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AIM High: Adding influencer marketing to your campaign toolkit · Two in Twenty

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to another episode of AI.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Twink Field.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the host of these podcasts and CEO of White Marble Consulting.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: And today we are talking about how you can bring influential experts into your social strategies and adding influencer marketing into your campaign toolkit, frankly.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's not something that many asset managers are doing yet, and we'd love to hear from those who are already trying it and your experiences in it.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: But those who are just getting going, we have two great speakers today, Tim Williams, who's the CEO of Analytica, and Theodora Lau, who is the founder of Unconventional Ventures.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: So Tim's business works with lots of companies in helping them shape their strategy and thinking in this regard.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: And Theo herself is an influencer, or an expert, I should say, in some of these areas.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: As it became clear, influencer is not something or a term that they typically embrace.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Over to them.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Tim and Theo, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about uh influencer marketing and how that can become part of the campaign toolkit in asset management.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um maybe the best thing to do is just for you each to introduce yourself and then we can start to really unpack what we mean by influence marketing.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe I'll come to you, Theo, first and then to you, Tim.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for inviting us and including us today.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so my name is Theodore Lau, or Theo, known as I'm the founder of Unconventional Ventures based in the United States.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um we do a lot of public speaking and writing, and we recently published a book, Call Beyond Good, um, that basically collected stories from a lot of companies and entrepreneurs that we have worked with and talked to through the years.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to use our platform and our audience to uh tell stories, stories of purpose, and talk about our thesis, which is we can have purpose and profits together.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: They can and do coexist.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to use the book and our podcast called One Vision to shine lights on these stories.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my background, I came from technology.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I spent over 15 years in telecom before I moved over to NGO and then eventually financial services.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So happy to be here.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Thea.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I I love that sense of purpose as well.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure um all asset managers have got that um taped yet in terms of their vision and values and purpose.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you can tell that you you are here as our resident um influencer.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: So so thank you for that.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Tim, over to you.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thanks so much, and thanks to thanks to you, Twink, and uh White Marble, and good to speak to you again, Theo.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Theo and I regularly um uh speak on social media and on sort of webinars uh and podcasts like this.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um uh so it's great to be here.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm Tim Williams, I'm the CEO of Analytica.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're the we're an influence marketing and also employee advocacy platform, which is designed really to enable brands to create inspiring content through influences.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of why we're doing this, we see that influence marketing is such a uh a wonderful way of driving trust and driving impact with target audience.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, influencers or influential experts, as I should say, I prefer that term, especially in financial services.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Influential experts like Theo, you know, really just bring the uh the credibility, the authenticity and the trust to content creation, which I think really drives cut through in the target audience.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so our kind of raison d'et, raison less is to be the matchmaker, to to matchmake brands and your asset management companies or um anyone in sort of investment management, connect them up to the voices that the it that the industry trusts, and then you know hopefully the brands can generate really wonderful industry content through influencers like Theo.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really our job in the whole sort of ecosystem.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: That sounds brilliant and powerful, and no doubt exactly what a lot of these sort of marketing campaigns are striving to achieve.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Tim, maybe you could just expand a little bit in terms of um how you even begin to get going um in um building out a program like that and um really what some of the objectives might be and what the success might might be for for uh a campaign of this ilk.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think that's a that's a really fantastic question because a lot of people, a lot of people listening will probably hear influence marketing and think much more of the B2C application or Instagram, Snapchat, you know, TikTok kind of influencer, you know, selling products, for example.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously financial services uh and what we're talking about here is heavily regulated and you know it's just not playing in that way.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think some even though everyone uses the term influences, I think it's also a term that I dislike sometimes through the ambiguity, especially when it relates to financial services.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I would say, first of all, is that um influencer marketing, when we talk about it in this context, is is the art of collaborating with external influential experts to change behaviors or to drive action within your target audience.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, everyone listening here will have probably um hired an event speaker to speak to their customers or to speak to their industry.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you'll have probably um worked with journalists or analysts, or uh you would have uh commissioned someone to create content, maybe some research for your industry.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a form of influence marketing.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: We just haven't called it influence marketing.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the first step is to get beyond the terminology and call it something different if you want.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Call it thought leadership, call it uh call it an advocacy program, uh, call it brand ambassador program, or just call it um you know research content or you know, some is some something that you is kind of the uh day-to-day because then people understand what you're talking about.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that's a really critical step.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then just the five steps that we encourage our clients to go through is uh the discovery stage first.