The Creator Economy's Missing Link: Real Talk on Social Commerce

[00:00:00] Bijan: would argue that being that influencers and the influencer economy has existed for a long time, long before it ever took place on a scrolling feed on a, phone. I always think of like politics and the fact that like you have to, you endorse another candidate. in this whole idea of well, I'm in the race now, I'm out of the race and now you should all go support this person. So I would have to say like over a hundred years of endorsements happening

[00:00:27] Bijan: and influencing that way.

[00:00:56] Kelly: Hey everyone, Kelly Maguire with Vuja Dé Digital. Excited to talk to today's guest.

[00:01:01] Todd: Hello. This is Todd Kelly's partner at Vuja Dé digital. It's Monday, March 17th, St. Patrick's day. Kelly, you are fired. You're on, you're fired. Cause neither of you are wearing green. So you're that kid that got pinched in elementary school. I bet.

[00:01:15] Kelly: I'm in black, I'm mourning your birthday.

[00:01:19] Todd: I should be the one morning, my birthday, I'm one, year closer to double nickels and, being able to live in a retirement home, which is scary. So it's a holiday, it's Monday, but we are going to talk to Bijan Malaklou, who's been on with us before. , Bijan heads up all things, creative and create tour and influencer and social everything under the sun.

[00:01:41] Todd: if I haven't said it before, I don't think there's anyone that can pull strings better than Bijan can, when it comes to. It's the world of social, and get things done. So, this is going to be a fun topic to talk to you today. John and Kelly, the backstory to today's conversation is interesting in that we own and operate for all intents and purposes, a media and analytics agency.

[00:02:04] Todd: but we're always thinking outside of just the things that we do and over the years, the last few years, we kept hearing a common pain point from brands that we were talking to, which was their struggles with their influencer programs and trying to connect the dots between paying a lot of money. I'm into this sort of influencer space and not being able to really connect the dots with the transactional return that they might be getting out of that relationship.

[00:02:31] Todd: And so, as always, that turns Kelly's gears and he comes up with an idea. in many cases, those ideas become entrepreneurial endeavors, which is what 3 of us and a couple of other partners. And we are. Well, down a rabbit hole of creating a social commerce tech solution, outside of our day to day agency life.

[00:02:52] Todd: And so today we're going to talk about that. Bijan with you and Kelly with you, and I'll throw some questions out along with you, Kelly. so Bijan, welcome. Thanks for joining to talk about social commerce

[00:03:05] Bijan: Thanks for having me. I said, I gotta start writing down all these introductions because I feel like this one and the last one I just Keep getting better and better.

[00:03:12] Todd: while we're recorded. So you can go back and listen to the podcast and you can write it down. all right. So here's what I want to kick off. So. I just even think the two words, social commerce or a relatively new sort of phraseology, like those two words coming together is, new within, I'd call it the last five years or so.

[00:03:29] Todd: talk a little bit about John, what is it and how has it really changed relationships between brands and creators or, has it? Yet to change the relationship between brands and creators

[00:03:41] Bijan: Well, it's, taken on a lot of different forms. So those two words have meant a lot of different things to different people, or in different contexts. think fundamentally it, means being able to shop within a social media environment. so whether that's, purchasing from a brand or from a crater, Anyway, we can bring like the commerce component into where people are already spending their time.

[00:04:08] Bijan: For me, that's what social commerce really means. some other people have, used that term or the industry views that term to like talk about like just general solutions and kind of the creator marketing space. But I think fundamentally, it needs to have that commerce component. what really makes it different is how people interact with brands, and products these days.

[00:04:31] Bijan: I think what we've seen with. Creator marketing in general is that discovery is no longer the brand advertising to or not just the brand advertising to the consumer, right? There could be a third party some cases, a creator. Talking about or recommending a specific brand or product. And so when we think about like social commerce, I think it's also interesting to, to think about like how the brand and consumer relationship maybe isn't as direct as maybe it has been in the past.

[00:05:02] Bijan: and some of that discovery, is happening through traders, let's say. And, social commerce is really about. Bringing the point of sale to that moment of discovery

[00:05:13] Todd: I would just say for clarification purpose, this is another funny linguistic thing for me. Is there a difference between an influencer and a creator or are they the same thing and creator is the new word for influencer?

