It doesn’t sound like a big deal… but it is.

$135 billion dollars (to be exact). That’s how much revenue is expected to be generated in e-commerce sales via livestreams in China this year.

Last year live-streaming was 1 of the top 3 most used tactics used by marketers in China. With Covid19 audiences, competition, and uses have increased.

Alibaba owned ‘Taobao Live’ increased 7X in first-time customers. Pinduoduo’s live-streaming views grew 5x in March (month over month).

In February users averaged 120 minutes watching livestreams on Douyin (compared to 89 minutes with other content). On Bilibili a similar trend emerged. On average, users watched 190 minutes of livestream content and 105 minutes of other content.

The number of industries flocking to livestreaming to drive sales has been mind-bending.

JD.com partnered with DJ’s to host weekly livestream performances. Alcohol brands sponsored the events and viewers could purchase with a single click. One whiskey advertiser increased sales 70 percent. Beer sales of another partner increased 40 percent.

On Douyin (ie TikTok in China) one livestream hosted by Luo Yonghao an entrepreneur and digital personality, drove $15.5 million in sales and 48 million viewers all in a 3 hour time span.

A Taobao live-streamer, Austin Li, generated 16 million viewers to watch (and purchase) his lipstick.  

Even the farming industry has turned to live-streaming.

With traditional supply lines decimated due to Covid19, live-streaming has become a lifeline. Taobao now has over fifty thousands farmers live-streaming. They’re selling their crops direct to consumers.

“Growers who had once sold 90% of their products offline have now flipped to selling 90% online. Live-streaming has not only helped the industry weather the crisis—it’s forged an entirely new way of business that is likely to continue long after the pandemic is over.”

MIT Technology

China has mastered ‘shoppertainment’.

It seems as though each week there is a new streaming record being broken, new use, or new sales record. With dollars and audiences so massive, it’s a foregone conclusion we’ll see attempts by brands and platforms to replicate the habits and features here in the US.

However, it has one major blindspot. 

The piece focuses solely on influencers suffering due to loss of advertising. This is true. Influencers are losing ad revenue. However, creators have been developing massive brands and monetizing their fans directly for years. For many creators advertising is the smallest source of revenue.

I find this ironic given Kylie Jenner is the featured influencer. Jenner is a billionaire after developing her own beauty brand, Kylie Cosmetics.

Merch has always been big amongst influencers. Influencers have been broadening into developing their own products. For example, Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star sold over a million of their Conspiracy Theory palettes. Countless creators have developed apps and games. Movies, music, and tours are common as well.

Services like Cameo and Patreon are allowing creators to monetize their fans directly. YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and TikTok all have some form of digital gifting that allows fans to tip creators with real money. Fansa re more than willing to pay for content from their favorite creators. 

My assumption is that the Covid19 crisis will hasten influencers independence from brands. Creators who had previously avoided creating their own march or subscription products are likely to explore those opportunities now.

The author states, influencers who can’t “prove their value to brands may find that their place in the industry grows precarious.”

I disagree.

Influencers who can’t monetize their own fans themselves may find their place in the industry precarious. Those creators that can provide value to their fans will be just fine. They’ll be able to generate revenue independent of brands and advertisers.

Micro isn’t better. Better is better.

Touted as having higher engagement rates, lower pricing, and more credibility than their ‘macro’ counterparts micro influencers are the hottest category of creator to hire.

This is silly. 

Micro-influencers being better or more effective is not a universal marketing principle. Leveraging micro-influencers is a tactic, and one that is far from a silver bullet.  

The rise in popularity of micro-influencers coincides with the rise of influencer marketplaces. Influencer marketplaces are self-service platforms where brands share opportunities for creators to do paid endorsements.

Working with micro-influencers via marketplaces may seem to be a scalable way to do influencer marketing but it is wrought with issues.

First and foremost there is the common misconception that micro-influencers are more engaging. While that is often true that micro-influencers have higher engagement than macro influencers on a per capita basis, that doesn’t mean that engagement translates to a more efficient cost per engagement (CPE) for advertisers.

According to data compiled by Andrew Kamphey of Influencer’s Weekly, it is actually more efficient to work with larger influencers one a CPE basis.

