Latest / Field Notes: Creator-led Growth Podcast / Influencer Marketing Before vs. After 2020: Why the Old Playbook Stopped Working
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to Field Notes, the Operator's Playbook for Brand, Creator, and Growth. This is the influencer marketing podcast for people actually doing the work. Real strategies, real examples, and the parts the other shows leave out. speaker-1: Welcome back. This is gonna be interesting. We're having a day. Yes. Welcome back to Field Notes. What's our topic today, Sarah? speaker-0: Two field notes. We're talking about pre and post twenty twenty influencer marketing. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Because I don't think a lot of people, like a lot of people inside influencer marketing and brand marketing understand and growth marketing understand the absolute inflection point that was 2020, not only in our lives, but in the industry and in marketing playbooks. But it has to be said, it has to be stated because there are some, it's actually it's actually when you think about it. Huge differences. ⁓ and who knows if it's like cycles of every five years, because 2026, we're also seeing some very interesting shifts that go almost back to pre-2020. So very interesting little analysis we're going to be providing today. Where should we start? Do you want just like start with so pre-2020 was also like when influencer was a dirty ass word. Like no one wanted to be called an influencer. We didn't want to be called influencer marketers, like I was at Thrive Market from 2016, 17 to 2020 timing. And that was when my title was like on the I was like the business development team. Like it wasn't even influencer marketing, but it was ⁓ exclusively the influencer team. So Sarah, why don't you like obviously we have the part one and then part two of our personal intros, but I think grounding some context in what each of our experiences were pre-2020 will also kind of help level level the whoever's listening maybe to us for the very first time, but like let's get into pre twenty twenty. speaker-0: And I think I think well, I think part of us wanting to talk about pre-2020 is also in a weird way, at least for me, taking almost like accountability for how different it was to start a program at that time, like even more specifically, start a program. Yes, we had like the initial hardships of no one wanted to be called an influencer marketer. It wasn't really an actual dedicated person on a team a lot of times. Usually it was a social person or a PR person or the brand's friend, like All that fun stuff. And I think also too gifting sometimes was or wasn't considered influencer marketing. At the time, I mean, I started at Aloha Collection 2016, 2017 time frame too. And I was there through 2022. And it was crazy. Like I do not think I could have built the program that we built there if I were to start it in 2026. Like, end of story. So that's really like also why I wanted to come to this of There's so many of us that have been in the game for so long and I'm sure half of our listeners are in that bucket. But then the other half are people that are s starting their careers post twenty twenty. Yes. And are like, Why is this not working when I'm listening to all of these old playbooks and I'm trying it and it's not working? So or speaker-1: And I also think executives and leaders that were more operators, you know, were more in the weeds six years ago, who are now have chief titles or VP titles, who are so far removed from the actual day-to-day strategy, they have these preconceived notions about influencer marketing that are is so outdated. ⁓ so we're here not only to help level the playing field and be real realistic, but also to help those who are just starting an influence or feel assured and also kind of know what lessons they can learn from our experiences and th and how to apply them moving forward. Cause, you know, pre twenty twenty, the best way to kind of describe it was very peaceful. speaker-0: For the most part, yeah. There's a lot less reporting that you were accounted for. Yes. You could gift and I gosh, I think our gifting rate for creators posting was like eighty plus percent, which is unheard of now. speaker-1: Easily. And like with Thrive with Thrive Market, like we would send people obviously whatever they whatever food things, whatever they wanted to try, we would be contracting them for one-offs because one-offs also worked pre-2020. We would send them a ton of product. They would unbox it for free on stories, sometimes in feed, and then they would do their contracted deliverable. It's it felt way a bit more relational and a bit less transactional. ⁓ and I think due in part to the lack of talent managers also during that time period. Yeah. I love I nowadays my per my POV on talent managers has completely changed. I love me a talent manager. Especially if you're organized, we speak the same language and we can just flow, you make our lives a lot easier. ⁓ because pre-2020, we were also working a lot more directly with talent, which is to your point, why gifting was more successful, to my point, why the partnerships seemed more relational and enthusiastic because it wasn't just you know play to post it was a real partnership there was transparency but let's talk about the reporting component because I agree and I find that really interesting and also an observation that post 2020 things are just like a real cutthroat. ⁓ so what was like your experience