March 27, 2025 • 36 mins
Influencer marketing isn’t just for fashion brands and TikTok dance trends anymore. It’s driving measurable impact in some of the most regulated, trust-heavy industries—including healthcare.
In this episode of Talk Digital to Me, I’m joined by Keith Bendes, Chief Strategy Officer at Linqia, Forbes contributor on influencer marketing, and co-host of the Creator Economy Live podcast. With experience helping massive brands like Unilever, McDonald’s, and Pepsi navigate the creator space, Keith has seen it all—and he’s breaking down exactly how and why influencer marketing is changing the game in healthcare.
In this episode of Talk Digital to Me, I’m joined by Keith Bendes, Chief Strategy Officer at Linqia, Forbes contributor on influencer marketing, and co-host of the Creator Economy Live podcast. With experience helping massive brands like Unilever, McDonald’s, and Pepsi navigate the creator space, Keith has seen it all—and he’s breaking down exactly how and why influencer marketing is changing the game in healthcare.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The world of influencer marketing is evolving fast. What started
as simple brand deals has transformed into full scale marketing
engines that power everything from digital ads to TV commercials,
and when it comes to industries like healthcare, where trust
is everything, influencers are playing a bigger role than ever before. Today,
(00:20):
I'm joined by Keith Bendi's VP of Strategy at Linkia,
a Forbes contributor on influencer marketing and co host of
the Creator Economy Live podcast. Keith has worked with some
of the biggest brands in the world, Unilever, McDonald's, Pepsi,
and Moore, helping them navigate the shifting landscape of creator
driven marketing. In this episode, we're breaking down the biggest
(00:43):
shifts in influencer marketing and why Gen Z and millennials
trust influencers more than traditional experts, and how regulated industries
like healthcare are finally embracing the power of creators. If
you're a marketer, founder, or brand leader looking to future
proof you strategy, this episode is for you. I'm your host,
(01:03):
Nicole Ramirez, and this is Talk Digital to Me, where
we uncover the latest in digital marketing tech, AI innovation,
and the strategies for personal and professional growth. All right,
(01:25):
welcome back everyone to talk digital to Me today. I'm
joined by Keith Bendi's VP of Strategy at Linkia, a
Forbes contributor on influencer marketing and co host of the
Creator Economy Live podcasts. Keith has worked on some of
the biggest brands in the world, Unilever, McDonald's, Pepsi and more,
(01:45):
navigating them through the ever changing world of influencer marketing.
He's an expert in Creator Economy, and today we're diving
into how brands, especially in healthcare, can leverage influencers to
build trust and drive real results. So thank you for
coming on the show today.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Keith, thank you for having me. I'm a fan of
the pod, so good to be on it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, that's awesome. I'm also a big fan of what
you and Brennan are doing. I think it's awesome. I
love listening to your podcast. I'm super excited to have
you as a guest.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
All right, Well, I'm excited to Well.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Let's dive in. We've got a lot to cover. Tell
me a bit about how you ended up in the
world of influencer marketing and why you do what you do.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh, why do I do it?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I do so.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
First of all, I worked on the brand side for
a long time, So I was at Unilever for many years,
which obviously owns many many brands. And the long story
short is, at the time they had a venture group,
which nowadays is a little bit more common back than
was not as common. And I have a weird background.
I studied finance and economics. I did some work in
investment banking. So I was doing a little work with
(02:48):
the ventures group, helping them out, and I ended up
going to one of their perspective portfolio companies they were
looking at potentially investing, and part of my job there
was to help brands navigate the next three to five
year road map of digitals and influencer just came up
over and over and over again, and so it was
still very early. These were little test budgets, just curiosity
(03:10):
kinks for the brands, but it became very obvious this
was a future major investment area. So I spoke with
several of the companies in the space, fell in love
with Link and I've been here since twenty nineteen, so
it's about six years already.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's crazy, I'm sure You've seen a lot of change
in influencer marketing since starting there with your smaller little
budgets and then how much it's just grown and blow
up over the past few years. What's the biggest shift
you've seen recently.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So, I'd say it goes in phases. Influencer one point
zero when I first started, was very direct. It was
you partner with an influencer, they create content, they post,
and you're trying to reach their audience. Two point zero
was more about how do you build more of a
social strategy around influencer creator and so how do you
leverage it and paid social? How do you use it
in your organic social as a brand? I would say
(03:59):
three point zero, which WI We've been trying to spearhead
this last year, and I think this next year is
going to be kind of a super charge moment for
it is how does influencer power the entire marketing engine.
We've never created this many CTV commercials, OLV spots, digital ad,
home ads, display spots with creator content, and I think
(04:19):
the brand community is waking up to the fact that
one single campaign for an influencer can literally power everything.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
That's really interesting. I think there's a lot of power
behind influencer marketing, and you could see it just in
all the spots that just happened yesterday with the Super Bowl, Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And even that, it's if you look at the activations
in New Orleans for the super Bowl, it's dominated by influencer.
If you look at the commercials, still pretty heavily dominated
by celebrities. And I think it's changing. It's obviously changing.
I think alex ur was in two commercials yesterday, but
it will only continue to change. I mean, that's a
little bit of the audience that goes to physical experiences
(04:58):
versus you know, tunes in to TV at home. But
that dynamic is changing. So I agree with you. I
think we're going to see a lot more creators being
the celebs for the next generation.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, I'm totally with you there. I think that people
tend to listen to what they consider like someone more
like them than a celebrity now. And yeah, a lot
of the activations around the city. You know, I was
looking at what adweek was doing and just how many
influencers were there, and it's just been such a shift
from the celebrities, and you know, as a LinkedIn creator,
myself it's crazy to see how much that platform has
(05:31):
shifted over the past few years as well. Why do
you think that is and what do you see as
the future for LinkedIn? For creators the.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Sleeping giant that is LinkedIn. Yeah, for those of us,
I know you're in that category. I definitely am in
that category. We've been posting an active on that platform
for some time and this past year has definitely been
a crazy new age in LinkedIn. Why and what's going
to happen are two interesting questions. Why. I think partially
(05:59):
it's because it's one of the only platforms that still
has organic reach and connective circles versus everything else is
becoming a bit more enterteam and focus. This is still
interest based, and when you think about business, a lot
of the business it is interest based. You're trying. You're
not necessarily just there to be entertained by the most
entertaining post. You're there to connect with certain communities and
(06:19):
look at what's interesting to you based on your job.
So I think that's why it's gotten so big. But
the video is going to take it to a next level. Obviously,
LinkedIn's investing heavily in video, so it does feel like
the early days of TikTok or even Instagram, where you
can still get massive reach on LinkedIn. Creator partnerships are
so much more cost efficiental LinkedIn. So if you're especially
(06:41):
if you're a B to B player, but you even
see it with B two C, Yeah, LinkedIn's definitely definitely
a giant finally awakening to it.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
It's so true. I mean, I saw Brendan speak at
Brand Week and he was talking about exactly what you
just said. That LinkedIn almost feels like what Instagram felt
like ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Exactly exactly. Yeah, you look at what the creators make
on the platform versus the reach and the impact they have.
It's an imbalance that will definitely not be there for
too many more years. So it feels like the next
twelve to eighteen months are probably the mecha of doing
B to B LinkedIn campaigns, and then it will probably
get to much more pay to play place. So yeah,
I would say, if you're thinking about it, I would
(07:20):
probably run and do it in the next twelve months.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I agree. I mean, you know, I'm a little biased,
but I agree. So I saw a stat that more
than fifty percent of gen Z and millennials trust influencers
for health and financial advice before professionals like doctors or
financial advisors. That blew my mind. Why do you think
that people are turning to influencers over experts.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It blows everybody's mind, and people are when I quote
some of these stats and financial services has similar statistics,
people almost make a disgusted face. But then you break
it down and they really understand and it makes total sense.