[00:05:24] Bijan: This is a hot take I don't know how other people would reply I would say if you're talking to an influencer, then you call them a creator. If you're talking about them, like let's say a brand and an agency talking together, then it's an influencer. So for me, it's a word to describe the same person. It just depends on your audience.

[00:05:46] Todd: Fair enough.

[00:05:47] Kelly: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting way to, look at it and I think there's not one defined answer. As you said, Bijan, I think depending on the audience you're talking to, depending on the situation you're talking about, There's a lot of these terms and terminology that are used interchangeably, and so it kind of goes back to the beginning of what led to the ideation the exploration of whether or not a social commerce platform solution was worth considering.

[00:06:14] Kelly: And, you know, what spurned the idea initially was looking at the engagements that we were seeing between. Brands that we were working with or brands that we knew about and how they wore using social commerce or social marketplaces, how they were engaging with influencers. even think the term social commerce is very confusing in terms of what has existed for a long time and still exist in variations, because A lot of people, or my opinion is that it's, it's a lot more affiliate marketing still.

[00:06:44] Kelly: And it's the evolution of affiliate marketing versus true social commerce. And, and then there's the convolution between brand driven social commerce and creator or influencer driven social commerce. And I think that's what the big genesis of our idea the conversation that you and I had, which I thought was interesting because my first idea was.

[00:07:03] Kelly: A lot less valid in terms of the value would bring to the marketplace, but it was still rooted in the idea that social commerce was very much from my opinion was being built around the brands and what the brands could do and enabling them. And I felt very. left out from the creator side. And that was odd to me.

[00:07:21] Kelly: Cause I was like, well, it's the influencer that are called influencers because they can influence people taking action. And I was like, well, they feel like a by product or an afterthought, or at least in a low power position where they're sort of waiting to be reached out to and connected with and. A lot of times that results in not the best collaborations because they need to get paid.

[00:07:41] Kelly: And so whoever's offering to get paid, pay them at any time, whether it's a perfect fit or not, I felt like a lot of times that would come together. And we'd seen that through some of the collaborations. And so that's when I know I talked to you about, well, what if we could find a way to let it be more creator influencer driven and empower that.

[00:07:58] Kelly: And I think your big light bulb moment. That I think can pull this conversation forward was exactly described, which is, it's really about that journey, that point of discovery and the facilitation of the action. And you have the big insight around, well, there's all these native functionalities that are being built out and shortening that life cycle and lowering those barriers of entry.

[00:08:21] Kelly: Really would make a big difference between what was in the marketplace. And then that took us down the whole conversation where your knowledge base was far greater than mine, which is what were the solutions in market that we're gaining traction or we're trying to gain traction and failing. And so that's kind of takes me to my head around, you know, how have you seen the attempts at social commerce and what has been effective and what maybe has fallen flat?

[00:08:44] Kelly: Whether that's U. S. base or I know there's a lot of set, conversation around how effective it's been in Asian markets, and it hasn't translated the U. S. behaviors, and then I know TikTok shock has changed that a lot. So, when you and I talked, I had a grandiose vision of the overall structure, but you had a very specific vision around what problems could be fixed or made better that would truly actually.

[00:09:08] Kelly: Set a new solution apart from again, what I would call was just variations of affiliate marketing up until now. And maybe still the majority of the cases.

[00:09:17] Bijan: Yeah, I think there's been two things that have kind of been building in tandem. And one of them is. The growth in creator marketing and better ways to facilitate collaborations between brands and creators , and how that ultimately delivers value to like consumers, right. And how people can have better collaborations, more collaborations, more reliable collaborations, and, , ultimately keep that engine going and, improving.

[00:09:46] Bijan: so that's kind of where. Creators as you know, is the term that we've used to, that's kind of like who they are versus influencers is like what they do. That's been where that's really started to bubble up. , and then in tandem, on the other side, you have what the platforms have been doing, which is trying to prioritize.