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So find your relevant influences, then insights, you know, find out what's in it for them, what they would like to do.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what motivates your Theo, for example?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why does she show up?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what does she want to do?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because then you've got the best chance of working with someone like Theo.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then it's the activation.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, you need to know how to contact them and you know how you would want to sort of leverage and collaborate with them and actually have that agreement.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of paid influences.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's some influencers that would happily speak at your event because they would happily network uh with the people you would bring to that event.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the management.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, it's important to communicate and to manage influences rather than just, oh, can you do this for us?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's one way, and then you know there's sort of no communications.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't work because everyone's a person at the end of the day.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the measurement side, you need to measure the impact.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a five-step process once you've worked out what you're going to call your your kind of program or campaign or event, uh, which you can follow.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and then it it starts becoming much more simple and something that you can visualize.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um, maybe uh Theo, we could just uh get a bit more background from you as to how you become an influencer in the first place, that that sort of that process, um, so that when people are looking to find you, uh, sort of how how you built those that credibility, that network, um, that expertise.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, I guess it'd be great to hear from you as to what would be the maybe some of the right and wrong ways of of engaging you, of um, of sort of involving you or or trying to sort of bring you into some kind of um program like this.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for that question.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I resonate with with a lot with what Tim says.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of times when people think about the word influencer, you automatically go to TikTok and Instagram and what have you.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I don't typically call myself an influencer because I can't even influence my kids too well, to be honest.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I do have an opinion.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I like to share my opinions, and I'm not shy about sharing opinion.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a starter.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have a vision on how I believe we can and should use technology to create a more sustainable, inclusive future.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always the anchor of a lot of the work that I do um consult on or speak about.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think where I got started is I've been in tech pretty much my entire life, right?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout different industries across telecom, NGO, and financial services, but it's always been in technology and looking at how we can use technology to create something different, to work with different demographics of people and use technology for good.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always been the backbone of looking at things.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that experience coupled with having worked with different players in the ecosystem, both from consumers and provider side, deep in the belly of the beast, as my partner and Karen Bradley Lyman would say, or on the other side, looking at what consumers need and what our economy needs and matching that up, that has helped us to create a very unique voice in the ecosystem, helping organizations understand what is it that they're offering, what can they do more with their solutions, how can they expand upon their use case and change, right, with with how our world has changed?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: How can they stay relevant?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and and you know, I've been lucky enough to to be able to use that and privileged enough to use our platform to share that.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was just thinking to that point of relevance and personalization.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: How how individual does it need to be?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and how can that be with your solution, Tim, in terms of reaching out and connecting and the sort of the one-on-one engagement to really sort of bring the right influencers or sorry, experts, um thought leaders into your approach?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So what we try to do is, you know, we've got we've got analytics on people's social influence across a number of channels, but there's also you know who Theo is, and I hope you don't mind me using uh um you as an example, Theo, because obviously we're talking on this podcast, but you know uh so what's your Monday to Friday like?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what what do you love getting involved in?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um what don't you like?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's often the sort of colour and the qualitative aspects that that Theo will decide.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, that's really interesting.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to do this, and this is something that I wouldn't like to do.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, so uh you know, what we try to do um uh at Analytica is is sort of interview influencers and to capture that information so that you feel like you know Theo to a certain extent just before you outreach.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you know that Theo is really uh passionate about the you know confluence of your technology and financial services and sort of social impact, and you've got something that is maybe around your sustainability, around um you're just some of the themes that she's really passionate about, then you're probably gonna get a better response um on that.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also you know, uh I do do people want to do podcasts?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do they want to do long-form written content?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Would they like to um create content for you?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have video production?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what are they a Forbes contributor?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: How big is their audience on LinkedIn versus Twitter, for example?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: All these things it is difficult to know.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the relevance and personalization has to just come with the insights on the influence, and that's what we see our job in providing.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, once a brand is speaking directly to influential experts, then I think it's really between them to sort of either negotiate or you know, whether there's money or it's non-monetary, it's obviously just a sort of a quid pro quo uh agreement which they need to work out between themselves.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it just becomes a conversation then like it would in any other setting.