S15 E2: The Right Way to Work With Influencers

Summary

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Limited Supply S15 E2: The Right Way to Work With Influencers

Host: Nik Sharma
Guest: Ben Soffer
Date: January 14, 2026

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Overview

This episode of Limited Supply delves deep into the world of influencer and creator partnerships in DTC (direct-to-consumer) brands. Nik Sharma and guest Ben Soffer (entrepreneur, creator, and co-founder of Spritz Society) dissect the realities of working with influencers—what works, what doesn’t, and how brands can leverage authenticity while avoiding cliché, inauthentic approaches that often plague the industry. Together, they share tactical advice, industry war stories, and sharp takes on influencer marketing, gifting strategies, and community-building.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Brands Get Wrong About Influencer Marketing

• Ben highlights the false belief that just getting "nice PR" or building reach is enough—emphasizing that authenticity is the real value influencers bring.
  • “You can always buy awareness, you can’t buy authenticity.” – Ben (06:52)
• Many traditional brands lack community savvy; instead, creators unintentionally build “cult-like” communities that brands want to tap into.

2. The Value of Authenticity Over Scale

• Using creators isn’t always about reach or awareness. The holy grail is when an influencer genuinely loves your product and their endorsement is real.
• True success comes from deep, long-term, authentic relationships, not shallow one-off transactions.
  • “If you go out and you work with an influencer that’s never spoken about the fears of toxicity in the home… no amount of time will convince the audience this is real. It has to be real.” – Ben (09:33)
• Macro-level campaigns with the wrong (inauthentic) influencer are less valuable than a small group of genuinely invested creators.

3. Gifting Gone Right vs. Gifting Gone Wrong

• Most brands’ approach of “sending free stuff” is misguided and often annoys creators.
• Gifting should be targeted, personal, and delivered with empathy and genuine connection.
  • “Gifting gone wrong can actually completely turn somebody off to the brand forever. Gifting done right, without any expectations… that’s the way.” – Ben (12:45)
• Lean on PR relationships that know the influencers; referrals or gifts from trusted contacts cut through the noise.
  • Dave Grutman’s investment strategy is cited: gifting through an authentic, personal network (14:00).

4. Building & Maintaining Community

• Long-term partnerships and community engagement matter more than periodic influencer campaigns.
• Spritz Society’s initial growth came from genuine connections with a millennial community, evolving through collaborations but eventually re-focusing on the core brand.
  • “We lost the core brand… it’s not an influencer collab brand. What is Spritz Society? … It brought us back to our nucleus.” – Ben (18:08)
• Launching new products eventually requires broader appeal and shelf presence, not just influencer cool factor.

5. Micro, Macro, and the Cult of the Middle Influencer

• The right influencer size depends on the goal and the brand’s stage.
  • Early DTC (e.g., Swishables): Mass gifting to test and discover genuine advocates.
  • Growth phase (e.g., Spritz Society): Micro-influencers for content production; attach macros authentically.
  • Cult influencers (mid-size but highly engaged) are prime for investment before they blow up.
  • “All of it’s just about being educated and making the right choice. But there are different ways that you can use influencers up and down the spectrum.” – Ben (25:53)

6. Content Creation: Internal vs. External

• Some brands bring on full-time internal creators, but only those already native to the platforms truly succeed.
  • “Anybody you’re hiring to create content for social… that doesn’t have a public platform, I don’t believe you understand the platforms.” – Ben (29:18)
• A creator with hands-on, viral experience is far more valuable than process-driven social media managers.