I look at myself. I'm a parent and I have
two young children, and I would say the first place
I turn every time there's anything wrong with them is TikTok. Hey,
(08:04):
that's the reality.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I have a two year old and I do the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, now, I'm sure you'd agree. Half of that is
the pathetic healthcare system we have in the United States,
and I don't feel like spending five hundred dollars to
walk to the doctor for them to tell it. I mean,
they can't do anything. But the other side of it
is you just have a lot of expertise and a
ton of content out there that why would you not
consume it? It's there, it's done. There's a lot of
experts on these platforms. You definitely have to do a
(08:29):
little bit more research and curation as the user than
you know in the olden days where you could just
go to a highly reputable site. But I got to
be honest, every one of these quote unquote reputable sites,
half of it is paid affiliate links anyway, Like the
most trusted information I get is by watching a bunch
of videos from a bunch of different experts and smart
people on TikTok, and then you look at commonalities. And now,
(08:50):
if I go to a doctor, I might get it wrong,
but at least I come informed and saying here's what's
the issue, here's what I think is wrong, And I
might have already tried to or three things that were
at home remedies that could fix the problem before needing
to go to a doctor. So I think it makes
total sense. I always draw the financial parallel and say,
you know, I studied finance, I did investment banking, I
(09:13):
run my investments at my house, Like I'm pretty strong
on financial knowledge, and I still get most of my
financial education from TikTok. So it's not just these people
have no idea what's going on, turning to a platform
they shouldn't turn to, and listening people they shouldn't listen
to These are incredibly smart experts on social spewing really
important valuable knowledge for no cost.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
That's a really good point. I mean yeah, just getting
into potty training with my toddler, I watched like NK
videos on TikTok and I learned more just from watching
what people did wrong and what they learned that it
translated into my parenting style.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. I totally agree. There's so much good content out
there from so many parties that it seems almost silly
to not you is what's at your disposal before you
turn to a quote unquote expert.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, I'm with you. So healthcare, you know, that's my
space that I've been in. It's always been really super
traditional when it comes to marketing. But now we're seeing hospitals,
insurance companies, and even like pharma brands tap into influencer marketing.
Why do you think that is what's changed?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Just trust, Like we're talking about, trust has changed enormously
in institutions. In traditional advertising, all of the major agencies
have their trust meters and they continue to plummet I
think Edelman has their trust barometer. From brands, just the
trust in institutions has never been lower, and so there's
trust an individual. I usually say social content is no
(10:44):
longer a social construct. That really raw, relatable, authentic content
is what people want to turn to first. So if
you're in the field, there's one just truth punching you
in the face, which is this is where people are
turning to now for their healthcare advice. I think that's
number one. Two is I think legally the more brands
(11:05):
who start doing this, the more other brands then can follow.
In highly conservative industries, oftentimes they don't want to be first,
but once a competitor is doing it, then all of
a sudden it becomes more okay for legal and regulatory
teams to say, let's try it. So I think that's
number two. And number three is I just think they're
seeing it works. They're doing tests. The tests are proving
(11:25):
incredibly valuable. It's better building brand equity, it's better at
driving people to have more intent, and so when they
do a test, it then leads to a lot more work.
So it was the slow inevitability. You know, the healthcare
took longer than maybe many other industries did, but those
of us in this space never had a doubt that
they would get here.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense as someone who's
worked in highly regulated industries for a lot of my career,
I was in financial, I worked at a banking system,
digital marketing, and then I've been at healthcare for the
past decade. I think that legal is a big one
for that, but there is a lot more lenience when
you see other brands doing it. And speaking of other brands,
(12:04):
are there any that come to mind for healthcare that
you think are getting influencer of marketing? Right?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
We'd have to break healthcare down too, because I think
OTC is obviously very different than pharmaceutical. I give Beyer
a lot of credit. I mean, we've been working with
Beyer for many, many years, and beher has consumer health
brands like mit All and merlax In one a Day
and alca celts are in a leave an aspirin, and
these are over the counter things, but they also have
a whole pharmaceutical side of the business, which are actual
(12:32):
prescription medications. Very different obviously, but I appreciate that they're
taking risks, and they're not huge risks, they're just they're
deploying more B two C tactics and more consumer goods
tactics in industries that historically have just been very conservative.
So I think their recognition that you can actually talk
(12:53):
to consumers through one HCPs who are influential that's a
new trend that you haven't seen much of five ten
years ago, which are actual legitimate doctors across a number
of different professions building significant online following. So all of
a sudden, that becomes a lot less risky. Right now
you're working with an actual medical professional who does their
(13:15):
own research, whose day job is to be in the
medical industry, and so that's a much easier thing for
these brands to partner with. So I've seen a lot
of them do that really really well. And then I've
seen some of them segment patients and caretakers in a
really effective way so that patients can speak to their experience. Obviously,
but caretakers are often overlooked and almost as effective because
(13:35):
they can reach a wider cohort than just the patients
of the product. And I think that's worked really well.
So I think there's a lot of brands doing well.
I think the way I bucket them is unbranded content.
You saw the breast cancer screening commercial yesterday. I don't
know if you saw a feiser in the bottom right right,
but it wasn't really quote unquote branded the whole time.
(13:56):
So you have unbranded content, then you do have more
branded content, and within branding content you have kind of
general education versus actual product testimonial experience. And with prescription,
they lean more towards education unbranded than they do product testimonial.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
That's a good point. I mean that commercial for the
breast cancer awareness was so good because for a long
time in that commercial you weren't sure who was doing
this or what the point was, and I think that
that makes for a really, really good influential commercial. The
big thing is in healthcare is trust. It's such a
huge factor and for brands to make sure that these
(14:38):
partnerships don't come off inauthentic or just another ad. What
do you suggest?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
I still suggest taking true B two C principles of
how do you market to consumers and what do they
care about? It's storytelling. It's not necessarily overt product promotion,
but like through the storytelling, through the education, the product
rings true. So you look at I mean I mentioned
aspirin what they've done with caretakers and what they've done
with people who could tell stories about parents, about grandparents,
(15:07):
about children who have had issues. It's more about the
story than it is about the overt product advertisement, and
people understand the product when it's incorporated effectively. But that's
the stuff that works really, really well. If you think
about how many products prescriptions treat women's health as an example,
(15:27):
I'd rather tell really great stories of women's health than
tell a product recommendation post that's never going to land
as well as the stories and the broader ethos of
women's health. So you look at Midaw's another one that's
done a really good job. I know they've worked with
Victoria Brown heavily over the years, who has had a
lot of great content on her mental health, on her
(15:50):
body positivity. So there's ways to tell rich stories where
brands just think the brand placement has to be so
much more overt than it actually has to be. If
you can create community and culture and storytelling, it will
do the job for the brand. I promise you don't
have to scream take this, I support this brand, I
swear by this brand. You don't need that all the time.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah. I think that that's a really interesting take because
a lot of brands right now still think well, we'll
just make content and have the influencer post it. But
that's not really how this works anymore. What's the difference
between brand created versus influencer created content and what actually
performs better?
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So influencer creative almost always performs better. This is where
the nuance of influencer versus creator generated content or CGC
does come into play. So the idea of CGC. Everyone
knows what UGC is. A consumer posts and as a brand,
if you're looking for it, you can find a lot
of these posts and maybe you ask them, pay them
to use it, or you just ask if you can
use it. CGCs creators are creating content for you. They're
(16:54):
not really posting it. It's kind of like UGC, but
you're paying for it and kind of producing it with them.
There's a time and a place to do that to
kind of supplant your advertising. So if you need very
specific messaging, very specific creative, CGC is a really cost
efficient way to do what you used to have to
do with commercial shoots. So there's a role for that.
