Building Community and Brand Success w/ Priscilla Lau

0:00Community means more. And that word is used so much now, but it's not just the numbers behind the millions or billions of views or hundreds of thousands, but how close is your community? How much are you engaging with them, reading their comments, etc.?

0:18Hey Priscilla, welcome to the show. How are you? Hi, I'm great. How are you? So good. A lot of things happening in this period, like, you know, with people coming back from vacations after all the out-of-office emails. So it's good, right? There is business at the same time. There is, you know, a lot, right, happening at the same time. But glad to have you today with us. We're going to talk about several things, right, from streaming, you know, like to personal branding, the importance of AI with influencer marketing, creative economy, and so on. But before we get started, why don't you tell us, you know, more about yourself using the map that we have here.

0:55So basically, it's divided in three different sections, right? So the M stands for mission. So what do you aim to achieve with your work? The achievements is anything that you're really proud of, any notable milestones in your career or in your life or both, if you want. And the last one is the purpose. So what do you do? What do you do? Hi, everyone. My name is Priscilla Lau. I lead customer success and creator partnerships at a D2C streaming company called Kiswi. I'm also the founder of a consulting firm called Representation Matters. So my mission is really to create experiences to help others connect, learn and have fun.

1:31I spent the last 15 years at Google and YouTube. My latter part of my experience at YouTube was working with the top 1 to 5 percent of the top creators. And I think when I reflect on that time, there are a couple of things moving on to the achievement, I guess, part of the map that really hold true and stand out in my memories. one of them being a space lab advertising program that we put together that was year-long with Lenovo. I was really proud of that campaign that I worked on with my colleagues because it was a science experiment for kids 14 to 18, and we were able to find an amazing partner, Lenovo, to partner with us on doing this contest for kids that would later be performed in space on the International Space Station by an astronaut that is still like an astronaut now, Sunita Williams.

2:18so that was one thing that really just hit kind of like a mission-oriented part of who I am and really stands out as like a very memorable experience and then I think just in this last year developing my own personal brand I think working in corporate I kind of worked within the confines of what I could do I think you know after 10 years at YouTube and working with creators and media companies I explored not necessarily being a creator myself but explored putting my voice and my face out there a little bit more. So that came across in, you know, speaking at VidCon or speaking at VidSummit and interviewing a creator about building a brand and scaling it.

2:56And then also just experimenting with posting more on LinkedIn. So those are a couple of things that I am proud of and just really hit to what I care about and what values that I have. And I think the, is the last one purpose? Yes. The purpose could be either like, you know, about your own, right the company and also like you know the company that you joined could be either or yeah I mean purpose life life is short you know I lost my dad about eight nine years ago and for me kind of boils if I could describe myself in one word and what I care about it would be service like I really care about helping others and my last couple years at YouTube working on a lot of advocacy work like we created a API task force was very meaningful for me and just I hope the people around me know that I just want to lift up other people and help others along the way.

3:48And I see partnerships everywhere. Fantastic. You know, it's very important, right? Especially now that all the world is connected, but many times there are still unfair advantages and there is still a lot to work on in terms of the creative economy, right? So we can also discuss of course more during the podcast. And so you said, you know, like a long journey, right? with major social media. And so I'm pretty sure that it's so developed, right, of the creative economy, influencer marketing, and so on. I would like to know from you, like, how it evolved over time. Like, have you seen any drastic, like, you know, shifts in terms of creative partnerships, you know, like how they, you know, started building personal branding, right?

4:29We went from an influencer that was just promoting, I don't know, like, you know, pair of shoes, right, in front of a camera, and it did use as just almost programmatic to now getting basically their own team. So they have their own personal brand. They start creating their own product, right? So how did it change in the past, I don't know, like 10 years is a long time, right? But let's put 10, right? Just as a number. What did you notice? Yeah, I mean, there's so much that has changed, but then there's so much that remains the same. Like I know mental illness is something that is frequently referred to in this space.