As influencers get bigger their engagement generally declines a bit, but their costs don’t scale at the same rate.

One factor often overlooked in working with influencers is not just the hard costs, but the time spent to manage influencers. Working directly with an influencer that has 10 million subscribers is often just as much work as working with an influencer that has 10 thousand. 

Even if you work with influencers via influencer marketplaces, taking the time to review content and managing quality control becomes a huge issue.

Within these market places brands are asking creators to opt into campaigns based on a brief that has been posted. You are not spending time working closely with a creator via meetings and phone calls. Oftentimes a brief is the only thing the creator gets to their hands on to get to know the brand before going on to develop promotions even without the products themselves.

Credibility is a big issue as well (one that I imagine will become a bigger issue as time goes on). Creators looking to make money will need to go from brand to brand, oftentimes working with competitors in the same category. 

At the same time the inverse approach, of working exclusively with the top tier influencers isn’t a perfect solution either. Just because some has scale doesn’t mean they’re relevant to your audience.

Top tier creators are often bombarded with brand deals and opportunities. Their ability to invest in a partnership is constrained. You don’t want to work with someone that just won’t or can’t make the time for you. 

There is no easy solution and therein lies the opportunity.

Few brands and marketers are willing to put in the time and effort to focus on identifying creators that are truly relevant, then having conversations with them to gauge interest, and then work with them deeply and make them real partners. 

As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded.

None of this is rocket science, but like most good things, it takes patience, focus, and a long-term outlook vs looking for quick fix solutions. 

The impact that the virus outbreak has had on digital and social media behavior in China, likely provides a look into the future of what we can expect here in the states.

People have changed their behaviors worldwide with more time being spent online as people are forced indoors.

Some trends that we’ve seen emerge in China include the following:

Audience Engagement & Viewership Growth:

Creators in China saw a surge in subscribers and viewership.

One top tier live streamer Austin Li drew a record breaking (for him) 16 million viewers on his first stream this February. He’s not alone in generating a spike in viewership.

A study of 574 accounts across popular video apps Douyin (TikTok in China) and Kuaishou showed creators accruing 100k – 500k followers from January 20th thru February 2nd. One food creator  @皮皮教做菜 noted that this time of year he generally sees some growth, but nothing like this. @皮皮教做菜 gained over 1 million followers from a single video.

With people eating out less, food and cooking content saw spikes in demand. People staying at home and wanting to learn to cook lead to Douyin (TikTok) supporting cooking-related content with a Tasty Food Challenge which generated over 10.3 billion views.

Comedic content also saw massive viewership increases. According to data released by Bilibili (a Chinese video sharing site), views of videos tagged with the word ‘funny’ grew by 905 percent between January 23rd to February 5th.

One beauty KOL (influencer) Melilim Fu saw a 10 percent increase in followers over a two week period. According to Jing Daily these aren’t isolated incidents, “those increases are across the board, including engagement and new private traffic followers. It’s very noticeable that people are spending more time bored at home.”

Beyond engaging with influencers, the Covid-19 quarantines resulted in a spike in app downloads. The first few weeks of February resulted in 40% more app downloads than the same time in 2019. Additionally, there were 222 million apps downloaded in China’s Apple app store from February 2nd – 24th. Games topped the list, but educational app downloads doubled as many schools closed down.

Offline Events Come Online

As in person events and social distancing became banned and/or discouraged China brought traditional offline events online.

In February there were at least seven movies slated for theatrical release. With theaters forced to close down due to the virus these releases were moved online. ByteDance, best known as the holding company of TikTok, paid 630m yuan (US$90.8m) for the rights to stream several films across their mobile apps.

Here in the states we haven’t seen the same thing occur yet, but Disney did just announce something similar. Disney is adding “Frozen 2” to Disney Plus three months ahead of schedule.

As people are forced to spend more time indoors they are spending more time online. However, production resources, shoots, some commerce, and brand deals have largely declined or postponed.

Challenges With Content Creation

Because meeting face to face is difficult due to quarantines and social distancing production has been hampered.

People often assume that influencers are one man bands – writing, filming, editing, and participating as talent all on their own. In reality established creators have large teams. 

