Why This Allbirds Marketer Loves Influencers
Have you ever wondered how brands get products to celebs like Justin Bieber, and then get Justin to post about it? If the answer is yes then tune into this episode with Sarah Grosz, an influencer marketer at Allbirds.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness, making that purchase,
retaining that customer, bringing them back around,
and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
the marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
Hey, it's me, Jess.
Welcome back to another episode of The Juice.
I am super excited to bring you this week's episode
because we are with my friend, Sarah Gross.
- Gross.
- You got it.
- Oh man, I butchered that.
I'm so...
- No, you're good.
You actually, that was perfect.
Exactly how it's supposed to be pronounced.
- Oh, gross.
Nobody pronounced my last name.
It's Servion, but everybody's like curvil on.
- Same thing.
- Yeah.
I love it.
Anyway, Sarah leads influencer marketing at all birds,
but she has a really dope story that I can't wait to dive into
because there are some really fun stuff.
I'm gonna hand it over to Sarah
so she can tell you a little bit more about her,
and then we're gonna dive in.
- Sure, thanks for having me, by the way.
This is so fun.
I love this.
Yeah, so I am the influencer marketing manager at Allbirds.
Before that, I was consulting for a few years,
but what really got me into influencer marketing
was working at a performance marketing agency called Mute6.
I started and scaled the influencer department.
So what's cool is we had a bunch of different
performance departments.
So Facebook ads, paid search, email, all the things.
And influencer was one of the pieces that was missing.
So I was able to plug into the other channels
and help them grow while also creating my own service.
And then, yeah, we ended up working with over 200
of some of my favorite D2C brands.
There was, I think, a team of maybe 12, 13 campaign managers
to video editors, it was this whole thing.
And I just dropped out of college a few years before,
and I was the youngest on the team,
and it was just absolute madness, but it was so much fun.
And that's where my passion came from.
- I love that.
I absolutely love that.
I love the fact that you also just said
that you dropped out of college.
But wait, I wanna touch on this.
You dropped out of college and then moved to LA.
- Immediately moved to LA.
- But you had no job, right?
- So actually, I did have a job.
I was going to school at Syracuse University.
I was a junior, and to be honest,
I was failing most of my classes.
(laughs)
Actually, I don't think my mom still knows
that that was a big factor.
I was working at a tech startup,
and I was really passionate about building and growing there.
And I just didn't think school was right for me.
I remember I took running for fitness
as a class for credits.
I'm like, this is great, I love it.
But also, where am I learning?
How can I leverage my passion to move me forward in life?
And at the time, it just,
I felt like all my friends were still figuring it out.
And I'm like, okay, I wanna do this, not only that,
but I wanna put gas to the pedal.
How do I do that?
How do I just start my career?
So I actually applied at an internship
and I ended up getting connected with the CEO
of a marketing agency, and the agency was out in LA.
And we connected and he was like,
"Oh yeah, what's this internship job you keep on mentioning?"
And I'm like, "What do you mean?"
I applied to it online.
It's your company. - Stop.
- And it was a fake posting, or maybe it was an old posting,
but they had no intention of hiring an intern.
And to be honest, it was like a startup,
and it was the cool, LinkedIn had a moment,
and they were the cool marketing Venice Beach, LA agency,
the disruptors that every single marketing bro
wanted to be a part of.
And so I was a part of the marketing bro fan girl team.
And so a lot of shit happened on campus,
and I ended up getting into some trouble.
Blacklisted from the business school,
took all of the conversation to LinkedIn,
to kind of string everyone along,
and kind of exposing what it's like
to be a student entrepreneur with not so much support
from campus. - Yeah.
- And yeah, this marketing agency ate it up,
and they were really prominent on LinkedIn,
so they also loved that I was posting on LinkedIn too.
And they offered me a full-time job
with the contingency of dropping out of school
and moving to LA. - No way.
- They were like, "Yeah, we'll give you a full-time job
if you leave school."
- I mean, I'm like, perfect, either I was gonna take myself out
or find someone who was gonna do it for me.
So I had no hesitation.
What was cool is that I remember kind of like calling my mom
and talking about this.
And the way the conversation happened was,
it's like, "Hey, I am doing this.
I hope you can support me."
And it was the best conversation ever.
I had full support from my mom,
which definitely was helpful,
but yeah, moving to LA,
knew a handful of people on the team that I was working with
and didn't have any friends.
I had actually met up with like one distant,
like second cousin once removed.