7. Tactical Rapid Fire Advice

• Biggest Brand Mistake: Gifting that feels transactional or disrespectful of the creator’s business (30:58)
• Most Overrated Metric: Likes and comments; Ben values “saves and sends” as true indicators of impact (31:45)
  • “If you saved my post… I know you plan on watching that again and making it.” – Ben (31:49)
• Must-Negotiate in Contracts:
  • For creators: Partial, upfront payment (protect yourself from slow or deadbeat brands)
  • For brands: Content usage licenses can be a waste unless you know you’ll leverage them; renegotiate usage as needed (34:14)
  • “No creator in the world is going to deny… if you want to pay me this much more… Of course, I’m going to say yes.” – Ben (35:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the dangers of mass gifting:
  • “You don’t want to receive endless amounts of something that you don’t want or care about… it actually becomes really, really annoying.” – Ben (11:35)
• On influencer authenticity:
  • “It's not just about more creators. It's about however you can make it real.” – Ben (07:21)
• On the influencer platform search game:
  • “The middle 100,000-follower person who has a cult following… you use them now and eventually they’ll be that huge person.” – Ben (25:11)
• On what’s truly valuable in content metrics:
  • “All I care about is saves and sends. Likes and comments don't tell the story.” – Ben (31:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:49 – Main topic intro: Creators as content, distribution, market research, and sales tools
• 05:28 – Ben on authenticity and why brands struggle to capture it
• 09:33 – Dangers of inauthentic influencer partnerships
• 11:35 – The pitfalls of mass gifting and what creators really want
• 14:00 – The value of PR relationships and personal network gifting
• 18:08 – Spritz Society’s journey: from influencer collabs back to core identity
• 21:55 – Playbooks for Swishables (mass gifting) vs. Spritz Society (content + credibility)
• 25:11 – Why mid-tier ("cult") influencers are the sweet spot
• 29:18 – Why every social hire should have a public platform
• 30:58 – Rapid fire: The biggest mistakes brands make with creators
• 31:45 – The only metrics that matter
• 32:19–35:14 – Negotiating payment and content usage in contracts

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Tone & Style

Nik and Ben maintain a candid, fast-paced, no-BS tone throughout, balancing sharp tactical insights with honest industry anecdotes. Their focus is always on practical lessons and "what actually works" for DTC founders—cutting through industry “hot air” and platitudes.

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Key Takeaway

The right way to work with influencers centers on cultivating authentic, mutually beneficial relationships—whether that’s through careful gifting, building long-term partnerships, or engaging micro/macro creators, success depends on genuine fit and respect for the creator’s craft. Behind every effective influencer campaign is deep homework, empathy, and a willingness to put in the work for real community, not just viral reach.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e commerce, digital marketing and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nick Co Email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics and the insights. All so you can unlock your next hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode. Big screen ads without big screen headaches. Roku Ads Manager is a self service CTV platform that helps advertisers drive outcomes across the funnel. Start today at advertising.roku.com Limited Supply. Ben, thank you for being here. Thank you for jumping on Limited Supply. I love listening to your podcast, so it's fun to have you here.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you. I mean we did just have the Mr. Beast. I don't know if you've heard of him, but that was pretty crazy. It's there, there are only a couple of those guests. For those that don't know, I host a podcast called Good Guys with my dear friend Josh Peck. And Josh, because he is, he's a different level of a celebrity, he's able to just like pull these guests and when he texts me, he's like, we got Mr. Beast. I'm like, we got, we got the Mr. Beast. With 450 million YouTube subscribers, anything he touches goes to the moon. We got that Mr. Beast. And I listened to him on Diary of a CEO and that's where, I don't know if you heard that interview. That's where I learned a deep appreciation for Mr. Beast, the entrepreneur and thought of him so much less as just a creator. But the way that he studies the platforms, which is nothing that I've ever done, I literally cook and throw up what I think looks good or I don't study. Why did a video flop? Why did a video do well like Mr. Beast is? There's a reason he has 450 million subs. It's because he's a. He's a beast. No pun intended. But yeah, the podcast is fun.

[A]

What else is cool about the Mr. Beast world is how, how much of an audience he has built internationally. Like non native speaking. I forget the stat, but he said in some interview that like, you know, only a small subset of the world speaks English and, and so by not doing international content, you're just Eliminating that entire audience potential.

