Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Shaheen Samavati chats with Niki Albon, head of creative at the award-winning influencer marketing agency Cherry Pick Talent, about how to get influencer partnerships right:
Shaheen Samavati 0:03
Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I’m Shaheen Samavati, host of the content mix podcast brought to you by multilingual content marketing agency VeraContent. Today I’m joined by our special guest Nicky Albon, head of creative at the award winning influencer marketing agency Cherry Pick Talent to talk about how to get influencer partnerships, right. Welcome to the show.
Niki Albon 0:22
Thanks for having me.
Shaheen Samavati 0:24
So to give people a little more context, you’re an influencer turned influencer marketer. So you’ve advised and collaborated with some of the world’s biggest brands, including Google, Samsung, Coca Cola, 20th Century Fox and charities such as Stand Up to Cancer. You call yourself an ex influencer, you’ve been over 10 years, working on your own channels. And now Niki is using his firsthand contextual knowledge and experience as head of creative at Cherry Pick Talent where he develops innovative influencer strategies and campaigns and heads up the entire creative process from concept stage through to pitching and campaign reporting. So I think there’s that, that cover it.
Niki Albon 1:01
You gave me the best elevator pitch that I’ve ever heard for myself. I will add one thing I had roughly across all of my social media 400,000 followers. So it was yeah, it was my full time schtick for I would say we were doing it. I didn’t read my brother did it for 10 years. But I would say it was my full time job for seven of those 10 years. And this was before the word influencer existed. So yeah, it was it’s been a wild ride. And I’m really pleased to be in a position now where I can use that knowledge. And that insight that I had as someone that was a creator, to work with the new wave or current generation of creators, in a way that I hope is, it’s beneficial to the industry, but also to the creators that we work with, because there are a lot of wild west cowboys out there. And I don’t want to be one of them. So yeah, it’s I’m really grateful for the journey that I’ve had and the experience that I’ve got. And I hope that it’s making an impact in a good way.
Shaheen Samavati 2:06
Yeah. So could you tell us like, how did you get to influencer status? And what does it really mean to be an influencer? And do you have to have 400,000 followers to be considered an influencer? What’s the cutoff?
Niki Albon 2:18
These are some good questions already. So it’s very basic form an influencer is someone that can that can influence the opinion or purchasing behavior or behavior of an audience. So do you need 400,000 followers to be an influencer? Absolutely not. A Cherry Pick, we work with influencers across the spectrum from the Mr. Beasts of the world with millions and millions of create audience members to micro influences that may have 500 to 1000. They’re different brackets on the same spectrum. And there is kind of an I’d say a new terminology, it’s kind of a, an adjacent terminology called a key opinion leader, which is, in my opinion, something you would find a little bit more regularly on LinkedIn, or in discord, these kinds of campfire, social media presences where people are sharing thoughts, and opinions. Reddit is another good example, around smaller audiences, but they themselves are very influential. I kind of think of it like the cool kid in the group of friends where their network is quite small, but they hold a lot of sway over them with their influence. So there’s also key opinion leaders, which more and more frequently we’re being approached about, because it is interchangeable at this point with the best kind of influencer, influencers that are known for a skill, whether that’s art, music, dance, or insight. So I think of creators like Philosophy Tube on YouTube, where they make content around philosophical topics in in a digestible and approachable way. They have themselves, these creators are experts in their field, and I would consider them key opinion leaders, but they actually have the influence of an of a traditional influencer.
Shaheen Samavati 4:14
Yeah, I think people often think of influencers, like being at a synonym for celebrity, basically, but it’s a sign of also how things have changed and our way we communicate has changed in the who’s, who controls the kind of communication, you know, so it’s kind of like anyone can put things out there now. And level of influence can be very high or lower. But there’s, like you said, depends on kind of the I guess you can be much more granular in the audience you want to reach with the types of people you collaborate with. We’re putting content out online, and it’s very different than than in the past.