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think the the real key to this is that uh if there is money involved, it's it's for their their time and content creation and opinion.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's not you know anything near to advertising because you're and and obviously there's different sort of regulations and they change from the US to UK to Europe to Asia.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this is about your thought leadership, this is bringing opinion about what's happening in industry.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about talking about how great someone's brand is, because that will that will you know quite quickly move it to a sort of a B2C product advertising.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that and I know that you're you're probably coming on to questions like this, but there's that especially in the US, there's heavy kind of uh regulation now around um any kind of social media influencers that are trying to promote investment platforms.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not really where I see the the kind of low-hanging fruit for the asset management, investment management, financial services industry.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's really about directing target audience to your particular site or to an event or or to get customer engagement at a at a customer event, for example.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that those are the kind of um applications and use cases that that we see are uh as a far safer territory and far more impactful for B2B and financial services.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we can just come back to that in a minute because of you know there is obviously sensitivity amongst some of these sort of financial services clients around inducements, um, or what may be perceived to be some kind of inducement to the endorsement.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I'd love to just ask you, Leo, when you know you are approached uh to sort of lend your voice and expertise to something, um if the the necessary sort of due diligence, the necessary understanding as to kind of your areas of expertise and um kind of the understanding of your likes and dislikes and um kind of habits, if they haven't done the necessary um scrutiny around that, is that one of the things that would determine for you whether you want to work with that with that business or or or organization?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Or you know, what are the determining factors for you?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good good question.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've been lucky enough.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the folks that have approached me either, they've approached me through Analytica.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, Tim's team has done an amazing job putting portfolios together, talking about you know what he just mentioned, what are some of the areas that are that we are passionate about, and how do we typically work with companies?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of them actually came um prepared.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that was nice.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: But otherwise, I mean, this is this is a a new territory, but yet I think a lot of the players, we sort of know each other.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a small ecosystem.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I'm always happy to to chat with brands first to understand what is it that you're trying to do, right?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's first and foremost.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: What is your objective?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, what do you need?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I take a step back and look at, you know, throughout the work that I do, worry topics that I'm interested in, do we have a match?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because it has to work those both ways, isn't it?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and Tim, typically, do you advise uh your clients to sort of start small, like be really focused, get the kind of the kind of a few people involved rather than necessarily kind of have this big expansive view, or or does it typically depend client by client?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's that's a really, really important question.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you asked that because everyone starts what it says, like I really want to start small and maybe like you know, work with one or two influencers.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what I say to that is within your first of all, map out your topics.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: It could be um ethical investing, or it could be you know that it could be the future of like fintech platforms or or you know so whatever the topics are that we've kind of worked in in around, find out how many topical experts and influences are there, either in the UK or in Europe or globally or in the US, Asia, whatever your territory is, and then uh spin up a social listening program to find out uh what people are talking about, so that and you can set up some alerts and you can learn a lot to see what the the hot topics are, you can see whether someone's talking in a way where actually they would be a perfect fit.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's I think it's really important to sometimes listen to uh you know one to two thousand voices or even just five hundred um where you can learn a lot.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, within that group, I think there could be 10 to 30 people that might be a potential you know target uh to collaborate with.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then out of that you know 10 to 30, you can start saying, you know, do they do they align with our with our brand voice?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do they have the right target audience for what we're trying to achieve?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um are they speaking on the channel or creating content on the channel where our audience sits?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I I look at it from uh, you know, let's listen to a really large group, you know, hone it down to um 10 to 30 targets and then pick a handful of influences to start with.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes those are the paid engagements, um, but there's also organic community building.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're a brand that's giving a lot out there, maybe coordinating insights, you know, getting some quotes from influential experts, they'll be happy to provide quotes, often free of charge, to be published in something and to be part of a community.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that can be something that you could go out to 10 to 15 people with.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you want to, if you want Theo to come on a podcast or to write um some content or to really um spend a lot of time with you as a brand, obviously um it's important to pay for our time and you'd probably start small with a paid engagement.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a really, really great question.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think it's just about starting with a one or two people, because then you're just really in pilot stage.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you can't move the needle as much as you would want.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think you need the longer-term vision of how can we build advocacy as our brand, but then you know, run a, you know, people call it a pilot or a campaign from the brand side, but effectively it's what content can we create that's inspiring, that's different from our potentially boring content so far, and how well it's how well is it performing?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because that that's the whole point.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: In B2B and financial services, most of the content, even from the people that create it, they admit it's quite boring.