The New Purchase Journey: From Mass Media to Social Media Feeds

[00:00:00] Kelly: the whole purpose of working with an influencer is so that they will create influence.

[00:00:05] Kelly: So if they create a lot of influence, you probably wanna be willing to pay more for that. What you don't want to do is pay

[00:00:15] Intro/outro: Welcome to Contrary to Popular Opinion, a podcast hosted by IDE Digital. In each episode, we bring you provocative topics and novel perspectives around leadership, business, and marketing that defy the norms because exponential growth demands unconventional thinking and visionary action. So open your mind.

[00:00:35] Intro/outro: And let's get into this week's episode. Hey

[00:00:38] Kelly: everyone. Kelly McGuire with Fuji Day Digital. Excited to get into today's topic.

[00:00:43] Todd: Hello, Kelly, this is Todd, your partner. it's Thursday. We're recording a few days late this week 'cause we've had some, client to work to do that got in the way of recording a podcast.

[00:00:52] Todd: Can you imagine that? we just didn't have time to do it on Monday. So here we are on Thursday, getting it out, for the week. Alright, so today, a topic near and dear to our entrepreneurial hearts, is a discussion around influencers and or creators and or influencer marketing and or the creator economy and or a whole bunch of other labels that exist to describe this world, which is.

[00:01:23] Todd: Yes. and it's been around for a while and, it has actually spawned, a two year project for us to build, another company called Social Fair, which we're gonna be launching soon. I'm excited about that. But today what I wanted to pick your brain about and ask you questions is to sort of define some of this stuff and reposition what you think.

[00:01:44] Todd: it should be positioned as, from purpose to intent to actual execution and real sort of world outcomes of how things should happen. So, Being in the agency business, we have seen like many things, dating back until the, mid two thousands. I remember us saying the year of mobile is coming, right?

[00:02:06] Todd: And so we've seen a lot of changes. we've seen the influencer, thing come about,and make its life known on Instagram and all the other platforms. so we've got to see this shift. and since that's happened, we've seen it shift a lot. We've seen how it's evolved, how it's changed, but we probably would also agree that maybe it's, there's still some missing pieces, some gaps, some things that could be done better.

[00:02:35] Todd: and so let's talk a little bit about that. what's changing, what's broken? Maybe you know, how brands can start thinking about. A lot of different ways to get real value from this. so, first question is, what do you think the biggest maybe mindset adoption is that you might think that you don't think brands are getting yet still, to this point?

[00:02:59] Todd: are they still not finding or figuring something key out about this whole influencer creator world?

[00:03:05] Kelly: Yeah,maybe the best place to start is where you started talking and thinking about even just the words that we use in this space. Right? And in its simplest form, you use two words that I think are worth exploring.

[00:03:19] Kelly: There is influencer and there's creator, and oftentimes those are used interchangeably and they can mean very similar things. The way that I think about that is kind of the starting point of the branching that happens in this space where. Influencer is kind of the whole genesis of why we started or why we looked at social affair, was this idea that is a personality and a presence and a digital entity that has influence that is able to create content or have an opinion, or make a discovery or talk about a product.

[00:03:59] Kelly: In a way that the people who have chosen to give that personality, attention and buy-in can be influenced by what they do. If they say, buy this product it's good, or Do this thing, it's good, or this thing is cool, they have influence over that network and that audience. And that is where that term influencer comes from.

[00:04:19] Kelly: And I think that's very critical to think of it. Tied to that word, and on the other side, oftentimes creator can be conflated with that, and that makes sense. It can mean the same thing, but there's also another angle of it where creator is more of the genesis of that word, which is creative. The ability to tell a story to, craft content in a way that it engages, right?

[00:04:42] Kelly: It could be the same thing as what used to be someone who is, a, an artist or someone who is an actor or does these things that, that gets attention. And the reason that I make those distinctions is because the way that I look at influencer marketing, the way that I think brands start to have to segment it in their minds is working with a creator.

[00:05:03] Kelly: In that capacity tends to be how do I draft off of their vision and their style, and how do I align with them and how do I get content that features and highlights and showcases my brand in this really good way? Sometimes that can be pushed out through their networks, but a lot of times that's creating content that I can use in my marketing engine.