Elijah Whaley, a manager of beauty KOL’s (influencers) in China recently stated that, “it will undoubtedly affect content creators that rely on teams and studios. The immediate effects are more felt with the planned campaigns, which have already been canceled or delayed, especially offline events.”

Here in the states we’ve already seen top tier creators share publicly the impact Covid-19 has had on their production process. The CEO of The Fine Brothers (of react fame) commented in a recent Digiday article that “Two weeks ago, FBE began actively planning for the possibility that coronavirus may force the entertainment company to temporarily close its 25,000-square-foot studio and have its 105 employees work from home.”

Sales & Brand Deals:

Although this may be a time of investment in community building it is likely that many creators will suffer from brand deals being cancelled and/or postponed. Additionally, with factories shut down getting products to consumers could prove to be difficult for some time.

According to Jing Daily:
“Several influencers have shared that their Q1 brand campaigns have all been postponed — many until as late as May. While this is a big blow to their earnings, they will likely make it all back later in the year if they can hold out until then. But the top influencers aren’t too concerned. The popular WeChat account “GQ实验室” says that there are even some positive aspects to this unfortunate moment. For instance, publishing fewer commercial articles gives influencers a much-needed opportunity to create more and better editorial content.”

Streamers in China with their own brands and products are facing a lack of stock and delivery delays. Many streamers are immediately selling out of what few products they have on hand. As a result, many influencers are selling items as ‘pre-sale’ with the promise that they’ll be shipped when manufacturing resumes. 

Here in the states we’re already starting to see similar effects. Brand deals are being postponed, and travel influencers in particular are the hardest hit. As BusinessInsider reported, “Travel influencer Lauren Bullen, known as @gypsea_lust on Instagram with 2.1 million followers, said all her paid trips had been canceled.”

While these may be difficult times, it will pass. If anything for those of us here in the states, we can look to China and the trends that emerged to help inform our own decisions and preparations.

Headlines like ‘The Dishonest and Wasteful Practice of Influencer Marketing’ paint influences with a broad brush as money grubbing and eager to take any brand deal coming their way and sell out their audiences along the way.

That’s just not true and doesn’t accurately reflect the majority of my experiences in nearly 15 years of influencer marketing.

Influencers say no and fight for work they believe in.

I personally have experienced influencers walk away from 6 figure brand deals because they didn’t feel it was a good fit, or they felt like they couldn’t do the campaign justice. Oftentimes they genuinely loved the brand, but simply couldn’t take on the workload or couldn’t quite wrap their head around a way to bring a campaign to life.

When working on branded content with influencers, they often say no to client requests and push back in order to fight for what they feel is going to work best. That’s their job. It can be frustrating, but ultimately, I’m incredibly grateful that they do it.

Ultimately, saying no to most opportunities makes sense for influencers.

The connection influencers have to their audience is the lifeblood of their business.

As tempting as it may be to take a nice paycheck in the short term, if it is going to compromise the relationship they have with their audience (real or perceived) they should say no. Brands come and go, but the audience is the renewable resource that keeps their business alive – brand deals or no brand deals.

This isn’t some deep insight, and I’m not saying that all influencers are saints. I have had some incredibly difficult experiences working with influencers. However, by and large, I’ve found my experiences in working with influencers to be extremely rewarding, informative, and effective for the brands.

The reality of influencer marketing is more complex than the knee jerk reaction being made by many marketers writing op-eds at the moment.

Some influencers are more talented or honest or hard working than others, and in many ways influencers have got more in common than a typical creative director than anyone else.

As a general rule they care about their reputation. They want to do work they’re proud of. They want to make work that is fulfilling and recognized by their peers.

For both groups this oftentimes means forgoing short term gains and carefully curating the opportunities they take on in order to create a career with longevity. For Creative Directors you see this reflected in the way many choose to work for more creative shops vs behemoths that pay well but churn out crap. Just like influencers, Creative Directors have a responsibility to push back on clients if that’s what it takes to get great work made.

Generally speaking, neither influencers nor creative directors wants to sell out their credibility for a quick pay day.

As frustrating as the creative process can be, I’d much rather have someone be honest with me about what they believe will work best, and is right than take the money and run.