(17:16):
But influencer is these people have following, they have real influence,
and you want to let them do their thing. More,
you want to let them tell you how to translate
what you're trying to accomplish in your product message into
content that will resonate with their audience. But when you
actually put influencer content into media, you put paid dollars
behind it, and you test that against brand produced content.
(17:38):
I mean, we've done so many of these. I truly
don't think I've ever seen a test result in brand
content outperforming influencer content, although a combination often does do amazing.
So if you think about frequency with a consumer, maybe
you serve the first ad to them as your brand
ad to set the tone of what the brand stands
for and is. But then you hit two, three, four
(17:59):
five on frequent and see with the really relatable social
first authentic influencer content that translates the brand to the
everyday person. So oftentimes it's not stop all your brand content,
only do influencer content. It's just the role of how
you deliver them in a media engine to the consumer.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I think that's good insight. I mean, when it comes
to creative control over what the influencers are doing, though,
what do you think is the sweet spot between guiding
the message for your brand and not making it feel scripted,
because obviously you don't want them to just go completely rogue,
but you want it to feel authentic.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's build guardrails, not handcuffs. We talk a lot about
content to feed match. So if you watch a creator's
feed and you say this creator is great, let's bring
them on the campaign and you have a brief, just
spend a minute reading the brief and then questioning based
on this brief, is the content going to fit what
I just watched and the reason I wanted them on
the program. And if the answer is no, either the
(18:56):
brief's not written well enough or the brief is a
starting point, and you try to the creator to take
their own spin on the brief to answer your question.
The brief is everything, and I think a brief should
say what the brand stands for, believes in, what your
core goal is in this particular campaign, and then a
little bit of an open ended question to the creator
(19:18):
to how would you embody this brand and land this
core message that we need to land in something that
does fit your feed. And if you do that really well,
it will always perform. If you go, hey, this needs
to be a get ready with me style video with
text overlays and whatever else you require, but their feed
is just none of that. To expect them to land
(19:40):
that style of content, if that's not their style, you're
asking for trouble.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah. I think it also comes down to the influencer
being responsible for that as well, knowing what brands match
with what your audiences and your intentions, because I know
we've all watched an influencer ad where like this isn't
their content at all, immediately it was a brand ad.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
The first thing I tell creators is, I know you're
scared to push back at all, or to challenge a
brief at all because you don't want to lose the deal.
But if anything that will win you that deal in
more deals, you coming and saying I completely understand what
you're trying to do. I would tweak it this way
and it's going to kill with my audience. Let the
brand say we hear you, but we can't and then
(20:23):
make your decision. But don't not say anything and then
just create content you know is not going to land.
So as a creator I get it, especially the micros,
I understand the hesitancy to push back knowing there might
be a million other people in line trying to get
a deal. But we love it. We love it when
you come with opinions. It's hard to create custom briefs
for every single creator, so you need in our world
(20:45):
a little bit of standardization. If you do the customization
for us, Oh my god, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, I think that's so important. And you know, let's
talk about the biggest mistakes brands make with influencer marketing.
You've worked with some massive brands. What's something that you've
seen over and over that makes you cringe.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
The number one thing is the prescriptive brief. It's just
defining it too much, where they are creating content in
a world that they shouldn't be creating content. And I
think that's number one. The second one is I posted
a meme a few weeks back. I don't know if
you've seen the one from the Beckham documentary where talking
about the car she had me exactly the be honest one.
So there's one where it says what's the goal? She says,
(21:25):
brand awareness is be honest. She says brand awareness' is
be honest, and she says sales. So I think the
biggest biggest mistake is brands want every creator to be everything.
It's tell a great story, but also get people to
convert and like drive engagement in your posts, but we
also want people to follow our handle. You're just confusing
so many things that don't be afraid to segment creators
and say, you know what, Let's have a bunch of
(21:46):
creators who are more about product promotion and driving lower
funnel sales. Let's have a few creators who are more
about equity building and driving course storytelling. And let's maybe
have a bunch of creators that do a challenge or
a giveaway or something. You can't have everyone be everything.
And so that's the biggest mistake I find brands fall
into is they're trying to do just way too much
(22:09):
with each partnership.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
That's good insight. So when a brand is getting started
into doing influencer marketing, where do you suggest they start?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh my god, it's so dependent on the need that brand.
I have a visual that I often walk brands through
that's this pyramidive influence, and it shows at the very
bottom you have affiliates and that's just driving sales and
trying to do whatever you can to kind of drive
core trial of product. Then you have gifting and everything
that comes with the pr of gifting and trying to
get notables to respond to your gifts and post about it,
(22:40):
et cetera in a very cost efficient way. Then you
have this CGC, which is just generating content through creators.
Then you have actual influencers that you're paying because of
their influence. Then you have ambassadors and celebrities and spokespeople,
and so you have this whole pyramid of influence. And
it comes back to I believe everything in business is
(23:01):
a factor of three. What is my goal, how much
time do I have to achieve this goal, and how
much money do I have to achieve it? Because if
I have all the time in the world and not
a lot of money, I might want a slow roll
community development and build an organic audience following and do
a lot more gifting and affiliate. But for a lot
of brands I work with, they have a few weeks
(23:23):
to a few months to hit a campaign and really
drive significant product adoption in equity changes and brand awareness changes.
Because that's the nature of large brands. They can't slow
roll community building and do affiliate and hope people post.
It's never going to work. So I think it's not
even size of brand. It's more of those three things.
It's time, goal, and how much budget I have.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I like that breakdown. It makes it really visual for
people to get started with what they're thinking. I like visuals.
I'm a c learner. I love well all the people
who go.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
You know, should you pay influencers? Why? I just you
got to build organic communities. You should have to pay
for anything. It's ridiculous. We're gonna pay to play World.
You can't do anything without paying for it these days.
Even if you work at PR used to be able
to pitch stories and get them placed in Now half
of that, if not eighty percent of that is paid.
So I think that narrative doesn't fly with me. Again,
if you have all the time in the world to
(24:17):
develop a community, great, go do it. I prefer do
all of it. Have somebody who does kind of community building,
Have somebody who does CGC and content expansion. Have somebody
who does influencer, have somebody who does affiliate. But that's
not the reality for a lot of brands. They can't
afford all that head count or all that money. So
you got to make some tough decisions.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, that's fair. So can you really come on a
podcast anymore and not talk about AI? So I'm going no,
you cannot, Yeah, No, you cannot. No, it's twenty twenty five,
Everyone's gonna talk about it. So are there any cool
AI tools that brands are using right now for their
influencer campaigns?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
For sure? So let me try to bucket them. So
I think one bucket is how companies like use AI
to find creators and find themes faster. That's one bucket,
and a lot of that comes down to listening social
listening bucket. We use a lot of AI on our
platforms that we could do contextual searching around different topics.
So if I search for vegan, I can set the
(25:16):
parameters of how much of a match do I want
to that topic? Do I want it to be an
exact match so people have to be talking about being
a vegan, or do I have a light contextual search
that says anything related to this topic? And then it's
searching for conversations and people, and we're trying to find
who are the creators most active in these conversations and
what kind of topics perform best within this conversation. So
(25:37):
I think it's a really interesting accelerator for how we
do research and insights and listening. So that's how we
use it very very often. The other side is content creation,
so how creators use it or how brands do it
to create content? And I think in that realm you
have kind of these assistant tools. You have a podcast,
(25:58):
I have a podcast. We use it eye tools to
do video cutdowns on the long form, so it makes
the process faster. There II tools to make idea generation
very very simple. You know, TikTok and Meta have amazing
tools in that regard to that. Creators can map out months,
if not years of content through these tools based on
the performance stuff information. There's you know, b roll syndication
(26:19):
of you know, do I have to shoot as much
content because I can now instruct b roles. So there's
that whole world. And then the one world that is
kind of on the horizon that scares the hell out
of everybody is the virtual character world. And I was
not as bullish on that world last year. I thought
it was overstated in how fast these tools would allow
for it. But there are some tools now that that
(26:41):
are scary good where I can pick an AI character
type in words or even record my own voice, and
the character will match my intonation. And like there's whole
scenes I can create now in AI. So it is
getting it is getting creation. Yeah, but I still think
that application is not quite I don't know if that's
(27:03):
a twenty five thing. That might be a twenty six
to twenty seven thing, but it's still not there where
I could. That last mile is so hard to achieve,
and then if you can't, the entire the entire content
breaks down. So I'm more excited in this next year
or two on the first thing I said, which is
how we're using it to just get smarter and better
with what we recommend to brands.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
That's a good breakdown, and I think that's exactly how
people should be using it as a tool to help.