Niki Albon 4:49
It’s, it’s really interesting, like with celebrity, I find it so I’ve had the opportunity to work with influencers that have grown their own audience and and influencers that have come off the back of reality TV shows that kind of trajectory. And there is a very marked difference between the approach that these two groups have to their audiences. So an influencer that has built their own audience, I’m not saying any less, I’m just saying it in a way that disparages the work of someone that has gone on to reality TV, like, that’s a whole separate journey. But in terms of the quality of relationship, that influences that have, have built their own audience have with their audience is, for me, it’s like miles and leaks apart. Because they have generated that audience through sort of hard work and diligence, sharing content that they have themselves worked on. Whereas the relationship with celebrities and their audiences is, it’s different. There isn’t, perhaps, this feeling of being as beholden to them in terms of what they would like to see from you, you kind of they kind of give them what they’re gonna get. Whereas an influencer, has a more democratic relationship with their audience. I mean, at the end of day, they’re still calling the shots. But they, they’re very much invested in what their audience would like to see from them. And that always plays out in the quality of the content that we receive. From a branding perspective, I find that influencers that build their own audiences take the time to read the brief ideate on a concept very often with me, where we’ll sit down, have a chat and be like, Okay, that was your understanding the brief, either a yes, you’ve got it, or B, let’s have another go. And they’re like, cool. Let’s make this work. Because I want to make something that ultimately works for my audience. And that kind of guides us in everything we do at Cherry Pick, I, as being head of creative, it may seem kind of counterintuitive. But very often, the whole play here is to let an influencer do what they’ve been doing best without being too heavy handed and taking too much of a vise grip on the production of the content. So I am there. But oftentimes, like, we very much take the influences lead because I don’t want them to create something they don’t care about, or their audience isn’t interested in, because that defeats the whole point.
Shaheen Samavati 7:13
And I was wondering, like a bunch of things, but well, which I guess what types of campaigns you typically work on, if you can give us an example. And maybe like the platforms that you work with the most I know that you were really influential in YouTube as a YouTuber. Is that still the channel that you’re most expert in? Or do you work more with other channels? And also kind of just how things have changed over the years? You started in 2012? So maybe other channels are more important these days? Can you are equally important? YouTube is still super important, of course. So yeah, what’s the landscape these days? What are you kind of focused on.
Niki Albon 7:46
So the big three, four kind of, so we cut our teeth on YouTube by for cherry pick and also for myself. YouTube is something I care very much about. Just because I grew up watching it. And it’s something that I personally enjoy watching. It’s very millennial of me. And I like it as a platform to work on because it has a longer tail to it, meaning that if you do a campaign with a YouTuber, that video will continue to convert forever forevermore, because it’s live for a long time. YouTube has a much better ability of resurfacing old content with audiences. So there’s YouTube, there’s also YouTube shorts, which is is is great. I love YouTube shorts. I think that it was an underdog and kind of seen as a copycat for a long time. But actually, if you think of YouTube as arguably the home for video on the internet, even still to this day, I think YouTube shorts makes total sense. And creators are using it really effectively to to build audiences on YouTube if they had come from tick tock, for example. So we use YouTube shorts as well. TikTok is I would say a huge focus for us. Primarily because for an awareness play if you’re looking to build awareness around a product, not necessarily drive, clicks, or installs, which we’ll get to at a later date. Sure. But for an awareness point of view, you TikTok is huge. It is global, with a few exceptions. Obviously, its future is uncertain still to this day, but it has time passes. The longer these decisions take to make, the more ingrained it becomes in people’s browsing habits. So TikTok is another focus Instagram Stories particularly is a big focus. It has an unparalleled user journey. You You know if you are an influencer and you’re marketing a product like hey, buy this water bottle and the link is right there for people to click on within the content. They can then travel out and download or purchase that product pretty seamlessly. So as a user journey, it’s great and very often we like supplement existing campaigns with Instagram stories because it just goes hand in hand, I’d say Reels, short form in general is great, Reels comes to the bottom of the pile when we tend to work with influencers because we prioritize TikTok, or YouTube shorts, because I find that the reach is better. And the platform is just easier to browse, I find Reels on a personal point of view still feels like an afterthought, even though it’s a huge focus for Instagram. So that’s just me. But short form, we try and secure sort of cross posting where possible because even though someone’s audience might be similar size across platforms, it’s very, it’s extremely likely. In fact, it’s 100% certain that audiences across each of those platforms are marginally different because the demographics that use Tik Tok are different to those that use YouTube and those that use Instagram. So oftentimes, it makes sense to like, secure, more posting for a piece of content across platforms, because you’re gonna hit different audiences, even with the same influencer. And then for the type of campaigns we work on primarily gaming campaigns. We work a lot with Epic Games. We work a lot with clay tikka, who develop some of the biggest games in the world on mobile, alpha seven, who developed my talking tom, we actually just close that a campaign on them, not for them from My Talking Tom to with Mr. Beast, which was really cool. But we also do work with lifestyle brands. We also work with products in verticals outside of gaming, but for the most part, gaming is one of my key focuses because firstly, I am a gamer and secondly, I play fortnight so I love working on the marketing fortnight. Yeah, we kind of cover all verticals, is a long answer to a short question.