Objectively, I think we can all appreciate the integrity it takes to say no and push back in the face of overwhelming pressure or walk away from the carrot in the form of a nice payday being waved in front of our face.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Collaboration is, and will always be, a tool to drive growth and build an audience online…  rising tides lifts all boats.

The Hype House is an LA mansion TikTok stars formed in December of last year to live and collaborate. 

These TikTokers are co-creating content, featuring and promoting one another in an effort to cross-promote one another and collectively grow their audiences. The ideal outcome is an ever expanding audience.

Influencer A has X audience and Influencer B has Y audience. The two promote one another to capture both X & Y audiences and (ideally) capture additional followers in the process.

If history is any indication, the Hype House could be the start of a massive business that may change the course of media.

This fundamental principle of collaboration has been key to influencer marketing, and social media marketing (and expanding ever outward, you could argue for a great deal of success in life in general), since the beginning.

You scratch my back I scratch yours.

Going back to the late 2000’s we first saw this tactic brought to life with the YouTube community in the form of The Station. The Station eventually morphed into Maker Studios, which went on to be acquired by Disney for nearly a billion dollars.

The Station started as a loose federation of YouTubers who came together in the summer of 2009 to share resources and collaborate on content creation in the form of a collective sketch comedy channel.

Working out of a few Venice Beach, CA homes, the groups was affectionately dubbed, A Modern Brat Pack of YouTubers, TheStation was comprised of Shane Dawson, Kassem G, Phil DeFranco, Dave Days, Shay Carl, Lisa Donovan, with cameos from other YouTubers like iJustine.

Before a video was ever launched, their collective YouTube channel, was among the 25 most subscribed channels across all of YouTube. By winter 2009, after only a handful videos had launched, The Station had become second most watched web series.

Eventually, several creators from the original crew parted ways, but LisaDonovan, ShayCarl, Kassem and a handful of others soldiered on. The team moved into crappy offices above a Taco Shop, rebranded into Maker Studios, raised money, became an MCN, began signing YouTube channels to power that MCN, and by 2012 were generating over a billion views a month.

In 2014 Disney came knocking and acquired Maker Studios for $550 million dollars, with benchmarks, that if hit could bring the total earn out to close to a billion dollars.

This isn’t to say that absolutely the Hype House of today will follow a similar path, but I certainly believe that it is possible.

In its infancy YouTube was filled with silly dance and lip sync videos, which made the whole phenomenon easy to discount. In many ways it mirrors the common perception of TikTok today.

However, as the saying goes, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

My thoughts boiled down to two key predictions, They were that creators would:
1) Invest far more in their own brands (beyond outside of ad revenue)
2) Look to build communities independent of social platforms (ie email, etc)

They weren’t incredibly bold predictions – I was assuming existing trends would continue to gain momentum. That said, looking back at 2019 these largely came to fruition.

2019 was a banner year for creators monetizing their audiences directly.

Cameo exploded last year and raised an additional $50 million based off its success (its predicted to be the next unicorn). Patreon added 1 million patrons (bringing its total number of patrons to just over 3 million). YouTube and Facebook rolled out features to allow creators to monetize their creators – both rolled out digital gifts, and YouTube launched additional paid subscription tiers (similar to Patreon).

Countless creators launched their own brands and products.

David Dobrik launched a Disposable Camera app which generated over a million downloads.

Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson launched a series of cosmetics which collectively sold over a million palettes within 30 minutes of launch (crashing Shopify in the process). Not all influencer product launches were a success, most notably Jaclyn Hill, who’s lipstick launch was met with criticism. Countless YouTubers claimed Hill’s products were shoddily made (and even dangerous) resulting in recalls and ridicule.

Creators did take strides to build communities and build a direct line of communication to their audience beyond YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, etc.

In 2019 we saw a number of top tier influencers adopting the text message based communication (driven largely by Ashton Kutcher funded startup Community). A quick scan of some of the top musicians, influencers, and celebrities and you’ll see many them inviting you to shoot them a text – everyone from Jake Paul, to Gary Vaynerchuck, and Phil Defranco are using the tactic.

Additionally, gaming streamers in particular, have adopted Discord, an app for video game communities that want a dedicated chat channel. The app now has more than 250 million users and handles 963,000,000 messages sent a day.