Like as you mentioned, you know we both have podcasts.
It makes our life a lot easier to I leave here.
I've got a transcript that AI has pulled from this
whole podcast. I'm able to pull quotes from it. I'm
able to write up a synopsis so much quicker than
when I started this podcast in twenty eighteen, where I
(27:44):
spent hours writing out listening to the podcast. Exactly what
you just said to me.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Oh for sure. Even the note takers, the AI note
takers and meetings are getting ridiculous. And not only does
it capture the entire text, it will summarize the key points,
tell me what the next steps were, who is most
active in the converse? You get set it for yourself
to say how much did you talk? How engaged where
people are you're talking? It is wild now, I'd argue
you can get into data paralysis that way too, So
(28:10):
you have to be a little bit careful that you're
not using so many tools that you can't act on them.
But the actual core technology is getting way smarter and
way better a lot faster than I probably thought last year.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Oh absolutely, I completely agree with that. Okay, So you know,
when you're measuring success of these influencer campaigns, there's a
lot of metrics that you need to be looking at.
What do you think are the biggest ones that people
should be paying attention to?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So first, obviously match your goal. If your goal is
upper funnel, design your metrics for a funnel and vice versa.
We kind of break it down into four key pillars.
So one is your social engagement and that's all the
stuff you would think of your impressions, your engagements, your
view through rates, your clicks, and I would include share
a voice in that which I do think is underutilized.
(28:58):
What is your share of voice versus editors pre during
post a campaign. But that's all the kind of social
engagement bucket, kind of vanity metrics, but still pretty damn important.
The second bucket would be your media effectiveness and so
how this content translates into media. I'll always ask brands
for their kind of target CPS, whether it's CPM, CPA, CPC,
(29:22):
what are their average media metrics and then how does
influencer content perform against those averages? And again you know
ninety nine percent of the time they're going to outperform.
But having the data works, you can even think about
it as if you have an average and you put
that as a line and then you scatter plot every
creator ad which ones outperformed and are there any commonalities
in that to learn from things. But so media effectiveness
(29:43):
bucket too. Brand or sales lift I would put as
bucket three. So if this is about upper funnel, we
will often run brandless studies to see actual impact on
things like awareness or perception or favorability. If it's a
lower funnel. You could run things like sales lift studies,
or you could run chrding that show you retail basket
opportunity size, things like that. So actual impacted upper or
(30:05):
lower funnel would be number three, and then number four
I'd say is more MMM modeling or MPTA tracking. So
whatever the CMO is looking at are the most senior
marketing person on an everyday basis. If influencer is not
part of that dashboard and that measurement structure, it's tree
falling in the forest. There's nothing I'm going to tell
that CMO that's going to make them want to focus
(30:27):
more on influencer marketing. So that's the key to everything
is in the beginning of a partnership, find that out,
implement the logistical back end tooling that needs to funnel
data to the right sources, and then everything else becomes
much much simpler. So four buckets social conversation and engagement,
media effectiveness, brand or sales lift and core ro as
(30:49):
or MMM.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
That's great. I think that's really important to be able
to talk to leadership about why influencer marketing is so
key for ROI. So I love how you broke that
down because you have to speak their language exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I mean, I think some of these companies have done
a good job with things like earned media value. I
just I call BS on one metric that just solves
the entire ecosystem. You know. I don't want to sit
down with the CMO and say we had one hundred
and eighty million EMV so this is highly successful. I
want to say, hey, we drove incredible view through rates
above platform averages, and we had millions of engagements. We
(31:24):
also were up twelve percent on share voice versus competitors.
Our media effectiveness was two times better on every channel.
We saw, you know, a twenty bp lift in awareness
and intent through a brand low study, and the row
AS numbers are showing strength on like a twenty percent lift.
For that's the conversation. I want to have, not an
EMV number that is just some magical number.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, that makes sense, all right. So then wrapping things up,
if you had to predict the biggest opportunity for brands
and influencer marketer over the next three to five years,
what would your crystal ball say?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So Number one would definitely be the creator content kind
of busting through the walls. Of social I think most
TV ads we're going to see in the coming years
are going to start in the first three seconds with
social first content that looks like a TikTok or real
or short. So I think the usage of this content
far beyond social media will be one of the biggest trends.
And I think if you get on it now as
(32:19):
a brand, you're going to benefit a lot. So that's one.
Two is I do think shop in livestream is going
to be a massive trend in this country. I think
it's taken much longer than Asia, but I do think
we're almost at that precipice. This holiday season felt like
a big jump in that, but I think it's going
to take off even more in the coming years. So
I think social commerce is my number two there, and
(32:40):
then the third is maybe it's hopeful, but I do
really think it's going to be fully integrated into all
the modeling of mmms and marketing data. I don't think
we're going to be sitting here in a few years
and saying cmos aren't investing because it's not measurable. I think,
if anything, they're going to be investing three five times
what they are today because it's so measurable, and you
can actually compare at Apples Taples against every other media
(33:02):
placement that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I think you're probably spot on. You know, you are
the experts, I would hope.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
So, I don't know. Brendan always says, they, what is
it like monkeys throwing darts are are oftentimes right more
than experts, So we'll see.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That's touche. I'm like, yeah, we can guess all we want,
but no, I think you're onto something there. I think
that it is really important that cmos see this as
you know, the direct ROI they can see out of
the influencers, and I think we're on the path there.
And I love the shopping in real time because we
definitely saw it during the Black Friday stuff and TikTok
(33:37):
shop is like on that path. There's just so much there.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Oh yeah, there was that pop up in Santa Monica
this year that was like Asia has pods often in
these in these physical facilities that are live streaming pods,
and this top up hat in Santa Monica and even
you know, I live in San Francisco and I walked
through the Japantown mall the other day and that to
me is a rubric of them all of the future.
I don't think there's any clothing stores in the Japantown
(34:02):
all in San Francisco. It's all food experiences. There's like
arcadish style gaming places, there's bookstores. It's just it's all experiential.
