Do You Have the Right Influencers?
Companies such as Cameo have shown the value of making genuine connections with people through its platform. But now that everyone wants to sell via social media, you've got to up your game.
BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS@TULLMAN
When Cameo was started at the 1871 tech incubator in
Chicago, the two founders had to overcome a staggering amount of skepticism
about the whole premise -- that anyone would pay any amount of money for short,
customized, video messages, wishes and greetings created for their friends and
family by C- and D-level celebrities and other has-beens and "never
wases." It didn't happen overnight, but eventually, and with a huge boost
from the pandemic lockdowns, Cameo killed it. Cameo's 2020 gross revenues were
about $100 million -- four times the 2019 results -- and the company soon grew
to be one of Chicago's brightest unicorns.
As with so many firms which raced to bulk up in order to meet
the Covid-19 craziness, Cameo overbuilt its team and the 2021-2022 season was
spent dealing with slower growth and right-sizing the business's headcount.
More importantly, management was able to apply the product-market fit lessons
learned to build a stronger set of offerings for the future.
As you might expect, there are many explanations of what
ultimately helped Cameo turn the corner early on, and plenty of their
"creators" are happy to take credit. Yet it's pretty clear that the
real hook wasn't the celebrity, skill or talent of the various amateur or
professional participants that the customers connected with; it was something
much more basic and too often overlooked. Interestingly enough, the fact
that the first few thousand cameos were fairly crappy, done on iPhones on the
fly in bad locations and circumstances and, as often as not, with only a rough
approximation of the actual "script" that the customer was seeking,
turned out to be not a flaw, but a compelling feature. These weren't slick
Hollywood shorts (dare I say Quibies) or
painstakingly produced IG user-generated fantasy flicks; they were
down-to-earth, simple videos which felt like they were made by friends.
The key to these critical connections with the customers was
that, even though everyone knew these weren't technically authentic, everyone
was also in on the game. Above all, what came through was the fact that
the creators were sincere. The videos may have been clumsy or
hokey, the performers might have stumbled along the way but what was obvious
was that they were trying their best and actually putting themselves into the
moment. Strangely enough, you might say that, even as they were using a
cellphone to create the end product, they weren't phoning it in. Sincerity
reads on the little screen just as effectively as does on the big screen at the
theater. The immediacy, the simplicity, the directness, and the informality of
the process combined to create a touching and convincing result that no one
really anticipated.
Now, as we see the shift from the attention economy, where
clicks counted most, to the influencer economy, which started as looks, but is
increasingly about lucre, Cameo and others in the game are shifting their
offerings from entertainment to information and economics. Cameo's
"partners" are now happy to make brand and product endorsement
videos for all kinds of companies.
In the past, social didn't need to sell stuff to make ends meet
- selling slices of your mindshare and attention to advertisers was
enough. Today, the business is all about ROI and every player needs to
pay their own way. Social is no longer simply about seeing, it's all about
shopping. Context trumps content. The central context now is less about
community and far more about commerce. Novelty, notoriety, and noise are no
longer enough. And not every influencer is a smart choice.
Cameo's initial experience provides some important lessons for
brands and advertisers who want to use the omnipresent influencers effectively.
The issue now is whether Cameo's latest attempts to translate and transfer
their creators' credibility and connection to the commercial world will work or
whether it will undermine the very reasons these people were accepted and
appreciated in the first place. Too often, the medium gets in the way of actual
communication.
There are three important ideas to keep in mind as you decide
whether the risks and costs associated with employing influencers make sense
and will provide a real return on your investment - not simply in terms of
buzz, but in terms of bottom-line bucks. Brands and businesses need to build
trust, authenticity, and benefit into their stories and the right influencers
can help them do that.
(1) Make Sure Your Influencers Know What They're Talking
About
You need to take great care to ensure that the particular talent
talking the talk is actually someone who consumers believe walks the walk as
well. Snoop Dogg can sell Corona by the case and cannabis products all day
long, but I wouldn't ask him (or Matt Damon) about crypto. Cred is extensible,
just as brands can expand their coverage, but the capacity and qualifications
of the endorser need to be known not simply to the industry or insiders but to
the target consuming population as well. They don't have to be in the business
- Snoop doesn't make the beer - but they need to know the business they're
talking about. The Manning family may look silly hawking gambling apps for
Caesars, but everybody truly believes that they love Lays potato chips.
(2) Talk to Me about Me or Have a Friend Do It
Don't waste the time I don't have talking to me about you and
your products or services; tell me simply and succinctly what you can do for
me. How will you save me time, money, increase my productivity, or help me make
better, smarter decisions about the things that matter in my life? People
listen mainly to other people these days, most often at work, and the best
paths are always the byways. These are lateral conversations in proper contexts
from close and trusted sources -- not blasts or blatant attempts to beat me
into submission. Subtle sharing sells. To be effective, influencers need to
connect their own experiences to those circumstances and situations that the
customers would empathize with and understand.
(3) Make Sure the Influencers are Properly Positioned
The only content that really reaches the right audiences and
effectively communicates your pitch is content that is authentically shared and
passed on from trusted peers, friends, and families at the right time and
place. If I'm not listening, it doesn't matter who is speaking or what you're
selling. If the time's not right, even the most effective communicator will not
get the job done. It's all about sharing, not selling. Given the growing swamp
of competing and commoditized product offerings and the glut of ads about them,
no one is looking for more choices. We want simple answers from people we
trust. A finite and carefully cultivated number of credible influencers can
provide those responses and directions if they're presented properly and in the
right context.
Reverse mortgages may be sketchy -- and there are known scams
associated with them -- but there's no better man to sell them to senior
citizens than Tom Selleck. He's the right guy, right age, right persona, and a
simple story. Trust me, I'm a TV Police Commissioner, a family man, and here to
help.