Of course, influencers working with brands wasn’t replaced and they haven’t abandoned social platforms in droves. However, these two trends show an evolution in how creators are approaching their businesses. Creators are looking to be less dependent upon third parties (ie the advertisers and platforms) and invest in themselves and their communities to create more sustainable businesses for the long term.

If you’re unfamiliar with Tanacon (recently dubbed the FyreFestival of influencer events) here’s the necessary background information–

Best known for her vlogs and pop-music, Tana Mongeau is a 20-year-old YouTuber with over 5 million subscribers across her two channels. Tana recently attempted to create her own, alternative to Vidcon, which she dubbed ‘Tanacon’.

The whole ordeal started when, according to a video Tana created, Vidcon had promised her a VIP pass then withdrew the invite after she’d promoted the conference to her fans. After her anti-Vidcon rant generated millions of views Tana decided to launch Tanacon and make an anti-Vidcon. The original vision for Tanacon was that it would be free and all fans would be given the chance to meet their favorite creators (Vidcon charges for tickets).

Tanacon quickly drew a roster of over 65 well known creators including uber famous YouTubers Casey Neistat and Shane Dawson to make appearances. In the weeks leading up to Tanacon the event built up a huge amount of publicity. Tana promised that fans would get 4X the value of the price of their paid tickets (and promised to let many fans get in free).

Tanacon ended up being a disaster of epic proportions.

Within hours of opening its doors Police shut down Tanacon. Apparently 5,000 fans showed up – almost all of them spent hours in the hot sun waiting to get inside. One fan collapsed and was taken away by paramedics, hundreds of others got sunburns.

The event was massively understaffed, had minimal security, and almost none of the attendees got into the venue to see any of their favorite creators. The swag bags that were promised to be 4x the value of a ticket turned out to be filled with a few stickers and some condoms.

It was exposed later, via a three-part documentary by YouTuber Shane Dawson, that Tanacon was put in the hands of a 21-year-old talent manager with questionable credentials. The documentary exposed countless missteps, but the most egregious was that Tana had agreed to host over 5,000 fans, in spite of the hotel only having capacity for 1,000.

Why does any of this matter, and, why am I writing about this?

I think this shit show is the result of the same kind of behavior we see in (a lot of) influencer marketing. People quickly build audiences and become ‘influencers’ – they oftentimes have millions of adoring fans that hang on their every word and will do just about anything the influencers asks.

The issue then becomes that they don’t have any ‘real’ business experience. While they know how to build their audience and cultivate their community they don’t necessarily have the same skillsets that translate to understanding timetables, budgets, project management, etc. As a result they get in over their head and don’t take their newfound responsibilities of running a business seriously when it comes to working with major brands and companies.

In the case of Tanacon – they signed a contract with the Marriott to host the event, which stated they could host just over 1,000 people. Tana and team decided to say ‘fuck it’ and sell tickets for 5,000 people. This is not the behavior of normal businesspeople, and its wayyyyy out of bounds of common sense.

Unfortunately it is too common.

I’ve worked with thousands of influencers. Some of whom are phenomenal and professional – they’re buttoned up, they know what they know and delegate the rest to their team.

There’s another contingent of influencers that believe because they have their audience the only thing that matters is that they’re ‘authentic’ – that this ‘authenticity’ comes at the price of any real responsibility and is a hall pass to be a terrible business partner. Deadlines are missed, the work promised comes back as something totally different, and communication is lacking. I’ve had influencers ghost on deadlines, come back late and say that they don’t want to post their original idea after they already shot it, have asked to get out of contracts right before deadlines were supposed to be met (and even right after) without real reasons.

This behavior is more common in influencer marketing than in any other business or aspect of marketing and advertising I have ever seen. It is too common. Just after Vidcon I was hanging out with a buddy that is a talent manager. While hanging out one of his talent called to say that a video he’s been working on for a brand for the last week and was already a few days late to post wasn’t going to work for his channel and he no longer wanted to post it. This was a video the influencer concepted and sold to the brand. This was a video he’d edited entirely himself knowing the deadline and where it was going to live. He had 100% creative control, but still didn’t want to post it because he didn’t think his audience would like it.