I don't know, like for a quick holiday,
but other than that, I've just been--
- Viben. - Viben.
- Yeah, I love that.
I think this is completely off topic
of customer experience, brand experience,
or influencer marketing right now.
But I also, I think what's really interesting
is that LA is a very lonely place,
but once you find your people here, it's a vibe.
- Oh, hell yeah.
And then also, a lot of people just don't grow up in LA
that are here now.
And so I think the neutralizer is,
so many people start at the same place when they move.
And so once you kind of like realize,
"Hey, we're, we started the same place
and we're all trying to get to our next moment,
it's so much easier to connect with people."
- Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.
And I think that there's also like so much,
there's a lot of like events and fun stuff always happening,
you know?
Like, you're like, "We'll get there, we'll get there."
We got a surprise at the end.
How?
Anyway, okay, let's talk about,
I mean, you have a wealth of knowledge
about influencer marketing.
And I really wanna talk about like some really fun things
because this podcast is really about customer experience,
but not just the support piece of it,
like the entirety of a customer's journey, right?
And I think what's really interesting about like
what you specialize in influencer marketing is like,
literal influencers influencing people
to purchase your product, right?
And that's a, it's such a big acquisition channel.
But I think people look at it as just like,
oh, you just do influencer and that's it.
They don't think about like the hopeful depths
that go behind all of it, right?
So I'd love to like just start at this part.
Like, I wanna discuss taking risks
with different influencers in your career.
I wanna talk about, has there ever been a time
where you believe like a certain influencer
was like gonna be so good and it wasn't good?
- Slops, yeah.
Yeah, so often.
- I know.
- I mean, so with like influencer marketing,
there's no, you can test as much as you can,
but when you have a partnership,
there's always gonna be the first post.
And what's interesting about influencer marketing
is that it's an ad, but it's also supposed to be
an organic placement.
And so it's finding the mix where the influencer,
you can leverage the influencer for their knowledge
on how their audience reacts,
so that it's not just an obvious ad,
but it's the dance by giving them the right,
unique selling points,
so that they can sell the product
while connecting to their audience.
And then there's also this another layer of,
it's marketing.
And most of the time, people aren't convinced
seeing a product for the first time.
And so how many times do you need to engage
with an influencer to have that breakthrough?
But also, if you push it too far,
like sometimes like influencers are just flops
and they'll never work.
It doesn't matter how many times you partner with them.
And so it's really, it's a lot of trial and error.
It's a lot of it is setting internal expectations.
- Yeah.
- But then, yeah, there's a whole lot of factors.
- There's like that internal expectations piece
'cause then they're like,
okay, great, make this campaign go viral,
but it doesn't work that way.
- I mean, we can all hope.
(laughing)
- I know, you can all hope, right?
But it's like you gotta have thoughts and prayers first,
you know?
- Right, and then there's also a huge guardrail,
especially working with an established brand.
- Yeah.
- And this is like, I've worked with hundreds
and hundreds of brands and it's always been a challenge
is how do you go viral
and align with the influencer
and align with your brands,
especially if it's like more Lex or more elevated,
doing like a quick viral TikTok post with a voiceover.
That's just not pushing your brand in the right direction
in terms of aspirational,
but maybe it will get your brand really top of mind
and just 'cause it goes viral that you get this awareness.
But it doesn't speak to any of the selling points
of your products,
so you're not actually acquiring new customers
or customers in general.
- Right, right, right, right.
- Right, right.
- It's such a balance.
It's such a balance.
Like it's like, okay, it's an awareness play.
You could definitely be an awareness play,
but like it doesn't always leave to acquisition, right?
When metrics are you looking at to like see
if like you're performing correctly
or not like you,
but like your campaigns are performing correctly?
- Sure, so I mean, just in general,
like influencer marketing,
there's so many different KPIs,
key performance indicators.
Usually where I bucket it is acquiring content,
acquiring some sort of awareness
and then also acquiring customers.
And so content usually feeds into other channels.
- Right.
- So Facebook ads or meta ads in general,
TikTok ads, even like onsite conversion rate,
emails are so many places
where you can leverage influencer content.
But then in terms of metrics looking at feed,
like the influencer's feed and social feeds,
I usually go by CPM,
so cost per thousand impressions.
And then you can kind of cross check and see, okay,
are we seeing the same efficiency for Facebook ads
or are we just super expensive?
How can we create efficiency there?
And then just depending on your business model,
you can do customer acquisition costs,
you can--
- CAC.