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and let's get let's get a different perspective and and that's gonna drive more eyeballs to the content.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's to your point around starting with a pilot campaign and particularly maybe something, a sort of strategy or tactic they haven't necessarily employed before, you know, kind of that almost immediately shrinks it further back already, because they want to be a little bit more careful before they maybe put or budget behind it or resource behind it, they want to see the results before going further.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, how do you see people kind of making the case internally to do something like this?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I appreciate what you're saying around sort of brand ambassadors and thought leadership and and and people really using kind of social media much more in that sort of educational tone and sort of trying to make sure people understand what their brand stands for.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe maybe it's a continuation continuation of that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, but I'd just be curious as to how you either of you see the case being made for for these types of programs being sort of added to to the toolkit.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: What I tend to do is is I see what investment they're uh they're making into content creation and just how they go to market with with some of their thought leadership content.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've done is we've taken it could be just an announcement where they were going to publish something uh or there was gonna be a piece of piece of research and that they were gonna spend and it could be$15,000 to$30,000 on some research, and they were gonna push out uh a big report.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Some of their execs were gonna be you know talking about it and gonna be showing up on you know video podcasts like this, and and then say, okay, well, let's look at a just a slightly alternative way of doing this.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's go out to the influencers and influence experts, get their get their input into the research, get them part of that creation process.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes reduce the uh the budget for content creation internally, but um push it towards employee generated content or influencer generated content.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not spending any any more or less.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're just you're just diverting it uh you know in a pilot sort of stage just to see how well it does.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can you know source some quotes, you can start um publishing some blog posts, you can publish some research which is shared by a lot of the people that are part of it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're proud to be part of it.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's about the industry, not about the brand.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, it's branded because you've enabled that to happen.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then there could be an event off the back of that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: There could be some networking opportunity.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when we've done that, um, the results are like 30 times as much awareness and amplification and site traffic and or listens on podcasts or whatever it is compared to what they would normally get.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I think you can have a blueprint for okay, here's an alternative go-to-market strategy.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the one added bonus to this is it brings in your internal subject matter experts and exec leaders into the conversation because it's also about leveraging your internal experts and influencers.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've suddenly got some people that love to work with you as a brand, you've created something really nice and you've got a sense of community, you've got some topics, you've got ongoing conversations on social, and it's no, it's it's not too much of a step away from what they've currently done or previously done.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Anything further you'd suggest for people trying to influence internally to get a project like this through?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that is definitely one of the models that we've done quite a bit, uh, as what Tim has mentioned.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And other model that we do a lot within financial services, because obviously, as Tim mentioned, it's not about marketing advertising, right?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't really do that.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we do a lot of collaboration with brands, internal product teams.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's treating not just like a brand marketing, if you will, but work directly with the product, looking at how they are planning to position their product with a row out, um, and what what is the message that they have and what does the product look like and who are they trying to serve, for example.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually will give our input as to, you know, perhaps we can position in this way, or perhaps these are some of the um external publications that you can you can reach out to, or you know, perhaps this is how you should design it in your in your website to get the message out.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we help with those aspects of product as well.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that makes it more effective.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that also gives them, I would say, a fresh and neutral perspective coming from the outside.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that, you know, next time on it becomes like an ongoing engagement to help them expand their product work instead of like a one-time, oh, you know, we're going to help you amplify your events or a report and whatnot.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess that co-creation process um helps maybe some of these businesses get more comfortable, more trusting, more reassurance because of the kind of collaboration in that, as well as the kind of kicker, which would be that you'll be much more confident in endorsing it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's sort of a sort of two-way benefit.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's more consultative approach, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and I like that better than, oh, here's a topic, we would like for you to write about it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I was also thinking that for some of the uh slower movers, uh Tim, that maybe through through our litutica being able to sort of demonstrate sort of track record, the kind of companies you work with, there is also that reassurance of the handholding that you can provide through that process rather than, I mean, I imagine that if some of these companies were trying to do some of this on their own, it's very labor-intensive and time-consuming, you know, specialist expertise, uh, as well as you could potentially come across fake experts, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and there's there's an element of sort of um, I don't know whether that's that's a thing that you have to be wary of, but you know, how how you your role in in sort of shaping and leading a business through a successful program.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I th I think I think when people don't know how to get started, it's it's not it's not necessarily that it's complex.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just good to have someone to say, here are five example stages and here is what we see is the best practice, but you can then customize it.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a bit like um, I guess if you if you want to cook a recipe and you're not quite sure how to do it, and then you see that there's a there's just a a very easy five-step process.