5:01And it is, I think what I've seen in flows of content production is that, well, one, first of all, anyone can be a creator like you and I, when you are a creator, I try to speak on LinkedIn sometimes. And I think, you know, viewership continues to be really important, but I think more than that community means more and viewership. Like I was trying to look up the, you know, the creators that I manage and the billions of views they had, but all that after a while, I think with shorts being such a big player in the media space now, short form content. So the TikTok shorts on YouTube community means more.

5:34And that word is used so much now, but it's not just the numbers behind the millions or billions of views or hundreds of thousands, but how close is your community? How much are you engaging with them, reading their comments, et cetera? So that continues to be the same. I think it's just, it's been interesting and kind of see the rise and like decline, I guess, of multi-channel networks. That was a long, long time ago now at this point. So kind of not, no point there to really go into, but I think what's really exciting about this space number two is there's so many more ways that you can diversify your revenue.

6:07I think Kajabi has a really great report about how there's maybe 50 million creators out there and 60 plus percent of their revenue is from brand deals. But I think there's so many more exciting ways to, you know, create a course, create a digital download, do an in real life experience or do a book or partner with, you know, the DNC or whatever it is. And so that's been really exciting. And I think the, I guess the last thing would be just accessibility. Like everyone is so much more connected now than in the past. And I mean that not just from a creator perspective, but also like industry perspective.

6:44I feel like LinkedIn has been really an amazing way to connect so many players and make it more accessible for you and I to talk and me and others, etc. And, you know, when you say about, you know, like, you know, so community, right, that kind of change at the same time, you know, remain the same concept, right? But you also said that these days it's accessibility, right? It's very easy, right, to get connected. There are the barrier of interest, like it's very low. There are so many tools, right? You don't need a budget anymore, basically, to become a creator and get in front of people. and one of the ways, right, to get connected and actually have a way to talk in real time with your audience is live streaming, right?

7:23There are so many platforms out there. Social media themselves, they usually have a dedicated area, right? So TikTok, whatever, TikTok live, right? Instagram, you can also just, you know, next to the stories, you can click and see people going live. So tell me a bit more about, first of all, how do you see live streaming these days, right? because, you know, it's still, I don't want to say a niche, right? But compared to async content, right? There is still like, you know, minority compared to all the content that goes like, you know, go publish every single day, right? So first of all, what is the status of live streaming right now?

7:55And also how can be helpful and beneficial for creators? And should every creator do live streaming or not? And based on that, like tell me a bit more like, what should be some of the factors to be like, okay, I should do live streaming. I should not even try or maybe I should test it out. So again, like current status, future opportunities and main benefits for creators. I think pre-pandemic, I was pretty obsessed on live streaming. I know that in certain markets, like in Asia, it's very common. You can buy foods through live streaming, etc. It's a huge market. People can sell bottles of wine in like minutes.

8:30I think for post-pandemic and just seeing how people are always looking to engage with people and how social media is so amazing in so many ways, but in some ways it isolates us even further. I think it's a really great opportunity to deepen your format as a creator or your relationship with someone by having a live stream. And so, so many times, you know, it's nice to have things on demand, but I think being able to like plug into one time, you know, exclusive events is super exciting. And one of the reasons why I came to KISWI was I actually worked with, so KISWI, we've been around for 10 years.

9:05We were founded by Bell Labs executives. I was telling you earlier, I love our Wikipedia page because I have the most respect for our founders. You know, one of them is Jung Kim, who used to be the president of Bell Labs. Wim Sveldens, who is also who's now our CMO, who also worked at Bell Labs. And then Jimmy Lin, who is a Georgetown professor, who was an exec at AOL. So I think the reason why I'm so excited about KISPI 2 and why it was actually brought about to this company was we focused on three areas. sports, music, and creators. And in the sports world, again, we fuel the DTC platform and events for the Utah Jazz, the Phoenix Suns, sports.