- CAC.
- CAC.
- CAC.
- That's usually what I've seen pretty universal
in terms of like using influencer for a customer acquisition.
- Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Well, working at Mutix or just like honestly,
not even just Mutix, like hundreds of brands, right?
Like, tell me, tell me what is your best influencer
campaign you've ever done?
- Ooh, best.
Actually, I think my favorite campaign to this date
was my first campaign ever.
And this was actually before Mutix for this agency
that I dropped out of school for.
I actually had this one client that knew the agency
for what we call growth hacking.
- Yeah.
- And what is growth hacking?
- I mean, at the time it was a pseudonym for
make me a lot of money with $0 budget, right?
And I'm like, and I'm just straight out of college.
So I'm like, okay, put me in coach, I can do all this.
- Yeah.
- And they're like, great, she can do all this.
So we had a makeup brand and they were pretty well known
in Italy, a small indie brand.
And they wanted to launch in the States.
And I did a lot of PR hacking at the time
where I was just scraping targeted leads.
And it was a weird mix of like scraping
and business development where I would reach out.
And I don't know, basically the process that was outlined,
it was so transferable into influencer marketing
where instead of looking at the database we looked at
was BuzzSumo for to find authors and journalists.
Instead of that, we used Instagram.
And we used the same tools to reach out via email
'cause there's the contact button in Instagram
or there's the email and bios.
And so I would commission these virtual assistants
to find all of these emails.
And I would just plug them into these sales outreach programs
so that I could reach out at skill to influencers.
And this was back in 2018 where influencer marketing
was just starting.
And I remember reaching out to hundreds and hundreds
of influencers and within two months,
we saw over 200 influencers post.
And these were kind of like macro influencers,
especially at the time where they had 100K+ followers.
And it was just kind of like my aha moment
where you could just like,
once you like reach out to people be like,
"Hey, try this."
And people like, "Okay, yeah, sure, like let's do it."
But it was cool, especially at the time starting when I did
because I had to do everything manually,
like tracking content and communicating both with my team
and then also with the client.
And it's like, this is what success looks like.
And I remember I had this massive deck
with each slide representing an influencer
that I reached out to.
And there was, it was like a red light green light system
where at the bottom, I like had a block of red,
meaning like they're not interested or a yellow,
which means that the client had to talk with a client
and answer a question or green, meaning like,
we have their address product descent.
And I'm like, "Oh my God."
Like if this was the scenario today,
like more than half of the brands that do influencer marketing,
I bet you wouldn't still do it
'cause it was such a manual process.
But it was so good to know how everything works
from the ground up and then now supplementing it
with so many more efficient tools.
- Yeah, well it's funny because I've actually worked
with brands like in the freelancing stuff,
but they're not as, they don't got these tools still.
Like I've seen, I'm not gonna name any names, okay?
But I have seen a program where it was thousands upon thousands
of like creators, right?
Across so many different industries.
And they were doing all of this through Google Sheets
and tracking it very manually.
And it's a big company.
- Yeah.
- It's not a tiny company.
- You know?
- Yeah, it's probably, yeah, spreadsheets are big.
It kills me when brands DM at scale.
I'm like even going back to customer success.
Like DMs are such a hub for problem solving
that you're adding a layer of communication.
- Dudes.
- And I'm like, and there's no tagging, there's no,
I mean there's all these additional tools
that can connect to Instagram Messenger,
but I'm like, why would you start there?
- Yeah, I still see, I'm telling you,
I still see brands doing this.
I actually just ran into something
because the customer support team and the affiliate team
like needed to work in the inbox.
But then what happened was I put the customer support person
in the inbox so she can like deal with like
actual comments and stuff like that, right?
And then she like poked around and like looked in the DMs
just to be like, oh, do you need support
or this or that, right?
And then it ruined this manual system.
- Yeah, it's, like people still do this.
But it's also like an unavoidable evil
where influencers don't have their contact information out
which I'm like, why would you, why?
- PR@influencer.com, you know?
- Even just do that, but there's so many accounts
where they just keep their information,
especially on, I see this most often with TikTokers
who don't have a ton of following on Instagram
and there's no contact information on TikTok.
Or there's no DM.
You have to be mutually following each other,
which is like the chance of that happening as like slim to none.
(laughs)
I'm like, why isn't all of the influencers
following me on TikTok post?
I never post.
So the natural progression,
if you can't find their contact info is DM on Instagram.