[00:05:25] Kelly: In vehicle, I can put in my ads, I can push out and or I can put my dollars behind boosting. And there's a level of credibility that being in that environment lends itself that is really beneficial. On the influencer side of that, the way that I look at it, it is more how do I leverage the alignment with that personality to create an outcome, to create discovery, to create sales, to create transaction, to create RO.

[00:05:49] Kelly: And again, I'm making distinctions when there's a lot of crossover here, but it helps me segment the way to be thinking about the leveraging of this space around am I trying to work with this in order to get a direct outcome or am I trying to work with it to align myself and to create content that is, again, more brand and I would crossover with the likelihood the likening to brand marketing and performance marketing, right.

[00:06:16] Kelly: Brand marketing tends to be your Super Bowl commercial, your TV commercial, your, your social awareness where you're just trying to get that story out there. Get that coverage. Get that exposure in order to set yourself up for a future outcome. And I would liken that a little bit more to the creator side of things.

[00:06:31] Kelly: Versus the performance marketing tends to be, I want to capture a sale, I want to drive someone through. I want to get that ROI and get that customer acquisition cost. And I liken that a little bit more to the influencer side. I'm oversimplifying it, but I'm trying to paint the pictures of the paths to how to talk about this that I think is really valuable.

[00:06:48] Todd: okay. So I'm gonna try and tee up an example that I just thought of that maybe you can describe if it's one or the other. So, in my Zoom background is a picture of my sailboat. I like to sail. I like all things sailing. There's a guy that made a massive splash on Instagram last year, and his Instagram and sort of journey is called Sailing with Phoenix, and Phoenix is his cat, and he sailed from the North Pacific, Northwest to Hawaii last year and documented his journey and created content.

[00:07:19] Todd: About his journey. he's a pretty novice sailor, and so a lot of it was about sort of that and like, wow, you're gonna sail to Hawaii. And he made it to Hawaii. And in the time that he prepared to leave and the time he arrived in Hawaii, he had literally a crowd of people welcoming him when he arrived at his first port in Hawaii, just because of the following.

[00:07:44] Todd: He built through creating this content. Social media. Well, fast forward, he's gotten so popular, that he gave away that boat literally gave it away for free. He bought a new boat and is going to attempt to be one of about 200 people who have ever attempted and successfully sailed solo around the world nonstop.

[00:08:10] Todd: I saw this cat Phoenix with him. He has taken on an endorsement deal from Friskies. And occasionally he talks about Friskies. Occasionally he's wearing a Friskies branded hoodie or something, and the cat is part of all the content he creates, and everybody asks about Phoenix the cat. In that scenario, is he a creator or is he an influencer?

[00:08:37] Kelly: So I would liken it to, it depends on how the brand is gonna use it. So for the Friskies example, I would liken that more to the creator experience, right? It is a, it is friskies thinking about the fact that this account exists. It's got the attention of people, it's around a cat. It has content that works.

[00:08:54] Kelly: It's something where the brand can be aligned, they can generate nice exposure, and then maybe they can draft off of that to drive results. That would be more that creator experience in my mind. Where you're getting paid for the posts and the content, the more I liken that more to like the television commercial type thing, where again, it's really cool and memorable and top of mind awareness type exposure.

[00:09:16] Kelly: That's like, okay, I'm gonna think about it. I'm gonna align it, it's gonna sink into my brain a little bit. Where it would go into influencer is if he then decided to directly endorse a new cat food brand flavor that says, this is the hottest new brand. It's great, it's healthy for your cat, it's better than anything else you could buy.

[00:09:33] Kelly: You guys gotta try this. This is what you should be feeding your cat, and that's featured and there's affiliate links or direct links and you're trying to sell it, and you're basically trying to push a new product or a unique product because of the audience and using that influence to say. This is an action you should take because you follow me, because you trust my opinion, because you wanna go through that.

[00:09:53] Kelly: I am guiding you into that. And that is using more of the influence and that's where you get in the creator economy. So are you paying for the TV commercial that makes you aware of it? Are you paying for the sales vehicle that says you should go buy this? Here's the best way to do it. And oh, by the way, here's a coupon.

