#245 - Growing Your Brand with Influencer Marketing with Joybyte

25:12So to get into gifting, let's say, okay, I'm starting out, I'm figuring out who my product really appeals to. And then I'm trying to figure out some influencers that also have good influence with that demographic or maybe the region that I'm focusing on. And let's say now I'm going to approach them with some gifting. Is it just as easy as sending them a DM and saying, you're great, I would love to send you some product. Can I have your address? Is that cool? Is that how you do it? A lot of brands start there. It is very manual if you're just doing it one by one with DMs, which is why it is nice to have some support behind that, maybe some resources, an online platform that can help you find people.

25:47But it can be just as simple as reaching out through DM. We'd love to send you some free product. The caveat there that brands have to understand is that it has to be a kind of no strings attached. If you are gifting, you can't necessarily expect that they're going to turn their Instagram feed into a big battle cry for your brand. Probably you'll get some feedback from them and you'll hear whether they liked it, any things that could change about it. You may see some social integration, but we do need to understand that if it's just free gifting, it is just free gifting and there's no necessary content attached to that.

26:24Yeah, it's funny. I've definitely seen examples of brands being like, I'd love to send you product provided that you guarantee that you're going to post about this for time. You're just like, just get out of here. Don't contact me. You're going to do that. That's probably not going to fly most of the time. When you do gifting, obviously the brand still is hoping like I'm going to send this to them. Yeah, I'm not asking for anything, but it'd be great if they did happen to post about us. I wonder what percent of the time they actually do if that's done well. Is it like a third of the time that they might end up just kind of doing a story or something organically about it?

26:58I would say it really does depend on the brand. It really does depend on the product. There are some products that you can tell really early that just are amazing quality. People love it. And almost kind of that response rate of how much content you're seeing is a direct indication of how much is the market going to like this product later on. So in some brands, we've seen that it's really, really low. In other brands, immediately people loved it. And we started to see a lot of story coverage for it. So it's hard to put a specific number on it, but it is a really good indicator of how the market feels about the product.

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28:36Okay, so in some instances, maybe you could just keep gifting them product. I know, and sometimes even an influencer who just organically happens upon your product, right? And then if you're working with a PR person or someone, they might tell you, yeah, just make sure that they're always stocked with product. That's the first move. Don't even like start talking about paying them for things because then they'll stop what they're doing organically. Just offer to send them a truckload of product and see what happens. But yeah, maybe in other instances, they're going to reach out and see if there is some kind of a formal arrangement that you could have there.

29:08Yeah, you're literally talking about the dream situation where you already have somebody who's big, who loves your product and is talking about you already. Love to see that, of course. But when it comes to a more tiered approach or you want like consistent, again, if it's gifted, you don't have any say in what the content says, what it looks like when it's posted, usage rights for those things. So if you're okay with just letting that person talk about your tips or your drink brand whenever they feel like it, then that's a great arrangement. But if you do want some consistency where you need someone talking about X launch, you need someone talking about Black Friday, that's when you're probably going to want to introduce the budget into it.

29:51Same goes if you need content for your paid media or you need content for your organic social page. You're going to want to make sure there's some kind of an agreement there so that you have usage rights to use the content in other places. So, OK, speaking of leveraging the content, let's say in some instances, let's say you get that high quality piece of content from an influencer and it's still maybe they only have 30 ,000 followers, something like that. So it doesn't get as many impressions as you would like, but it is high quality. So you would think about maybe boosting the post in that instance or doing it as a collaborative boosted post or just trying to repurpose the content where you would then post it on your own and try to get a little bit more visibility around it?

30:32Repurposing is one of my favorite things to talk about. So here we go. When we have a piece of content from an influencer that is high quality and it's got the right messaging, not only do we want to first make sure that that post is shared to the brand's organic social. ideally as a collaborator post so that way step one we started to capture the influencer's audience we started to capture those eyes bring them across the divide and bring them into our brand audience so they can start to follow us and learn more about us and eventually hopefully become a customer of ours that's step one we would want to use it in paid media as well so you mentioned boosting specifically whitelisting is something that we really love that's when the influencer's content is turned into an ad, but it's not necessarily coming from the brand's handle.