This is not acceptable behavior for a professional. If it was any other part of the ad industry you’d work late – make it happen (or just think things through far enough in advance to avoid issues).

I don’t mean to disparage all influencers or paint the brush that they are all a pain in the ass. They’re not.

However, I do think that there’s a lot out there that are burning bridges for the rest of the industry.

Marketers and agencies are working with billion dollar brands. There are campaign deadlines and bosses these people are accountable to, there are stockholders, and real consequences.

Many influencers are much more like the Hank and John Green who developed Vidcon. That event is buttoned up. It’s been slowly growing over the last nine years and is hands down one of the best-run industry conferences I go to (full disclosure I’m on the Vidcon Advisory Board, but I’d believe this even if I wasn’t).

Hank and John Green have taken the even seriously from the beginning – they’ve planned methodically with venues booked over a year in advance. This past year Vidcon hosted over 30,000 people, hundreds of creators, and worked with dozens of sponsors over the four days of the event. Sessions and keynotes started on time. Security was tight, and the event was incredibly professional and brand friendly. This is no small feat.

I love unbridled ambition and the passion of young entrepreneurs. However, within the influencer-marketing ecosystem there are a lot of bad actors who need to understand that if they want to work with brands they need to take the contracts they sign seriously.

Many influencers are creating terrible experiences for the fans and the brands.

In short – don’t be like Tana and ignore the contracts you’ve signed and not take things seriously. Instead be like Hank and John Green – build your reputation as a trusted source, think through who you work with, the agreements you sign, and the work you decide to take on.

There’s a reductive narrative circulating in the advertising world lately: if you need to meet your marketing goals, then you should do influencer marketing.

Want to reach millennials? Influencer marketing speaks to teens! Want to be more efficient with your advertising budget? Influencer marketing is cheap! Want to be ahead of the curve? Influencer marketing is the future!

I understand the allure of this narrative (it’s one I’ve contributed to at length). Influencer marketing is commonly presented as the mother of all marketing shortcuts. But that’s just the thing: there are no shortcuts.

Influencer marketing is sustainable when it’s built on a thoughtful relationship among a brand, a creator, and the fans that consume the content. Like any relationship, it takes time, energy, and money to maximize its potential. Brands are often unwilling or unable to make that kind of investment, so as a result, they engage influencers carelessly and enter a “me-too” race to attempt what is trendy or has worked well for others.

Just because you “did influencer marketing” doesn’t mean you did it well.

Brands often make the mistake of taking a lackadaisical approach, doing just enough required to check the box for hip marketing. They make use of automated platforms that connect them with influencers-for-hire where there’s no relationship to speak of; they’re not even communicating on the phone. This “spray and pray” approach  results in virtual strangers touting brands in which they have no vested interest.

Consider the case of one social agency reaching out to well-followed Instagram user Coltrane Curtis, offering him an influencer gig to promote Dove skin care products. Had the agency done any homework on Curtis ahead of time, they would have quickly learned that he ran his own agency and was, in fact, the competition. He publicly shamed the agency for its carelessness. Thoughtless influencer marketing is a liability, not an asset.

Operating this way dilutes the credibility (for both the brands and the influencers) that makes this tactic work. Credibility is all about representing one’s true values and beliefs. If representing a brand’s true values was as easy as writing an email and signing a check, then everyone would do it. And that’s exactly the problem.

My message to companies adopting this attitude is simple: please, don’t do influencer marketing.

No Fortune 500 company got to where it is today by taking shortcuts. They designed real products, built real infrastructure, and hired high-quality, full-time teams. Thoughtful brands play the long game. Why should influencer marketing be any different?

Having worked on thousands of influencer campaigns, I can say that the best collaborations are those in which the brands have invested in getting to know the creators. They’ve brought the influencers to company headquarters, shared their brand values, outlined the goals of the campaign, as well as the thinking that got them there; they mixed education with entertainment. The face-to-face interaction that is so uncommon these days leads to influencers being invested in the people and campaign in a way that has tangible results — they want to do right by the brand. Because they understand what they’re working on (and care more), they promote it more often and more effectively.