[B]

Yeah, it depends on what your goals are. Like, if you are an entrepreneur and your goal is to grow your platform and sell something, it doesn't really help unless you're looking to do what he does, which is, I guess, launch, well, one YouTube, of course you make ad revenue, but then you have beast games where anybody can stream. But ultimately he started talking about how with Feastables, Feastables cannot be sold into every country that he reaches. It cannot be bought direct to consumer. With his 450 million subs, like, he's primarily focused, it would seem right now on the United States and for me, a significantly smaller creator. I don't need like the idea of having 450 million subs and reaching that amount of people on an international level would not in any way, shape or form advance what I'm trying to do. Does that make sense? Like, I heard we Both worked for VaynerMedia. I heard Gary say this a long time ago, that if you. Some people are very focused on growth, others sort of take a look at what they have. And it's like, I have one and a half million followers. If I could convert 10% of them to become die hard subscribers of a brand, I won. I don't need more subscribers. I don't need to have 1 in 10 people in Latvia know my name and face. So it's amazing what he's built. It's just, it's like, it's so a totally another level. Sometimes I don't even know why he does it. Like, what do you do with that? Like, I don't. You know what I mean? Like, what do you do with that?

[A]

Yeah, I think it's. For them, the end game is probably outside of like launching some of their own stuff, probably the international level of brand deals that they can go and do, or, you know, the ability to create one video, dub it into different languages and each region has its own, you know, like national sponsor maybe. That would be my guess.

[B]

It's too big for me to even think about. He has, he told me he has 600 employees and that's where my brain broke. It's like, oh, and he spends $5 million per YouTube video. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that makes sense. That makes sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now all of this makes sense.

[A]

So I feel like creators. Good segue into today. Creators can be used as like a content machine, like supplying the content, whether it's creating the content. They could be used as distribution, you know, reach and trust. They could be used as Market research like Sephora does this a lot where they set up these every six month meetings with creators to find out what's their audience asking about or talking about. And then also as like sales accelerants either through social proof and driving sales. But in terms of how you have seen the evolution of creators, is there one you would say is bigger than another before we dive into each one?

[B]

Like what type of. I think that using creators for authenticity is the holy grail. Like that's the best place which is increasingly harder and harder now. But I think that using influencers for credibility in their whether it's micro or macro networks is something that brands struggle with every single day. Like every with spritz society. We talked to some of the biggest brands in the world. We did a collaboration with Kraft Heinz and Clausen for example and we launched that pickle spritz. And a brand that's owned by Kraft Heinz doesn't know the first thing about community. And they'll tell you that first and foremost it's creators that have typically unintentionally built these cult like communities that brands are dying to get a piece of. Because if you come in and you are the brand with a brand voice, it's very, very rare that you're able to crack community without it. I think one prime example of that is Chipotle was really able to do that where they were able to somehow, I don't know how create a community around a brand without somebody sort of speaking for it. Now unfortunately I think they're having some product problems. But at its height when the product was great and the community was great and the social was firing, all of a sudden they had that perfect storm which is what created such a viral brand. But I think that brands being able to borrow the equity of authenticity for creators is probably the. If you can do it, it's the number one thing you can always buy awareness, you know, you can't buy authenticity, I guess.

[A]

How do you think about like those. I think a lot of people would hear that and think oh that means we need to work with more creators. But it sounds a little bit different because that would just be buying that reach. Right? Are you saying these are more longer term partnerships or like deeper partnerships than just.

[B]