It's not clothing shopping. And I think social commerce, live
streaming pods like Creator Meeting, I think we're going to
get a lot more physical too, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
That's really interesting. I love that. I would love to
go check that out. That sounds really cool.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, when you're an SF next time we're having ramen
in Japantown, it's top.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I love it. Well, Keith, this has been a really
insightful conversation. You know, it's clear that influencer marketing isn't
just about endorsements. It's about building trust, reaching the right audience,
and driving real impact, especially in industries like healthcare. And
I really appreciate you being on the show. This was
really great insights and I had a great time talking
with you.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, likewise, I think the next time we chat, I
guarantee there's five more health healthcare companies that we've seen
sprout up new influencer campaigns. So I think healthcare, financial services,
the industries that are really rooted in trust are the
ones that are going to have the most growth in
our influencer industry in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
I absolutely agree, and I can't wait to see everything
that is to come. That wraps up another episode of
Talk Digital to Me, where we explore the strategies, trends,
and innovations shaping the future of marketing. Keith drops some
incredible insights on where influencer marketing is headed, how brands
can build trust authentically, and why industries like healthcare and
(35:34):
finance are finally embracing creator driven content. The takeaway influencer
marketing isn't just about endorsements, It's about impact. If you
enjoyed this conversation, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Share
this episode with a friend or colleague, and don't forget
to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to now until
(35:54):
next time. Keep innovating, keep creating, and don't just join
the conversation. Lead it, see it soon
The world of influencer marketing is evolving fast. What started
as simple brand deals has transformed into full scale marketing
engines that power everything from digital ads to TV commercials,
and when it comes to industries like healthcare, where trust
is everything, influencers are playing a bigger role than ever before. Today,
(00:20):
I'm joined by Keith Bendi's VP of Strategy at Linkia,
a Forbes contributor on influencer marketing and co host of
the Creator Economy Live podcast. Keith has worked with some
of the biggest brands in the world, Unilever, McDonald's, Pepsi,
and Moore, helping them navigate the shifting landscape of creator
driven marketing. In this episode, we're breaking down the biggest
(00:43):
shifts in influencer marketing and why Gen Z and millennials
trust influencers more than traditional experts, and how regulated industries
like healthcare are finally embracing the power of creators. If
you're a marketer, founder, or brand leader looking to future
proof you strategy, this episode is for you. I'm your host,
(01:03):
Nicole Ramirez, and this is Talk Digital to Me, where
we uncover the latest in digital marketing tech, AI innovation,
and the strategies for personal and professional growth. All right,
(01:25):
welcome back everyone to talk digital to Me today. I'm
joined by Keith Bendi's VP of Strategy at Linkia, a
Forbes contributor on influencer marketing and co host of the
Creator Economy Live podcasts. Keith has worked on some of
the biggest brands in the world, Unilever, McDonald's, Pepsi and more,
(01:45):
navigating them through the ever changing world of influencer marketing.
He's an expert in Creator Economy, and today we're diving
into how brands, especially in healthcare, can leverage influencers to
build trust and drive real results. So thank you for
coming on the show today.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Keith, thank you for having me. I'm a fan of
the pod, so good to be on it.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, that's awesome. I'm also a big fan of what
you and Brennan are doing. I think it's awesome. I
love listening to your podcast. I'm super excited to have
you as a guest.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
All right, Well, I'm excited to Well.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Let's dive in. We've got a lot to cover. Tell
me a bit about how you ended up in the
world of influencer marketing and why you do what you do.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh, why do I do it?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I do so.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
First of all, I worked on the brand side for
a long time, So I was at Unilever for many years,
which obviously owns many many brands. And the long story
short is, at the time they had a venture group,
which nowadays is a little bit more common back than
was not as common. And I have a weird background.
I studied finance and economics. I did some work in
investment banking. So I was doing a little work with
(02:48):
the ventures group, helping them out, and I ended up
going to one of their perspective portfolio companies they were
looking at potentially investing, and part of my job there
was to help brands navigate the next three to five
year road map of digitals and influencer just came up
over and over and over again, and so it was
still very early. These were little test budgets, just curiosity
(03:10):
kinks for the brands, but it became very obvious this
was a future major investment area. So I spoke with
several of the companies in the space, fell in love
with Link and I've been here since twenty nineteen, so
it's about six years already.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's crazy, I'm sure You've seen a lot of change
in influencer marketing since starting there with your smaller little
budgets and then how much it's just grown and blow
up over the past few years. What's the biggest shift
you've seen recently.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
So, I'd say it goes in phases. Influencer one point
zero when I first started, was very direct. It was
you partner with an influencer, they create content, they post,
and you're trying to reach their audience. Two point zero
was more about how do you build more of a
social strategy around influencer creator and so how do you
leverage it and paid social? How do you use it
in your organic social as a brand? I would say
(03:59):
three point zero, which WI We've been trying to spearhead
this last year, and I think this next year is
going to be kind of a super charge moment for
it is how does influencer power the entire marketing engine.
We've never created this many CTV commercials, OLV spots, digital ad,
home ads, display spots with creator content, and I think
(04:19):
the brand community is waking up to the fact that
one single campaign for an influencer can literally power everything.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
That's really interesting. I think there's a lot of power
behind influencer marketing, and you could see it just in
all the spots that just happened yesterday with the Super Bowl, Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And even that, it's if you look at the activations
in New Orleans for the super Bowl, it's dominated by influencer.
If you look at the commercials, still pretty heavily dominated
by celebrities. And I think it's changing. It's obviously changing.
I think alex ur was in two commercials yesterday, but
it will only continue to change. I mean, that's a
little bit of the audience that goes to physical experiences
(04:58):
versus you know, tunes in to TV at home. But
that dynamic is changing. So I agree with you. I
think we're going to see a lot more creators being
the celebs for the next generation.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, I'm totally with you there. I think that people
tend to listen to what they consider like someone more
like them than a celebrity now. And yeah, a lot
of the activations around the city. You know, I was
looking at what adweek was doing and just how many
influencers were there, and it's just been such a shift
from the celebrities, and you know, as a LinkedIn creator,
myself it's crazy to see how much that platform has
(05:31):
shifted over the past few years as well. Why do
you think that is and what do you see as
the future for LinkedIn? For creators the.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Sleeping giant that is LinkedIn. Yeah, for those of us,
I know you're in that category. I definitely am in
that category. We've been posting an active on that platform
for some time and this past year has definitely been
a crazy new age in LinkedIn. Why and what's going
to happen are two interesting questions. Why. I think partially
(05:59):
it's because it's one of the only platforms that still
has organic reach and connective circles versus everything else is
becoming a bit more enterteam and focus. This is still
interest based, and when you think about business, a lot
of the business it is interest based. You're trying. You're
not necessarily just there to be entertained by the most
entertaining post. You're there to connect with certain communities and
(06:19):
look at what's interesting to you based on your job.
So I think that's why it's gotten so big. But
the video is going to take it to a next level. Obviously,
LinkedIn's investing heavily in video, so it does feel like
the early days of TikTok or even Instagram, where you
can still get massive reach on LinkedIn. Creator partnerships are
so much more cost efficiental LinkedIn. So if you're especially
(06:41):
if you're a B to B player, but you even
see it with B two C, Yeah, LinkedIn's definitely definitely
a giant finally awakening to it.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
It's so true. I mean, I saw Brendan speak at
Brand Week and he was talking about exactly what you
just said. That LinkedIn almost feels like what Instagram felt
like ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Exactly exactly. Yeah, you look at what the creators make
on the platform versus the reach and the impact they have.
It's an imbalance that will definitely not be there for
too many more years. So it feels like the next
twelve to eighteen months are probably the mecha of doing
B to B LinkedIn campaigns, and then it will probably
get to much more pay to play place. So yeah,
I would say, if you're thinking about it, I would
(07:20):
probably run and do it in the next twelve months.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I agree. I mean, you know, I'm a little biased,
but I agree. So I saw a stat that more
than fifty percent of gen Z and millennials trust influencers
for health and financial advice before professionals like doctors or
financial advisors. That blew my mind. Why do you think
that people are turning to influencers over experts.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It blows everybody's mind, and people are when I quote
some of these stats and financial services has similar statistics,
people almost make a disgusted face. But then you break
it down and they really understand and it makes total sense.