Shaheen Samavati 11:56
Yeah. Okay. So and I guess maybe the agency started out in the gaming, and it’s kind of like expanded to more things.
Niki Albon 12:03
Yeah, our first client. So I found a Brit used to work at a MCN, which are kind of a dying breed at this point. But there are multi channel network that run advertising on YouTube content with top creators. But she left an MCN and founded Cherry Pick. And our first she might correct me on this. But our first client was Best Fiends the mobile game. And it got to the point where we were running sort of like monthly, quarterly budgets with them to work with influencers all over the world. So they were there, the first kind of main client, and to this day, we still work with the team that have since moved on to different projects. But yeah, mostly gaming. But I would say in the last year, that’s definitely become less of a case. Yeah,
Shaheen Samavati 12:50
well, so this would actually lead me to I do have the question about kind of like, how do you make these relationships with all these influencers around the world? And but it’s also to the question I wanted to ask you next, which is about like, when a new brand comes to you, how do you kick off the collaboration? And like, what comes first, the creative campaign idea or the influencer partnership? Are you like, I want to work with that influencer? So we’re gonna come up with a campaign for them? Or is it like I have this campaign idea, I’m gonna find the right influencer? Or kind of what’s your process?
Niki Albon 13:15
I would say 80% of the time, it’s the latter. So because a lot of brands are coming to us for our expertise in the space, so make up a brand Coca Cola, come to us, and they’ll be like, Hey, we’re launching this product. Help us. So the first port of call is to short is first and foremost is to understand what their their view of success is, like, what do you want from this campaign? If you’re a mobile game, that is obviously driving downloads, and increasing installs, and ultimately purchases in the game. So that’s on mobile app. That’s, that’s the goal. So first of all, we understand the goal. The second is understand kind of this is normally a whole call, but like understanding the brand’s tone of voice and who they’ve worked with in the past and any call outs they’ve had from those experiences so we can avoid them from the get go like there’s no point as I say they don’t like working with gamers and then we go away and shortlist just gamers that’s obviously not understanding the brand or the brief, but we try very hard to slot into the team which we find super, super successful for us in terms of campaign management, but also understanding the brand and becoming integral to their marketing because very often influences is a is a secondary thought rather than primary and if it can be involved in the mix from the get go. You have a much more fertile easy time with both the brand and the client so and the creator but also your the campaign idea as a whole will fit in much easily, much more easily to you kind of the overarching campaign. So if that’s out of home or paid media, we’ve also got an influencer. Spend that makes sense. So we’ll go a shortlist creators present these freighters, they will go through and look at them, and let us know, hey, if you missed the mark, which never happens, or they’ll be like, Hey, this is perfect. These are the ones we like, here’s our priority. And we will go away and and tap into these creators and kind of do your first question How do we have these relationships? relation I feel like relationships are at the very core of what we do, whether that is between us and a creator, us and the brand, or the talents management, because very often, this is very professionalized space now creators have management. Life is this is like underpins everything I do, life is too short not to have a good time at work. So if, you know, we aren’t negotiating with creators, easily, in a way, it’s understandable in plain English, and everything is transparent with the Creator. That’s just not that’s just bad juju, like, I don’t want to work with a creator and for them to think that we are pulling the wool over their eyes. If the goalposts keep changing, if the goalposts do change, and that’s not any fault of our own, or the creators, we’re just gonna let them know. So like, hey, the brands had to push us back a month. We wanted to be clear with you, this is nothing to no reflection of your content. This is what happened, because a lot of time creators are working alone, but they work alone in their rooms or wherever they work from, typically bedroom, on content. And they do require I speak from experience, they do require not necessarily hand holding, because I think they’re slightly condescending, but they do require a flow of information that helps them understand that if things go wrong, it’s not their fault, or you know, if something has been done wrong, or hasn’t followed a brief, that we’re there to work through that with them, not to tell them off and threatened to pull the contract or I mean, you know, there are exceptions to this rule. But we work with the Creator to make them feel supported, rather than just cut loose. And so over the 10 years that we’ve been, or sorry, eight years that we’ve been doing this, we come back to talent again and again with different partners, because we know that we can work well with them and that they’re trustable they trust us and we trust them.
