Welcome to the latest issue of Cuppa, a quick-fire newsletter for internet-first brand builders. Filled with analysis on the art, science and culture of building breakout brands in a digital age, it's quick enough to read over a cuppa. (Or something stronger if you need it...no judgement!). To get it direct to your inbox every other Wednesday, subscribe here.
ART
Sheerluxe launches new talent arm
A few weeks ago, I spoke about how making the internal team more visible in content is the hottest TikTok strategy as of late. Companies like Days Brewing and Keep it Cleaner are raking in millions of views by leveraging relationship dynamics and the daily happenings within their offices. Another brand who has been doing this extremely well is Sheerluxe. When you watch their videos you can't help but feel like you're apart of their inner circle. This strategy has worked so well for them they've now launched a Talent Management arm to their media empire. The first line up of talent on the roster? The team members themselves.
Not only is it a business power move, but a signal of how TikTok is increasingly democratising who is considered influential. Audiences are looking to connect with relatable creators who are experts in their niche, but lead 9-5 lifestyles just like they do.
Community events > Influencer events
This twitter thread on the rise of Cotopaxi - the $100M sustainable outdoors brand - is an inspiring read for any brand builder. However, what sticks out in their story is their approach to community events. To gain brand momentum it would have been tempting to pay loads of influencers in return for content. Instead, they tapped into their audience passion point, hosted an event, 5,000 people showed up, and 30,000 social media posts of people wearing CotoPaxi's backpacks was generated in 24 hours. That amount of reach and organic content volume is arguably more powerful than any influencer post.
So If you're in 2024 planning mode, think about allocating budget and time to prioritising your customers. Treat them like influencers. Hosting community events is a great way to thank them for their loyalty, and drive UGC by letting them be the organic content creators.
This doesn't necessarily mean throwing lavish, expensive events. It could be a run club or some drinks at a pub. Brands like Puresport, and Amie Wine do this very well.
TikTok’s $1 billion creator fund is shutting down
After criticism and reports of underpaying popular creators, TikTok is shifting focus to its Creativity Program, which requires creators to make videos longer than 1 minute, but promises higher rewards.
Phone case brand, Pela, seeds 2000-3000 influencers every month, with a 50% opt-in rate. Seems crazy right? We execute seeding campaigns at scale for clients at Charlie Oscar, and cannot agree more with the insights that are divulged in this podcast episode from Kynship and the founder of Pela, Matthew Bertulli.
Key Takeouts:
- Product seeding is a sales game. For optimum outreach to opt-in rates, you need to outreach to the right profiles, and be able clearly communicate your brand values and product differentiation. Stand out in a busy inbox.
- Seeding is a more economical way of generating content at scale. Rather than spending all of your budget on a small amount of paid-for content, you can gift hundreds of creators, and never spend more than the COG's.
- When executed at scale, seeding can create an echo-chamber that has knock-on effects on paid, making it more efficient.
SCIENCE
Your influencer metrics are bullsh*t
Excuse our french (we're just really passionate about this topic). If you're still measuring your influencer efforts with vanity metrics like code redemptions, likes, engagement rates and impressions, we're sorry but it's not giving your hard-work any justice.
Influencer campaigns are massively undervalued by click or voucher code based measurement. At Charlie Oscar, we have proven for clients that up to 85% of influencer value is in upper funnel impacts, which cannot be measured by GA or voucher codes alone.
Built based on our experience driving growth for brands including Meta, Uber, The Very Group and Apple Music, our attribution solution, COmpass, uses econometric modelling to help our clients navigate the true value of their entire marketing funnel, yep, even influencers (online and offline).
Charlie Oscar's Head of Content and Creative, Sasha, delves into how we do this below 👇
Influencers should be seen as a performance channel, executed with a full-funnel lens
Influencer-led paid media is booming as a new media channel, yet so many brands are not taking advantage of it due to operational challenges and lack of understanding. But the results are too powerful to put it to the side. At Charlie Oscar, our clients' influencer-led paid media creative is 20-30% more effective than general ad campaigns.
Here is a simple playbook to help you to begin testing:
- Source or generate some killer UGC from customers or influencers. Don't brief them with what to do or give them a script. Let them review your product in their own words. This will ensure your content is as authentic as possible and doesn't feel or look like an ad. Let creators, create!
- Once you've got your UGC assets, there are two avenues you can choose from to redistribute it onto paid:
- 1. Brand Campaign: run the asset as an ad through your brand’s own channel.
- 2. Whitelisting: run the asset through the influencers own channel. We do this by connecting with the creator’s own Business Manager in META, giving us benefits such as improved authenticity as the ad will appear under the creators handle, as well as enhanced targeting and audience data capabilities.
- Test, Learn, Optimise, Repeat.