I look at myself. I'm a parent and I have
two young children, and I would say the first place
I turn every time there's anything wrong with them is TikTok. Hey,
(08:04):
that's the reality.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I have a two year old and I do the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, now, I'm sure you'd agree. Half of that is
the pathetic healthcare system we have in the United States,
and I don't feel like spending five hundred dollars to
walk to the doctor for them to tell it. I mean,
they can't do anything. But the other side of it
is you just have a lot of expertise and a
ton of content out there that why would you not
consume it? It's there, it's done. There's a lot of
experts on these platforms. You definitely have to do a
(08:29):
little bit more research and curation as the user than
you know in the olden days where you could just
go to a highly reputable site. But I got to
be honest, every one of these quote unquote reputable sites,
half of it is paid affiliate links anyway, Like the
most trusted information I get is by watching a bunch
of videos from a bunch of different experts and smart
people on TikTok, and then you look at commonalities. And now,
(08:50):
if I go to a doctor, I might get it wrong,
but at least I come informed and saying here's what's
the issue, here's what I think is wrong, And I
might have already tried to or three things that were
at home remedies that could fix the problem before needing
to go to a doctor. So I think it makes
total sense. I always draw the financial parallel and say,
you know, I studied finance, I did investment banking, I
(09:13):
run my investments at my house, Like I'm pretty strong
on financial knowledge, and I still get most of my
financial education from TikTok. So it's not just these people
have no idea what's going on, turning to a platform
they shouldn't turn to, and listening people they shouldn't listen
to These are incredibly smart experts on social spewing really
important valuable knowledge for no cost.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
That's a really good point. I mean yeah, just getting
into potty training with my toddler, I watched like NK
videos on TikTok and I learned more just from watching
what people did wrong and what they learned that it
translated into my parenting style.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. I totally agree. There's so much good content out
there from so many parties that it seems almost silly
to not you is what's at your disposal before you
turn to a quote unquote expert.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, I'm with you. So healthcare, you know, that's my
space that I've been in. It's always been really super
traditional when it comes to marketing. But now we're seeing hospitals,
insurance companies, and even like pharma brands tap into influencer marketing.
Why do you think that is what's changed?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Just trust, Like we're talking about, trust has changed enormously
in institutions. In traditional advertising, all of the major agencies
have their trust meters and they continue to plummet I
think Edelman has their trust barometer. From brands, just the
trust in institutions has never been lower, and so there's
trust an individual. I usually say social content is no
(10:44):
longer a social construct. That really raw, relatable, authentic content
is what people want to turn to first. So if
you're in the field, there's one just truth punching you
in the face, which is this is where people are
turning to now for their healthcare advice. I think that's
number one. Two is I think legally the more brands
(11:05):
who start doing this, the more other brands then can follow.
In highly conservative industries, oftentimes they don't want to be first,
but once a competitor is doing it, then all of
a sudden it becomes more okay for legal and regulatory
teams to say, let's try it. So I think that's
number two. And number three is I just think they're
seeing it works. They're doing tests. The tests are proving
(11:25):
incredibly valuable. It's better building brand equity, it's better at
driving people to have more intent, and so when they
do a test, it then leads to a lot more work.
So it was the slow inevitability. You know, the healthcare
took longer than maybe many other industries did, but those
of us in this space never had a doubt that
they would get here.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense as someone who's
worked in highly regulated industries for a lot of my career,
I was in financial, I worked at a banking system,
digital marketing, and then I've been at healthcare for the
past decade. I think that legal is a big one
for that, but there is a lot more lenience when
you see other brands doing it. And speaking of other brands,
(12:04):
are there any that come to mind for healthcare that
you think are getting influencer of marketing? Right?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
We'd have to break healthcare down too, because I think
OTC is obviously very different than pharmaceutical. I give Beyer
a lot of credit. I mean, we've been working with
Beyer for many, many years, and beher has consumer health
brands like mit All and merlax In one a Day
and alca celts are in a leave an aspirin, and
these are over the counter things, but they also have
a whole pharmaceutical side of the business, which are actual
(12:32):
prescription medications. Very different obviously, but I appreciate that they're
taking risks, and they're not huge risks, they're just they're
deploying more B two C tactics and more consumer goods
tactics in industries that historically have just been very conservative.
So I think their recognition that you can actually talk
(12:53):
to consumers through one HCPs who are influential that's a
new trend that you haven't seen much of five ten
years ago, which are actual legitimate doctors across a number
of different professions building significant online following. So all of
a sudden, that becomes a lot less risky. Right now
you're working with an actual medical professional who does their
(13:15):
own research, whose day job is to be in the
medical industry, and so that's a much easier thing for
these brands to partner with. So I've seen a lot
of them do that really really well. And then I've
seen some of them segment patients and caretakers in a
really effective way so that patients can speak to their experience. Obviously,
but caretakers are often overlooked and almost as effective because
(13:35):
they can reach a wider cohort than just the patients
of the product. And I think that's worked really well.
So I think there's a lot of brands doing well.
I think the way I bucket them is unbranded content.
You saw the breast cancer screening commercial yesterday. I don't
know if you saw a feiser in the bottom right right,
but it wasn't really quote unquote branded the whole time.
(13:56):
So you have unbranded content, then you do have more
branded content, and within branding content you have kind of
general education versus actual product testimonial experience. And with prescription,
they lean more towards education unbranded than they do product testimonial.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
That's a good point. I mean that commercial for the
breast cancer awareness was so good because for a long
time in that commercial you weren't sure who was doing
this or what the point was, and I think that
that makes for a really, really good influential commercial. The
big thing is in healthcare is trust. It's such a
huge factor and for brands to make sure that these
(14:38):
partnerships don't come off inauthentic or just another ad. What
do you suggest?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
I still suggest taking true B two C principles of
how do you market to consumers and what do they
care about? It's storytelling. It's not necessarily overt product promotion,
but like through the storytelling, through the education, the product
rings true. So you look at I mean I mentioned
aspirin what they've done with caretakers and what they've done
with people who could tell stories about parents, about grandparents,
(15:07):
about children who have had issues. It's more about the
story than it is about the overt product advertisement, and
people understand the product when it's incorporated effectively. But that's
the stuff that works really, really well. If you think
about how many products prescriptions treat women's health as an example,
(15:27):
I'd rather tell really great stories of women's health than
tell a product recommendation post that's never going to land
as well as the stories and the broader ethos of
women's health. So you look at Midaw's another one that's
done a really good job. I know they've worked with
Victoria Brown heavily over the years, who has had a
lot of great content on her mental health, on her
(15:50):
body positivity. So there's ways to tell rich stories where
brands just think the brand placement has to be so
much more overt than it actually has to be. If
you can create community and culture and storytelling, it will
do the job for the brand. I promise you don't
have to scream take this, I support this brand, I
swear by this brand. You don't need that all the time.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah. I think that that's a really interesting take because
a lot of brands right now still think well, we'll
just make content and have the influencer post it. But
that's not really how this works anymore. What's the difference
between brand created versus influencer created content and what actually
performs better?
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So influencer creative almost always performs better. This is where
the nuance of influencer versus creator generated content or CGC
does come into play. So the idea of CGC. Everyone
knows what UGC is. A consumer posts and as a brand,
if you're looking for it, you can find a lot
of these posts and maybe you ask them, pay them
to use it, or you just ask if you can
use it. CGCs creators are creating content for you. They're
(16:54):
not really posting it. It's kind of like UGC, but
you're paying for it and kind of producing it with them.
There's a time and a place to do that to
kind of supplant your advertising. So if you need very
specific messaging, very specific creative, CGC is a really cost
efficient way to do what you used to have to
do with commercial shoots. So there's a role for that.
(17:16):
But influencer is these people have following, they have real influence,
and you want to let them do their thing. More,
you want to let them tell you how to translate
what you're trying to accomplish in your product message into
content that will resonate with their audience. But when you
actually put influencer content into media, you put paid dollars
behind it, and you test that against brand produced content.
(17:38):
I mean, we've done so many of these. I truly
don't think I've ever seen a test result in brand
content outperforming influencer content, although a combination often does do amazing.
