Happy Sunday!
If you're reading this, you know the drill! Feet? Up and extended. Blanket? On and wrinkle-free. The vibes? Turned to the highest level. A beverage? In the non-dominant hand. Excitement and curiosity? Ready to go.
Before I get into today's newsletter, I want you to know that we are running a Black Friday sale for HOOX, with savings of up to $5,000! Click here to see the full process of our landing page creation, and see how landing pages can increase your conversion rate significantly.
This coming Wednesday, Moiz and I will be launching our episode of Limited Supply with Keith Rabois. If you haven't already seen it, we launched Season 2 of the podcast last week, too.
Alright, let's get into today's email — it's a different format, more of a compilation of notes and thoughts on creators. Ok, here we go...
This past week was New York Tech Week, and as a part of it, there were tons of events related to media and eCommerce as well. I went to a couple and the common theme everyone was talking about was: Creator Brands.
There's been a big rush of interest over the last 3-4 months in creator brands, even earning a segment in the All-In Podcast. Whether it's about the creators and their trajectory compared to traditional media channels, funding their next big brand, or how to work with them for your own brand.
At a Northbeam dinner I attended, everyone from a brand with less than $2M in revenue to the largest beauty company was talking about creators of all different platforms and audiences sizes. On Thursday at a Postscript event, we learned how creator/celebrity brands use a channel like SMS so differently than traditional non-creator-attached brands.
On Friday, I gave a small talk at Adam Ryan's Perpetual Media Summit with some of the smartest people in media and I shared my thoughts on creators. So this email, I'll share my notes below and add some more color. DM me with any thoughts/questions/or wanna jam about it.
Today there are so many platforms for creators to put out content on. It's nearly impossible to find someone who's doing it across all platforms unless they have an entire media organization (think Team Gary Vee). Even the most successful still focus on one or two platforms to build most of their content on.
- TikTok
- Twitch
- Podcasts
- Newsletters
- Blogs/Sites
Majority of really good creators focus on creating original content for 1 or 2 of these platforms. An easy way to know their main platform is to look for the platform with a two-way street of communication with their audience.
---
The platforms we are using to consume content are almost all now focused on recommending content to us that we didn't initially choose to "Follow" or opt-in for. Platforms like TikTok are pushing the interest-graph heavier than the social-graph (think of this as the version where we choose what we see).
We are now being targeted with the media, based on our consumption habits, versus proactively choosing the content we want to see. It's the inverse of what's happening in retail and commerce. Consumers want to be the one to "discover" and choose the brands, versus being targeted by them.
As a result, this means that vanity metrics around followers, past engagement, etc matters less. What matters is if you can understand what people want to consume, and be quick about creating content in that way.
---
In a lot of cases, but not all, brands doing less than $10M run paid ads because they suck at creating good original content that doesn't have to be a forced watch.
If you don't know what kind of content would resonate, I highly recommend running the Reddit Playbook (see here).
The smart brands operating at larger scale work heavily with creators for 3 main reasons:
- Alignment of a creator's values, style, mission, authority, etc.
- Creating content for distribution.
- Doing both together, though this is rare as it's usually a brand marketing play, or a performance marketing play.
For the second point, it's silly to not work with individual content creators. A full campaign video production done with a creator would be $10-20k versus $50-250k with a studio/production arm. The process is also much slower.
Another reason to create with creators, is this is what they're best at. They didn't find this job on Indeed or a job board, they are just good at it, and that's why there's a business around them. Content is in their DNA.
The ads we run that are made by creators generally have a higher clickthrough rate, and a longer watch time. They know what works, as of right now, in the platforms we consume in.
---
Now switching to creator-founded brands versus just working with them...
After working with a ton of creator-founded brands through Sharma Brands, investments, etc., here are the common traits of the ones that succeed more than others:
- They act as content machines to their brands — driving messaging (even from the brand) in their own way that feels authentic to their "creator brand".
- They are actually operating the business to some extent — they understand the challenges, the solutions and get in the weeds of fixing things. This helps them make content with more empathy to the issues or keeping customers up to date.
- They are leveraging their network — other talent/creators/influencers/celebrities to create content with/for them as a friend. Or this could be Chamberlain Coffee collaborating with Levi's on an event, knowing that Emma is what Levi's is paying for/wanting, but they can include Chamberlain Coffee at/in the event.
- They understand that CX or customer experience needs to be at the heart of everything — these customers are buying emotionally.
On the last point, if you think of your brand as an airport, with terminals for each department (operations, marketing, retail, etc), think of Customer Experience as TSA in every terminal. Customer Experience isn't just customer service, it's gathering data, insights, information, patterns, etc that can be applied to every area of the business.
---
I talked a bit about B2B content creators, or as I call them, "Operator Creators" before getting to some final thoughts:
- Using creators for eyeballs out the gate will allow you to maximize margin for the first few million in revenue, but that person will need to continue to grow and create for the business to grow, too. You can't just relax once you have someone with an audience attached.
- When working WITH creators, you need to first understand who YOUR target audience is. Then you can make much better decisions with WHO you choose to work with. This one sounds obvious, but it's heavily practiced.
- You work with creators for either alignment or distribution of content assets.
- Internet creators drive change, both in consumer minds (think about Kim K. or Emma Chamberlain wearing a new style of fashion) and also for the B2B/OC side — they drive change in the companies they interact with.
If you missed our Limited Supply episode with Harley (President of Shopify), they launched a Shopify Tax product after Moiz and I pressed about there not being a proper solution in place.
---
Those were my notes. What would you add/subtract? I tried to remove anything that's already commonly preached or talked about. Let me know!
On to some fun stuff...
Vendor of the Week:
minisocial — a no-brainer investment to gather content at scale, right before the holiday season
Have you ever thought about how brands like Native or Imperfect Foods (8 & 9-figure/yr brands) create so much content, all the time, and it all feels natural? Well, the answer is a company called minisocial.
minisocial makes it easy for any brand to work with creators at scale and gather a ton of content at once. For example, with minisocial, brands can work with ~100 creators to gather content for just $6k… you won’t find that anywhere else.
In addition to just the content, minisocial creators naturally post the content they create too, which has led to a number of viral videos for their clients (you can see a few here). The content also comes back fully licensed, so you can use it on ads, social, site, etc.
To get content for Black Friday, make sure you request a demo with Kirsten here, and submit your briefs by October 24th! If you mention the Sharma Sunday newsletter, you’ll get 15% off your first campaign as well.
Click this link and sign up or schedule a demo with Kirsten!
LP of the Week:
Well, this week, I am going to plug an LP that the HOOX team made, for the HOOX Black Friday Offer. This page was for a B2B audience, specifically you, so that we can explain the HOOX process, and how it's a no-brainer in a more compact format.
One of my favorite parts is the scrollable landing page images when you're on desktop.
Check it out by clicking here, and also place your landing page order or reply with a question, if you have one!
That's all for this week
This past week felt like 3 weeks, even though it was only 4 days. If you missed it, we dropped Season 2 of Limited Supply on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. This week we'll release our interview with Keith Rabois, too!
I hope you get 9 hours of sleep tonight, get a good sweat in this week, stay hydrated, and have at least 2 really good laughs that make your stomach hurt.
Have an awesome week!