31:21It's coming from the influencer's handle. And Mariah had mentioned a few minutes ago that people don't like to hear from brands. They like to hear from other real people. They don't like to be talked at. They don't like to be sold. They don't like to feel like they're constantly seeing promotions and advertising. They like to feel more of a connection. So that's where we take the influencer's content. We run it as an ad, as if it's coming directly from the influencer. So it feels more organic and authentic when people are seeing it. A lot of people will use those two things and that's already an amazing start, but you can also take influencer content and put it into email marketing.

31:57If you have photos from the influencer or even just like clips of their video as a gif that can go into your email marketing, putting it on the product page, almost like a product review. Here it is in real time, how people are using it. That's proven to show that there's better click rates on your website. There are so many places that that piece of content can go to. As long as you've got that agreement with the influencer that you can use it, there are so many places that it can be placed. And just about every single one of them, there are studies showing that it improves the performance of those places.

32:29Yeah, it makes sense to me because I feel like that stuff is just the most interesting, the most organic when it feels like a friend telling you about something that's cool. Like, yeah, I want to hear that. You know, anytime I think every brand probably has experienced this out there where they've tried to post something on their own channels that is what they want everyone to know about their brand. And it's a beautiful product shot. And it just says what's so good about it. And nobody likes it. And no one sees it because it's just not that interesting to people. And I think, like you said, it feels like they're being sold or feel like feels like they're just being told about something.

33:04Whereas something that's organic of someone trying the product and saying, well, it's good. And you know me, you trust me. You should try this. that would perform pretty well, potentially. So yeah, that makes sense to me. And speaking of, or going back to repurposing the content, do you feel like influencers are typically pretty protective about that, about the waitlisting and the promoting? And because I mean, me as an influencer, I probably would feel that way of like, well, wait a minute, I'm just doing this one thing for you. And then now you're going to promote it for like years and with like billions of dollars, shouldn't I have a taste of that?

33:39Or, you know, do you find that they typically are on guard or that you can just, hey, it's in the contract that says I can use it and that's it? Yeah, that's a great question. Definitely within that nano and microspace that I was talking about, there's a lot more liberty there. If you're trying to work with larger influencers or celebrity influencers, they're going to be super, super strict with their public image and how you're using it. So anything, any usage you get from them is going to have to be paid for, for sure. But within the microspace, there's still a little bit more flexibility to be able to use it, and they're a lot more open to it.

34:13I will say it's hard to get one piece of content and then use it in your paid media forever and ever. Algorithm doesn't usually like that. Most paid media teams will tell you that it needs to be refreshed. So you can use it for a little while, but there's probably not a great chance that that one piece of content is going to serve your paid strategy for the next two or three years. Probably looking more at two to three months, which is why it's important to have more influencers in your pipeline to have kind of an always on approach to it so that you're not just stuck with the one influencer, but you've got a group of influencers who are consistently posting for you.

34:50And that one influencer who did really well with that one post, we have a relationship with them now and they're going to be posting again in a month or in two months. So we've got already kind of that content engine in the works. Okay. So Mariah, let me ask you another question. So when I've been on the brand side before, I know in one instance, like we kind of had a certain amount of money that we were going to put towards influencers, which was not, I mean, not enormous, but like, okay, so we should have a couple influencers. And I think generally our goal was, I mean, more to kind of have them on the team and have them associated and hopefully convert some of their following into fans, all of that.

35:29And I think, you know, we just ended up picking a few people who fit really well with the brand and were available to be influencers and they were interested in the project. And then we ended up, I think, having mainly annual contracts. And I think you would call these micro or nano influencers. and maybe with one or two, it was just kind of a three to five post type relationship as well. But, you know, looking back on it, it's just, it's so hard to go back and quantify, like, what did that actually do overall for the brand? Would I have been better off working with fewer and then really figuring out how to just leverage their content better?