[00:10:07] Todd: Yeah, I don't think I've seen one poster story where he's ever overtly said anything about Go buy Friskies, or, here's my cat eating friskies or anything. It is the most subtle. He openly just says, yeah, frisky sponsored me. That's it. And so I would label that as very much on the creator side of things, where Frisky's has aligned with a person that they think is a personality type.

[00:10:34] Todd: Creating content that is safe for their brand and that people, everybody loves his cat Phoenix. And so I think that's, that in my mind, when you delineate the two, I think of that as, that's a creator relationship. 'cause it's very not transactional. but I wonder what Frisky's is getting out of that. Like, I wonder, are they selling more cat food because of Phoenix?

[00:10:57] Todd: I don't know.

[00:10:58] Kelly: I mean, I'm sure it's part of a bigger marketing engine for them. Now, all liken it in a different scenario, right? So, and this comes with the authenticity and the leveraging and the responsibility that comes with the following that you cultivate and that in there. So Frisky is obviously a very well known brand.

[00:11:14] Kelly: Let's say hypothetically upstart, brand new, no one's heard of it, cat food brand or Cat Toy brand comes in and is like, you know what? We need to make a splash. We need to come out there and we need to somehow break through so that we can sell and people know about us. And they come in and say, I'm gonna offer some X amount of big dollars.

[00:11:32] Kelly: That's more than any, than is Frisky's willing to offer you? 'cause they don't need you as much as we might need you, and we wanna leverage it. Now it becomes really interesting, right, because. Is that personality going to take that deal because it's a big paycheck and it's a great area? Or is there authenticity behind, I'm gonna try this cat toy brand out.

[00:11:51] Kelly: I'm gonna believe in it. I'm gonna really trust it and I'm gonna use the confidence that my following has placed in me to endorse it and say, you should buy this. I've tested it. It's good. Right. And where does the audience kind of come in there? Is it's happenstance in support of, or this is an endorsement, you should go buy it.

[00:12:08] Kelly: And where does that line cross through? In the instance you're talking about, that's a bigger creator or influencer, which whatever you wanna sign to it. So there's a lot more options that person's probably monetizing to a great degree. So they have a lot of options. If you take that down a scale into a lower kind of following, someone who's not making huge amounts of money, but has to be kind of grinding out a little and saying, look, I'm putting a lot of time into cultivating this.

[00:12:33] Kelly: Existence, but I'm not getting six figure paydays for it. Right? I might be lucky if a brand reaches out to me, occasionally offers me a couple thousand dollars for a post, or I might be lucky if I feature something and I get some link through clickthroughs and I make some commission on a couple of sales.

[00:12:48] Kelly: That person has to start making a lot different decisions around. How authentic do they want to curate their things and really believe it and curate it? And maybe there's not as much opportunity or how opportunistic around, well I don't know this brand that well, or maybe I don't even like it that much, but they're willing to pay me a nice little bag for it and I need to leverage.

[00:13:08] Kelly: 'cause I'm putting a lot of time and energy into this. And that's where it gets really interesting in the environment of, again, are you getting paid for the content and the authenticity to it? Are you getting paid for the endorsement and the pushing for it? How much is it opportunistic? How much is it curated on opportunity?

[00:13:22] Kelly: this all plays a role and this is something that the consumers never really exposed that much to. but it plays a role again in why I saw the need for the platform that we built, which is I felt that there was an imbalance in at a certain tier of creator or influencer. I'm gonna keep conflating those words.

[00:13:39] Kelly: To not have enough options available to them to monetize or be compensated for the time and effort and energy that goes into being an influencer, that they may be skewed towards having to take deals that weren't directly in their wheelhouse. And I felt like. If there was a world where there could be a more open marketplace, where someone could be more discerning, could discover and say, Hey, I have a following.

[00:14:05] Kelly: I think that if I talk about this brand, that I actually like the product. The people that I have looking to me will go and buy it, and I wanna earn off of that. And I think that democratization and that open ability really adds to the credibility of it. And so there's this whole world of those things, do you, are you just earning commission off what you're already doing?

[00:14:24] Kelly: Do you proactively choose it? This is where there's so many branches of this world. And then the last thing that I'll throw in there is sometimes it's not even about directly endorsing or directly selling the product. Sometimes it's about actually CRE creating the creative, right? A brand could choose to go to a creative shop to build them an ad.

