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Sharkreach's Smith, Harrington, on Influencer Marketing (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Intermediate crew. I'm Charlie pelt That's a bloom Bird business flash.
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  Speaker 1: You're listening to taking stock with Katlee Hayes and Pimp
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  Speaker 1: and so now we want to go from Shark Tank
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  Speaker 1: to Shark Reach. Let me fill in the dots in between.
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  Speaker 1: We have two very interesting guests on the show today.
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  Speaker 1: Kevin Harrington has been a successful entrepreneur for over forty years.
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  Speaker 1: He's actually the inventor of the infomercial has seen on
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  Speaker 1: TV Pioneers launched over five hundred products, generating uh five
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  Speaker 1: billion dollars in sales worldwide. Uh. He was one of
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  Speaker 1: the original sharks on Shark Tank, so you've seen him
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  Speaker 1: many times on TV. And if you're fanatical about Shark Tank,
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  Speaker 1: like my family, as you watch the reruns too. Also
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  Speaker 1: want to bring in a person that he is partnering
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  Speaker 1: with now who is the CEO of this company that
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  Speaker 1: Kevin Harrington has joined. Steve Smith has also a long,
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  Speaker 1: long career as a successful entrepreneur and their new company
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  Speaker 1: that they're going to tell us about now is called
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  Speaker 1: Shark Reach. It's to reach millennial. So, gentlemen, long introduction,
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  Speaker 1: but I want to get right to what this is
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  Speaker 1: all about. So let me welcome you and thank you
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  Speaker 1: for Johnny Mean Studio. Great to be or Kathleen, thank
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  Speaker 1: you so, so Kevin Harrington, tell me what drew you
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  Speaker 1: to this company where you are now the chairman. You've
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  Speaker 1: got you know how to sell, you know how to market,
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  Speaker 1: so why join Shark Reach? So is it the essene
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  Speaker 1: and TV industry has had a little bit of a
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  Speaker 1: disruption because there's fewer people watching television nowadays, and so
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  Speaker 1: our business has moved into a digital means now. So
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  Speaker 1: we we do over half of our sales digitally and
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  Speaker 1: we still have lots of TV stuff happening, but but
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  Speaker 1: we use television to help build the brand, but we
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  Speaker 1: really use digital to test. We use influencers. And so
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  Speaker 1: as our industry is moved into all of the social
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  Speaker 1: networking and and the facebooks and the pinterest and the
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  Speaker 1: Instagrams and now Instagram is doing stories video. We take
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  Speaker 1: the ideas, we put them onto the social networks. This
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  Speaker 1: is the way of the future and using influencers to
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  Speaker 1: take products to the next level is a natural progression
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  Speaker 1: for us. Okay, So Steve Smith, you have just gotten
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  Speaker 1: this trick. Trick Sherman who brings a lot to the table.
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  Speaker 1: You have so many years in marketing and uh in
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  Speaker 1: media you were at to discover communications w w E
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  Speaker 1: World Wrestling entertainment that teaches you a whole lot of
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  Speaker 1: different things. Tell us about Shark Reach, How did you
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  Speaker 1: get started? What was the genesis of this? So obviously
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  Speaker 1: we have the shark in common, right, so yeah, shark
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  Speaker 1: creating Shark Tank. So it was it was sort of
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  Speaker 1: a natural genesis of things. The um the world you know,
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  Speaker 1: has changed. It's it's a really already changed in the
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  Speaker 1: way that audiences exist now in the millennial era, is
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  Speaker 1: is attached to what we call influencers, and influencers are
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  Speaker 1: really just people who have large followings across a broad
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  Speaker 1: selection of social networks. Sure, Kim Gardashian would be an
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  Speaker 1: obvious one, but you know, there's only so many Kim
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  Speaker 1: Kardashians in the world. And there's already a lot of
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  Speaker 1: doubts about Twitter and the model and how long it's
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  Speaker 1: gonna last. Right, many people's look and valure critical that
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  Speaker 1: the original uh founders didn't do an SSA could are
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  Speaker 1: are you staking a lot on something that is going
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  Speaker 1: to involve so quickly? Well I'll speak to that a
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  Speaker 1: little bit. So So Twitter, Yeah, Twitter is a challenge
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  Speaker 1: right at the hundred the short number of awards kind
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  Speaker 1: of all that aspect of it. And there are other
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  Speaker 1: uh like an Instagram or Snapchat that are certainly moving
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  Speaker 1: vastly quicker in terms of growth. So we're really platform
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  Speaker 1: agnostic in terms of our influence are offering. So we're