36:08Like, okay, I don't need these like four or five different people just kind of posting a little bit to their, let's say not even overlapping audiences that are just kind of separate. What I need is one is great and they do some awesome content and I promote the heck out of that and put some real paid budget behind it. So Mariah, basically what I'm asking is like, how do you figure out what that balance is and how much you're going to put toward it and how to really like get the most out of this investment that you're putting into the influencer ecosystem? Yeah. I mean, it's the question we've dealt with for the last 15 years as an agency.

36:40And I think it's changed a lot over time. And I think it's easier for brands to understand the value when you think about the creators as a content engine. I think when you compare to video shoot or a photo shoot or graphic design or even AI, like when you compare those content vehicles to explain your brand to others, Like creators have a tremendous amount of value that is very clearly tracked. The advantage of the creators is that they can also get a conversion instantaneously from their content. They can also drive geo-targeted traffic to retailers. They can also get traffic to the website.

37:25They can also help with PDP pages, all the stuff that Val was talking about. Like I think those are the sprinkles on the cake. And so when we're thinking about your scenario where you're working with three creators throughout the course of the year, that's just not enough content from enough people to make decisions or to get diversity. And I kind of go back to, and this has changed, I would say like two or three years ago, you wanted a promo code conversion and a UTM link conversion, and you needed that to say that the creators were valuable. But I think now there's so much demand on brands to get a diversity of content and that social proof at scale and creative that doesn't cost an arm and a leg that it's almost the content is the ROI.

38:12And then everything else is just expanded signals that tell us how to use that content elsewhere. That's very interesting to hear you say it that way, because that is sort of how it makes the most sense, at least for an early brand in my head of like, yeah, you shouldn't expect, hey, I found this micro influencer and I'm going to do a post with them. And then all of a sudden I'm going to be the top brand at Whole Foods. It's like, yeah, it's not really how their influence works. but yeah like what you're getting is a really great set or pieces of content and that along with some other things you can spin up into a really great content machine of people who have their own influence that they've built up and are trusted in different ways and also are content experts it's a tough one to balance of you know people just they follow an influencer because they like their style and how they present things and they're authentic and then as a brand you work with them, but you kind of want to meld them into your own style.

39:11I'm like, no, I don't know. But just tell people how much you love my thing. And it doesn't forget all the other stuff you do and just be really straight up and tell them they must buy it. But like, yeah, that also wouldn't work so well as well. So you really are. You're hiring them for a lot of things. It's their influence. It's their content expertise, their take on things that they I would love to hear, actually, like, what is your approach to when you're working with content creators? How much direction do you think you should be giving them about the kind of content you want? Should it be, yeah, like a full brief of here's exactly what I want you to do.

39:42Here are the things I want you to say. Here's a script versus like, hey, here are a couple of things we want people to know about our products. Or even the full extreme of just, hey, here's my product. Do what you're going to do. I bet it'll be cool because, you know, you're a cool influencer and you do cool content. Yeah. After the influencer discovery and who we're actually contracting, the brief is the second most important thing. And I think this is another thing that we talk a lot about with brands because there's so much preciousness put on what the influencer is actually going to say, especially if you have products that have specific things that we can and cannot say.

40:17And there's, you know, logistics and legal with that. But what I like to do and what I coach the team on doing and Valet does such a good job of this is I will actually go through the creator's content and see what makes their audience tick. and then I'll try and like manipulate it into what the brand wants, which is best shown by like an example. We had this really amazing product that was very similar to like RX bar. It was an all natural protein bar, one of the most competitive spaces out there to like make a dent. And they were working with this creator and they were going to take her off the roster and she just was not converting.