9:45We've live streamed all the BTS concerts and many other musicians. And then on the last part, the creators that we work with were Smosh, Try Guys, and Mythical. So, Rhett and Link. And all three of them I managed when I was at YouTube. So, I was actually introduced to Kiss Me by Mythical. And if you know Brian Flanagan, you know that he is on top of his stuff, well-respected in the industry, and he's their CBO there, or president now. And there's just so many different ways to think about bringing the talent to your audience. But the most precious commodity for a creator is their time. And so however you can make it more fun in like different sketches, it just really, it's like a very, this creator economy is so personal and that's what makes me so excited because it's so different for everyone, right?

10:28Like for example, The Try Guys had a show with us. It was called Romeo and Juliet. And so we had Zach, Eugene and Keith doing different like sets based on polling that we developed. We actually developed a tool within the chat so that people could pull like in real time. And Eugene, Keith and Zach would react based on the audience feedback. So there's just an element of interactivity that is very special, I think, in the live streaming space. And also there's certain events, like I think David Blaine had some hot air balloon events, like Marquez Brownlee, he was moderating some of that. And so there's just certain things and events in life that are interesting to watch live.

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12:12other episodes about hosts of TikTok shop live streaming, right? It's very different via host compared to an influencer or content creator, right? So what do you think is stopping a lot of people still to experiment with live streaming? Is it because of the time? Is it because do you need someone helping you with moderation? I don't know if you have anything in your mind about that. I think the number one thing would probably be production and technical stuff. And that's something that we have been talking to a couple of managers and agents about. Like, we want to be a full stop shop. And I think what differentiates us from like a platform would be we have amazing engineers, we have the we have customer service development, ops, and a deep dive into like data scientists on our on our team.

12:58And so I think the main thing is production. And so literally yesterday, I was on a call with a potential company to work with, we want to help remove those barriers. At I told you my, I guess, internal compass is service and I like to help unblock things. And so when I put my work hat on, it's like, OK, what is holding up, holding you up? You have like, let's say X creator has a gazillion shows coming up and he can't access. This is all in U.S. tour. He's on a tour in the U.S. He can't access. He'll get random messages from people in, I don't know, Dubai or Asia. And they're like, I would love to go to your shows.

13:33When are you coming here? So I think it's a really great way. I guess the most consistent thing, no matter what the 10 years are now, is like experimentation. I think the more you're open to that, the more you'll be able to find different avenues to expand your business and your brand. And so I think the biggest hurdle is production and like we can help with that. And is there any current AI tool? I mean, I know that AI is such a buzzword, right? We're all talking about it. But at the same time, when we surveyed, you know, like more than a thousand people in the U.S. our content creators, we ask them, right?

14:05And, you know, almost 93 or 95 % of them said, yes, I use somehow, right, AI. And that could be, you know, editing content, right? So I'm talking about plugins that can easily remove, let's say, you know, dead silence or like, mm, or repetitive words in the videos. I'm talking about tools that can easily generate images. I'm thinking about thumbnails, right, for A-B testing on YouTube. I'm talking about generating also captions, right, for accessibility or helping with scripting, right? All that is for, again, mostly content, right? That you already recorded and then you want to edit. But I'm not familiar with any AI tools when it comes to live streaming.

14:46Is there anything that either you, like in the company, developed or do you know if there is anything on the horizon to help people? As you said, sometimes one of the barriers is production time. You need help and support. Is there anything on that on the AI side to help you with live streaming? I haven't seen anything on the production side. I think maybe on the engagement, like all the things that you said with ideating and editing and captions. Those are all areas, I think, that have opportunity on the live streaming side. The one area that we've been looking into is just around matching keywords with content.

