd in most cases. Brands have their own standards and they may share them with creators, but not always.

5:26Creators have a sense of self and how much they want to get paid, but often little to substantiate it. So what we're lacking more than anything is just transparency of data. Let's understand how much is getting paid for what and use that as a starting point. As for the criteria, I don't really have a view on a one size fits all because it very much depends on what it is that the creator is doing in context of a campaign. So some creators will get paid for content that they produce, that the brand will license and reuse someplace else. Other creators will get paid for access to their audience and engagement.

6:02Other creators are working on more of an affiliation type model where there's an expectation that products will sell through the content that they produce. All of these use cases are valuable and would lead to a different kind of payment structure between the creator and the brand. But let me emphasize one point that I think is really important when I say both are right. The reason why I'm mentioning this is because the lack of transparency often gives way to a structure with a lot of middlemen between the creator and the brand that end up keeping the lion's share of whatever it is the brand is paying before the creators get paid.

6:43So in other words, if a brand pays$5 million for a full campaign and outsources the campaign to an agency, the agency might also end up outsourcing it to a sub-agency specialized in influencer marketing. And they have a team of people whose job it is to pay creators as little as possible for that campaign. So it's possible that the creators end up making$1 million out of the five. And again, the lack of information and transparency makes that possible. the moment you start shedding light on this whole value chain, by no means do the agencies involved or the agent, am I saying that they should not make money?

7:22Not at all. But what I am saying is that they should make money for the value that they're adding to the process. No, absolutely. It makes sense. And so if this is, again, on the brand side, for the transparency and agency side, also on the creator, right? You said that sometimes maybe they also have to be realistic, right, of what are going to be the expectations, especially you know when you said also about you know we all know right that you can pay for i mean depending on the deliverables depending on timelines depending on licensing media rights linking bio all these add-ons right so sometimes i think that also can be tricky right because you can say starting price from right and then you have all these other things in addition to again putting this data out there for the public also for creators have identified any other way for them to somehow come up with a pricing based on their deliverables?

8:09Is it just chatting with other people in the industry and understanding what they are currently charging for? Is there a way? Right now, that's the way they're doing it. So for example, on the panel, we have the CEO of Clary for Creators who was there and they are sort of the glass door to the creator economy. And so they created a forum to help out, but it's still fairly incomplete as a picture. And again, as a tech provider in all this, we have an ambition because we have the data, the data belongs to the brand, to figure out a way to anonymize some of that data and put it out for the public, creators and brands to see.

8:46And then if Alessandro gets to work with Brand X and you want to be paid 20 % more than market rate, it's okay. But now we know it's 20 % more than market rate. So in order to set these standards, the very basic question we need to answer is just to share some benchmarks that today do not exist or are dramatically incomplete. And when it comes to benchmarks, something also interesting that we discussed in another episode is, you know, local influencer marketing versus global influencer marketing, right? Meaning that an influencer at the end of the day is a person, they have a family, they have a culture, religion.

9:23There are many aspects, right? And sometimes certain brands that want to treat influencer marketing as a one-fifth hole and they try to attack a market as could be another one without understanding Each social media is different. The type of comments can be different depending on the type of culture that you come from and so on. What are some of the best practices, in your opinion, for brands to really create impactful influence marketing campaigns on a global scale? Again, understanding also the local aspects of each country that they are trying to get in. For sure. So I personally don't think that creating a campaign globally ever works.

9:58there's no ubiquitous influencer or creator that will have the same impact globally. If anything, what the brand needs to do is to be extremely clear on who they are, what it is that they're seeking to do through a campaign so that they can measure the possible impact, what audiences they're trying to reach, and then work with local agencies or their local presence and markets to find the best fit people and creators to work in that campaign. So a creator for the same brand in Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, and Los Angeles might look dramatically different. The content will be dramatically different, but the underlying intent of the brand on what they're trying to do might be the same.

10:42It's just the way in which you execute on this will be in a different pathway because these are three dramatically different cultures. Hello! Is your brand ready to amplify its reach? Well, the Influencer Marketing Factory is here to do just that. We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements to managing shipping and logistics, we have it all covered. We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals from Fortune 500 companies to DTC brands. And we don't just stop there.