So if you think about frequency with a consumer, maybe
you serve the first ad to them as your brand
ad to set the tone of what the brand stands
for and is. But then you hit two, three, four
(17:59):
five on frequent and see with the really relatable social
first authentic influencer content that translates the brand to the
everyday person. So oftentimes it's not stop all your brand content,
only do influencer content. It's just the role of how
you deliver them in a media engine to the consumer.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I think that's good insight. I mean, when it comes
to creative control over what the influencers are doing, though,
what do you think is the sweet spot between guiding
the message for your brand and not making it feel scripted,
because obviously you don't want them to just go completely rogue,
but you want it to feel authentic.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It's build guardrails, not handcuffs. We talk a lot about
content to feed match. So if you watch a creator's
feed and you say this creator is great, let's bring
them on the campaign and you have a brief, just
spend a minute reading the brief and then questioning based
on this brief, is the content going to fit what
I just watched and the reason I wanted them on
the program. And if the answer is no, either the
(18:56):
brief's not written well enough or the brief is a
starting point, and you try to the creator to take
their own spin on the brief to answer your question.
The brief is everything, and I think a brief should
say what the brand stands for, believes in, what your
core goal is in this particular campaign, and then a
little bit of an open ended question to the creator
(19:18):
to how would you embody this brand and land this
core message that we need to land in something that
does fit your feed. And if you do that really well,
it will always perform. If you go, hey, this needs
to be a get ready with me style video with
text overlays and whatever else you require, but their feed
is just none of that. To expect them to land
(19:40):
that style of content, if that's not their style, you're
asking for trouble.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah. I think it also comes down to the influencer
being responsible for that as well, knowing what brands match
with what your audiences and your intentions, because I know
we've all watched an influencer ad where like this isn't
their content at all, immediately it was a brand ad.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
The first thing I tell creators is, I know you're
scared to push back at all, or to challenge a
brief at all because you don't want to lose the deal.
But if anything that will win you that deal in
more deals, you coming and saying I completely understand what
you're trying to do. I would tweak it this way
and it's going to kill with my audience. Let the
brand say we hear you, but we can't and then
(20:23):
make your decision. But don't not say anything and then
just create content you know is not going to land.
So as a creator I get it, especially the micros,
I understand the hesitancy to push back knowing there might
be a million other people in line trying to get
a deal. But we love it. We love it when
you come with opinions. It's hard to create custom briefs
for every single creator, so you need in our world
(20:45):
a little bit of standardization. If you do the customization
for us, Oh my god, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, I think that's so important. And you know, let's
talk about the biggest mistakes brands make with influencer marketing.
You've worked with some massive brands. What's something that you've
seen over and over that makes you cringe.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
The number one thing is the prescriptive brief. It's just
defining it too much, where they are creating content in
a world that they shouldn't be creating content. And I
think that's number one. The second one is I posted
a meme a few weeks back. I don't know if
you've seen the one from the Beckham documentary where talking
about the car she had me exactly the be honest one.
So there's one where it says what's the goal? She says,
(21:25):
brand awareness is be honest. She says brand awareness' is
be honest, and she says sales. So I think the
biggest biggest mistake is brands want every creator to be everything.
It's tell a great story, but also get people to
convert and like drive engagement in your posts, but we
also want people to follow our handle. You're just confusing
so many things that don't be afraid to segment creators
and say, you know what, Let's have a bunch of
(21:46):
creators who are more about product promotion and driving lower
funnel sales. Let's have a few creators who are more
about equity building and driving course storytelling. And let's maybe
have a bunch of creators that do a challenge or
a giveaway or something. You can't have everyone be everything.
And so that's the biggest mistake I find brands fall
into is they're trying to do just way too much
(22:09):
with each partnership.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
That's good insight. So when a brand is getting started
into doing influencer marketing, where do you suggest they start?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh my god, it's so dependent on the need that brand.
I have a visual that I often walk brands through
that's this pyramidive influence, and it shows at the very
bottom you have affiliates and that's just driving sales and
trying to do whatever you can to kind of drive
core trial of product. Then you have gifting and everything
that comes with the pr of gifting and trying to
get notables to respond to your gifts and post about it,
(22:40):
et cetera in a very cost efficient way. Then you
have this CGC, which is just generating content through creators.
Then you have actual influencers that you're paying because of
their influence. Then you have ambassadors and celebrities and spokespeople,
and so you have this whole pyramid of influence. And
it comes back to I believe everything in business is
(23:01):
a factor of three. What is my goal, how much
time do I have to achieve this goal, and how
much money do I have to achieve it? Because if
I have all the time in the world and not
a lot of money, I might want a slow roll
community development and build an organic audience following and do
a lot more gifting and affiliate. But for a lot
of brands I work with, they have a few weeks
(23:23):
to a few months to hit a campaign and really
drive significant product adoption in equity changes and brand awareness changes.
Because that's the nature of large brands. They can't slow
roll community building and do affiliate and hope people post.
It's never going to work. So I think it's not
even size of brand. It's more of those three things.
It's time, goal, and how much budget I have.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I like that breakdown. It makes it really visual for
people to get started with what they're thinking. I like visuals.
I'm a c learner. I love well all the people
who go.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
You know, should you pay influencers? Why? I just you
got to build organic communities. You should have to pay
for anything. It's ridiculous. We're gonna pay to play World.
You can't do anything without paying for it these days.
Even if you work at PR used to be able
to pitch stories and get them placed in Now half
of that, if not eighty percent of that is paid.
So I think that narrative doesn't fly with me. Again,
if you have all the time in the world to
(24:17):
develop a community, great, go do it. I prefer do
all of it. Have somebody who does kind of community building,
Have somebody who does CGC and content expansion. Have somebody
who does influencer, have somebody who does affiliate. But that's
not the reality for a lot of brands. They can't
afford all that head count or all that money. So
you got to make some tough decisions.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, that's fair. So can you really come on a
podcast anymore and not talk about AI? So I'm going no,
you cannot, Yeah, No, you cannot. No, it's twenty twenty five,
Everyone's gonna talk about it. So are there any cool
AI tools that brands are using right now for their
influencer campaigns?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
For sure? So let me try to bucket them. So
I think one bucket is how companies like use AI
to find creators and find themes faster. That's one bucket,
and a lot of that comes down to listening social
listening bucket. We use a lot of AI on our
platforms that we could do contextual searching around different topics.
So if I search for vegan, I can set the
(25:16):
parameters of how much of a match do I want
to that topic? Do I want it to be an
exact match so people have to be talking about being
a vegan, or do I have a light contextual search
that says anything related to this topic? And then it's
searching for conversations and people, and we're trying to find
who are the creators most active in these conversations and
what kind of topics perform best within this conversation. So
(25:37):
I think it's a really interesting accelerator for how we
do research and insights and listening. So that's how we
use it very very often. The other side is content creation,
so how creators use it or how brands do it
to create content? And I think in that realm you
have kind of these assistant tools. You have a podcast,
(25:58):
I have a podcast. We use it eye tools to
do video cutdowns on the long form, so it makes
the process faster. There II tools to make idea generation
very very simple. You know, TikTok and Meta have amazing
tools in that regard to that. Creators can map out months,
if not years of content through these tools based on
the performance stuff information. There's you know, b roll syndication
(26:19):
of you know, do I have to shoot as much
content because I can now instruct b roles. So there's
that whole world. And then the one world that is
kind of on the horizon that scares the hell out
of everybody is the virtual character world. And I was
not as bullish on that world last year. I thought
it was overstated in how fast these tools would allow
for it. But there are some tools now that that
(26:41):
are scary good where I can pick an AI character
type in words or even record my own voice, and
the character will match my intonation. And like there's whole
scenes I can create now in AI. So it is
getting it is getting creation. Yeah, but I still think
that application is not quite I don't know if that's
(27:03):
a twenty five thing. That might be a twenty six
to twenty seven thing, but it's still not there where
I could. That last mile is so hard to achieve,
and then if you can't, the entire the entire content
breaks down. So I'm more excited in this next year
or two on the first thing I said, which is
how we're using it to just get smarter and better
with what we recommend to brands.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
That's a good breakdown, and I think that's exactly how
people should be using it as a tool to help.