[00:10:04] Bijan: Keeping people where they're already spending their time. And so with the, uh, the privacy changes that have happened over the last five years or so, we've seen how, there's been issues tracking what people are doing and what actions are taking outside of. Some of these platforms and ecosystems.

[00:10:25] Bijan: So we're dealing with what they call like signal loss. So meadow or tick tock or any of these platforms are having a harder time now, figuring out, how to influence behaviors outside of their platforms. so, they're developing solutions for people to be able to shop directly within Instagram, directly within tick tock.

[00:10:43] Bijan: the same way that some of the bigger players in Asia have been doing for Several years already and it's quite popular over there even in europe. And so I think The light bulb moment was the crossover of these two trends, was hey, this is happening over here We know we need a better solution over there.

[00:11:01] Bijan: How do we like bridge these two worlds together? , and the platforms have tried some of this, you've seen Instagram shopping, shopping from creators. For example, you've seen tick tocks affiliate program, , but there's still like inherent things missing from that. , that's preventing that from being a comprehensive solution, which is, I think really where we've landed, which is how do we allow people to directly at that moment of discovery?

[00:11:31] Bijan: So if I'm scrolling my feed and I see. This new brand or product from where I typically might see it, which is a crater that I follow, how can I make that purchase that in there when it's top of mind for me when it's fresh, rather than in the future, saving it for later, going through 12 different steps, maybe that I might need to take.

[00:11:52] Bijan: So, I think that's where, where we really started to gain some traction.

[00:11:56] Todd: I want to pick up there, Kelly and Bajon. So my next question was going to be around behavioral sort of change and evolution. So, like you said, there's been the ability to buy stuff through social platforms historically for a while now, is the behavioral change evidence really there to support, like, is this becoming mainstream, right?

[00:12:18] Todd: we have spent two years. For the for better or worse, engineering a product to address the ease of social shopping, because we believe that behavioral change is beginning to occur. I saw more news headlines in the past week about other big box retailers closing down and going out of business.

[00:12:37] Todd: And, It continues to make me wonder, where are we going? Like, where is Gen Z shopping? How are they gonna shop? How is your generation? You guys are in the, well, Bijan, you're not, I can't remember if you're a millennial or Gen z. Kelly's a millennial. I'm a Gen Xer. are you guys seeing any sort of seismic, like data backed evidence that the behavioral evolution is here?

[00:13:01] Todd: It is real. It is happening, and if you're a brand that's not addressing this evolution, you're going to miss the boat. do you see it that clearly this either one of you can jump in on this

[00:13:12] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, definitely do. think, in the course of working on the project, we've done a lot of research and I've learned a lot more. still not as knowledgeable as Bajon on it, but I'm still, I've always found it interesting that from the point that we sort of started the initial ideation to where we are now, as sometimes frustrating as the journey has been in the length of that journey has been, I also will talk to the team oftentimes and say, we also may be coming together in a really nice timing because I think we could have been too early before, before the behavior, especially before tick tock shop certainly came up and started to be trained.

[00:13:48] Kelly: I mean, have these conspiracy theories around the whole reason tick tock shop has spent the money that they have is they were actually trying to train a entire generation on behaviors that they could ultimately leverage down the road. But I won't go too far down that rabbit hole. But. I personally have seen a lot of shifts in the adoption and the acceptance fact is, is I think we see that people want these generations want to shop this way because there are what I would call much more difficult solutions in place that do tremendous amount of transactions, despite it being a rather fragmented, difficult experience and journey.

[00:14:27] Kelly: it passes the logic test of, it just makes sense for people to want to transact that way. And it just, it fits with the narrative the things that are driving. I mean, you see so many statistics around the things that influence people to buy, especially younger generations is.

[00:14:43] Kelly: Recommendations and influencers and endorsements, but also a trend towards wanting more authenticity and reality to it, but I'm sure you have a little bit more on that than even what I would be able to opine on.

[00:14:54] Bijan: Yeah, I mean, it's been interesting because this was something that was in the. Heavy alpha beta stage was not supposed to roll out when it rolled out, but. Well, we all couldn't have foreseen with COVID and the pandemic, and retail completely shutting down that fast track to this. So it rolled out before consumers were necessarily ready to actually shop with an Instagram.