11:16With detailed ROI analysis, we help brands like yours measures success transforming impressions into actionable conversions. You can find us at theinfluencermarketingfactory.com or just search the Influencer Marketing Factory on Google. And, you know, even in terms of social media, right, and social platforms, right, because, again, in addition to the difference in terms of geography, there is also politics all the time happening, right? I don't want to get into politics right now, but understanding how, because of everything that is happening, right, let's talk about like TikTok for a second, there was just recently, you know, extension, right, of the potential ban.

11:51This thing of the back effort that is going for five years now. Indonesia back in the day banned TikTok, especially for the, you know, commerce, because they didn't want to kind of kill the local economy of sellers. India also had a sort of things with TikTok. Different, like, you know, ways of the user, the algorithm changes also, depending on the regulations. Europe has GDPR. There are so many things happening all the time. What is the best way for both brands and creators to navigate this uncertainty all the time about the social platforms, like understanding what is next and how you can somehow do a backup plan.

12:21We don't even need to go to these extremes of a platform like TikTok getting banned to understand the challenges because remember the world before TikTok, just at the beginning of COVID, even though TikTok existed, it was not ubiquitously present. There was a sheer dominance from Instagram and almost from one day to the next, there was a need to move into TikTok. And then there was Twitter and going the opposite after the Elon Musk purchase and Twitter just going down in the abyss of social media. Snap is emerging, re-emerging today, as is YouTube. So you always have this dynamic in what platform should I be spending time on?

13:02What should I be doing as a creator and as a brand? And the very simple principle that we've always applied as the tech and data provider, and we recommend both creators and brands to do the same, is mindlessly simple. Don't put all of your eggs in the same basket. It's that simple. If your future is tied to a single platform, single format, at some point, it's going to come and bite you. It does not mean that at any point in time as a creator, you may not decide to do 70, 80 % of your work on TikTok because it pays better, because you like the format better, it resonates better for your audience.

13:38but you still need to keep active on one or two other platforms so that you can continuously experiment, try new things. And at some point you might decide that now that YouTube is emerging, it's actually a much, much better model for what I'm trying to accomplish. And you move your audience of the content. The main mistake that we find social networks make is to assume that the audiences are tied to them. The audiences are tied to the creators. Based on your data, I don't know if you have this top of mind but based on that as you said correctly you know we discuss about this all the time not put all the eggs in one basket because again you know maybe you get shadow banned you can lose your page boom years of work it's it's done in one day to the other do you think that now caters are kind of trying to go on a splitting their time between social media kind of like two hours per tiktok two hours per you know youtube and so on or did you identify still a sort of main channel that they're using and then secondary, right?

14:38Because what we notice is that there are some that are understanding that they want to kind of split their time across kind of in the same way. But the majority of them are still, this is my main platform, right? And then, yes, whenever I have the time, I try also to expand. Have you seen anything there? Yeah, it's definitely more the latter than the former. And the issue is very much what you're highlighting, that there's a finite number of hours during the day. And most successful creators are very picky about their creations and their work. What they all have in common is that in some way, shape or form, they've struck a chord with their audience.

15:15That's what all creators have in common. They've managed to create a captive audience. And in order to do this, they want control over the content that they produce. And as a result, they tend to be limited in their ability to be relevant everywhere. But what I was saying, though, is that the notion of having a primary platform and then a couple of secondary platforms where you experiment, where you try new things, new format, new ideas, and see what resonates is what gives you an out the moment your primary platform is struggling or it stops resonating with you. The algorithm changes, the ownership changes, any of these things.

15:54On the other side, going back to brands, you know, we'll know that brands are using influencer marketing because of the trust, because of the eyeballs, the attention is getting there. I know that's doing a comparison between 10 years ago and now we'll be crazy. So let's just look at what is happening now. OK, recently, again, have you noticed any different type of approach to influencer marketing from brands when it comes to campaigns? Like what would be like the biggest thing that you'd be noticing as in terms of change or trends? It's a good question. The thing that has happened quite a bit, and in my book, Too Much So, is a migration of a lot of budgets and efforts towards boosting content.