I think it's. However you can make it real. If you know that X influencer is a fan of your products and they have spoken about it authentically for the last three years and they use it and there is no one that will question if it's real, then you can go and buy a post from them. But typically that like if you can do that and you have a celebrity or an influencer that has a track record of that, you can do that. Otherwise you probably need to fake it. And the way that you would fake it would be okay. We're going to start by seeding to them, right? We're going to send them free product. We're going to hope that they throw it on their story. We're going to hope that they just use it. We're going to follow up with them and see if they've used it, became fans of it. I'm going to buy an ad read on their podcast, I'm going to buy a story post. I'm going to start to make them feel like I'm a long term sponsor. It would be great if you could come out with just a year long deal, but I wouldn't even do that until I found out that the person really truly loved and consumed and used. My brand immediately goes towards consumer products that you can ingest. But it could be like with, with what you've done with Jolie, it could be a person who actually cares about cleanliness when it comes to their home shower. Like if you go out and you work with an influencer that's never spoken about the fears of toxicity in the home and all of a sudden you buy a year's worth of ads with somebody that it's no, no amount of time will convince the audience that this is real. It has to be real. So it's not just about. I think that this is where brands get it wrong. Like they all love their creator IQs and whatever the platform is at the moment, that was probably the platform six or seven years ago. Whatever the platform is now where brands are paying to have access to talent, they're looking at audience reach, they're looking at engagement rates, they're looking at location, they think that they're looking at interests. But in reality, I actually think that you have to follow these people to really understand what they're about, what is real, what is not. You listen to my podcast, so you would be, and we're dear friends, but you would be the perfect person to say, I actually think this would be perfect for Ben. Because you know Ben and you know what would work? You know that if you asked me to promote Jolie Shower Heads, it probably, it probably wouldn't work because that's just not, that's just not authentic to me. But if you had a new fucking supplement that you were trying to. I can Authentically Talk about trying a supplement. And I will be totally honest with you. If, if I liked it, if I didn't like it, if I had adverse effects because I talk about that all the time, or if it was in GLP1 because I've lost 60 pounds on Zepbound, like great robot weight watchers, this new pill, whatever it may be like things that are authentic or any food brand because I cook so much, but if you gave me something completely out of left field, you know that I'm Jewish and I don't eat pork. If you asked me to promote the bacon, egg and cheese at McDonald's, that probably wouldn't do well. And it's just, you don't, you're not able to know that unless you follow the person.

[A]

Yeah, I feel like a lot of the, like the influencer, okay. In the direct consumer, even the wellness world, a lot of the influencers get, they do these kind of not do, but like they have these long term relationships you see play out with these brands. And I think it's because to your point, a lot of these relationships start by sending product and they're relatively like low barrier to entry for these brands that just got funding. They're not paying for these posts up front. And so they are working on building a relationship over time. But with the larger creators, like somebody like yourself, it might be harder to do that because you have a floor to what you will accept in order to create content, but they could still start by sending you product. It's probably just like the bigger the creator is, it's probably a little harder to start that relationship unless you maybe have a way in. But I also think that is like the advantage.

[B]

Have it be a good product though, and have it be a value add to me and have it be something that you think I'd like. Creators, influencers, celebrities, whatever they are, whatever they call themselves. Just like you wouldn't want to receive endless amounts of something that you don't want or care about. Like the gifting space has become. And people hear this and they, they think like, oh, like it's, it's such a privilege to receive free stuff. It's like it actually becomes really, really, really, really annoying. Like when you keep getting gifted by a brand where you don't like their products, you don't have room for what they just sent you. I live in an apartment and I had a, there was a time where body armor and I love body armor. This is an example of a brand that I love was sending me cases and cases and cases of body armor. I don't have a garage. I barely. It's just like, I don't know if you know that I live in Manhattan or if you think that I live in Iowa. Like, I don't. I don't know where you expected me to store this stuff, but so I bring that up because gift something that somebody will be excited to receive. It's called gifting for a reason. It's not shilling free product. I can go to Costco and I can try a sample of something. Give me something that will be a value add to me. Make it personalized to me. Write me a nice note because you are a fan of mine. Create an emotional attachment. Don't just print something out. Spray and pray and hope that I post about your chocolate company because I don't owe you anything and you haven't made me feel like I owe you anything. So gifting gone wrong can actually completely turn somebody off to the brand forever. Gifting gone right or done right without any expectations. Like, don't write in a note, hey, I hope you post at this. Why would I do that? I don't know you. I don't know you.

[A]

Right?