40:57She just wasn't getting any engagement. And so I looked through her content and noticed that the content that got the most engagement was when she was making fun of her husband. The audience just loved it. And so she talked about her husband's like dietary restrictions and all this stuff all the time. And she just would talk about how she had three kids, but her husband was the hardest to take care of in the household. And so we made this storyline about how early morning breakfast was so easy because she just gave him this bar and she felt really good about it. And then we did some pieces of content where she would like serve him in a really nice, you know, breakfast in bed type of situation.

41:35It was instantaneous overnight that that content did significantly better. I think she made$10 ,000 in one weekend. And this is a creator that never converted for the brand before. And the audience was super engaged. They thought it was hilarious. and the brand ended up being able to use it because she did call out the US piece throughout that storyline. It was just interesting, you know, and it just takes a little bit of extra time to figure out what does the creator actually do and like why are they influential and what's that little X factor that makes them interesting and how can the brand like fit into that story.

42:11But when it comes to the brief, like we also want to bring the creator into that topic as well. Like we're reaching out to the creators and we're having conversations with them, which takes a little bit of extra time. But we're also like, what do you want to do? Well, let's collaborate on this. Let's make a piece of content that's both of us together. And that usually does a lot better. That's pretty interesting because it almost goes way beyond a brief where in my mind, a brief is going to be here is all about my product. Here's the kind of stuff we want you to do. Here's what fits with our brand, all of that, where you actually have almost done what you would hope the influencer would do, which is I really know what of my content hits in the best way.

42:50And here is how I'm going to integrate your product into that. So it does the best, right? So that's pretty interesting that you would go as far as analyzing their content to figure out exactly which of their content styles even you would ask for, and then figuring out how to tie the product in, in a way that would feel organic with people, but also be really high performing content. So that's like not just the extra mile, it's the extra extra mile. That's pretty awesome though. Okay. So in this, let's say scrappy early brand world, like, okay, for my brand, we did not have a big budget for this stuff.

43:25So we were being pretty scrappy. We had people on the team who kind of knew the world that we were going after. And so they could go and kind of research influencers on their own and reach out and kind of knew more or less what a fair price to pay for things would be and we can negotiate that way and do our contracts. But boy, I wish we had a lot of money to pay an agency to make all of that easy for us and probably go that extra, extra mile like you're talking about, because definitely there are things that did not hit when we did it that way. And maybe it would have done better. I don't know.

43:56So can you just like, obviously, you guys do this for a living. Can you tell me what it is like for brands to get to work with you if they have the budget for this and what are campaigns typically like and what do they typically get for results, stuff like that? Yeah, usually it takes a little bit for us to grow the creator army. Usually it's a month of strategic work, which is getting familiarized with the brand as if we were a part of the brand team so that we can build those storylines. And then also doing a lot of research on who that first round of creator outreach would be, competitive analysis, all of these metrics and everything everyone else has done is publicly available with influencers too.

44:37So it's like we can learn from everybody else as well. So we pull that into a strategy. We have our first month, which is pitching the brand to creators, negotiating contracts, getting them into a good place to create that first piece of content. And then usually month three is like, okay, what do we need to pivot on? And then from there, we pivot every single month. We align with like new things that are happening in the brand story, but also what's happening in the creator's world. Do we need to bring on a new audience? Do we need to take somebody out of the group? What are we missing? What are the gaps and how do we fill them?

45:13And so we have a flat rate management budget because of that. We just have a very clear proven process of how we handle the influencer timeline. The fluctuation on price comes down to the influencer compensation, which is totally up to the brand and we can help them make good decisions on that. But when somebody is just starting out, like Val said, we can get people for really cost effective, you know, sometimes no additional budget. And I think that negotiation process is sometimes hard for a brand because we have this thing called the 50K threshold of followers, where anybody who has over 50K, sometimes now people under 50K, but definitely anyone over 50K has a management team.

45:55So if we have a brand that like really wants those bigger creators, we have to factor in that management team price and that it's going to be an additional compensation. And we're going to have to change our strategy to accommodate that. But really, we just try and maximize that influencer compensation budget. And we can change that month over month if things change for the brand. So, OK, so you typically when you're working with brands, you just have almost like a retainer. it would be that you're charging and then they're going to pay a variable amount that is it's like a pass through cost on actually what you have to pay the influencers for the content.