[00:15:16] Bijan: There was no like training or, Comfortability with the behavior when it rolled out. And ultimately from a creator perspective, it failed. but. What we saw after that was a recognition of hey, like this is still the future and If you're a brand, for example, when you want to shop on Instagram, your only option is to enable in platform checkout.

[00:15:39] Bijan: Because Meta wants to keep all of that in the platform. They don't want to send people out where they can't track anymore. They want to get percentage of that sale as well. And so I don't see that going away. And TikTok was probably looking at that failure and was like, Hey, like this is blowing up in Asia where we have a strong foothold already.

[00:15:59] Bijan: Like, why would we not do this too? We can probably do it. Much better than meta did and have more high ends with some of the retail and distribution sides of things that they have, through Asia to actually make this happen and they've done it and they've actually to Kelly's point, they've invested the resources required to change people's behavior to say, wow, I can actually shop within one tap and buy something the same way I can on Amazon.

[00:16:25] Bijan: Within TikTok, within Instagram, within whatever, and now people are getting accustomed to this. so they've done a lot of, I think, the hard work. now it's just about, okay, if that's the functionality, then what's the right format for that to live in? Having an algorithm and a feed filled with a bunch of products from Teemu on TikTok is probably not the right And the goal for what this is going to turn into being.

[00:16:50] Bijan: So how do we keep it with brands and products that people really desire and want to rally behind? and the right way to actually surface some of those. Recommendations or shopping opportunities. That's probably not going to always just be through the brand. It's probably going to be through creators as well, since that's where the discovery happens.

[00:17:09] Todd: Kelly. Can I go out of order here a little bit in our questions list? Because I think my last question dovetails off what Bajon just said about authenticity and scale. So, John, the way you're talking about this. is describing the whole evolution of the and Kelly, you to the human behavior, but then the sort of the brand evolution and behavior.

[00:17:29] Todd: the interesting thing to me, Kelly, we did this many, many, many, many, many years ago when we had a large national plumbing company. hire us and we came to the conclusion that nobody needs a plumber until they need a plumber and our interviews, our man on the street interviews revealed 100 percent when somebody needs a plumber, how do they find a plumber?

[00:17:49] Todd: They ask their neighbor or their friend, who do you use so that you could say that was influencer marketing, right? Those people were influencing somebody's decision. And I think in that scenario, you trust that recommendation. There's authenticity to. Your friend telling you, I,

[00:18:06] Kelly: it's digitized word of mouth.

[00:18:08] Todd: yeah, but that being said, that wasn't at the scale that like social media and social commerce is right.

[00:18:14] Todd: so when I think about what you're talking about, I think about brands getting involved in this. Also, this brings me back to the, Adidas or Adidas watch launch and sort of how to do that. In an authentic way. And I think a lot of brands are going to have gotten it wrong so far. They've gotten influencers or creators involved in trying to schlep their brand and it's not authentic.

[00:18:40] Todd: there's conversation coming up about this now with Gen Z and the younger generations kind of shunning this stuff, they're not interested in it anymore. Like you said, tick tock shop is just schlepping a bunch of cheap crap. All this is to say, do you think brands. Are going to maintain authenticity through social commerce and create a relationships where it doesn't just feel like, oh, that's just some person, selling the product.

[00:19:07] Todd: Like, how do you think there has to be like a real connections? In other words, maybe an example is. If you see a runner who are, I don't know, an athlete who's known in their sport talking about the shoes they wear and how much they love them, and they do genuinely wear them. There's a degree of authenticity there, right?

[00:19:26] Todd: Can that exist outside of that? Does it need to exist? Is it possible? Does it, or does it all have to be really, really authentic for it to work? And

[00:19:38] Bijan: I think like in, in any collaboration, there's usually three facets. There's. What the brands are looking for, which is typically are the products, which is typically like they're looking for validation, right? So they're trying to get someone to speak on their behalf, to validate that this is a brand or a product that people should be recognizing or leveraging, et cetera.

[00:20:04] Bijan: and I think with some of the collaborations, even with like TikTok shop, even if it's a team new product or an Amazon product, they're still looking for that validation, They're still looking for the equivalent of the word of mouth recommendation. What, creators on the other stand like thinking about is.