15:23So nothing like evolutionary or anything at this point. but um yeah i think there's still an essence of creativity that is hard to crack with ai no matter how many tools we have and i think that's how i very much felt with going to the ai film festival there was a majority ai film festival earlier this year and it was amazing to see but i was i felt like i lacked the feeling of a story despite all the amazing images and flow of content and since you said like you know creativity is very important right when it comes to the live streaming part is there any other like any do's and don'ts that you either noticed right uh something that like these are the things that works well to do the perfect live streaming these are the things to potentially avoid have you noticed any patterns anything that across no matter the industry you're in but in order to do like a live streaming that is going to go for x amount of time to having engaged people in and so on these are the things that you should do these these are the things they should avoid i am more thinking about the things that you should do versus avoid so i'll have to think about that part a little bit more but i'm fresh out thinking about two nfl altcasts that we did with the denver broncos and the detroit lions and again it depends on the format and the industry of course and on the creator world is like even more personal but just high level then i think one thing that we were we were discussing with the altcasts were around how many people is ideal so they had a lot of different talent they had like a couple of players from former super bowls that they won for the denver broncos and yeah i'm not as much of a sports person so but okay so um but sports wise you know two to four people are good if you're gonna you can do a live stream by yourself i think another amazing creator that i respect so much is mark rober and like you know he has this camp crunch labs and that may be him with a couple of guests here and there kind of think of other live streams like jank from the young turks you know he'll be it's like a very much a show format so it just depends but we realize like maybe 10 plus people on a live stream is tough and hard i think when we're thinking about creator live streams man that the teams there are so airtight about production and managing like having we i think the production and the the timelines and coordinating with our operations and project management is the most important which sounds basic but there are just so many things with live that could go wrong.

17:44And so being able to have like backup resources, whether it's technology or, you know, someone really amazing on the backside, you know, helping out with technical issues is really important. I think what Mythical has been doing with streaming their show, like I think the last year might have been the first year, but they streamed their Good Mythical evening show at the Alamo theaters. So just thinking about creative ways, again, to not just be stuck to a VOD or even a live stream. I think there's so many ways to like explore having in real life experiences as well. And you mentioned, you know, many creators that are not just creators anymore, right?

18:21Like not meaning that they create content, but also they create their own line of product. They create their personal branding. They have a company, they have a team, right? So the creator economy these days is not just anymore the person in front of the camera, but there is the person behind the camera, the editor, the person with the scripting, the person helping you with the brand deals. And then if you go even more and you have like, again, your own product, it means logistics and lawyers and these and that, right? So it definitely became more and more complex every single day. Do you have any either tips and tricks there when it comes to, I want to go from a creator, right?

18:58Just like only creative content that is not only, right? We all know how much there is behind that. From going like, I'm a creator now, I want to become a creator entrepreneur. What would be some of the, I don't know, again, this is not the perfect formula, but in your journey so far, have you noticed something that works well, at least to get the sort of the jump, right? To go from that position of creating content to becoming an entrepreneur. Yeah, this area excites me so much. I mean, at the end of the day, if anyone knows me, you know how people oriented I am. But what I've observed with creator entrepreneurs is they always have an amazing, there's always someone.

19:37It can be their spouse. It can be their manager. Or it could be their best friend that they hired to be their COO. But you need a business-oriented person to help think about that aspect of the job. And so some of the most amazing creator entrepreneurs I'm thinking about are Mindy McKnight and Heritage. We already talked about Mark Rober with Crunch Labs. Brad Mondo with his hair care line. And I think it takes like Mindy talks about this and we talked about this at VidSummit. But part of the way she forayed, made her foray into, you know, creating a whole hair care line at Walmart. That's like one of their top three new hair care products is doing a brand deal with Walmart.

20:18Like she was on stage at Brandcast, which is our YouTube upfront every year where we invite all our ad agencies. And she was one of the speakers. and the story is sean her husband is probably about best to kind of confirm and talk about all these details himself but the story that i heard was she spoke and there was someone in the walmart audience and they were like whoa she's amazing like why haven't worked with her and they're actually like we actually did work with her and you know she has five kids two of them they're adopted and they're black and she wanted to find a product about you know something that she so if you're not familiar with mindy mcknight i should have started there um her her channel used to be called cute girl hairstyles.