46:29Yeah. Well, that sounds amazing, honestly, because when I looked at this level, I mean, I'm like, I've been out of the game for a while. But when I looked at it and had been talking to agencies about it, I just had, I think, such a sour taste in my mouth about it because they would like give me a quote for what they would be doing. And then I would talk to someone who knew how much the influencers charge and they're like yeah they're putting an 80 overhead on the actual cost of this i'm like well that's ridiculous like i could never even if we had the money justify that so that makes me very happy to hear about you talk about just kind of the pass-through stuff on the actual costs that way and also makes me feel like you can actually truly go out and get the right creators not just the ones who are willing to let an agency mark them way up they have them on their roster of kind of people who they can pay a little and mark and charge a lot for.

47:21You must get that feedback from brands a lot. We do. Yeah, we get that feedback a lot. And that's why we don't have an influencer roster. We don't have a set. I mean, we've had years of experience working with creators. We know the top dogs out there, but we don't have a roster. We don't have any engagement with the creators themselves. And so we did that intentionally so that we're not fixed to something that's not going to work for the brand. We really go out and find the creators that make sense. And I think people really like that. It feels a lot more custom and a lot more approachable. So if I'm a brand and I start working with you guys, then we do the strategy part.

47:57And then you actually start reaching out to creators on our behalf and you understand what we're going for. And you basically are like, you have a wide net of people that you're interested in. You start reaching out to them and you're then seeing if they're interested. And then like probably pretty quickly from there, just trying to get a sense of how much they charge for stuff and if they'd even be interested in the product. Like, are you often actually then just trying to send them a sample at that point so they can you can see like, hey, does this really align or like how does that actually go with you and the influencer to the point of having them actually get on board and start working with the brand?

48:28Most often we go through a contract process with them. We use an amazing tool called Grin, which we work very closely with the creators of that platform. And it's really systematized using that tool where we have a discovery team that is finding and sourcing creators and elevating them to our strategists as opportunities. then the strategist reaches out to those creators. If they have a management team, it's a little bit of a different workflow, but most of the time reaching out to them, pitching the brand, getting them under contract, and then facilitating product delivery and then their first post.

49:05And so it's pretty regimented and we've got a really good system of how we get that done. Okay, that makes sense. So let me, one thing I think I've honestly just kind of neglected to ask you about so far is TikTok because I don't like use TikTok personally. I'm behind the times. I'm like hitting boomer status, I guess. I'm more of an Instagram person. And so how are you thinking about TikTok versus the other platforms? How are you typically thinking about the influencers who might be stronger on TikTok to influence TikTok shop, that kind of stuff versus some of the other platforms out there? Yeah, I mean, TikTok has changed the game completely over the last two and a half years since TikTok Shop has been established.

49:49We have separated the TikTok Shop affiliate program from the influencer program within our business. So influencers for us are really what we've been talking about today. They're omni-channel. We usually have them posting to what channel they have the most engagement on. And sometimes we get cross posts from them too, if it's cost effective enough. But when we think about TikTok Shop, like we've been certified as a preferred partner within TikTok shop. I meet with TikTok shop regularly and I think that they have found a perfect blend between e-com and creator content where the response really does happen in real time from creator videos.

50:32But those are separate people to us. Those creators are working within the TikTok ecosystem. They are TikTok affiliates. They are trained and partnered with TikTok. And so there's a lot more factors and there's a lot less control brands have when they're working in the TikTok affiliate program. It's all about gamification. It's all about sales and promotions and quick and lives. And it's not a content engine. It's more of its own separate ecosystem that has considerations that might eventually fade into influencer. You might eventually own that content, but it's a system that works and runs that TikTok has designed.