in a lot less reporting? Like what do you mean by that? speaker-0: Yeah. I initially we didn't need a tool because we didn't as long as like the creator was posting, to be honest, that was a win. I was like, this is dope. We just sent product and we are getting creators posting. I wasn't even when we first started doing it, it was so much more out of an act of building our community as opposed to building impressions, building likes, build it like gathering more customers kind of thing. speaker-1: Number. Yeah. speaker-0: Yes, yeah. So it was very much built out of a community, which is also too, I think I think you can still be successful doing that now. ⁓ but that's really like the root of how we started everything. So then it started being like, ⁓ okay, we have a lot of flight attendants, like we're co-founded by a flight attendant. So that makes sense. Let's have like a persona of a flight attendant, let's gift a ton of flight attendants. ⁓ my gosh, the flight attendants that have more of an an Instagram following are performing a little bit better. Let's gift more of those. And then it was like, okay. We have a ton of surfers that use our bags for changing, like pre and post beach. The ones with more followers are doing better. Like it was it feels so like elementary looking back, but it really grew out of really just wanting to feed our community and especially our community in Hawaii and California. And then it just kind of like grew into, ⁓ this could actually like be a real channel. And then when I asked for a tool, because I think at the point we're at 70-ish creators. That's when I was like, okay, I I kind of like need more of a system to start organizing what's going on, who I'm gifting to, what prints they already have, all of all that fun stuff. And that's when I discovered tools where it was also like, ⁓ I could give them a discount code and I could start tracking like revenue associated with this person. And that was when it was also really easy. Our algorithms weren't all like suppressed against the like use my code Lily10 for 10% off. speaker-1: Chronological, what a concept. speaker-0: Yes, yeah, yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. I mean I s and it also felt too, you know, because I think our our ways into influencer were were very different. Like I was immediately flop dropped into a team that was like, here's your CPA target. And that was like a new concept. No one was doing it at the time. Yeah. ⁓ but it also felt like our influencer CPA goal as a team was more collective. It was more it was less team based and more organizational. It was like we are all collectively growth. Paid media, whitelisting, influencer content, we are all contributing to this one overarching goal. Obviously, on a like a per individual influencer level, if they hit our CPA target, we would rebook them. but it also felt less like channels competing with each other. Which, like now, especially at with Superbloom and on the agency side, you know, seeing the comp the intercompetition between teams and even feeling it at seed. So I also s joined seed in 2020 in this and I was feeling it firsthand, the shifts that were happening, both internal at seed and then in the influencer industry. And we'll obviously dive more into post-2020, but pre-20 funny twenty funny. speaker-0: It's not more. speaker-1: It was not funny. Nothing about 2020 was funny. ⁓ it was more collective. It was more like let's achieve this together and let's share our learnings versus let's like keep our learnings to ourselves and out and beat the CRM team and beat the SMS team and beat paid media. ⁓ that also could have just been it could have j that could also have been a fit not a thing at other companies. And I was just very blessed to have been at Thrive. ⁓ But from other people that I've met, you included, it's like, no, it did. It was like it w lot a lot less reporting was necessary. Attribution wasn't the biggest topic of conversation for growth teams. It was yeah, how do we build a member member base or a subscription community that goes hard for us? speaker-0: Yeah. What a and then the elephant in the room too of twenty twenty was that everyone started shopping online. And I think that's also what just like put everything into hyper drive of like, okay, we're not seeing as much movement in stores or whatever it is, everything is really uncertain, everyone's online. So how can we, you know, use this to a benefit? And then I know you and I have talked about too, how a lot of brands skyrocketed during that moment and that's going to be, you know, we can't do that again without another global pandemic. Please don't let that happen. ⁓ but and as another part of that, a lot of people are home and creative businesses and now there's a shitload of competition for everybody. speaker-1: Yes. ⁓ my God. Well, I mean, I feel like because we're living in post twenty twenty, there's so much more that we that like we're gonna talk about. But on that competitive side, a huge thing that was also pre twenty twenty was commission based partnerships were way more common. Yes. And creators and their managers were way more open to it because there wasn't eight They weren't getting spammed, being invited to TikTok shop programs and affiliate programs, like the drip series that I have been accidentally added to in my personal email make me wanna cry. You know, like that was not a thing. speaker-0: Can I another elephant in the room I think is I think that's also AI. AI