But again, it's also just like the notifications
and the unreads on DM is crazy.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I try to avoid it as much as possible.
- I know, it gets lost in the sauce, man.
So I'm gonna go ahead and chalk that up to the nightmare question
that I was gonna ask you about influencer marketing.
(laughs)
That seems like a nightmare, right?
- Yeah, this is, yeah, definitely something
that I constantly scratched my head at.
I think, like right now I have a good system going
where I'm like, the system is don't engage
until someone tells me there's an influencer.
I'm like, okay, great, my time to shine.
Yeah, that's definitely a nightmare constantly.
- Yeah, no, I bet, I bet.
So, okay, in the realm of like a customer's journey,
and I know we like kind of like talked about this a little bit,
but you know, if influencer marketing is at acquisition
and awareness, where do you think,
not necessarily for the customer in particular,
but like even at the influencer,
like how do you retain them, right?
Like how do you keep them coming back?
Like and wanting to constantly like promote your brand,
like put, you know, and be just a part of the funnel.
- Yeah, actually, I forget which brand this was,
but I had this aha moment.
There is one brand that I was working with,
and they only wanted to work with these like massive celebrities
and this is a few years ago,
and I'm like, guys, you're still working on credibility.
There's no, it was such a small brand,
and I believe, I remember I'm like,
oh, but this is such a good product,
and we just need to get like these people to say yes to trying.
And so what we did was try to integrate
within their close circles.
So let's say Justin Bieber is a celebrity
that we wanna get in touch with.
The strategy there was let's see who Justin's following,
assuming that it's close personal connections,
and it's definitely not gonna even be close
to the amount of people that follow him.
- Right.
- And there might be an account with,
you know, a few thousand followers,
and like, and you can go in and see if they liked each other's
post and I'm like, okay, let's start seeing product
to their network, and then once we reach out to Justin,
I can, maybe he's already heard of us.
- Yeah.
- Or maybe it's just like a talking point where we,
I can call names that he for sure knows
and would care about that might be more interesting
than like just a random someone else to get in touch.
But also kind of with that concept is that
the retention part is that you can work with an influencer
so many times, and at some point it gets boring.
- Yes.
- This is also something that I'm actually testing right now
is like, how many times can we have an influencer
talk about us without being, without plateauing?
- Right.
- 'Cause there's only so many things about either a brand
or a product that keeps people interesting,
and then there's also so many creative ideas on top of that.
So there's definitely a finite amount.
But if you can work with their circle of influencers
or within their close or not work,
you can assume that they have some follower crossover.
And so maybe I'm seeing content from Justin Bieber
or maybe I'm seeing content from Haley Bieber
just knowing they have such similar crossover
that the customer is constantly engaged and interested.
- Right.
- Right, yeah, because it can get stale.
Like, absolutely.
I mean, there's a lot of just micro influencers
that I follow, right?
Like, I don't know, get ready with me videos.
I don't know why I like those so much.
Or the ones where they're like,
- The Amazon?
- Yes, MR.
- Yeah.
- Oh, interesting.
- But it's not like anything like, okay.
You know, about the mic, right?
It's like something really fucking weird.
Like, I don't know, makeup or whatever.
And like, they're like-- - They're like cleaning supplies.
That's weird. - Ew, that's weird.
- Okay, I'm weird.
I am weird.
- That's so clean.
- Okay, but that's on my feet.
- So like, cleaning.
- Yeah, all right, Sarah.
Anyway, the point is that was like,
I have so get ready with me video, right?
There's this one micro influencer that I follow.
And like, she's like always kind of repping
like these brands, these clothing brands or whatever.
But I actually started getting really annoyed with her videos.
- Did she selling out?
- I don't think it's like selling out.
It's not even to do with the product.
It was just like consistently the same type of motions
or the same type of comments.
You know what I mean?
So it's like, it's gotta get stale
for the on the brand side too,
if you're still constantly doing the same influencer.
- Yeah.
- Does that make sense?
- Oh, 100% and I think that's where a lot of brands
create like briefs.
- Yeah.
- And you can do like briefs on like a brand moment.
Maybe you're doing a product, new product launch,
a new variation of what you already have.
And you create a campaign for newness.
Other opportunities for newness is like cultural moments
or holidays too.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, it's, I, there's so much repetition
and also on social when there's a good idea.
So many people copy it.
- Yeah.
- And so all of a sudden you're seeing like,
you're hearing the same sounds,
you're seeing the same motions.