[B]

It would be like a. It would be like a complete stranger, which is also like a number one turn off. I'll meet somebody and they'll say, hey, can you promote this for me? And it's like, no, no. Why would I do that? I don't know you like so versus if you text me and said, hey, I'm working with this brand and it would mean a lot to me if we could gift you and if you like it, post about it. We're boys. So that's like, you know what I mean? And if you don't have that relationship like me and you have, you use a PR firm to create that relationship. Right. I can't stress enough. People think of PR firms because when they're used wrong, they're a complete waste of money. Like awareness marketing and PR I think is just like they charge you so much money retainers, I hate that. But using PR teams to gift their roster I think is huge. If they have the right talent roster, they have 100 people that they've worked with over the last 10 years. They have intimate relationships with them and they will know, will this person like this? Will this person not like this? Who should I gift? And it's no longer Ben's company gifting this influencer. It's the PR rep who reps them, recommending a product to them. It's the same way that I think Dave Grutman structures almost every single one of his investments, where he invests in something and then all of a sudden, he's sending out a PR box on behalf of Dave, not on behalf of Skinny Almond or whatever the hell that brand is. Skinny Dipped, right? It's not a Skinny Dip box. It's I'm friends with you and Dave Grutman wants to give you Skinny Dipped because he invested and because he stands behind it and thinks that you'd like it. So it's just right. It all comes down to authenticity. How do you create a great relationship with talent and with the customer?

[A]

Yeah, that's such a great example of it too. I remember we did the Judy and Poo Pourri collab bag, and that was another great example where Poo Pourri got to leverage Simon's relationships, where he gifted out that collab and. And you know, everybody was posting about it because of Simon.

[B]

Exactly. We just invested in and are very active in a company called Swishables, which you're active in as well. And I brought you on that. And the founders, Gulshan and Harry, are amazing. It's the first single serve mouthwash and a stick pack. Just a genius, genius product. But we are doing those gift boxes where it's not Swishables reaching out to Lauren Bostick and saying, hey, I want you to try this. It's me reaching out to Lauren because we're friends and saying, hey, you know, I think you would absolutely love having a single serve mouthwash in your handbag when you go out for a night out. Or I think you'd love to have them in your podcast studio because you're talking to people so up close, everybody wants good breath, but everybody wants in a convenient way. And because it's a value add to her, and it came from me, I know she's going to try it, versus if it just came from the brand.

[A]

Yeah, so true. Could you talk a little bit about the Spritz Society playbook you created too? Because I think that's another amazing example of this kind of longer term relationship being applied really thoughtfully.

[B]

Yeah. So with Spritz Society, we obviously started with a community. We had a community of mainly millennial women driven by boy with no job, girl with no job, even more so. And then the Toast. Toast is the number one female millennial podcast in the US My wife Claudia and her sister Jackie co host it. And I had been working in marketing for about a decade and knew how to market products, knew how to work with Talent knew everything that we're talking about. But it came down to authenticity. It came down to having a community. And I just had that sort of aha moment where it was like, why aren't we doing this for ourselves? The alcohol space had just exploded. White Claws and Truly's were doing billions in sales. They tasted terrible. And it just, it seemed like the space was ripe for disruption. And so we galvanized our community to help us ideate what could this alcoholic product be. It was the perfect intersection of sort of aperol. Spritz culture was exploding and I didn't see anybody doing that. So why don't we launch the Spritz Society? Wine based sparkling cocktails that actually taste good. And I can tell you, four and a half years later, we are still this year. Nick, I don't know if I've told you about it, I can't tell you exactly what it is, but if I haven't told you about it, I'll call you later and I'll tell you about it. In March, we have a new product going nationwide in Target. And this is our Hero skill. It took almost five years to figure out, finally, what does Spritz Society stand for and what is its hero skew? Because of everything that I just told you, with the ability to build relationships, we were very quick to smartly tap into influencer and celebrity partnerships with friends and investors to grow the brand without spending a ton of money. That was Lauren Bostick's pink lemonade. That was Craig Conover's lemon iced tea. That was Clausen's Pickle Spritz. And throughout all of that, I'm not like, this is like the true nuts and bolts of being an entrepreneur and founder. We lost the core brand. And the core brand, like, what is Spritz Society? It's not an influencer collab brand. What is it? And you're going to see it in March. And it is the core Hero product. And it came through the community. It came through trials, tribulations, testing, learning, and sort of brought us back to our nucleus. And it's really, really, really obvious and epic.