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can say, actually, I'm gonna do something different, but you've then got the confidence that like you can always like stick to the recipe if you if you wanted.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I feel like you've got a some window into my kitchen or something with that example.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's uh or maybe like I mean, I it's a long time since I think I've followed a recipe, but I always kind of uh I just kind of want the confidence to be able to know how I get from A to B.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think what you've said uh is is right to know what to look for in an influencer and to know that they've been doing it for other brands, then you can see their content and you can visualize what it would look like for your brand, then you feel comfortable.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you know, I was talking about financial services and and uh leveraging influential experts the other day, and one thing is internal trust.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what I would say is don't go on LinkedIn Lives like straight away with new influences because maybe some of the internal management you just don't feel comfortable with it yet.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a few ways in which you can really get around that.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: One is you know what Theo was saying, you can actually get influential experts to come and talk to you internally so that they get to know your background.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you've been in financial services for 20 years or 20.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you you you completely understand the industry and the layout, and you have their expertise, and you happen to be influential on social as well.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I I I really you know, I I really value your your opinion because because otherwise some people might think, oh, they're a consultant that I haven't heard of.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who are they?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why should they front our brand?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's one element.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the other element is you can record some really great influencer-generated content and then edit it so that you can, you know, it it's a non-risky environment.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can repurpose that content, um, including your subject matter experts, some of which might be influential, some of which might not be.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you can use that to also improve their influence.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not only influencer marketing, it's also what people are calling employee advocacy.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it could be just internal, great experts that want to have external impact.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then your exec leaders could do video interviews like one-to-one, you know, fireside chats or or anything that they can do, and they can also develop their social media influence as well.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it not only creates better content, but it can you can repurpose an hour uh uh inspiring interview into 20 pieces of of wonderful social content, which is gonna deliver benefit across the organization.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you can start definitely, even if you're the most risk-averse, okay, I'm not quite sure how to do this, because you know at the end of the day, it's not rocket science.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: You find the relevant people, you create some content, you've obviously got to work out how it's gonna work for both sides, and then if it's focused on the industry and they're more influential than the people that you've got internally or your brand's voice, it's gonna perform better.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really just how to sort of get to that stage.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Often people think it's a lot of hard work, but actually you could do this in maybe I think the uh one of the financial organizations that we worked with, uh, they invested uh 10 hours of their time uh to do a pilot.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and we helped them through a few stages, but in terms of the internal work of writing uh you know, writing a blog post, uh, that was you know two to three hours work.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: It would be the same effort that they did before.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: They just uh they they had some calls with influencers and and they sort of reach out to them.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that was maybe sort of a couple of hours work.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not um it's not this like hundred hours and you've got to be an expert in influencer marketing.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's really common sense once you know the people and you can connect them up to the topics.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, makes sense.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um I guess um in terms of the initial commitment, maybe we could just talk a little bit back to um rather than park it entirely, this this um um element of payment, which is clearly appropriate, but you know, in some respects, you know, going through being a very regulated industry and compliance has quite a lot of power um in terms of you know agreeing to a lot of the sort of tactics and strategies that marketers deploy.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: How do you see um how do you work with your clients to help um remove these type types of issues or hurdles or question marks over um you know the sort of the the necessary financial sort of uh aspect to it?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you get asked, Theo?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or have they worked it all out by the time that they got to you?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, it's always a tricky question.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a I have my way of weeding out if people just want stuff or if they actually genuinely want to work with you.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean the bottom line is this, right?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of what we're doing, I think I feel it more acutely now that you know we've started our company the past few years.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, I do have a mortgage to pay, I have bills to pay, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's my partner.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Working on things that resonate with our audience is one thing, and we do know what we're doing, I would like to think.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we do need to get compensated for our time and effort, right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: One way or another.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: It can be monetary or it can be something else.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think brands that are more sincere and working that out with people are more successful in a way that because they have a vested interest in it, rather than just, oh, you know, a drive-by, here you go, I'm doing something.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can I can can you do this for me because it's good for your brand?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It has to work both ways.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I was just thinking, you know, with the co-creation um point that we were making earlier, that there are plenty of different agencies or even consultancies like mine that you know that get paid for sort of helping in the creation of the content.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's you know, as you say, it's not a big leap from there, really.