and workflows and like this mass outreach to creators where brands are going out and they're sending five hundred, a thousand emails at a time. That is also wh why it's so much more difficult. speaker-1: I will always say this, but just because it's more efficient doesn't make it excellent. And just because you can't automate it doesn't mean you should. Yeah. I hear yeah. ⁓ yeah, it it so so like to to what we're talking about, it's just like the the actual conversations, the negotiations were more flexible, they were more mutual, they were a little and they were commission driven because the competition wasn't there. ⁓ obviously like You always led with, hey, this is what we want to pay you on a commission basis. And then maybe it ended in on a flat fee basis, but it was also less expensive to be successful. ⁓ So much. You know, 'cause it was all like, let me teach you how to be a good influencer to our brand. And that those lessons were very valuable to that influencer. ⁓ and that's a value that We carry through in our day-to-day at Superbloom. Like we're all if we're lowballing the hell out of you, we're gonna apologize, but then we're gonna explain where we're coming from. And nine times out of ten, there's so much respect, mutual respect that is established in that dynamic that it feels pre-2020, you know? And it's just like be pleasant as hell to work with. And I think that was just how it felt in influencer marketing in pre-2020. But let's shift left. speaker-0: ⁓ I was gonna ask what what do you think is like the biggest thing looking back around 2020 era, especially cause so much happened, just even in that year 2020, 2021? What do you think is something that you learned during that that you could still apply in twenty twenty-six? speaker-1: Well, you know, it's like as much as the industry has changed, the most effective skills have not in my entire time doing this. And it literally all comes back to being relationship first and being data first and balancing and marrying the two of those perspectives. ⁓ because I think people that are very performance and data get such a bad rap for just being like bros. And I'm the browser. I'm like pretty broy. If you know me, like you know I'm pretty broy. ⁓ but I'm also weird as hell. ⁓ and that's it, like, and it it just is a matter of like showing up and being both. It's like I'm gonna anchor all of my negotiations, my decisions, and my rationale and data, but I'm also gonna be so for real and so kind to you. And that that is a skill that has not changed pre-2020 or post-2020. ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: But even sometimes to this day, the thing is is like having that skill set was a lot easier pre-2020. It's a lot harder post 2020 because people have just gotten nastier and greedier. On both sides. On the brand side and the talent side. So I think let's let's get into post-2020 because those are the these are the days. Twenty twenty itself was wild. ⁓ Cause I also was there half the year at Thrive Market. So seeing online grocery blow up. And then I was crazy and wanted to leave a very stable, very secure job to start something new. That's when Seed hired me. ⁓ seed was successful, obviously, for a lot of reasons. I would be remiss if I didn't we were growing during a time when health and immunity were on people's minds. and I think the brand and the product being so clinically studied, clinically tested, scientifically backed, in full of integrity, it was it was a safe thing to purchase. It was it's an incredible product. So, but the time of the year, what was happening globally, nationally, like that, people were becoming were more skeptical about science. They were asking questions about supplements, you know, they were taking a a healthy dose of skepticism along with. And I think that helped, I think that's why Seed really stood out. and also a huge reason why we were able to scale so quickly. And so obviously, like our playbook was incredible. ⁓ I think if you don't acknowledge what's going on in the world and how that's affecting your growth, you're delulu. Like you're literally delusional. You have to, you have to like open your eyes and look around and see, okay. What's happening in the world right now and how is that affecting performance? Like for you, how did what happened in you know 2020, 2021, like peak COVID, how did that influence your job? It highly influenced mine. And it highly influenced influencer marketing. But like enough about me and seed. Like what happened? speaker-0: I was I was at a travel bag company. Yeah. So so it was actually very, very conflicting. a travel bag company that was rooted in a state that also could not handle tourism coming in when tourism was also Hawaii becoming like almost a nuisance, yeah, to Hawaii. So that was also like to your point, like you it's so ⁓ frustrating to There's a potential that you work at a brand at some point that like doesn't want to acknowledge what's going on in the world and how that affects your day-to-day life or your business. ⁓ and it was really hard for us to decide because that was also when everyone was like, speak up, speak up, speak up, because so much was happening, but you also are like behind a brand doing all the things. So really, I guess this could be looked at as a lesson that we learned that we took through, like continuing after COVID, was we were listening to our customers. At the end of the day, we had at the time, I think we were approaching, you know, 150,000 