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  Speaker 1: we're really we have about one influencers, which basically anybody
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  Speaker 1: domestically who has more than fifty thou followers across any
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  Speaker 1: of the social works is within our system. So we
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  Speaker 1: were able to activate that talent, uh kept really for
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  Speaker 1: any brand and and that's the reach of that is
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  Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. Kevin, You've had such success already, is do
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  Speaker 1: you feel that too for your own future success, for
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  Speaker 1: the success of marketing? This is this is the train
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  Speaker 1: you have to jump on now, Yes, I really do,
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  Speaker 1: because I mean we're even used sing mommy bloggers and
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  Speaker 1: people in their homes that have uh, you know, ten thousand,
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  Speaker 1: twenty thousand followers, so you know, and that's the the
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  Speaker 1: advantage of a Shark reach. They have twenty one thousand
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  Speaker 1: access to twenty one influencers. We we can put a
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  Speaker 1: ton of them together in a campaign and actually have
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  Speaker 1: tremendous movement. In fact, you know, Steve can talk to
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  Speaker 1: some of the things that the company has done, but
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  Speaker 1: you know, engaging people to go watch movies and things
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  Speaker 1: like that have been you know, very powerful. Okay, so
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  Speaker 1: you just Steve, you just mentioned that fifty thousand followers
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  Speaker 1: is sort of the minimal threshold across to be considered
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  Speaker 1: an influencers. So besides that, Kevin, how do you pick
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  Speaker 1: your influencers? Uh? Do you? And how do you pay them? How? What?
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  Speaker 1: How does this relationship work? Several ways? Um? One is
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  Speaker 1: you know, on a on a on a per action basis. Um.
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  Speaker 1: You know, to put the message out to their crowd.
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  Speaker 1: It comes on if they're doing a video, how long
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  Speaker 1: the video might be, what they're doing. Sometimes that some
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  Speaker 1: of them will get a percentage of what might occur,
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  Speaker 1: a percentage of sales or something like that, but generally
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  Speaker 1: it's it's paid on an upfront basis. Okay. Uh, proprietary technology,
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  Speaker 1: I here that there's something. It's not just the fact
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  Speaker 1: that you guys are harnessing. Hey, let's get these influencers
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  Speaker 1: and let's use this as the the new wave of marketing.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe not so new, but how does the technology come in? Steve? So,
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  Speaker 1: technology is definitely a big part of our business that
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  Speaker 1: the way that we work with um we call them
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  Speaker 1: the talent ice with the influencers. They're all within a
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  Speaker 1: back end system that we use has a number of
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  Speaker 1: tools within it which do something called Shark rank Shark
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  Speaker 1: polls just three or four of them, but they basically
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  Speaker 1: allow us to work with For example, we work with
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  Speaker 1: Universal Pictures for the movie Straight Out of Compton, which
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  Speaker 1: was sort of famous for that at this point because
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  Speaker 1: it really took over the social networks for three weekends
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  Speaker 1: and rather than we became number one and something percent
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  Speaker 1: was a result of the social media. UM that was
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  Speaker 1: kind of the pulling. So within that context, we we
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  Speaker 1: take a movie like that who wants to reach a
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  Speaker 1: specific demographic, uh, and then we really source that within
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  Speaker 1: our system. It kind of tells us who the best
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  Speaker 1: fits are in that case, you know, hip hop sort
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  Speaker 1: of talent. And then we then it's kind of a
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  Speaker 1: white glove process of talking with the talent, matching them
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  Speaker 1: up correctly with the brand and kind of that process. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: and you've got some things also, you just partner with
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  Speaker 1: mastermind correct and Mastermind to explain to our listeners that
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  Speaker 1: why this is interesting and important. Take that one yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's a little bit more than a partnership. We we
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  Speaker 1: recently just acquired Mastermind. That was a couple of a
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  Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. We probably dropped that information out
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  Speaker 1: there in the in the world, but um so Mastermind
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  Speaker 1: Marketing is a digital creative agency and um what we're
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  Speaker 1: doing is we're really doing it quite a bit of
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  Speaker 1: growth through M and A. UM Influencer Marketing is kind
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  Speaker 1: of like our core sort of social media marketing tool set.