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, that's a better process, both kind of you know, working together on something that is sort of more impactful.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, and and I I I think you're completely right.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a couple of elements which play into this.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we would you know, we're we're trying to classify people as you know different kind of experts and influencers.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got categories such as uh professional influencer, which which means um to our clients that they are people that work uh independently and they're you know verified by us as professional influencers that are you know people that show up that do a great job.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and they um you know 90% of the time is on a pay-to-play uh basis because you know they have mortgages to pay, and this is what they do for a for full time and and and and they're worth it.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's other people who are industry experts that would never ever call themselves influencers and would never ever seek payment and would love to be involved in in some content creation.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that is an organic strategy.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And to find those people, you can create an event, you can create a network, community, you can add value to that, and you can get wonderful content creators.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you ask someone for something light touch, then obviously it's yeah, if it takes half an hour, it's different to if it takes you know four hours, they would have to see the value for them.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a different kind of proposition.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also new uh terms like content creators or creators, um, which are probably not too much in the financial services industry, but are much more in kind of B2B tech and B2C.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is gonna become more and more uh important.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's journalists, analysts, um, you know, asset managers, uh, and people that work for other brands, so or channel partners and and uh and all the sort of ecosystem.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it you you would only have to pay a certain type of influential expert.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think common sense prevails.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And in terms of the payments, uh, how you reconcile that internally, uh, yes, different organizations struggle with it.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Some organizations have gone way past it, like Theo was was saying, because they recognize that they are just paying for the the creation, they would have to pay for that some other means.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I think senior management do need to be educated on why they're being paid if they are, and the value that they can deliver.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point, Tim.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back to why you're seeking help, right?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: What is your intention and how do you define success?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of work that we do, it's not about clicking, it's not about just retweeting, because that's not what we do.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's about leading, taking in our experience, working in the space and working with different players in the ecosystem.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: How can we help you create something that resonates with your target audience?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's different type of work.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it it all depends on on the undertaking and and the intention.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so to the more enlightened brands and businesses, um, I wonder whether each of you could maybe just uh hold up uh an example of a of a business you think is doing a great job of this.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and ideally in the financial services industry, but um if there aren't too many to hold up, then um others.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: But hopefully that you've got a couple to hand.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe Tim, are you happy to go first?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got a few examples.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I wouldn't say that this is widespread throughout the whole organization, uh, but I uh but they're having success in terms of you know within a business unit or within a particular region.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we did some work with UBS um looking at a uh a research report on asset management or wealth management.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of pushing it out through their execs and all those of usual channels, they went on a uh an influential podcast and drove four times as many leads um from that particular piece of research.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that that is just a that's just a very simple uh change in strategy from we're gonna we're gonna talk to the whole world about what we've done.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of that, it's like, okay, where would most of our target audience be?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And let's just think about what's in it for the uh for the influencer, you know, where our target audience is, and then actually the brand drove much more success just with a particular very individual campaign.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's other brands like Weeble.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh we're working with uh Refinitive, so X Thompson Reuters um on some financial uh campaigns there.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's other brands like you know IBM or AT ⁇ T that do some you know financial industry you know content that that's working very, very, very well.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um another fintech uh organization that I can't name, but just you know, changing the way that they start publishing things and and creating more of an episodic content series around some of their thought leadership topics and then integrating influences uh in that as well.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not widespread, but there are brands doing some really good individual work, and I think that the the opportunity is to make it more programmatic during the year.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Theo, any brands caught your eye or businesses that you admire in this space?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot, but I would prefer not to name the names.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can uh play favors, but we do work with most of the big brands, and I I don't know if it's all just a brand per se, but also the people within it, right?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a really big brand and different teams operate completely differently as well.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's, I guess, is the my other thought that whether within these asset management companies they're thinking purposefully about some of their key individuals becoming that influencer expert themselves on some certain topics.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they are sort of becoming part of those communities themselves to be attached to certain sort of key attributes that they want you know them to be associated with and by dent of that that they're their businesses as well.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: You see people being increasingly thoughtful about both the push and the pull, Tim, are you seeing that?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean 100%.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's actually been the the big evolution that we've seen over the past couple of years.