Along the same lines, I’ve negotiated multi-year contracts with creators on behalf of brands — the brands benefit extensively by getting economies of scale, efficiencies and category exclusivity. But, more than anything, the creator understands the brand after working together for so long and his or her audience knows that the creator is more than a paid shill – this is something that he or she believes in enough to work with a brand on an ongoing basis and really collaborate deeply.

Ultimately, if you aren’t willing to invest in meaningful, long-term commitments to influencers, why should the influencers commit to working with you? Influencer marketing can be a silver bullet for messaging — only when there is a deep collaboration at the heart of the brand-influencer relationship. This is why brands must take the time and effort to find creators whose sensibilities mesh well with their goals.

If your marketing goals are qualitative, wanting to see your brand’s message taken to a talented creator’s audience, then influencer marketing is a powerful tool for getting there. If your marketing goals are quantitative, wanting to ensure some number of impressions and conversions without much thought, then please don’t do influencer marketing.

Would you rather have one foot in the past or one in the future?

It’s true that, from the looks of it, Cannes is much more fun – you won’t find anyone popping bottles of champagne on a yachs atVidCon. Instead, you’re far more likely to find a few digital influencers, forward thinking brands, agencies, and talent managers huddling around cups of StarbucksCcoffee in some hotel lobby hammering out a few deals.

That said,VidCon is at the epicenter of what is happening within influencer marketing, social media as a whole, and more importantly – what is happening with culture. Digital influencers are the most recognizable celebrities among teens today, becoming a digital influencer is the most desirable job amongst teens today, and the most engaged athlete online is now an E-Sports athlete, the Twitch Streamer, Ninja.

I personally take pride in the fact that while other agencies send execs to the South of France to hear talks, such as ‘What is Innovation”  myself and my team are on the ground working and meeting with influencers at VidCon.

VidCon is where innovation is happening – even the major platforms understand this and make major announcements there. For example, this year Instagram waited until the first day of VidCon to launch IGTV (instead of doing it during the peak of Cannes). Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube also followed suit making a variety of announcements around platform updates, features, and partnerships onsite atVidCon.

Looking at the ad trades you’ll see that brands and agencies are struggling to capture eyeballs. Ad formats are shrinking and advertisers are having trouble even watching a 6 second ad. Marc Pritchard, the CMO of P & G stated that they “stopped wasting money on 30-second ads, and we’re designing ads to work in 2 seconds,” and that “it is time for marketers and tech companies to solve the problem of annoying ads and make the ad experience better for consumers,”

I agree with Marc that marketers need to solve the problem for annoying ads – but, the reality is the solution exists, and I think if he and his team spent more time immersing themselves inVidCon, and the ecosystem as a whole they’d have the answer already. While P&G is struggling to get ads to work in 2 seconds, people are watching influencer content that is as much as 6 hours long.

According to recent studies long form video content consumption is up 30% over 2017. The #1 Most subscribed YouTuber (PewDiePie) regularly posts 20 min long videos, and the most downloaded podcasts are all well over 45 minutes on average (with some top podcasters like Joe Rogan going as long as three hours).

Clearly attention span isn’t the issue – most advertisers are just not great at creating content and putting it in front of the right consumers.

My team and I at Epic Signal certainly don’t bat 1000, but getting past two seconds is fucking terrible and certainly the exception rather than the rule. Instead, by having an understanding of these platforms, how to work with influencers, and integrate paid media – we’ve seen fifteen minute long pieces of branded content generate 75% completion rates. On a recent campaign with Boost Mobile we integrated influencers into paid social (in addition to having them create their own branded content) and beat the previous CPA benchmark by 50%. The list goes on.

This success comes from us investing a lot of time with these platforms, ingratiating ourselves in influencer communities, attending events likeVidCon (and a lot of trial and error).

I say this not to brag, but to point out that much of the industry is still caught up in the gigantic circle jerk of trying to impress one another with champagne and yachts – resulting in an inability to communicate with consumers.

Just like anything else you’ve got to put in your ten thousand hours – that means spending a little less money on champagne, Rosé, and yachts in France. Instead, why not invest in listening to people who are able to get millions of fans to hang on their every word for hours on end, like you can at VidCon?

End of rant