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  Speaker 1: But over the last few weeks we started announcing sort
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  Speaker 1: of like the stealth portion of the of the growth.
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  Speaker 1: And Mastermind Marketings acquisition was one some huge clients that
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  Speaker 1: they've had for its ask me to understand, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this is their pharmaceutical pole pre big deal. So Kevin
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  Speaker 1: tell us about Shark Reach Labs the project. So so
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  Speaker 1: we're taking we're able to take products. We have a product,
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  Speaker 1: for example, it's called I Grow Laser. It's a it's
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  Speaker 1: a hair growing product laser and um led lights and
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  Speaker 1: it and it grows hair right. And this has been
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  Speaker 1: now it's been selling on QVC for five and forty
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  Speaker 1: five dollars, is blowing very big numbers. But now we're
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  Speaker 1: able to go out and find influencers who can talk
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  Speaker 1: to their their friends and family and networks about their
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  Speaker 1: hair growing experiences. So we can target people that want
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  Speaker 1: to grow hair by getting influencers that can help that
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  Speaker 1: help get the word out about a product like this.
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  Speaker 1: Just surprise. I don't think anybody needs encouragement for wanting
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  Speaker 1: to grow hair and get at a certain point man
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  Speaker 1: or you know it's a it's a big deal. I
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  Speaker 1: guess The point is an influencer is presumably someone who
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  Speaker 1: isn't just got lots of followers, but has followers because
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  Speaker 1: they have some kind of credibility because I trust that influencer,
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  Speaker 1: not just say hey, I'm cute by this, but trust
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  Speaker 1: me correct and and so yes, they they and and
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  Speaker 1: they've been engaging with their their followers and their clients
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  Speaker 1: for for X number of months or years so they
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  Speaker 1: know what to expect and um and if they like
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  Speaker 1: a product, of course, you know it is there. Many
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  Speaker 1: of these people do like to try and make sure
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  Speaker 1: that they believe in it also and and validate the
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  Speaker 1: product themselves. Okay, so how one of our listeners, small
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  Speaker 1: business or an investor, how do they what is the
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  Speaker 1: intersection they might have with Shark Reach Steve. So, we
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  Speaker 1: generally work with the mid tier to large larger brands,
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  Speaker 1: but really it's across a product segment we can work with. Really,
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  Speaker 1: it's because like I said, followers, right, So there's a
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  Speaker 1: really it can go very broad and go very niche
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  Speaker 1: depending on what that brand or what that company you
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  Speaker 1: know is looking to do. There even can be like um,
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  Speaker 1: these kind of meetups that we do within owensers at
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  Speaker 1: regional level, which is kind of fun. I mean they're
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  Speaker 1: real people with real followings and it's kind of just
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  Speaker 1: a way to connect them to what the brands want
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  Speaker 1: to do in a really true organic way. Okay, Kevin,
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  Speaker 1: you are an influence there here. Now you're going to
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  Speaker 1: jump in with this digital millennial approach. Tell what what's
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  Speaker 1: the number one thing an influencer should know or what
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  Speaker 1: are you looking for? Well, what I look for is
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  Speaker 1: I look for a credible company with a great background
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  Speaker 1: or if it's a product, a great product that has
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  Speaker 1: a proof of concept and and the ability to reach
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  Speaker 1: the masses. So uh So, I think that's that's one
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  Speaker 1: of the advantages with with some of these influencers because
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  Speaker 1: they have you mentioned a Kardashian. They have such a
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  Speaker 1: mass following you you've got to have a mass product
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  Speaker 1: for somebody like that, because you can't. You can't go
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  Speaker 1: to a Kardashian on a hair growth product because it's
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  Speaker 1: it's too niche of a product. So because they'll help
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  Speaker 1: plenty of hair exactly. Well, thanks You guys have to
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  Speaker 1: come back when this is when you get your next
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  Speaker 1: big acquisition or your next big influencer. Thank you so
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  Speaker 1: very much to Kevin Harrington, he's the chairman and board
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  Speaker 1: member of Shark Reach. And Steve Smith, he's the CEO
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  Speaker 1: of Shark Reach. I'm Kathleen Hayes. This is Bloomberg