Like as you mentioned, you know we both have podcasts.
It makes our life a lot easier to I leave here.
I've got a transcript that AI has pulled from this
whole podcast. I'm able to pull quotes from it. I'm
able to write up a synopsis so much quicker than
when I started this podcast in twenty eighteen, where I
(27:44):
spent hours writing out listening to the podcast. Exactly what
you just said to me.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Oh for sure. Even the note takers, the AI note
takers and meetings are getting ridiculous. And not only does
it capture the entire text, it will summarize the key points,
tell me what the next steps were, who is most
active in the converse? You get set it for yourself
to say how much did you talk? How engaged where
people are you're talking? It is wild now, I'd argue
you can get into data paralysis that way too, So
(28:10):
you have to be a little bit careful that you're
not using so many tools that you can't act on them.
But the actual core technology is getting way smarter and
way better a lot faster than I probably thought last year.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Oh absolutely, I completely agree with that. Okay, So you know,
when you're measuring success of these influencer campaigns, there's a
lot of metrics that you need to be looking at.
What do you think are the biggest ones that people
should be paying attention to?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So first, obviously match your goal. If your goal is
upper funnel, design your metrics for a funnel and vice versa.
We kind of break it down into four key pillars.
So one is your social engagement and that's all the
stuff you would think of your impressions, your engagements, your
view through rates, your clicks, and I would include share
a voice in that which I do think is underutilized.
(28:58):
What is your share of voice versus editors pre during
post a campaign. But that's all the kind of social
engagement bucket, kind of vanity metrics, but still pretty damn important.
The second bucket would be your media effectiveness and so
how this content translates into media. I'll always ask brands
for their kind of target CPS, whether it's CPM, CPA, CPC,
(29:22):
what are their average media metrics and then how does
influencer content perform against those averages? And again you know
ninety nine percent of the time they're going to outperform.
But having the data works, you can even think about
it as if you have an average and you put
that as a line and then you scatter plot every
creator ad which ones outperformed and are there any commonalities
in that to learn from things. But so media effectiveness
(29:43):
bucket too. Brand or sales lift I would put as
bucket three. So if this is about upper funnel, we
will often run brandless studies to see actual impact on
things like awareness or perception or favorability. If it's a
lower funnel. You could run things like sales lift studies,
or you could run chrding that show you retail basket
opportunity size, things like that. So actual impacted upper or
(30:05):
lower funnel would be number three, and then number four
I'd say is more MMM modeling or MPTA tracking. So
whatever the CMO is looking at are the most senior
marketing person on an everyday basis. If influencer is not
part of that dashboard and that measurement structure, it's tree
falling in the forest. There's nothing I'm going to tell
that CMO that's going to make them want to focus
(30:27):
more on influencer marketing. So that's the key to everything
is in the beginning of a partnership, find that out,
implement the logistical back end tooling that needs to funnel
data to the right sources, and then everything else becomes
much much simpler. So four buckets social conversation and engagement,
media effectiveness, brand or sales lift and core ro as
(30:49):
or MMM.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
That's great. I think that's really important to be able
to talk to leadership about why influencer marketing is so
key for ROI. So I love how you broke that
down because you have to speak their language exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I mean, I think some of these companies have done
a good job with things like earned media value. I
just I call BS on one metric that just solves
the entire ecosystem. You know. I don't want to sit
down with the CMO and say we had one hundred
and eighty million EMV so this is highly successful. I
want to say, hey, we drove incredible view through rates
above platform averages, and we had millions of engagements. We
(31:24):
also were up twelve percent on share voice versus competitors.
Our media effectiveness was two times better on every channel.
We saw, you know, a twenty bp lift in awareness
and intent through a brand low study, and the row
AS numbers are showing strength on like a twenty percent lift.
For that's the conversation. I want to have, not an
EMV number that is just some magical number.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, that makes sense, all right. So then wrapping things up,
if you had to predict the biggest opportunity for brands
and influencer marketer over the next three to five years,
what would your crystal ball say?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So Number one would definitely be the creator content kind
of busting through the walls. Of social I think most
TV ads we're going to see in the coming years
are going to start in the first three seconds with
social first content that looks like a TikTok or real
or short. So I think the usage of this content
far beyond social media will be one of the biggest trends.
And I think if you get on it now as
(32:19):
a brand, you're going to benefit a lot. So that's one.
Two is I do think shop in livestream is going
to be a massive trend in this country. I think
it's taken much longer than Asia, but I do think
we're almost at that precipice. This holiday season felt like
a big jump in that, but I think it's going
to take off even more in the coming years. So
I think social commerce is my number two there, and
(32:40):
then the third is maybe it's hopeful, but I do
really think it's going to be fully integrated into all
the modeling of mmms and marketing data. I don't think
we're going to be sitting here in a few years
and saying cmos aren't investing because it's not measurable. I think,
if anything, they're going to be investing three five times
what they are today because it's so measurable, and you
can actually compare at Apples Taples against every other media
(33:02):
placement that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I think you're probably spot on. You know, you are
the experts, I would hope.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
So, I don't know. Brendan always says, they, what is
it like monkeys throwing darts are are oftentimes right more
than experts, So we'll see.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
That's touche. I'm like, yeah, we can guess all we want,
but no, I think you're onto something there. I think
that it is really important that cmos see this as
you know, the direct ROI they can see out of
the influencers, and I think we're on the path there.
And I love the shopping in real time because we
definitely saw it during the Black Friday stuff and TikTok
(33:37):
shop is like on that path. There's just so much there.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Oh yeah, there was that pop up in Santa Monica
this year that was like Asia has pods often in
these in these physical facilities that are live streaming pods,
and this top up hat in Santa Monica and even
you know, I live in San Francisco and I walked
through the Japantown mall the other day and that to
me is a rubric of them all of the future.
I don't think there's any clothing stores in the Japantown
(34:02):
all in San Francisco. It's all food experiences. There's like
arcadish style gaming places, there's bookstores. It's just it's all experiential.
It's not clothing shopping. And I think social commerce, live
streaming pods like Creator Meeting, I think we're going to
get a lot more physical too, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
That's really interesting. I love that. I would love to
go check that out. That sounds really cool.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, when you're an SF next time we're having ramen
in Japantown, it's top.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I love it. Well, Keith, this has been a really
insightful conversation. You know, it's clear that influencer marketing isn't
just about endorsements. It's about building trust, reaching the right audience,
and driving real impact, especially in industries like healthcare. And
I really appreciate you being on the show. This was
really great insights and I had a great time talking
with you.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, likewise, I think the next time we chat, I
guarantee there's five more health healthcare companies that we've seen
sprout up new influencer campaigns. So I think healthcare, financial services,
the industries that are really rooted in trust are the
ones that are going to have the most growth in
our influencer industry in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
I absolutely agree, and I can't wait to see everything
that is to come. That wraps up another episode of
Talk Digital to Me, where we explore the strategies, trends,
and innovations shaping the future of marketing. Keith drops some
incredible insights on where influencer marketing is headed, how brands
can build trust authentically, and why industries like healthcare and
(35:34):
finance are finally embracing creator driven content. The takeaway influencer
marketing isn't just about endorsements, It's about impact. If you
enjoyed this conversation, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Share
this episode with a friend or colleague, and don't forget
to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to now until
(35:54):
next time. Keep innovating, keep creating, and don't just join
the conversation. Lead it, see it soon
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