20:57She pretty much dominated that sector. And so if you find, look for anything braids or hair related, you probably will find her videos. And so, yeah, she wanted to find a product that she could use for her, for all her children that had different hair types. And so that kind of inspired, again, she would be the better storyteller since this is her story, but that inspired her to find something that would work. So I think the best creators, they use their, okay, well, first of all, creative control is really important to them because we're in the context of working with them as a brand and influencer marketing two they're very protective of their ip but they also use the ip in innovative ways and ways that like they've been swirling around content for a long time and they it's something personal to them and so um you know like like mark rober he talks about think like an engineer that's the tagline for his his crunch labs box and so that i mean he was a he worked at nessa he was an apple engineer So it's like things that are their essences and elements of who you are and what you care about that kind of formulate into a product.

22:01And I think how you go from being a creator talking about things kind of related to building a business is exploring it with your manager, exploring it with your spouse, finding business minded people to think about what's next for you. And then also just experimenting like different avenues and being visible. So Mindy was visible. She was at Brandcast. She had good relationships with whoever it was at YouTube. And so that's how I think that always helps. No, I agree when it comes to, you know, the storytelling behind that, right? We already discussed in other episodes about how these days consumers want to see the behind the scene, why that is important to others.

22:39Is there the same values that are shared, right? Like people now are more and more looking at things that are not just a product, but also what is behind the product, right? And that's why I think that many times, right, the creators, influencers are able to like, you know, do a sold out basically in minutes. Right. Because, of course, they have influence, but also there is all the, as you said, the storytelling behind that. And many times it's like, oh, you know why? Because my kids and that's why. Or like my husband, my wife. And that is so relatable. Right. All of us, we have, you know, families, all of us, we have friends, all of us, we have certain things in life that is like, OK, I can understand that.

23:15You know, he's not a typical celebrity that is somewhere there, right? In the cloud that is so far away from me, right? And that's why I think that influencer marketing work so well. And so last question for you today. But again, we covered like, you know, different things, right? So basically we went from like, you know, personal branding, creative partnerships, the importance of live streaming, AI. So a lot of, right, a lot of different words here. But is there anything else that excites you in this industry? Again, I know that you are like doing a lot of things, right? But is there anything that, you know, people listening should know about?

23:50Anything that, again, excites you? Something that is, do you believe is going to be like the big important piece as the future of the creative economy? Maybe something that people are not seeing right now. Ooh, what I care about a lot is like social good. And I think Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, she said something recently that I heard, which was like, do something that has a bigger mission beyond you. and so in a world that's even more connected more than ever I think that there's so many elements of doing things in real life that are still missed and so I just I would encourage people to continue to connect in real life and not just you know online or yeah in virtual environments I think that's just really important and I think there's a lot of opportunity to build your own personal brand and you build your brand and like support others totally and I can see more and more happening in major cities right now, where also creators meet with communities and influencers and creators are meeting with themselves.

24:52And something else that I saw, and I think that we discussed this in an episode about community and audiences, that is great that sometimes communities of influencers are sometimes also meeting without their influencer, right? Just because they are part of a community. And sometimes it's, again, social goods and other times it's about business, whatever it is niche you're in, they are finding that they belong, right? We did another episode with Reddit where we said there are so niches, so many niches, so many subreddits, so many places on earth that even if you think you're alone, you're not alone.

25:25There is always going to be other people that have the same interest of you as niches can get, but you're going to find it. And I think that the power of social media is that you don't feel alone anymore. And we are going more and more from online to also offline, right and i think that is helping so i'm also i also want to see more of that happening in the next future you know yeah no it's amazing i think there's something for everyone out there and we're definitely not alone yeah absolutely fantastic priscilla thank you so much for joining me today uh you know congrats on all the all the journey right so far and uh wish you you know best of luck for you know career when it comes to live streaming entrepreneurship uh and and everything and thank you also for sharing your knowledge with us today.

26:10Thank you, Alessandro. Very nice to meet you. This was the Influence Factor by the Influenational Marketing Factory, and I'll see you next week.