51:15And so you have to play ball with them a little bit more than if you're just working with influencers. I gotcha. Okay. All right. As we're wrapping here, I would love because you've worked with so many brands. Just tell us about a time when it went so well. So Mariah, I'll start with you, but if you could just highlight it, here's a specific instance and we got to do the thing that we love to do with them and the results were just awesome. And here's why or here's how it went. Yeah, we worked with a brand called Ice Farrel, which they sell roto-molded ice baths and use the Wim Hof method for that.

51:47And we really dove pretty headfirst into the biohacking space at a time when cryotherapy and ice plunges were like the talk of the town, which I feel like they still a little bit are. And we worked with a small group of creators in the biohacking space that were just about to take off. They were really very prominent within a small ice bath community. And they had everything it took from like a looks perspective, a storytelling perspective to really go far. and what we did was a completely product seeding campaign we sent them ice barrels and a couple of them did fantastic on their first post we then eventually put those creators on a retainer and they would just film their daily routine with the ice bath and it caught on like wildfire to be honest one of the creators eventually started to do in-person engagements where they would do like ice bath workshops at different locations all around the US.

52:48They started a podcast with the owner and now they own part of the ice barrel business. And so I think what really worked in that scenario was that we went very niche and at a time when it was trending and did it in a way that was very easy for people to understand. It was a repetition play every single day. You saw the ice barrel on those creators' feeds. And then we found some creators that really loved the brand and wanted to see it succeed. And they have done fantastically well ever since then. And I know what you're talking about. There was a moment in, I mean, I think it's still very popular, but there was a moment in time where it's all anyone was talking about.

53:27And I think I lived in LA in that time. And that's just what people wanted to do. And that was their weekend plans, hitting up a different ice bath. So at the time, were there a lot of, because the ice barrel, I just looked it up online. Like, yeah, I've seen that. It looks very beautiful and everything. Were there a lot of people going after that space, though? Was there a specific way that you were advertising it that was differentiated or was it really first to market? And so it was really just a game of getting as many eyeballs in on it as possible. I mean, it was one of the first. I think there were two that were in market at that time and the other one was significantly more expensive.

54:02And so that was a key advantage. And it was at a time when no one was really talking i mean you would have to be part of like a yoga type of community to like know that ice baths were a real value out at that time but it kind of caught the wave it was magic it was like catching lightning in a bottle and that could happen at any time you know and a niche is so so so powerful when you can find it and really own it that definitely makes sense okay val story time what you got yeah so i was gonna touch on one of our brands that is in the cbg space that's Jackson's chips. We've been working with them for a while and just following that same best practices of building up their roster, building up their ambassadors, the people who love the brand and the influencers who are loyal to the brand.

54:47And we got to a point where they were looking to launch a new product. So our approach for it was to activate all of these, literally every single one of our brand ambassadors that we had, bring them into this launch, get it to them ahead of time so they could try it. So they had the product in hand for launch day. They were launching on e-com, but also specifically in retail. So what we wanted to do, which is really create this FOMO, like this product is everywhere. Everyone is talking about it so that obviously you get into your retail space and those shoppers already know what this product is because they've seen it a thousand times on social media from so many different people.

55:24So we activated their entire existing influencer roster. We also used their budget they had for influencers to contract a really big wellness influencer in the space. And his post went live as well on launch day. Hundreds of thousands of views. So kind of using the budget more for the novelty big name and then complimenting that with hundreds of other people just posting naturally to their feeds. And it worked really well because the people that had been posting many different times about the brand were coming up with this new product, showing off this new product. So it felt really natural. It didn't feel like overly promotional.

56:03It felt like something that just kind of fit in with what they'd already been talking about. Created a lot of buzz, a lot of excitement. And because of that, the new product that they launched ended up outselling their existing product. It became their new hero product. And it outperformed other competitors that had been in the space for years and years. So it was really a huge success across the board. And I've noticed that it was in retail, like it wasn't in the digital world. It was all of these voices coming together to create that buzz, that hype, that credibility, that familiarity, so that when people were shopping, they were making their decisions based on everything that they had heard online.