[00:14:45] Kelly: They can also go to A-U-U-G-C creator that says, here's my story. You go be creative and think of a story that. that your age group or your peer group is gonna really find interesting. And then I'll take that as creative and I'm gonna use that in my ads and my bespoke element and what I'm putting together.

[00:15:01] Kelly: So it's all these branches of what constitutes the creator economy and how that influences used and all of that becomes so interesting.

[00:15:10] Todd: that's all very confusing. So let me try to keep, simplifying, I. How would you separate or talk differently or prescribe or advise differently a brand, the, to, to a brand, the difference in a strategy between deploying an influencer program versus a creator program in the traditional senses that you are describing, how would you know?

[00:15:40] Todd: Which one to prescribe. What, like what sort of signals or brand objectives or, yeah. Objectives. would you have to hear, I want to try to get real world example outta this. If anybody's listening, they're like, well, I don't, do I run an influencer campaign or do I run a creator campaign?

[00:15:54] Todd: What are the objectives? So what, how would you prescribe one or the other?

[00:15:59] Kelly: Again, I'm gonna be oversimplifying this for the point of it, so, nobody crushed me for, missing a component in here or a nuance. But the way that I would try and look at it is I would go the creator route, which I like, and again, to the commercial, the alignment, the exposure that's offered.

[00:16:17] Kelly: If what I want and what I'm gonna expect out of that is. That is going to enable me, empower me to put money and put my marketing engine behind it to leverage that piece of content that I've paid for upfront. If I'm gonna go pay $5,000 for a post or $10,000 for a series of videos. I would do that if I thought I'm gonna take that content, or when that content lives on that person's profile, I'm gonna put my marketing engine behind it to make sure that translates from just being a cool exposure to moving the needle down the road for my business.

[00:16:54] Kelly: So I'm gonna feature it in my ads. I'm gonna boost that post, I'm gonna. Reference it. I'm gonna do things with it and use my engine to get ROI out of it. That to me is using someone else's likeness, alignment, voice style, whatever that is in my engine. The other side of it, the influencer side of it, is I am going to tap into the engagement with an influencer.

[00:17:17] Kelly: To use their engine to produce the ROI, because they're gonna push it to their audience. They're going to endorse it, they're going to link to it, they're gonna create the discovery. And as a byproduct of me going through their engine, that's gonna be what leads to the ROI and the outcomes that are going in there.

[00:17:35] Kelly: So. And I'm either investing in something that powers my engine on the creator side, or I am spending my money on someone else's vehicle and distribution engine to produce the outcomes that I want on the influencer side. That's kind of the simplest way I would delineate it.

[00:17:50] Todd: Okay, so let me use my sailing with Phoenix example again to see if I understand correctly.

[00:17:55] Todd: In this case, I don't believe I've seen a poster story or anything where he has overtly tried to push or sell. Someone to go buy Frisky's cat food for their cat, but he creates content. So let's say there's this beautiful piece of content, he videos of his boat, charging across the Southern Atlantic Ocean and Phoenix is in the cockpit hanging on while you know the ocean and wind is, blowing by and he creates this amazing content.

[00:18:25] Todd: And what you're saying is Friskies could go and take this amazing piece of film content and they could use. In their marketing to say, look at how strong and healthy Phoenix is to survive, the world's toughest oceans. They could build something around this content that he's created versus him posting to his audience and saying, I feed Phoenix Friskies, and so should you.

[00:18:49] Kelly: Yeah. So let me, I'll break it down into the journey that creates, right? So I'll keep using this example since you used it. So in the scenario of what he's doing, the value that Frisky, I believe is getting out of that is creating awareness of Frisky's. And so what that brand is hoping is that more people are gonna go to Google and search for frisky's, or a bunch of people are gonna go to the Frisky's website, or the next time they're doing a search for food, they're gonna pick it out on the shelf.

[00:19:15] Kelly: Right? So it is a byproduct that has to have a second layer to cultivate into outcomes, right? It's not.

[00:19:22] Todd: Let me ask you, let me ask you to clarify, sorry to interrupt. think about the content piece that I just described. There's no evidence of Frisky's involved in this piece of content at all.