16:35There's nothing wrong with boosting content. There's something wrong with boosting it somewhat randomly. And often the funny thing is when you talk to creators who know the audience in their bones, they will say, I work with Brand X. They're spending so much money on boosting, but they're boosting to the own audiences. And I don't get it because I know that my content is not going to resonate with that type of an audience. And so brands tend to get eager and roll with the punches when there are changes to the algorithm, new capability, new formats being released. But it's always important to grow your practice as a brand alongside your ability to measure success in a meaningful way.

17:14And not go way too far to go above your skis on your ability to measure your success truthfully. Same goes with affiliation and creator commerce. So there are lots of anecdotal successful stories there. But what works at scale outside of some key markets in APAC, the question is still open. No, yeah, I do see that. You know, many brands treating creator economy as programmatic, basically, trying to get an exact, super direct ROI behind that, where I maybe understand the rule of the game, right? I think that some brands put into that because everyone is saying you have to be into investor marketing without education and then you kind of waste your money, right?

17:52Absolutely. And I think to your earlier point about trust, that's really at the crux of the practice of influencer marketing. And in order for brands to reach audiences who will trust the content that is being seen when the brand is being discussed by a creator, it means a couple of things. It means that the creator needs to be trusted by its audience, by his or her audience. And often that is the case. That's why they're successful creators, why you work with them. But you need to be mindful as a brand to not break that trust through the content that you're producing with them or the places in which you're disseminating that content.

18:28And the second thing is that brands need to, in turn, be trusted by the creator so that the content that they jointly produce feels authentic to the audiences. When this is done well, you have sort of the perfect virtue cycle of trust. brand creator audiences going back to the brand. And when it doesn't work is when things get too programmatic, too transactional. And then it looks like advertising. As a result, the creator loses credibility with the audience. The brand doesn't yield the results that it seeks. Everybody loses. It feels to me from where I sit, it's a very obvious proposition. But I know that the pressure that brands feel to scale results and scale everything.

19:14And sometimes it's a very present problem when you want to do more, better, faster. And sometimes you just have to go at the pace that you can build this fundamental trust value. I absolutely agree with you. Sometimes you want to go faster. But again, influencer marketing, the creative economy, it's a people-to-people type of relationship. And as I said, the creator will lose the credibility because, you know, people trust you. The brand will not see the ROI there or will be paced at influencer marketing saying it doesn't work. No, it's not that it doesn't work. It's just, you know, maybe you didn't do the things, you know, like properly.

19:49Last question for you today, Pierre. One prediction for 2025 in the influencer marketing arena. It's not so much of a prediction as it is something that we see. When we first started Tracker, way back when, my favorite platform by far was Twitter. I love the community aspect of it. I love the direction they were taking. They were struggling as a business, but there was so much good in building that sort of authentic vibe within the platform and with its users. And I think that 2025 is going to continue to see the downward spiral of the company formerly known as Twitter. And it's just a shame, but I don't see a way back into this, unfortunately.

20:31We've seen our clients give up on it already, many of them. And I just, I don't see a way, a way back. Yeah, no, I do see it. I mean, like I can understand why it's always been quite difficult to properly execute campaigns, right? And a lot of changes in directions between how do you monetize, it is by CPM, it is based on impression of your comments, right? A lot of errors and trials, let's say. And so, yes, I do see this maybe years ago, some clients are like, oh, what about Twitter now? And now I haven't heard about X in any conversation in a long, long time. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think it's going to...

21:06It's an orchid. I mean, maybe if it's going down, you and I can buy it from Elon Musk. How's that? We'll think about it and we'll reset it. That would be nice. Fantastic, Pierre. Thank you so much for joining me today. Best of luck and co-development on everything that you've built so far. I appreciate it. This was the Influencer Master by the Influencer Machining Factory, and I'll see you in the next episode.