Shaheen Samavati 17:23
Yeah, it’s kind of it’s similar to PR, essentially, it’s modern PR influencer marketing, no, like building those relationships with the media, media. Or are
Niki Albon 17:32
you as you say that, though? Like, it’s true, but like, as you say that the speaking with my influencer hat on. I obviously come up against agencies that I worked with as an influencer. And they will talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk. So So an aeroplane is landing in my garden, who’s gonna shut this? So yeah, they, they, they don’t walk the walk in that they will say things like, you know, we have our relationships with the creators and all this stuff. But very often, I was waiting, you know, one month plus two months, plus three months plus to be paid for campaign, which is unacceptable, first and foremost. And also, like, there are so many reasons why that’s wrong, listening to it, or campaigns would be canceled, and I wouldn’t get the insight as to why or an offer would be on the table. It’s pulled away very quickly. Obviously, things like that do happen. But there are there are agencies that I rub shoulders with now that I had that experience with on multiple occasions. And it’s very, very well for someone at the head of a company to be like, you know, we’re the originators of influencer marketing, we treat creators treat creators with respect, actually, my experience was not that. Yeah. And it’s a shame because I think like, a high tide raises all ships. And I think that if we can treat creators fairly across the board, it’s only going to lead to an easier working environment, fair treatment for everyone across the board. And just this could be so much more pleasant. So yeah, that’s my little soapbox that I’m standing on today is that I think that creates should be treated with respect because it just levels up the whole thing for everyone.
Shaheen Samavati 19:16
Yeah, and it makes them eager to work with you again in the future, and maybe choosing working with you over working with other brands that are Yeah,
Niki Albon 19:23
and that happens very frequently with if we if an if a brand is using a different agency, and we happen to reach out to the same creator, which is like not the end of the world. It happens. A lot of a lot of these brands will use different agencies in different markets, but there’s overlap. As I said, like if someone’s in Spain, they speak English. Like there’s just a little bit of crossover. I would say 90% of the time, I would say 100 because that’s too big headed 90% of time but creative like hey, I’ve been reached out to both our agency but I would rather work with you. And we’ll just take that to the brand because what else can we do? But yeah, it happens. So Yeah, treat people nicely.
Shaheen Samavati 20:03
Absolutely. So could you give us an example of a successful campaign that you’ve worked on? And tell us a bit about like, how do you measure success and kind of what metrics and KPIs to look at?
Niki Albon 20:14
Yeah, so I’ll answer the second part first. So in terms of what we’re looking for, for a campaign, it will differ per beat. So if you are a home where brand company, so we worked, actually, here’s a good example, we worked with a brand called poster Lounge, which is a desenio type, poster delivery company. And their KPI was increasing sales. That’s it like Dave, that’s the goal. They’re a product they want to sell more. So it was important to understand that for us from the get go. So for us, the easiest way to track success, if the client isn’t willing to share how many sales they’ve made, fortunately, this client was, because it’s a piece of the puzzle, like, the more we know, the bigger picture, we can paint. So for us, all we could track was link clicks. Because our job is to drive people to the store. But if the store isn’t doing its job, then they’re not going to buy. And it’s very often something. So for example, if we’re driving someone to the App Store, if the app page looks ugly, or doesn’t represent the game properly, doesn’t sell it adequately, then we’ve done our end of the bargain. But if they don’t do the install, then it’s like, there’s only so much we can do, we can get people to the door, but they don’t choose to buy that’s not on us. So for us, very often, it does boil down to simple metrics, like link clicks, for an awareness campaign, which isn’t driving installs, which isn’t driving sales. So if you’re just trying to make awareness, which is something that fortnight does, for example, it’s a console game. So when you’re advertising on social media, you can’t link out to download it because it’s on a console. So for awareness campaigns, it does boil down to the CPM, more often than not, there’s other elements to it, obviously, they will come into play. But if you’re sort of very broad overview CPM, so that is for anyone who isn’t aware, that is the cost, they’re paying per 1000 views, which is a very old school advertising metric, but in influence, so you can actually tie it to demonstrable figures before it would be on the side of a bus and you’d be like, Well, we think you’re gonna get 100,000 people seeing this, we know for a fact that, you know, on X, Y, Zed influences content, you got 125,000 views? Well, you got this number of views. So it’s, I don’t want to say it’s a vanity metric, because it’s not impressions in count for an awareness thing, because you can say, well, this is how many people have seen it. But then you have to combine it with things like engagement rate, to understand that actually, yeah, a million people saw it. But if only one person commented then what’s the quality of that view?
Shaheen Samavati 23:03
And then, knowing that the right people saw it, right,
Niki Albon 23:06
exactly. So you and that’s why we do as much research as possible beforehand to see what an audience looks like for a creator, where they’re based that age, gender breakdown. And we do that with tools that we have access to this, there’s a ton of them, but things like tubular creator, IQ, Mo dash, they’re all they all boil down to using the same API, which gives you the same data. But they’ll also they’re slightly different. I don’t think they are. So yeah, it’s it’s about CPMs. Typically for an awareness campaign.