followers. And I liken our ⁓ community, which I think I was a part of building, I guess, because we were at about 1,500 people on our Instagram when I started. was they're Disney adults, they are insanely excited about all of our drops, all of the things. It was every single thing I would post a suitcase full of 10 bags. One of them would be sold out and I would get flooded with DMs saying, why would you post this when this bag is sold out? Blah, blah, blah. I've waiting for bag. Blah blah blah. and we realized, okay, you know, we're not, we're still a travel bag company. We have a lot of other uses for it. Let's start tapping in on the other uses. And through that, we started listening to a lot of our customers and our followers who were nurses and on the front line and saying, like, hey, this bag is perfect for me to take to work because I can wipe it down with a Clorox wipe. And I don't have to use the paper bags that they're giving out. ⁓ this is incredible. And so then we like totally full-fledged moved our business into like, okay, let's support the front lines, let's do all these things, let's donate a ton of product, let's, you know, do campaigns with this, let's have people we did we set up all these systems where you could nominate a healthcare professional, you could nominate a teacher, you could nominate all these different people to receive ⁓ bags. Then we did big sixty percent off for like different categories, and that really launched our business into the next Well, dimension, to be honest. So really from that it was speaker-1: By listening to your customers and by like also acknowledging what was going on in the world rather than ignoring ⁓ speaker-0: Exactly. speaker-1: So wow. Yeah, I mean it changed and I also think ⁓ I mean 2020 changed everything for everyone. ⁓ and I don't know, it's so I sometimes get asked this question too, like, how what would influence the marketing look like if 2020 hadn't happened? And I'm like, well, I don't know because that didn't happen. So it we were bound to be here anyway. Yeah. But I think going to your point, ⁓ a little bit earlier when you were like, everybody's switch to D to C. No one wanted to go in a store. No one was launching retail. Like you were if going to the grocery store, maybe like once a week, unless you were like me and you were literally scared to leave your house for months on end. Yeah. ev everything went to D to C. Everything was like e commerce focused. Now again, I'm a little spoiled or lucky in the sense that like I've always been in D to C and e commerce. ⁓ so it's but it that aided in competition. And competition is a huge thing that we wanted to that a huge thing that we wanted to talk about post-2020 and especially what we're feeling now more than ever. But it's not it's not just competitive creator wise, but also brand wise, because so many brands popped up or ramped up in 2020. ⁓ everyone was inside and online and tw and TikTok launched. Obviously people were still doing dances. Like it wasn't It wasn't like a product pushing frenzy like it kind of is now. but let's talk about like the competitive nature that the the like the competition that almost was infused into our industry post twenty twenty. speaker-0: Yeah, I feel like there was this false sense of ⁓ well, if I create a product and a brand, people will use it and influencers will post about it. And that is crazy. Like that I came into the tech world of influencer marketing where I started speaking with hundreds of brands a year in twenty twenty two. And the amount of brands that I saw where I was like, influencers won't post about your shitty product at the end of the day. Like And so yeah, there was a lot of them. And I think that was like also like kind of a cleansing too of like, okay, if influencer and digital marketing is not going to save a bad brand at this point because there's so much competition. ⁓ and then now, I mean, I think we're kind of at the point where the strong have survived, but there's also still so much more than there was pre because people had different funding, people had time, all those different things. So yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. It it's it totally different. and I think competition from my eyes is like being i at one brand. ⁓ I we didn't really experience it at seed. 'Cause I will I will say like twenty twenty, I was there for two and a half years. So I quit in June of twenty twenty three. So I was literally there for on the nose exactly two and a half years. Just maybe just shy, just over I don't know, math. ⁓ and Because we were sp spending two million dollars a month by the time that I left, like our program was very resilient to test partners that would stop performing well. ⁓ like if someone tanked, we wouldn't like we all we obviously knew that that person tanked, but we also had a lot of money that was six that of partners that were converting. So it didn't completely affect our CPA. It was a very rude awakening launching Superbloom. And with those first few brands that we had, we sucked ass because I thought literally, we thought that everyone would have the same success at Seed. And I did not realize how unique Seed's program really was and how protected we were from for a lot of reasons. The brand by yeah the brand in and of itself being sci me science having scientific integrity and clinical sty whatever, like all the things I mentioned before. Our playbook obviously was really strong when it scaled during a very