56:37So a really cool moment for CPG on that one. I love it. I love to hear that. And I was just thinking about how sometimes when you really do create a nice moment around that, around the launched, then even it can get picked up by news outlets and just, you know, you can see a lot of compounding impacts on the investment that you're making. Okay. I know I said that was kind of the last one, but I actually have one final question to ask both of you, because I think just if you're on the brand side, you don't necessarily know a lot of influencers and you might have different ideas in your head of what they're like and who they are.

57:09So I guess finally, what is one thing that you would love for brands to really understand about influencers and who they are and their perspective. And I'll go first, which is, I think, maybe at the later stage, you're not like it could be sometimes that it can be more transactional. I don't know just my thought on it. But especially at the earlier stage, people maybe who are under that 50k plateau that you talked about, they really do want to do a good job for you. They will probably many of them want to be able to do this for a living, probably at that level, they're not at the point where they could.

57:43But they want to do a good job. They want you to like it. They want it to be impactful. They want to get to keep working with you. And so I think at that level, especially, it's good to know that and tap into it and get the best ideas that they have. And, you know, really just make sure you're getting their full best effort. I think when people have more to lose than to gain, then it's a little bit of a different game and they may be way more protective about their image and the contract and that kind of stuff. That's my impression, but you guys have way more experience in this. But do you have something that you think it's really good just for everyone to know about influencers?

58:19Mine is a little bit cliche, but I'm going to say the good that you put out into the world comes back to you. So the better that you treat those influencers and the more that you can customize your approach to them, like Mariah was saying earlier, look at the content that they're already making, pay attention to what they're already talking about, rather than just copy and paste a template all the time to everybody, that's really going to come back and strengthen that relationship, make them much more likely to work with you. If they feel like you've paid attention and you really are a fan of their page and you want to collaborate with them because you like them, not just because you're trying to tick a box to get a certain number of influencers onboarded, that's going to help your approach and your relationship and your long-term performance with that influencer a lot.

59:02That makes a lot of sense. It really does. That really resonates. Okay, Mariah. I would love for brands to know that it's a strategy when you're thinking about your army of creators. You can have different creators for different objectives. We can negotiate. We can manipulate things. It's not this blanket that you have heard about. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about the word influencer and thoughts in their head of who those influencers are. But it's actually much more controllable now. And there's a lot of strategy that goes into what that creator framework might be without and it might go against what you initially think that influencers actually are.

59:47And so I think there's a lot more opportunity than you might think just from what we see very publicly from the term influencer. Yeah. And I really like this overall idea just about the thoughtfulness of everything, how important it is and how it can turn up a lot of unexpected stuff as well when you really go the extra mile and try to make like find things that are going to hit much better because you put more effort into it, which you should because this is expensive stuff for people to invest in and might as well really figure out how to sharpen the idea so that it goes really well. and then when it goes really well, the influencer is going to like it even more and they're going to feel good because they did a good job for you.

1:00:24You're going to feel good about them and then who knows what that can lead to, but definitely those, probably those freebie posts and them actually then telling their friends about it who might help you out even more. So I really like that line of thought around it. Okay, Mariah Val, I really want to thank you guys. This has been a really fun discussion for me. I think just especially because I don't know so much about this wide world of influencers other than it seems to be the job that all of my nieces and nephews want to have when they grow up is to be influencers. So I'll also have them listen to this episode.

1:00:57But thank you guys so much. And thank you for also just having a service that is, I would say, right-sized for brands as they're growing on their journey as well, that lets them get access to this world of influential people without just having to pay almost all 100 % overhead, which can happen to some agencies out there. So thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks, Daniel. All right. Thank you, everybody. Hope you enjoyed. Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in CPG. As you may know, we're not just a podcast.

1:01:35We're a community of brands and experts, and you should join. You can sign up at startupcpg.com. You'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands, and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye-bye.

1:02:14Thank you.