And what I see as a trend is like brands try to hop on it too,
which super smart, but again, like,
is that the best newness that you can offer?
- Right. Right.
I know.
It's like you gotta constantly be innovative
and constantly like,
it kind of goes back to actually one of the things
I was talking about in another podcast episode
but about like spectacle marketing in a way.
You know, it's like there's gotta be some sort of like spectacle
in it because at some point your audience like,
just gotta stop fucking believing you
that you want the soda in your guy's hand.
Like I've tried that soda and that soda is shitty.
- You know, actually, this reminds me of a campaign
that I was a part of and oh my God,
it was, it's a very popular cereal brand
that we were working with to launch them on TikTok.
And I remember on TikTok,
we really leaned into cringe culture.
And I remember like sparked a memory,
like it sparked like a moment.
I remember watching a video and this person was just like
doing super normal things, talking to camera.
This is all on TikTok.
- Yeah.
- And there was like a cat in the background on like,
either a shelf or a pedestal and all of the comments
were saying like, the cat though.
And I'm like, okay, like this is cool.
This is so unexpected.
And everyone in the comments jumped on the cat bandwagon.
- Yeah.
- Even though the content was totally not about that.
- Yeah.
- And so for this cereal brand, what we did was
we had them doing like very normal things,
you know, like maybe it was a get ready with me.
Maybe it was like a taste test, like,
I don't know, very normal things.
But we really emphasized milk before cereal or cereal.
What is it?
You pour the milk in first and then the cereal.
- Oh, cause it's cringe.
- It's so cringe.
And we had all of a sudden so many people paying it,
even if they're just like talking to camera,
having a family moment, like eating, just having breakfast,
people would run straight to the comments.
No!
Like that's the wrong way.
Like I can't believe this, like I hate this so much.
I'm like, great.
Not only are people engaging and we're optimizing for that,
but there's that like recall where they're for sure
seeing the brand name on the box
because they're paying attention to the action
of like pouring the cereal in the bowl.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I love this.
So it's like a little spectacle, virality moment, right?
Of pissing the audience off.
- Oh.
Yeah, I mean, I like to piss them off.
I don't know, it just has to be brand friendliness.
But also I'm like, what's the actual cost?
If people are vocal, you're sparking conversation
and hopefully it's like not too risky.
But that's something else that I'm like,
brands should like really understand the scope.
And if you wanna do influencer marketing,
how much risk are you willing to take?
- Yeah.
- Especially when you don't have control of like
what the history of the influencer is
and all of the maybe risky activities they did
and their past life.
And that's kind of like one of my favorite things
on especially on TikTok when someone's like exposed
for something that they did in like high school.
I'm like, oof, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
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- You know, kind of like switching gears,
but still in like the same vein
because this is a question that popped up for me.
Have you or your team ever caused a viral moment
that's affected the customer experience team?
- That has affected a customer.
- Like, oh, like, you know what I mean?
'Cause I know that this is happening at Feastables.
Like, listen, what you guys said on this thing
was just not right.
I mean, coupon codes happen all the time.
- Oh, all the time.
- That's, and especially we,
I'm a fan of keeping coupon codes always on.
Just 'cause especially if content's in feed,
you have the chance of maybe 10 years from now
getting a customer 'cause they're scrolling all the way through.
I don't know.
But I remember also on TikTok,
this is kind of funny.
So I was working with this brand
and they were kind of on the edge of a gambling brand
where it was more of like a mystery box.
- Okay.
- And it paid for some sort of tokens
and the tokens would get you different levels of mystery box.
And these, it was kind of like a streetwear brand
or like a streetwear lifestyle brand.
And so you would unbox maybe,
it was like a key chain with the smallest tier,
like sneakers which would be the next tier up
or you could do like a whole luva ton bag.
And it's kind of gambling 'cause you would always win
but you wouldn't always win great.
- Yeah.
- And or you can kind of like recycle your winning
and be like actually wanna trade it in for, I don't know.
- There's a whole interesting, very complex.
- Yeah.
And so I remember it was so disruptive.
We worked with an influencer on TikTok doing something
and it went viral,
but what happened was it spun off so many fan accounts
of this brand where they would just show
their like there was a really insane unboxing,
digital unboxing experience where the entire fan accounts
would just buy more tokens
and just show their screen takes free and recordings
of like their unboxing experience.
And then we'd do a voiceover being like,
"Yeah, let's go next one baby."
And it was just like a whole, like,
and I'm talking like at least a few hundred accounts
were made and we're like scratching our heads being like,
where did this come from?