[A]

That's amazing.

[B]

But I bring that up because I'm sure that there are so many founders of direct to consumer companies, even though we're, we're now mainly a retail company that uses direct to consumers, a flywheel to push to retail. But there are so many founders out there that like this, it always, it always stuck to me whenever I watched Shark Tank and Kevin o' Leary loved to say, if it's a Dog, like go in the back and shoot it or some expression like that. And it's sure it could be a dog or you could just not have found the product. Like, we know we have marketing, we know it right, we know we have branding, we know we have community. We have a brand that people are behind and the products have been good. But in order to compete with a High Noon, a Surfside, a White Claw, you need a great product that doesn't only attract your community, it attracts the random person that has never heard of you, who sees it on the shelf at Target and wants to try it because it's interesting. Regardless of the brand too. Regardless of the brand, it doesn't matter what are the reasons to believe in a product and you don't have to have that on day one. You probably won't like, like just take some pressure off, don't spend too much money in the process, but take some pressure off that maybe you don't have everything figured out. Like maybe for some people they have the product but they don't have the marketing. It's the same thing. You're going to test and learn and all of a sudden you're gonna see, oh my God, that was, that was it the whole time. And don't be hard on yourself that it was at the whole time. It took you a while to get there, but you got there.

[A]

Yeah, I love that.

[B]

Yeah, always be breaking.

[A]

Let me put you onto something if TV is felt too hard. Roku Ads Manager is a self service connected TV platform. You can build campaigns within minutes, optimize them inside the platform and keep billing simple. It's built for growth and DTC advertisers who want a low barrier to entry and no big commitments. If you want to get on the big screen without old school processes, go to advertising.roku.com Limited Supply. With a brand like Swishables versus a brand, you know, maybe at a later stage like Spritz a few years in or something, maybe even even later, you know, a brand doing like 10 to 50 million somewhere in that range. How would you say, how would you recommend they approach the thought of influencer marketing or creator marketing? Because like with Swishables, even early days in Spritz, I remember we used creators for really for content creation and filling up the sites, getting assets, you know, different settings of product. Whereas today if you're launching something with Spritz, you might want to attach one bigger name to a product launch to help push it, you know, using it differently.

[B]

Yeah, well, first I would go down to the nuts and bolts of the business and what you're selling. So switchables direct to consumer is selling a weightless pack of mouthwash. So we are in a very unique position where gifting is free. It's free. You're paying for postage. And postage is not spritz Society. It's $20 a box, it's sign on delivery. Because it's alcohol, it weighs a lot. They're completely different. So on the swishable side, I would literally, and I've said this to Gulshan before, I would gift everyone. Why not? It's free trial. It's also the ability to then learn through that who are the influencers that really love it? And then once you know that they're they love it, they're in. It's a part of their daily habit. Then we pay them, then we offer them something, then we bring them into the fold. If you're fortunate enough to have a weightless, lightly regulated direct to consumer business where you're selling a product that is the playbook gift until you really understand who really loves your products. And then once you know who really loves your products, you can start paying them or have them invest or whatever it may be. On the spritz society side of things, it's trickier. But I love the example that you just gave of we used influencers, not macro influencers, micro influencers for 50 to 100 bucks a piece to get product and make content. And when we launched, we had 200 assets from legitimate creators with niche communities that not only reach their micro communities, but also helped us populate our site with ugc, also helped us fill out our socials. It depends on what the goals are. But influencers don't only need to be used for mass awareness. They don't all need to cost a quarter of a million dollars. They're very useful. I hate that people think that macro influencers aren't useful. There's nothing more useful in my opinion, than an authentic macro influencer. Now if you have a Jennifer Lopez who very publicly launched a Delola sparkling wine and Ben Affleck, her husband at the time, is an alcoholic and she doesn't drink. If you were to hire Jennifer Lopez for your alcohol company, she would be a waste of money. If you were to hire Alex Earl like Sit Margs did, it will completely transform your business because Alix Earle is, I think 24 years old, a party girl who I believe is drinking St. Marks. I do, I have never. Like that is about as authentic as it gets. And so Overall macro, influencers, celebrities can be completely game changing, if authentic. If you are just going and you're a brand with enormous amounts of money, incredibly deep pockets, bring on an agency and they go and pay a bunch of people that don't make any sense. That's when you start to get into hot water like a Budweiser a couple of years ago or when you start to have inauthentic partnerships, that's where your brand sort of gets in hot water. But otherwise macro is useful. I think micro is useful for content and I think that middle 100,000 follower person who has a cult following cult. You use them now and eventually they'll be that huge person. A couple of years ago that was Jake Shane. Now he's blown up. There's a kid named Graydon Cutler who I'm sure you're familiar with. He's now that on TikTok, he's going to blow up. You look for the people that have a couple hundred thousand followers on TikTok or 50 to 100,000 followers on Instagram, but they have a cult following. How do they have 30,000 likes but they have 100,000 followers? How is that happening? My sister in law, Margo is a prime example of that. She has less than 200,000 followers. But because of her sisters, because of me, because of her ecosystem and because of all of the content that she posts herself, her engagement is through the roof. She is, she is like pulling numbers that are not bad of her size and has a community so much bigger than her than what she should have. Right. So all of it's just about being educated and making the right choice. But there are different ways that you can use influencers up and down the spectrum.