Shaheen Samavati 23:38
How do you like evaluate that the audience of the influencer is like the right audience for the brand.
Niki Albon 23:44
So brand will be like, we’re targeting 18 to 35 year old women, primarily, obviously, there’ll be there will be men in the audience, purchasing audiences as well. But they know they have highest highest resonance with that audience. So we will use our tools to shortlist creators. The brand will then be like, cool, yes, these ones are great. Please, can you double confirm the audience? Then we’ll chat to the creators, because there are going to be subtle differences between the numbers we see on our tools versus what a creator can pull up from that they YouTube Analytics, for example. But ultimately, the brand has oversight on that. And they will say yes or no.
Shaheen Samavati 24:27
So going back to can you give us an example of worked on where it was a great fit and the and he had great results?
Niki Albon 24:34
Yeah, so one I really want to talk about is we worked with this couple of campaigns, I want to talk about the first one that comes to mind which falls into the category of kind of an opinion leader in my opinion. So for Black History Month, this year, I believe in the UK, it’s in February, but in the US it’s a different time of year. I might be completely wrong. I think it’s different in the EU versus us. But anyway, in February we worked with Reed of course which is a home design app, it’s a game where it’s a game. First and foremost, it’s very competitive. There is like a huge Facebook group where all these people are like, my design is better than yours. And people will post them and argue, but we worked with I want to say I forget the name of the channel, it’s a US channel, it’s called like HGTV, or like home design. It’s a Home Design channel, I think
Shaheen Samavati 25:24
it’s a very important
Niki Albon 25:27
well remembered, we worked with a creator called Tiffany, who is known for her really kind of eclectic, colorful home design, and also her personal story. So we worked with her to design an in game room challenge that she designed herself, she took inspiration from our own home. So you can actually look at the pictures of our own home versus the one in the game. And it’s like the same room. And her audience. She’s like, bio in, she’s not a million plus followers, she’s got around, I think 100,000. So she’s not some Mr. Beast. But her audience was super relevant, super engaged, and she herself had the right experience to work with on this campaign. And obviously, for an impact campaign around something like Black History Month is really important that the Creator selection reflects the moment. And so she was so genuinely infused by the moment that she did a blog post as well, with the brand, she did the endgame element. And then on top of that did her social posts. And because of such a beautiful moment, a bunch of other creators got involved as well and shared Tiffany’s content. And it was just this real organic moment, that to me, it was an indicator of success, because it resonated. This wasn’t about the KPI he was not about we need to get this many installs, we need to do X Y Zed. This was just about celebrating an important moment in the calendar for the game and its audience with the right creator. So that’s an example of a campaign that isn’t necessarily tied to a KPI beyond just quality content for the brand and the audience.
Shaheen Samavati 27:13
And I guess awareness with new audiences like her audience, I wasn’t I mean, maybe I’m not understanding exactly. But like, her audience was was, I mean, her content was design related, right? And then it was Yeah, promotion in a game. So but there was you were somehow able to tell that there was overlap from like her audience to the to the audience for this game.
Niki Albon 27:33
Yeah, ultimately, so the game is all about designing your own home. She’s a homework home design account. And she’s talking about on TV. So like, audiences are like, primed to be delivered home designed content. Her audience was also I believe, majority 18 to 35. Female, which the game know is their target audience or roughly is their target audience, I’d have to double check it was a while ago now. But regardless, her audience aligned in terms of demographic and the content they were already consuming with what the game was all about. Like it was all about home design. It was all about developing your own creativity. And they were there for that they so yes, they did download and they did install. What was great to see is a lot of the comments were like, I already play this game. I love it. And what that means from just a kind of our perspective is we were in the right place, because these audience members, some of them were already playing it, which means that the the other audience members that weren’t, were more more likely to be in, in tune with what this game is offering. And then I guess another campaign that was like a little bit more. So my chair is really squeaky if you can hear it. Yeah, I always
Shaheen Samavati 28:49
do, I keep moving.