[00:20:22] Bijan: Authenticity and relevancy. is this authentic to me and is it relevant to my audience?

[00:20:28] Todd: they?

[00:20:29] Bijan: I think they are, yeah. I mean, they may not put the weight behind it, but they're definitely thinking about that. do I actually use this? I'm sure people actually use those massagers that you see everyone on Tik TOK shop, but how relevant is that to their audience?

[00:20:43] Bijan: Probably not so much. How desirable is it? Maybe like even to themselves, like probably not so much. And so. to your point, where we need to evolve to is how can creators raise their hand and say like, Hey, these are the things that I'm really passionate about. And I want to have partnerships around these things, and then I want to actually be promoting the things that I actually use.

[00:21:07] Bijan: Not the things that i'm incentivized to use and That is I think a clear distinction because if you're a brand and you want to be on tiktok shop You got to like open the floodgates to everybody, you know You can't be really intentional with who uses your product same with some of the other platforms that's one of the reasons why a lot of people never never tapped into the instagram affiliate thing either I think what we're going to start to see is A need for a platform, which we're already starting to see, which is why we're trying to build it, which is a way to actually foster really high quality and desirable brands.

[00:21:42] Bijan: With creators that are super passionate about them so they can authentically promote and share those products and those recommendations with their audience who it's relevant to because they're following them or that type of passion or interest or that lifestyle. and if we can kind of marry all those things, like the validation, the authenticity, the relevancy, that's where I think we're going to really unlock the value of social commerce. By bringing the actual checkout experience within the platform, because at that point, it's an easy yes, Checks all my boxes. Awesome. I'm going to buy it and move on, rather than forgetting about it.

[00:22:21] Kelly: Yeah. And that was one of the big Genesis of the original Thought process that I had gone through, which was seeing. So how seeing how many inauthentic engagements were existing, because at the end of the day, creators also need to get paid for what they're spending so much time and energy for.

[00:22:36] Kelly: And it just felt like there wasn't a really clean way for creators to be able to identify the brands and the products that they really did love and be able to have more. Upfront control over the ability to work with them. I mean, maybe they could find a campaign if they had management representation, or maybe they could DM and hope that they heard back and can negotiate something, but it was really clunky process to be able to say, Hey, I like this brand and product.

[00:23:02] Kelly: I have an audience I'd love to talk to about it and help sell it. But I also need to get paid in the process. And so how do I raise my hand and participate in that way and, be able to do that. And so that's kind of the big vision is, there a way to have an open marketplace with guardrails that lets the people who authentically believe in things actually influence people to buy them and participate in the economics that get created that way.

[00:23:24] Kelly: And I think it's a win win for everyone. If it's built out in a way that does that. I think the other side of it really becomes the other kind of vision I had, which is, again, that affiliate model was too clunky in terms of the process. And we've heard about cookie deprecation and data loss and the ability to sort of get paid and all of those things.

[00:23:44] Kelly: So it created a lot of problems. So the idea of being able to have a little bit more control and use an open marketplace existed, but in a really fragmented way. And then on the other side, there was the authentic collaborations, but so much of that was built around. Paying for content in the hopes that would lead to outcomes and, there was a loss of control in terms of the freedom in which someone could create content, the data that they got to, that they got ahold of, and then brands were having to take big bets and hope that it was work is work for them and is very speculative.

[00:24:15] Kelly: And so that's kind of the last thing that I'm interested in hearing your, perspective around Bajon is. the shift in the way that brand creator collaborations have come to or how you see it evolving because the idea of brands being able to take big five and sometimes even six figure investment risks on if someone posts, I just I hope that the brand awareness leads to the traction leads to the sales is it doesn't seem like the reality in today's day and age, especially with attribution and the ability to kind of collect R.

[00:24:45] Kelly: O. I. And things like that. And that's a big thing to me of There's an entire ecosystem of creators that don't necessarily fall in that upper echelon where they can command five and six figure, content deals. And so I want to say the statistic is something like 75 percent of all Gen Z would consider influencer as a career or something like that.