[A]

Yeah, I guess in that sense. Like would you say that these platforms are better for getting the content production kind of like within a scope versus the, the way that we're talking about it now, which is these deeper relationships or even finding the next Jake Shane, that's where you need to be in the platform and basically doing your homework.

[B]

I hate influencer agencies. Again, having worked at them, I understand why large brands at one point needed them. But at this point I think that there are better relationships. It depends on what, what tier of influence we're talking about. But I think that the PR team that has a deep relationship with a creator is better than the influencer agency where you're giving a $250,000 yearly spend to because you're already spending all of the paid media dollars or whatever it is with the larger company like treating it as a throwaway I need to spend and they're going to put together campaigns. I'd rather hire a great creative shop to come up with a great concept and then go and find the talent myself or work with a PR firm to help me find talent that matched a brief or finding a creator that I know loved a product and my favorite way of doing it is saying tell me how you would promote my product. I'm not going to follow your brief because your brief is not going to lead to authentic engagement with my community. Like you tell me how you would best promote this product, which I think brands have gotten better at over time.

[A]

Yeah, totally. Have you seen this concept of like brands hiring an internal creator, like a full time creator that is just pretty much pumping out content. Do you think that approach works? I've. I can really only think of like maybe one or two examples where that's actually worked, worked outside of the need or the use case of okay, this person isn't just doing it for organic social, but they're really just pumping out a bunch of ads all day for us.

[B]

Yeah, I mean prime example, yes, one, yes, it does work. Prime example of that is Macy Thompson, who now is no longer at Spurt Society, but she is a creator, small creator. 100,000 followers on TikTok, 20,000 followers on Instagram. Super funny. But by having a hundred thousand followers on TikTok, you've proven to me that you understand social platforms. Like anybody that you're hiring to create content for social, anybody that you're hiring to community manage or run social media pages that doesn't have a public platform. I don't believe that you understand the platforms. I don't believe that you understand what makes a post go and doesn't go. I don't believe that you understand how to work with creators because the number one selling point when I worked at Vayner of how to how to sell somebody on a campaign was I would literally say to them I am a creator. So I understand why this is going to work for other creators. But not being able to do that and just this is not a traditional corporate job. This is the one job where you really need hands on experience to understand all of it. Otherwise it seems very formulaic. You're going to get one of those whatever it is, self posting apps. This post goes up Monday, this post goes up Tuesday, this post goes up Wednesday. There's no virality because there's nothing topical, there's nothing new. It just doesn't work. So I'M a big fan of having somebody that has deep knowledge of platforms work for you and create content, even if it's not for. I don't know if I'd use them to farm out content, but I think it's completely essential for them to be at the nucleus of what you're doing, then from there I would probably. It depends on who they are, but some of them can make content, others let them go and find somebody that they want to create content. Let them hire their favorite influencer that they follow because again, they're native to the platforms and are in it all day long. So they're going to know who's going to be able to authentically make content for sports society.