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if a subject matter expert within an asset management firm uh commented on what Theo was posting on uh on the investment management industry, or or you know, I'm not an expert in in finance uh management myself, so I don't know all this of um subtopic conversations, um, then you know if Theo found it interesting, she would respond.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Theo builds relationships within the community because she's got wonderful community and focuses on her themes and topics.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a brand marketer saying, Hey Theo, we'd like to work with you on some kind of like big campaign or event.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is just a normal conversation.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if you start developing uh your social media influence as a subject matter expert, this is just organic like co-creation of content that you can get it to that stage.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some people are very good at that, most people aren't.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think as a marketing team or a social media team, what you can do is invest in employee-generated content and influencer generated content or collaborations, and then you can actually bring the whole community, your internal and external experts, uh, into a content machine which is really just creating wonderful content for the industry and the target audience, but you're just that enabler and you're just diverting budget into it into making that happen to doing good um you know around the subtopics and and themes.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's an a massive part of it.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Theo spent a long time you know building up her audience.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're someone that is you know just at the start of that journey, you can't get to where Theo's got within a couple of weeks.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when you collaborate with influencers, then you do uh get access to their network if they're happy to work on that kind of content.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's I think it's absolutely integral, and there's so much expertise in asset managing, asset management companies, for example, but not necessarily the social media influence to go with it, that I think it's a it's a really, really good um link up.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Great point.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Theo, what do you do do you see people trying to encroach on your community?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the interesting thing, right?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really love your point, Tim, about community building.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, what I always say about social media is it's not there's a social part of it, right?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a community, is a digital community, especially more so in the last 19 months when a lot of us couldn't travel, myself included.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: The digital space, be it on Twitter or LinkedIn, is where you reach out to people, is where you exchange ideas, is where you build up and understand what it is that we need to do as an industry.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so for that, I think it's absolutely important, and it's something that I'm starting to see a little bit more, but still not enough, of brand employees actually participating in the online conversations.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you know, there's there's the the the regulatory aspect of it, which is you know, what can you say on social, what can you say on public?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we have had brands where everything that they post has to go through legal, every single social tweet, if you will.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes it very difficult for for brands to be part of an online conversation.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but other than that, absolutely, community is is crucial um because that's how you stay in touch with everyone, right?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's how we see future of work.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of talk about future of work as hybrid.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the future of building communities are also hybrid when not everyone can be in a physical conference to you know see speakers or see banners and and go visit a physical booth.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now you need to find different ways of reaching out and building different audience.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Love that.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm conscious of time and um maybe to uh close out our podcast.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: So if um if you have any thoughts in terms of kind of where next and how um sort of uh influence marketing is evolving uh further to your point, um or indeed any just final tips or tricks or thoughts that you have for our listeners uh thinking about how to get started um or how to kind of persuade people internally um or just deliver you know the best the best they can.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um why don't I come to you, Tim, and then give you the final word here?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the big evolution is is getting your subject matter experts and exec leaders as part of that thought leadership journey and you build that community, whether it's online, whether it's offline, in the the safe spaces that you can talk about.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that goes on to my tip, which is you know, find the topics and themes that you can talk about if if there's heavy regulation.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you if you think of the future of uh and whatever it is, or your topics that that that really gonna drive interest in your target audience, that you can create content around, and you know, there's an opportunity there, I would probably start there, and then you once you uh drive your audience to and it could be to register to an event or to your site or or you know or listen to your podcast or whatever the call to action is, then you can talk more about your brand or you can uh you can sell your products, for example.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of the advocacy, you map out four or five key themes and then build your ex in internal and external influential experts around those.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that's where I think you'll find the most interesting results, especially if it's industry focused, not not brand focused.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think I think the one thing I would definitely say is make sure that as would Tim say is a journey, right?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a one-time um, it's about interaction, it's about human interaction, it's about genuine interaction.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: So be authentic, treat it as a relationship because it is.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um we want to help see you being successful as much as you know you want the campaign to be successful.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and don't forget about the human.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you're not you're not a loud speaker, you're not just pushing messages out in the wild.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are humans on the other side listening to it, and there are humans who want to engage with you.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: That is such a great reminder to all of us.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, thank you both so much for your time today.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: I find it really thought provoking, really interesting.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I really appreciate you taking the time.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Twin.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.