- Dude, trends are so weird.
Like trends are absolutely so weird, you know?
Like it's so like it's like,
where did that come from?
Like some one person said this was cool
and then a hundred other people were like,
"Yeah, let's do it."
- But also I'm like, why is this?
Why is this the one that you choose?
- Yeah.
- There's so many like other things, I don't know.
- Yeah.
Okay, well in that same vein, what trends do you think
are gonna be like a game changer
in the influencer marketing world?
- Well, right now there's this one account
that I think is just so, like,
Serendipitous and where they are,
the account is on TikTok,
I like TikTok a little bit.
It's on TikTok, her name's Risa Tisa.
- Oh my God, I was hoping, no,
I was hoping you would bring this up.
'Cause that's when my mind literally just went.
Okay, keep going in the-
- I have thoughts.
- So Risa Tisa, all of a sudden,
she's just this like very charming woman
and she speaks directly to camera.
And there's no frills, there's literally no editing.
She's just one shot and she all of a sudden
wanted to talk about her experience through COVID,
meeting a man, ending up living with him,
marrying him and then divorcing him,
all like marrying and divorcing within like six months.
And then it was all like through the first year of COVID.
So he came into her life really kind of messed it up
and then left and he was lying about everything.
- It's so crazy.
- On the phone in front of her talking to family
or talking to business people,
but at the end you learned that he wasn't actually
talking to someone, he was just faking
and having a one-way conversation just to lie
and there was no point, it was just ridiculousness.
But the trend here that I think is going to really
have a bigger moment is one direct to camera
and specifically conversations.
And then also she added on this long format where,
oh my gosh guys, it was a playlist of 50 videos,
five zero videos and each of them were about 10 minutes long.
So that's 500 minutes of video.
And I think, and this is like a new creator too,
she had only-- - Unintentional creator.
- So unintentional.
And it's kind of like cringy where she's a little bit older,
she's not like the typical TikTok influencer
or TikTok or-- - She's not dancing.
- Yeah, she's not the archetype.
But she, I think every single one of her videos,
one of her 50 videos has over a million impressions
and this is within a week, one week.
And the last time I checked, she had two million followers.
- Yeah.
- So there's a few takeaways there, like one direct to camera.
- Yeah.
- Long form format, like, and then also,
I think it's just like how the industry is shifting.
Music is going to be less prominent
for a piece of content to go viral.
And it just has a lot to do with what's changing
in the industry.
A lot of music has been taken down just from new deals
and new partnerships and changes within partnerships
with TikTok.
And so I think the biggest trend is the individuality
and uniqueness that a creator makes
that isn't as like easily replicated
and that's the conversation to camera.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Conversation to camera right now.
I'm trying to make my content.
- No, I think you're absolutely right though,
'cause I think that is the trend.
I think that's a storytelling trend,
even of course, e-commerce brands, right?
Like even if you see like,
so actually completely stepping out of social, right?
Like you're seeing more of a trend
on like social commerce, like videos too.
And you're seeing more of like that founder story
being sitting on like websites, right?
And I think that that's really,
I think it's, people wanna feel connected.
People wanna feel connected in the content
that they're consuming.
They wanna feel connected to a brand, right?
And so it's like a different level of creating content.
It's not just like, oh, here's my spectacle
and like I'm gonna do all the things.
No, it's like one on one moment of like,
no, you need this.
- 100%.
And also just with like how popular e-commerce
just brands are these days.
- Yeah.
- It's so, so easy to literally create a copy
and paste of a brand.
And just change the name.
And I saw an Instagram post the other day
and it was just like copycats are out.
And it was like so, like Graza has a copycat
and Can has a copycat.
And Can you for X has a copycat?
And it's literally same color, same font, same everything,
except just the words are a little bit different.
And what's so important is to create these brand modes.
And the storytelling is a moat,
especially when it comes to building the brand
and the founder's story that cannot be replicated.
And another really customer success is another element
that just cannot be replicated.
And then also like social is another thing
that just cannot be replicated.
You can copy my content,
but the way that I engage with my audience
cannot, you just can't copy and paste it.
And also like the amount of followers
and the community that you're building,
it's the moat that brands need to build
in order to actually create success.
- Right, absolutely.
I think, man, end it there.
I feel like that was the moment,
like because you're absolutely right.
Like you're absolutely right.
Like, no, people don't wanna buy from you
because if you're like just like everybody else, right?