[A]

Yep. Okay, a couple rapid fires to wrap up. What's one thing that you think brands do that makes creators not want to work with them?

[B]

Gift. Gift. Like when they. When you gift. Wrong. I mentioned this before and you make it seem like you're trying to just get a freebie from me. Like this is my business and if you don't treat me like I'm a business, you treat me like a person that can do you a favor, I'm going to be turned off. But if you treat me legitimately like a business and you mention that, you know, there's no open campaign at this time, but we'll keep you in the loop for a future campaign. Would love if you'd give us your honest feedback on the product. Now there are ways to do it to be authentic, but yeah, that's a great approach. Actually gifting gone wrong doesn't work.

[A]

What's the most overrated metric in influencer campaigns?

[B]

Likes, comments All I care about is saves and sends. All I care about. If you saved my post, especially from a cooking perspective, I know that you plan on watching that again and making it. I just think. I just think. Likes and comments. Again, it depends on the type of brand, but likes and comments to me just don't tell the story that saves and sends do.

[A]

Agreed. What about one thing you would negotiate in every creator contract?

[B]

Oh, on behalf of the creator or on behalf of the brand or.

[A]

Yeah, actually either.

[B]

Okay, so on behalf of the brand I would probably. Or I'll start with the creator side. I would always ask for some form of payment upfront. Too often you hear about creators chasing brands, especially when you work with startups. Some of them go out of business. You really never know. And not enough creators have 50% on content delivery and then 50% on posting. They're always just like looped into this culture of net 90 or whatever it is from a L'. Oreal. L' Oreal pays their bills. I don't mean to throw them in there. Just an example. And I think that creators need to know their worth and there needs to be some standardization on this is an individual who is shooting the content and if this was a gray or a typical large creative shop, they already have a retainer and a scope. Like they are not doing one off projects for you hoping that they collect. They've been working with you for a really long time and anybody that works with you in a one off you typically want to see payment from early. If I was the brand, it would probably be some sort of recourse that if your content is just terrible, I can cancel. Like if you didn't put in any effort, if you missed the brief completely, I guess that's sticky for creators though. Let's stick with the creator answer for the brands. I don't. It's too hard. There's so much.

[A]

Yeah. The only thing I would add on the brand side is like license to the content. Just more for protection legally that if somebody ends up using it in the future at the brand they don't get, they're not liable to get sued.

[B]

I think that's a smart one. I also think that's probably a waste of money though. Like so often it depends on the type of content. But so often you will have these contracts that have I can use this post in perpetuity and it's like I'm literally like eating it like I'm eating a tuna. That's true.

[A]

It's not even worth it.

[B]

It's not even worth the money. And especially if you're scaling that across so many creators that you're working with, you're just burning money. I hate. It's also the number one way to burn money is I have the right to promote your post. No. No creator in the world is going to deny. If you come to me three months later and you say, ben, I already paid you this money, but you know what, I'm going to pay you this much more. You don't have to do anything. I just want to run paid against it. Of course I'm going to say yes, I don't have to post anything new. But so often brands like think that they have to pre bake in. I have the right to do this. It's like no, like don't pay me. Just in case you don't use it, come and tell me afterwards that you want to boost it. And if you want to boost it, of course I'm going to say yes. It's found money, no creator. Of course, if you come and you say, like, I'm going to pay you in snickers, like I'm going to say no. But if you want to give me, like, a legitimate amount of money, like that matches market rates, no creator is going to say no.

[A]

Yeah. Amazing. Well, Ben, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.

[B]

Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Nick. Great to see you everybody. Have a great day.

[A]

Thank you. Thanks for listening. We'll be back. Next time to cut through the noise on cpg retail and E commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend? And be sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss the next one.

[B]

Sa.