[00:19:31] Todd: It, the cat's not, you can't tell what the cat's eating 'cause the bowl of food's not out there. Right. He maybe he's not wearing anything branded. He's just got this amazing piece of content with his cat on the sailboat. and Frisky's his sponsor so they have permission to use it. That's creator content.

[00:19:51] Kelly: Yeah, but I mean, there, it's not a philanthropic effort. Right. Frisky's is mentioned somewhere. It's the supporting of, it's,it's seeding the name, whether it's visually

[00:20:00] Todd: Well, they could do that, right? They could Friskies could use that content in some sort of advertising. Because they have the deal with him.

[00:20:07] Todd: They have the relationship with him. Right. They, what you're saying is he created this content as a creator. Now they can take that and make a YouTube clip out of it, or a reel or something. That's, that says

[00:20:19] Kelly: that's repurposing of the content. Right. But the people that are watching the video, there's some degree of exposure to, again, whether he says this is sponsored by Friskies, or thanks to our sponsors, or Friskies, or

[00:20:31] Todd: what if he doesn't say anything?

[00:20:32] Todd: What if none of that's mentioned anywhere?

[00:20:34] Kelly: Then why are they paying him in anything if they're getting zero exposure from it?

[00:20:38] Todd: Because sometimes he does, I'm just saying from a content creation standpoint, what if a lot of the content he creates doesn't have any, there's no visual tie to friskies.

[00:20:51] Kelly: I mean, again, if they're not getting a shout out, a mention, a visual representation, I don't know why a brand what, why a brand would be paying that. Typically when you engage with a creator, you are getting some kind of exposure out of it. Again, it's either a voice clip or a pre-roll or an in the thing or a placement.

[00:21:05] Kelly: Like there's some actual exposure that's produced as a, spending that money. Otherwise, I don't know why you would do that.

[00:21:12] Todd: Well, I guess what I'm trying to get at is you talked about creators being like filmmakers and what I'm trying to get at is. Is, does Frisky's benefit from the relationship where sometimes they're tagged, sometimes he's wearing their merchandise, sometimes he might be showing the cat eating frisky's cat food or a box of Frisky's cat food or whatever.

[00:21:31] Todd: And other times they're just getting really beautiful content that they can use in their own marketing. That's what I'm getting at.

[00:21:37] Kelly: Yeah, so, so, so yeah. So those. Those are the two benefits, right? They either get to repurpose and use the content that, again, it's a component that they put into their engine, but there's a second stage that has to be used to put it out there and get anything out of it.

[00:21:51] Kelly: Or if they're mentioned, maybe that produces top of mind awareness or maybe it. Produces a visit to their website, or maybe it produces a Google search, but whatever it produces, there's a second stage. Before you get to something, you have to pay for your search ad to capture the traffic. You have to remarket to the visitor.

[00:22:10] Kelly: So it's that second stage engagement that is fueling my engine and making it more efficient. But I have to. Take it and do something with it. So that's the le the real world output there. The other alternative is there's not a second stage to it. There is a, I work with you, you feature the post, and you directly link to it saying Click on this link and go buy the product.

[00:22:33] Kelly: So you go from, I paid for you to feature it. That's the discovery. And I, the mechanism by going from discovery to purchase is all done through your vehicle, and so there's no second stage that I have to put in. What I did is I activated you, you went and produced the ROI, so that's the simplest way I can break down is producing the opportunity to fuel a second stage engine that you have to go use, or just using it as is and going from the discovery to the purchase and all of that, living in that ecosystem of that creator or influencer.

[00:23:06] Todd: Well, I think he's very much the creator. I don't know, I've never been on spy's website. I don't know how they might be repurposing or using any of the content that he is producing, but I know when he attempts to sail around the world's nonstop solo, he's gonna create a lot of content and they're probably gonna benefit.

[00:23:23] Todd: Heavily.

[00:23:24] Kelly: I mean, and that benefit is probably, again, whether it in some degree or capacity, they're going to get exposure. Their name's gonna get said, their logo's gonna get seen, something's gonna happen. That exposure fuels a starting point that you can say, okay, now that this exposure exists, my marketing engine can pick it up and go use it to try and get some outcomes out of it.