Like they wanna have a connection to you.
They want to feel like whether it's, you know,
a connection of an influencer liking your brand
or your own content and like the storytelling piece of it,
or it's the customer experience team
and like that human experience,
like in your email marketing, all of these channels, right?
Like people want to feel connected
in order to actually continue purchasing from you, you know?
- Yeah.
And I mean, there's no reason why
if you're not upset, if the product is not life-changing,
there's no other reason why people need to stay with you.
- Absolutely.
- Or like try something else.
And there's especially in like consumable products
where there's all these like different ingredients popping up
and you're like, oh, but this like combo of this,
I'm like, you just need to create a connection moment.
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely connection moment.
That's the hit connection moment.
- Okay, a couple more questions, but I mean,
that's actually a few, quite a few,
'cause I want to get your take on AI influencers,
influencer marketing and stuff.
'Cause you know, there's like,
obviously like more imagery or it,
actually I take it back, not even just more imagery,
but like AI utilization in developing scripts even.
- So actually, yeah, what I have been really excited about
and actually myself have used is using AI
to create timelines process.
I also like, I'll say like, hey, we're launching a product
this time, we're looking to work with this many influencers,
create a timeline for me with important dates
and execution dates.
So that I don't need to like backtrack myself and be like,
okay, this is when we start reaching out to influencers.
And this is the last day we can send out products.
And this is when we start seeing content come in.
AI is doing that for me.
- Yeah.
- Creating briefs is a really, really nice one.
- Yeah.
- You can give them AI a few prompts.
I'm talking more specifically chat GPT.
- Yeah, of course.
- Giving a few prompts and it'll spit back out,
like what are the unique selling points
that the influencers should highlight?
What are the concepts that they should lean into?
Briefs are really, really big.
Another thing that I use chat GPT for
is the outreach element.
When I reach out to influencers,
I try to stick with email,
but email school, 'cause you can also test your messaging
and see what really hits.
And I use tools that like give me feedback,
like open rates, response rates, like click through rates.
And so testing subject lines, testing,
you know, like I usually actually sometimes use
a press article in the outreach to add some credibility.
'Cause I mean, you're, you can be the biggest brand
in the world, but you can always be surprised
to how little people know about it.
So adding in that like little credibility moment
is really helpful.
So I use chat GPT to create different outreach templates,
different cadences for it, the whole thing.
And then there's also the content aspect where,
yeah, it's something that I'm excited to dabble in.
I don't have too much.
- Yeah, I think it's where I struggle from the content,
like the AI content piece is in this isn't just
for like my content, like this is actually like,
there's a brand that I do marketing for,
but like CMO, so it's like you do everything,
you know what I mean?
Great title, but my point is though is I was like
kind of using chat GPT to like help me
in like the same thing of like process
and that type of stuff, but then also helping me
with come up with like scripting for like content
because it's like hard sometimes you like
to completely like have writer's block, you know?
But I think it's hard unless you do the right prompts,
you know?
And getting to the right prompts is like takes time
is my point.
- 100%, but also when you get to the right prompts,
usually my little hack is I tell chat GPT give me
50 more examples.
- Yes.
- And then from those examples I usually ask,
give me the top five like recommendations from that list
'cause it doesn't list it in like best
and chat GPT like has its own way of defining best.
I mean, you can give it more and for like more insight
on what best should mean, but that's been super helpful
for me is like, okay, give me all the options
and then I can also present that to like my team
and say like here's everything that we thought about.
- Yeah.
- Here's our top selections and just makes me look
like a smarter, better, more aware.
- Like you're so good.
- Yeah, I came up with this on myself.
- Just me, just me.
Yeah, okay.
No, you're right.
It's like, it's constantly, it's like the initial prompt
but you still gotta do work with it, you know?
And like, and I think AI can like in many different areas
make us faster, better and I don't wanna say stronger,
but.
- Medially stronger.
- Medially stronger.
Cool.
So are there any influencer brands that you like?
- Oh, yes.
- You like really love.
No, give me your top three, chat GPT.
- There's so many.
Right now I have to lean back on the first brand
that comes from mine is Pop Daddy Snacks.
- Mm, I don't know that one.
- Oh my gosh.
- See exactly your point about it.
We need a phone, Pop Daddy Snacks, Pop Daddy Snacks.
It's like listening and you will get it
as soon as we leave this conversation,
go on TikTok and you'll get it.
They're leaning into a TikTok shop and.
- I love TikTok shop, dude.