[00:25:05] Kelly: It's something like 10 million of that. But there's no real monetization to make that a reality or have control over that. I think this is a big question I'm asking you to kind of opine on is, what do you see the desirability of the creator experience from a monetization standpoint, and how do you see the ability to monetize, putting the time and effort and energy into being a creator, shifting and potentially shifting further in the future here?

[00:25:29] Bijan: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, we started on a collab fee or a posting fee because that's how that was the value, ? Of someone posting on the app was, Hey, I'm going to tap into your following. You're going to post, you're going to promote it. That's going to unlock the floodgates and cross pollinate that community.

[00:25:50] Bijan: And obviously platforms have changed. just posting it means that maybe, 1 percent of the audience maybe sees it, that in and of itself is an outdated value proposition, which is why we've started to look at other ways to measure the success of a collaboration, but in paid dollars behind it, for example, and doing more affiliate type stuff but I think the reason why it hasn't changed is because that's still typically some of the only revenue that creators will ever see There's so much else that happens that they're not never gonna see how many lifetime sales come from their post or how many people who saw it and then did a google search and then one and found it on their own there's so many things that like they don't have access or control over so like yeah, you got to kind of just get the fee up front because You're very unlikely to ever hear from that brand or product again even if, they're putting all these dollars behind your post, your extended usage rights are probably never going to ladder up to the value that they're actually creating from that content.

[00:26:57] Bijan: so what that leaves is a better way to actually have that collaboration. And so if those creators can actually see the recurring revenue, if there was a way for them to have a space on their profile to actually promote the brands and products that they're passionate about without having to post about it every single time, then there's multiple opportunities for them to engage, so being able to focus and create a way for those influencers are those creators to still have, maybe a modest collab fee, this is something I need to engage. So if nothing else comes from this, like it's still worth my time, but to. Being able to actually participate in the back end, the growth, if all these people are buying through my post or my store or my shop or whatever it is, like, how am I incentivized to do that?

[00:27:47] Bijan: And if I see that, then of course, I'm going to post about it more. Of course, I'm going to support it more because now I'm seeing those. things come to fruition. So just think it's a resetting of values and what that collaboration looks like, because ultimately both parties want this to be successful.

[00:28:02] Bijan: The brands want more sales to come from the influencers and the influencers want more collaboration. So we can find a way to actually help them both see the value of that and to see it in real time. I think then maybe the model can change.

[00:28:17] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, it's, always been something I've seen kind of both sides of the, fence on when, I've thought about, well, if a brand's not really wanting to engage with the creator, if they're not going to see some kind of a return on that and sales. So if a creator is not willing to, or not wanting to take that risk on, I've always had a hard time.

[00:28:37] Kelly: I can see it from the creative side of like, well, I'm going to put time and energy into it. And there's variables outside of my control. And then a brand's basically saying, well, well, why should I pay you I'm not going to get those results on it kind of thing. And so, does create that uncertainty.

[00:28:48] Kelly: And the fact that there has to be that decisioning in the process right now just highlights that it's not an ideal system that's set up for everyone to extract the right amount of value in it. So. I mean, I think it's why social commerce has taken longer in our country versus others and taken longer than maybe some people thought it would catch on and be adopted because there's still some big barriers in there that ultimately I think it's the best way to go from, hey, this person has an authentic recommendation.

[00:29:18] Kelly: I believe in them. I like everything they're doing. And so I discover something and I can buy it really easily without having to navigate 15 steps outside and go to other sites. But it's just, it's interesting to me how much it makes sense, but how hard it's been to streamline and idealize the actual right journey and process to make it work.

[00:29:36] Todd: Well, I'll give you some ending context to think about then Kelly, when you say that, , this is sort of a little quiz that I created for myself about this to ask you guys today, if you had to guess, this is for both of you, if you had to guess in your mind, when you think the first sort of creator personality existed and for what brand or product do you think they existed for?

[00:30:00] Todd: Would you? Could you even formulate a guess at this time? So who do you think maybe somebody could be labeled as maybe one of the first creators ever and for what product and when,

[00:30:11] Kelly: I feel like there's a lot of qualifying questions I have, but I'm not going to complicate this that much on that.