Niki Albon 28:50
If I lean forward, it stops. Okay. I’m chatting with my friend. So a campaign that that I would say I’m just thinking top of my head. So we we do campaigns with some really cool brands, the one that I would say, set me on fire recently was subway surface. So Subway Surfer is a game that really hit its stride in lockdown, or just before in those dark days. But it now is like, it’s just taken a life of its own. It’s super popular. It’s played millions and billions of times around the world. Billions is not exaggeration. But they launched an artificial reality element to the game called subway Surface Studio. And the task there was to work with creators that fell in Target verticals. So our positioning was that we think that given that this AR element allows you to add the characters from the game into the real world. If anyone’s played, I don’t gonna compare it to Pokemon Go. But it’s a similar thing where you can have a character appear as if it’s in the real world for your phone. I’m explaining artificial reality, this is like not augmented reality for those that don’t know. But I feel like this point it’s like a known thing. So our positioning was, hey, you need to work with VFX creators, we’ve, we’ve worked with them in the past for campaigns with other games. And if you’re looking to make content with the emphasis on the word cool, content that is exciting. We think that VFX hits a happy medium between our audience that play mobile games, and audiences that are ready to are primed to be wowed. So we’re in the business of making cool content, we think that would work for you. So what we ended up doing was working with VFX creators to put their twist on this augmented reality element. But actually using the assets from in the game, which I thought was really cool. They’re not like making new pieces. They are using them in their content. And then we also worked with lifestyle and comedy creators, and dance creators because actually, when you add these augmented reality elements into the real world, they have like emotes I don’t know how best to describe describe them, like these characters will behave in a certain way. So we worked with dancers to recreate those. And just overall, the campaign hit a fantastic CPM was very low. The impressions out over delivered massively. And we just had it although it was only six creators, which is on the smaller side of things for us, they were all huge in their own niches. So that was speaking more to a tactic there. Sometimes you can work with 100 Micro creators. But oftentimes, if you want to make a solid piece of content that reaches a huge audience with zero brands spend on boosting, to like amplify that content. For me, a good play is either have a mixed bag of midsize to hero creators, or just go all in on the biggest within each of their verticals. Because you know that people are really gonna pay attention, they are astronomical, in reach for a reason. So oftentimes, if you’re looking to make a splash, my advice is to at least include a percentage of your budget towards these really big creators because they are hero creators for a reason. But then obviously, for for awareness, if you’re looking to drive in stores, then a mixed bag approach makes total sense.
Do you do you ever use boosting or do you think it’s generally not the best way to spend your money?
Some clients like it so specifically around sparks on Tik Tok, it’s a way of boosting of using influencer content as paid media. Because typically influencer content converts much higher than own brand content. So me being like, I’m Coca Cola, by our drink isn’t gonna convert as well as me saying, Hi, guys, I love to start my day, I want to start my day with coke. But like, I love to start my day with this lovely coffee is gonna convert better because I’m approachable. I’d like to think, approachable, I’m delivering it as a human. And I’m, you resonate better with me saying it because I’m an identifiable figure rather than a brand a face to a brand. So brands do like it and will very often come to us and be like, I want to allocate this much spend to boosting for
Shaheen Samavati 33:36
the influencers channel or the influence will create content for the channel. And then Dave, was that
Niki Albon 33:40
good question. So actually, it’s a mix of both. Oftentimes, brands we’d like to secure usage for piece of content so that they can then make a cut down or we can make the cut down for them. And they run it. Because it just goes hand in hand. Like as a marketing mix. If you’ve got paid influencer, they just work so so well together. Often the paid teams if the influencer team comes to them to the pay team, and like, Hey, we’ve got usage on this for three months, the pay team are like over the moon because they know that that is going to convert better than the stuff that they’re using. But at the very minimum, it means they don’t have to like create as many assets next month to run on paid. So it it just works hand in hand. It’s different approaches to it, sometimes brands to secure upfront, which tends to be more cost effective. Other times they’ll see it perform well on the influencers channel then come back and say hey, we want this for three months. At which point it becomes renegotiating with the Creator, which can up the fee typically does up the fee. Just because it’s like it wasn’t negotiated upfront, you’re now asking me something else. So therefore you have to pay for it. Which you know, is a logical conclusion.
Shaheen Samavati 34:49
Yeah. And then one thing I was wondering when you were talking about the the first example of the design influencer partnership, it sounded like the brand was very involved. like they had to essentially create this custom part of their game and everything. So how do you get the right like stakeholders involved from the brand and kind of like get them to buy into being part of this? Like, I know, a lot of times, maybe a brand just wants to outsource the function of influencer marketing to an agency. So it sounds like you’ve you’re working very hand in hand with the brands, how do you build that kind of relationship?