[00:23:44] Todd: Alright, good discussion. Start working towards the wrap here. What would you say are the, probably the most common, contrary to popular opinion, the name of our show, contrary to popular opinions about influencer or creator marketing that, you would you think either brands make the mistake of, or are still just sort of maybe they need to unlearn or evolve to?

[00:24:10] Todd: What do you think the popular pin opinions are that are just maybe not valid anymore?

[00:24:16] Kelly: Yeah, so I'll, I have two and I'll one of them, I'll double down on that I said earlier, which is the alignment and the authenticity of working with the creator I think is really critical. I think making sure that the people who are spending their time and putting their trust in these creators and influencers can believe that if who they're watching is talking about or featuring a brand or a product or whatever it is, that it's.

[00:24:43] Kelly: It's genuine and that they can buy into it, right? That you have these stories. they're less frequent than I think they used to be. But you'll have these stories of a big famous celebrity or a creator or something. I'll take it, I'll take it to the big extreme, right?

[00:24:54] Kelly: Remember the whole fallout when Tom Brady was featuring FTX and the crypto and like, and then it went under and it's like, well, like your, you have a responsibility of, representing things that we trust in 'cause we look to you type thing. So that's like a large scale belief in it, right? And so this idea of.

[00:25:10] Kelly: Proper alignment and really endorsement and is there this idea of they actually believe that I should buy what they're featuring or they're just getting paid and they don't care if it's real or good or not. And that, that creates a lot of friction. And so that is where having to understand, is this a byproduct of being paid or is it part of my belief and in what's in there?

[00:25:30] Kelly: the other thing that I will say is somewhat controversial is going down more of the discovery to transaction around the influencer route is. Trying to understand what the consumer experience is in that, right? It is not really that simple and streamlined to go from creator I follow is featuring a sweater that I really think is cool and I wanna buy it.

[00:25:53] Kelly: To go from that post that got me interested in that sweater to actually buying it is a really fragmented, difficult. Jump through hoops process, that makes it really hard. And so maximizing the benefit from the company that sells that sweater and the money and time and energy they put in working with that creator to letting the consumer discover and buy it.

[00:26:17] Kelly: There's so much friction and so much inefficiency in that process. That it's really highly dropped off. And again, that goes to why we've tried to streamline it, why we tried to look for better outcomes. Because it's not just that someone can do it, you have to think about how hard is it for them to realistically go through it and get to it.

[00:26:37] Kelly: And how do you maximize that out of it? So if you're a brand, I, the last kind of anecdote that I'll say is I believe it's you, and this might have been years ago now that kind of told me one of the things that used to happen a lot more was a lot of creators would be invited to go to these resorts or these like fancy, like vacation places, and that was commonplace for them to get free vacations and paid a bunch of money.

[00:27:00] Kelly: And then I think somewhere along the line someone stopped and tried to look at the return on investment to those of like what they were giving away. And they're like, basically nothing's happening from this. I'm just giving people free vacations and that all dried up. So I think that brands really need to think about.

[00:27:15] Kelly: What are they getting out of these endorsements? And I personally believe that there should be a lot more accountability on what the creator gets versus what they deliver and that they're, what they're getting should be a lot more tied to what they produce, and that should be uncapped versus just. I'm gonna give you a free vacation or I'm gonna pay for something upfront.

[00:27:35] Kelly: And then what happens with it. Well, I hope the best out of it. I think aligning with a partnership and an engagement and a variable comp model that rewards good outcomes is a lot safer and more sensible way in the environment. 'cause again, the whole purpose of working with an influencer is so that they will create influence.

[00:27:54] Kelly: So if they create a lot of influence, you probably wanna be willing to pay more for that. What you don't want to do is pay a lot and then end up getting no influence and then you're kind of out your money and you can only take so many bets. So I just, I think that's what I would look at is how do you really pick the right relationships?

[00:28:09] Kelly: How do you enable them and how do you make sure that you win together or you lose together versus it being a disparate sort of, you get paid and it's sort of a luck of the draw type situation.

[00:28:20] Todd: Alright, I got two hot seats questions for you and then we will wrap. Up, first hot seat question. Can you name, your favorite or a,a creator influencer program or campaign that you've seen that you thought nailed it for any creator influencer brand?

[00:28:38] Todd: is there one out there where you've gone, man, they got it right.