[00:30:15] Todd: well, just think about a personality endorsing a product for people to buy. So that's what a creator and an influencer is, right? An influencer is somebody who's. you're like, Oh, if that person is doing it, I

[00:30:29] Todd: should

[00:30:29] Kelly: I

[00:30:29] Kelly: mean, my tongue in cheek answer is going to be like Santa Claus for Coca Cola, like way back in like the thirties or something, but I don't think that's the right

[00:30:38] Todd: there's no right answer. I'll tell you what my answer is, what my research led me to. And then, we can all agree or disagree. What would you think?

[00:30:47] Bijan: I mean, so you're not talking specifically like in a digital sense, you're just talking like the example you gave about the plumber. Someone just influencing someone else's thing.

[00:30:56] Todd: would argue that being that influencers and the influencer economy has existed for a long time, long before it ever took place on a scrolling feed on a, phone. So, you take that setting into context, what would come to mind?

[00:31:09] Bijan: I mean, I always think of like politics and the fact that like you have to, you endorse another candidate. in this whole idea of well, I'm in the race now, I'm out of the race and now you should all go support this person. So I would have to say like over a hundred years of endorsements happening

[00:31:28] Bijan: and influencing that way.

[00:31:30] Todd: yeah, that very well could be. So the answer that, I came up with on the internet is that in 1934, so that's dating back, that far back. Lou Gehrig, the major league baseball player, was the first athlete to appear on a box of Wheaties. And that was one of the first ever publicly portrayed displays of an influencer, because at that time you could argue Lou Gehrig was an

[00:31:56] Todd: influence to moms who were buying a box of cereal on the shelf at the grocery store in 1934.

[00:32:04] Todd: so Kelly, to your point. Back then it was simply an athlete on a box of Wheaties and people standing at the grocery aisle shelf, deciding what to buy. And they're like, Oh, well, flu care, Gates, Wheaties, you know, I'm going to eat Wheaties or my kids should eat Wheaties. And it was really simple. And that was it.

[00:32:20] Kelly: it brings to light another. Much more modern version and variation of this and something that I learned recently around, I looked the history of Red Bull as a company, and it was fascinating when I learned around him that Red Bull is a company. Basically, they off sourced offshored all of the production of the actual product and everything else.

[00:32:38] Kelly: And they focused primarily as the marketing and the seller of the beverage and The way that they set up the company in that way is, is absolutely fascinating. And

[00:32:46] Kelly: they spend a third, yeah, but they spend a third of their entire revenue. So I think the revenue is around 6 billion, 2 billion purely on a marketing engine across everything.

[00:32:57] Kelly: But the economics that they can do that because they're not doing the product things is just really fascinating, and it makes me think of their whole thing was driven. They got started by getting into the nightclub and rave scenes and the college and student ambassadors with the cars and everything.

[00:33:12] Kelly: And it was basically just other people telling you, you should drink this drink and creating interest in. was even very, very early internet days and it was driven offline. And so you can see that this is, it's very natural to human behavior for this to make sense and work. And so the, the fact of finding a meaningful way to carry that through to the amplification engine that is social media, it's a no brainer on there is a, there's a huge treasure trove of unlock to be had there, but.

[00:33:42] Kelly: I would say from my perspective in our research, all of the attempts at it so far that we're seeing are not bad, but kind of just scratching the surface on what the true potential really could be.

[00:33:53] Todd: Yeah, well, there you go. We've had influencers around since the early days of politics or maybe a box of Wheaties or anything else. and now we're on to a new way to operationalize that technology. and maybe that behavior. , so we'll see what happens beyond. Thanks for sharing insights as always. , good to hear.

[00:34:12] Todd: From you and your perspective on this space, since you spend day and night, living and breathing it, you're at the forefront of it. And Kelly, your brain and ideas are always interesting as well. So, I hope you both have a great happy St. Patrick's day, maybe have a green beer, or I don't know, some food with your young kids.

[00:34:32] Todd: Kelly, you too.

[00:34:33] Bijan: And happy birthday, Todd.

[00:34:35] Kelly: Happy birthday.

[00:34:36] Todd: Oh, thanks. Talk to you guys later.