Niki Albon 35:21
Well, it’s a good point, we’re very lucky that the majority of our partnerships are brand direct. You know, agencies are great as middlemen, but I prefer to work direct with the brand, because we do have that freedom flow between us and the brand. We can be brought into meetings with, you know, the top dogs explain the position, perhaps, on behalf of whoever is trying to win that budget to spend with us or to spend on influencer. And just explain the method to the madness and give them an insight into what we’re seeing what other partners because with influencer, there are so many elements to it that I think, on a surface level, yeah, we can, someone from it within the brand can send an email to X, Y, Zed creator, and contract deliverables. But what they don’t have is insight to how they’ve charged before to how they performed before, to what their content should look like to what how many emails go into negotiating with creators, there’s a reason we have a whole campaign management team is because you know, depending on the vertical, and also the size of the craters, there can be, it can be quite heavy lift, have to do alongside your main, like your main job role if you are working in marketing. So that’s very often why we are brought in because we already have those details and that relationship, we can lean on it. We can say, Well, look, you charged us this last month, there’s no way that we can increase to double that this month, like that’s just not fair to the brand. Because your your rates have changed. Like we have that insight. But obviously, you know, it does boil down to the deliverables paying the Creator fairly for their time, but also maintain making sure that we’re prioritizing the KPI for the client. Being involved in the team as closely as possible, really, really helps with that. And ultimately secures more bang for the boat for the clients back.
Shaheen Samavati 37:21
I was gonna ask you, have you ever seen a brand? Like get it wrong with an influencer partnership? And how important do you think it is to like, make sure that you work with work with influencers who share the same values as your
Niki Albon 37:33
oh my gosh, you see it wrong all the time. Like, obviously, there was a really high profile case, we spoke about this. Not too long ago, the Dylan Mulvaney case, without going into too much detail, I think at the very basic level, if you’re if you’re going to work with an influencer, you need to have the gumption to then back them up if something goes wrong, whether or not you know, and in this instance, it was nothing to do with the creators behavior, it was a certain subset of the internet. So at a very basic level, this is why we work so closely with the brand, because the brand needs to be aware of what we’re doing, so that they can support it so that they it’s not coming as a surprise, it can be sold into the higher team. So everyone is on the on, on on board. And that is very clearly the case here with Bud Light. That didn’t happen. The higher ups had no idea they were doing this campaign. The campaign idea itself wasn’t groundbreaking put in someone’s face on a bottle, like Kate Moss has been on diet coke for as long as I can remember. It’s not a new idea. It was a really sweet idea. And it just showed that everybody wants it. I don’t think they sell Bud Light in the UK. But everybody wants to drink a low calorie or something. Beer. But obviously, when the stuff hit the fan, the wider teams weren’t briefed in. Not everyone had an idea this was happening. So people being thrown under the bus and no one more than Dylan. And it reflected badly and how they handled it was bad. I have so many thoughts on it that I would go into at length with you. But just on a very surface level. I think that the whole team needs to be sold in on an idea. And you can’t just have an intern run off and do something and when it goes down the Swanee swing back and be like, well, we didn’t like this idea anyway. So at the very that’s why we tried to be as involved as possible because it needs to make sense within the overarching idea of the brand strategy. There was a great example in the UK where it was a hoax, but a bunch of reality TV stars were contacted by a fake brand that was selling a drink. For example. I think it was a drink. And under the key ingredients was arsenic. And the reason they did this was to highlight that there’s a there was an approach to influence that was just like here’s money, do this brand new. Put this in Instagram stories. So that’s another instance of like, just going for creative with numbers. That makes no sense. I think you have to look into the granular detail to make sure our Creator reflects the audience, you know, works for you. And also the strategy that you have moving forward. Off the top of my head, I actually can’t think of any brands that I’ve seen recently. I didn’t surround myself with that. But I haven’t heard think of any brands that I’ve seen recently. I’ve been like, Oh, what was that? Yeah.
Shaheen Samavati 40:32
Exactly. But I mean, that example that you just gave it is a good one night. I mean, it’s obviously not going to seem sincere. The the endorsement essentially, if it Yeah, if it’s just the monetary transaction, as well. Oh, yeah.
Niki Albon 40:47
Yeah, sorry, I can kind of have an opposite example. What we had recently with a campaign was, we reached out to these craters, and every single one, bar none, said how much they loved the brand and they were so excited to work on the campaign. First of all, I had to feed back to the brand on that, because that’s a rare occasion. I mean, I don’t want to pat myself on the back and say, ‘That’s how great our creator selection was’. But I do think it boiled down to create a selection, obviously. But moreover, it speaks to the fact that you’re working with a fantastic brand. Because everyone loved the idea of working with them. We had 100% response rate from all the creators we reached out to, with lots of exclamation marks. And overall, it just means that you’re going to get an organic piece of content that makes sense, you’re going to get genuine, authentic joy from the creator, and you would then hope that converts well to the audience. Because the people you follow online falls into two camps, either people that are so very different to you, or people that you resonate with. So you will follow people that speak to your values, to your taste in things. And there’s a high likelihood, if a creator loves this brand, their audience will too. That’s like kind of a personal favorite of mine is when you’re reaching out to a creator and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, I love fortnight I need to work on this campaign with you. Let’s do this right now.’ Versus like, ‘I’m not really.’ You can sense when a creator is not a fan of a product. And for me, that’s a red flag. And oftentimes, they won’t accept the brand do anyway. But if, you know, you’re getting down the line, and you’re sensing that this is kind of not a willing partnership that’s normally a sign that things need to change, personally.