[00:28:42] Kelly: You know what's funny with that question is as ironically as, as involved as I am in this space, I am actually very much not on social media very much. I don't have my own Instagram account. It's all through company and things like that.

[00:28:54] Kelly: I mean, the closest, the closest that I would come for me is like, what I do use social media for is, as everyone I think knows, is I'm a big Arsenal FC fan. And so I watch those like, Like the A FTV and those types of things. and so that's exposure, but they don't do a lot of the influencing stuff.

[00:29:09] Kelly: So it's a hard question for me 'cause I'm not on social media that much.

[00:29:13] Todd: Well, that means you can't answer my hot seat. Question number two, which was going to be, who is your personal favorite or most connected or followed influencer or creator?

[00:29:24] Kelly: Oh, well, that I can't answer actually. So the person that I look to the most, his,his name is Fabrizio Romano, and he's the guy who is known to break every soccer transfer story like before anyone else has into it.

[00:29:35] Kelly: Now, I've never really seen him do much endorsement of products or things like that, but if he ever did, I would probably be highly influenced by it because I'm watching that constantly. 'cause he, because this guy, I don't know, when he sleeps, like he's constantly breaking the news. He gets it. He breaks all these stories.

[00:29:51] Kelly: So that is the one thing that I go and consume a lot, in that capacity.

[00:29:55] Todd: Alright. I had a feeling it would have something to do with European football or American soccer. all right. Good discussion. still a wacky world out there with this space and, hard to figure out, but that's, a good chat.

[00:30:08] Todd: we won't record. Next Monday, 'cause it's a holiday. It's President's Day. We're gonna be off that day. and we will get back online and get another recording going. on, the next week. And then, social fair. What are we gonna talk about? The launch of social fair, do you think? just so we can tease this out that it's coming, when do you think we'll actually launch and talk about it?

[00:30:29] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, well first of all, we will make it clear. 'cause I've seen this a social fair. It's, social, FAI r.com. Social fair is spelled that way. it's coming. We are, we're on our beta. it, we're working in this space. It needs to be a big splash and a big launch. So we're enclosed beta.

[00:30:43] Kelly: Closed invites we're,we're rolling out. But I would say that once we kind of get our first couple of campaigns under our belt, things move fast in the social space and we'll be out there. So I would say by spring, I think we'll be humming along and moving along and starting to open up from some of the interests in the wait list that we're starting to collect and do right now.

[00:31:00] Kelly: But we, We're being very mindful, about the presence and the experience and the view. 'cause we want that trustworthiness and that authenticity and that credibility to exist and live. 'cause, it's a big reason why the platform was built in the first place was to empower creators to be in more control.

[00:31:15] Kelly: and so we need to maintain that integrity and be very intentional about every, everything that we make.

[00:31:21] Todd: Alright, with that, I have one last thing that I just thought of that we should just pat each other on the back for, I don't know if anybody listens to this podcast. I guess we should know that.

[00:31:29] Todd: I think we have some downloads out there. 10 years ago we started on a journey to build one of the most complex, game mechanics in the mobile app gaming space. And I am very happy to say that I have what appears to be a final release. On my iOS device, and, we will be putting that into the app store, for Android and iOS.

[00:31:52] Todd: when do you see that coming?

[00:31:53] Kelly: Well, that's another good question. I am gonna spend, I'm gonna give it about a month or so of trying to find a publisher partner or a partnership that can kind of bring it out to for full release. If I don't find the right deal with that, then we're gonna self-release and let the world finally see and play this game.

[00:32:08] Kelly: It is a lot of fun. It gets very difficult, very fast. I've gotten good at it. You're not as good at it. but yeah, it's, if nothing else, it's fun and it's, it's a. Labor of love and a passion project that will be finally cool to see live and in, and see the light of day.

[00:32:22] Todd: Guess what? the last thing I saw last night, before I closed my eyes in bed and kissed my wife goodnight.

[00:32:28] Todd: She was playing orus. How about that?

[00:32:31] Kelly: There you go.

[00:32:32] Todd: Alright, we'll, talk about that more. Maybe we'll even do a little video demo of that and social fair coming up here in the next couple of months. that's it for now. Thank you very much. Talk to you next week.

[00:32:43] Kelly: Thanks everyone.

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