I love TikTok shop.
- It's like the, it's, I love it.
It's like a love-hate relationship
'cause I'm like, you're taking a lot of my money.
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, fair, yes, fair.
I have a brand that I work with that is on TikTok shop.
Like wasn't finding a lot of success in just the e-com store,
but then we had a lot of like success in like,
'cause it was a, it was a challenge brand,
meaning like you consume this,
you post your challenge.
So like that pathway is very beyond line, right?
So then purchasing, so continuously purchasing
from the store is a little bit hard, right?
But like this is why I like TikTok shop for them specifically
because we're already on TikTok shop,
or I'm more sorry, we're already on TikTok.
So it's so easy to be like,
hey, go purchase it through here, you know?
- 100%.
What I also love about TikTok shop specifically
is the visual aspect where you can not only see the product
and that's how it's usually merchandise on social
or on site is you see the product,
but what I love especially on the content aspect
of TikTok shop is the reactions to the product
that really sell.
And this is like visual like,
"Hah, like ready?
Should we do a thumbnail for this little?"
- Yeah, yeah.
(laughing)
- There you go.
But yeah, it's pairing the visual of the product,
the all of the like interesting things that are going on
and screening the actual,
especially on like consumables or even with them,
apparel, just the reaction trying things on.
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, the perfect fit."
Whoa, like, and then even like seeing other people
like step into frame and give their reaction,
it's just not something that's normal.
In like the purchasing journey or the consumer journey
that that's where I think TikTok shop
is disrupting the most.
And that's the edge off of Amazon
where it's like you get the reactions
that's so much different than reviews.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
I mean, also when you talk about reviews, right?
You hit this part, like I see a lot of brands
like putting a lot of emphasis
and getting photos and videos back
and then incentivizing that
because that's good UGC for them, right?
But then on these channels on like TikTok shop
like you get those reactions like so quickly,
you know what I mean?
Like obviously UGC sells, oh sorry, apologies.
User generated content.
- Yes.
- It sells, right?
So it's like finding the easiest path to that
is like what is helpful, you know?
(water splashing)
So we only have a couple minutes left
and I just wanna point this out
'cause this will not air until after our party.
But the whole reason I'm in LA right now
and with my home girl Sarah is because we are hosting
a D2C ranch party.
Do you wanna tell them what a D2C ranch party is?
Oh my God, you're so excited about this.
- I do.
- Oh no, it's so funny.
Yeah, Jessa, Richeau, ran,
you actually a little, this is our first time
like actually having a conversation.
- Hang on.
- Oh, my friend.
- So funny, but yeah, internet friends love it.
- Yeah.
- Live, laugh, love.
And yeah, we wanted to throw an event
and I literally had, I told Jess, I'm like,
oh my gosh, we don't know each other
and I'm just gonna say this random idea.
What about a D2C ranch party?
I'm like, but not like ranch ranch.
I'm like ranch dressing where we have
unlimited fountains of ranch and anything
that you can dip into and people are just enjoying their ranch.
- The ranch.
- And you were like, hell yeah, let's go.
Let's like more and more and more.
And so we're throwing a D2C ranch party.
All of our CPG and D2C founder friends are coming
completely sold out.
- We were all covered.
- We were all covered.
- We were also powered by customer.
So we're legit, okay?
Like you don't even just follow the Jews
for the podcast piece of it.
You follow the Jews for the weird events.
- Yeah.
- And I can't wait to throw more weird ones with them.
- I'm ready.
Let's do it.
So on that note, more to come
because we're actually going to do some video content there.
So we'll post that online and in other places.
And link it in the show notes.
But before we end end, Sarah, can you just tell them,
where can I find you?
- Ooh, LinkedIn is always a good spot.
Starting to post more content there,
but more specifically, Instagram, I have like a fun little
CPG D2C spot, it's called good.cpg.
And I share mostly stories on different trends
that I'm seeing different pieces of content
that I think are really pushing the needle
and moving brands forward.
And that's the best place that I like to chit chat.
- Yeah, it's really good.
We'll link all of Sarah's contact information
in the show notes, but specifically follow
the Instagram account.
It's, if you're in just D2C and CPG
and just like fun stuff and good content, highly recommend.
And on that note, thank you for joining me
for another week of the juice.
I'm your host Jess and I'll see you next week on Thursday.
- Hey, wow, you made it to the end of the episode.
That means that you like me and I like you,
which also means you should subscribe to this show.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(water splashing)
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