opportunistic time, 2021, 2022. Like we were crushing it. ⁓ we were also a brand that was very early in adopting rebook and long term partnerships because that was something that I clocked very early on, is that pre twenty twenty you could do like we like I mentioned earlier, it's like you could crush it on a one off post pre twenty twenty. Post 2020, what I started to observe is like these one-offs are you like you need a compounding effect within your influencer program. And so within six months of our of our program having launched, like we already had a 50-50 split between test and renewal partners because I knew that that was gonna be important for our scale, and it was probably the number one factor as to why our program was so successful year over year. But then I started in SuperM and I was like, ⁓ these brands don't have budgets to Book long-term partnerships. They're all doing one offs. ⁓ my God, one-offs are not working well anymore. Like, and things partners are just like, okay, wait, this brand has like can't afford a five thousand dollar partner on an Instagram story like Seed could. Like it was a total, I mean, it was a rude awakening and it was a slap in the face. I was like, ⁓ wow. It was, it was honestly like walking into a different industry. ⁓ in twenty twenty three. And I think that was a huge shift for me personally, but I also started to see how competitive it was, how competitive it was out there. Yeah. ⁓ in and how expensive influencers were and how how much of a negative impact those expensive influencers could have on a brand. Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: It was right. That was right. speaker-1: Because like, you know, a lot of creators are steering away from commission based income to opting for flat fees. They all wanted predictable income. They the talent managers can't predict commission, so they can't take the 20%. So now all of that kind of brings us to 2026. Which to me, what's really interesting is that, you know, no one's doing commission anymore. I mean, maybe some, but even the smaller creators are now UGC creators, right? And everybody's got a manager. And the one cycle that I am starting to see though is this like reessurgence of the OG formats. So like newsletters. Because you and I worked with a lot of bloggers back in the day and then nobody started and then everybody stopped blogging. ⁓ now Substack, newsletters back, YouTube long form, everybody's launching. I think A lot of people launched YouTube channels when they were worried TikTok was going away. ⁓ but a lot of people have stuck have stuck with it. And to me, YouTube and newsletters are like OG formats for influencers. So while the competitive nature is not changing, it's getting worse. I think the formats are going back to what us pre-2020 influencer marketers really love. speaker-0: Yeah, and I think it's proven too which creators want to continue to invest in themselves as creators. We saw a lot, I think around the twenty twenty two to twenty twenty, like four, five, even a lot of people quitting their jobs to become influencers because they could just post on TikTok over and over and over again. And now we've seen a lot of those people actually go back to work. And the people that are really investing are like starting the Substack. They have a really great broadcast channel. They started YouTube and they're consecutive about all of it. And those are also the creators that you want to be investing in right now because they feel good about the prices that they can put out into the world. And then you can feel good, hopefully, as a brand when you receive them. speaker-1: No. No, totally. I I think that a lot of the creators that weren't think that were so that were overly focused on TikTok during twenty twenty that weren't thinking about channel diversification or didn't have the right person supporting them in their growth and development, to your point, they're no longer they're sometimes not even influencers anymore. You know, they've taken a step back. Also, influencer marketing is not for everyone. It's okay if you're an influencer for two years and then you're like, screw this. I I know of one influencer who I miss deeply. Who is no longer an influencer and she's a private account on Instagram. And I'm like, girl, I miss you. But like, yeah, take a step back. speaker-0: I also still like a lot of creators that do it part time. That's okay too. Yeah. I buy a lot of product off those people. speaker-1: ⁓ Yeah. It's literally, and I also think a huge shift is like pre-2020, it was a lot, it was a it was a side hustle for most people. So that's why they were just like really chill about it. Every but so many people, I would say 98% of the influencers that we work with at Superbloom are doing it full time. ⁓ so it's a real job. And obviously now influencer marketing is called the creator economy. Like We're not we're not afraid of the word influencer. It's evolved to be creator because that there's just a little bit there's more legitimacy to it, which I think we always knew it was legitimate, but the industry and marketing operators in general are picking up on that, which I think is just it's exciting. All right. Well, that's it for this topic. ⁓ questions, comments, concerns, feedback, you let us know. What was it like for you, pre twenty twenty and post twenty twenty? What what do we think is happening next? That's a whole other episode. speaker-0: We'll get there. speaker-1: Huh, we'll get there. Okay, bye.