Shaheen Samavati 42:39
Yeah, well, I mean, so what happens when you’re in that situation when, when you don’t have influencers eager to work with the brand, I mean, I guess that means the brand has to work on their own marketing first or their own channels.
Niki Albon 42:52
So what has happened in the past, if a creator that the brand is like, we have to work with the Creator, and the creator, not that they don’t like the brand, but they aren’t familiar. And oftentimes, we’ll sit down with a creator and talk them through kind of the brand, the strategy, what’s going on here. And 90% of the time they come around, they’re like, oh, okay, that makes so much sense. I can see why this works. Because we do work with sort of startups and smaller brands that don’t have that awareness. And that’s not to say that these guys can’t work with creators oftentimes, they’re the perfect candidate because they’re breaking into a space for the first time. But it does require a little bit more strategy a little bit more explanation with the Creator. But no, if if a creator isn’t familiar with a brand that’s different to them not liking the brand and in all honesty, I’ve never had finances something that does become slightly tricky because it is a lot of creators don’t want to get financing from it seems to be giving financial advice. So I have had that in the past where they’re like, Ah, this doesn’t feel good for me. But I would say that feels different to them not liking the brand. In all honesty, I haven’t had many people dislike a brand. But it does come down to sort of just having those conversations with the Creator. And if they’re if they’re hard no then you let the brand know and you pivot and you change and we are you know we’re quick thinkers to cherry pick so we like to fill that space with the next amazing creative we find
Shaheen Samavati 44:21
Well, I think it’s time to wrap up but I wanted to just ask if you have any kind of parting advice for anyone for any brands that are thinking about trying influencer marketing
Niki Albon 44:32
do it. No, I think my my advice would be do it. But take your time to approach it with a level head and not get overexcited by kind of Woo. Don’t get over excited but make sure that you’re looking at the stats that make sense, you drill down what your KPI is, you go in with a clear vision of what you want to obtain from the partnership or partnerships. And, my advice, is to do the campaign justice, to do both the brand and the creative justice. If you are giving this to someone on your team that already has a full time job within marketing in your team, I’m gonna let you know now that I think it’s very unlikely they can take on a whole influencer marketing campaign from the get go, unless they have experienced before from doing it. So I would say work with an agency that’s reputable. Work with an agency that you get along with because ultimately, there’s a lot that can go wrong in influencer marketing. It’s late nights on weekends, it’s emails all hours of the day. It’s briefing creators on Zoom calls, working with the different departments in the team. There’s a lot that goes on in influence marketing that requires a lot of attention. But I think an agency is best suited to service just purely because it’s very unsociable sometimes. But it’s also high bandwidth in terms of running the campaign. And again, we we don’t represent creators at Cherry Pick, I think there’s a slight conflict of interest, so we don’t do it. The beauty of that is means we can reach out to anyone we have relationships with, and anyone that we don’t, which is rare at this point, but anyone that we don’t, we will be able to contact because we have the network to do that. And I think that that is the beauty of working with an agency is that there’s a little bit wider scope to work with any creative that could suit your brand. So I think do it, I think take the time to approach it with a clear vision of what you want, and lean on those that have the experience to help you and assist you deliver. And then keep delivering, because influencer marketing works. And it can work for most brands, if done correctly and slotted into that overarching campaign ideas.
Shaheen Samavati 46:59
Great tips. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your insights with us today. I know I learned a lot and I’m sure that our audience did too. So thanks for being here.
Niki Albon 47:08
Oh, no, thank you for having me. I really really enjoyed it.
Shaheen Samavati 47:10
Excellent. So for our audience. If you’d like to learn more about Niki and Cherry Pick Talent, you can check out the website cherrypick talent.com. And also follow Niki on LinkedIn. It’s Niki Albon. And we’ll have all this information in the show notes. And, and then yeah, that’s all for today. Thanks to everyone for listening in. For more perspectives on global content marketing, be sure to check out veracontent.com/mcs And if you’d like to get in touch with us if you have any interesting topic for an upcoming episode, feel free to reach out at mcs@veracontent.com and keep tuning in for more perspectives on topics related to global content marketing. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai