Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 33: Product Placement and Influencer Marketing-More Accessible Than You Think with Stacy Jones
149 Plays6 years ago
When someone you know and respect recommends a product or service, that makes a huge difference in your opinion of that product or service. The good news is you don’t have to be a blockbuster movie to utilize the power of product placement. And you don’t have to hire a Kardashian to gain the benefits of influencer marketing.
In Episode #33, Phillip and Bryan talk with Stacy Jones about the power and accessibility of influencer marketing and product placement. You don’t have to be a multi-national corporation to do these things. Stacy talks about starting her business and learning some hard lessons along the way that you can definitely benefit from in your business.
Stacey Jones is the CEO of Hollywood Branded, a Los Angeles-based marketing, branded content, and product placement agency. She has 23 years of leadership experience building global branded content campaigns for top fortune 500 companies, utilizing hundreds of brands including Blackberry, Bumble, Canadian Club, and Pilot Pen.
An acknowledged expert in the field, Stacy has appeared on top media outlets and spoken at conferences around the globe. She also hosts the podcast, “Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.”
What You Will Learn in this Episode:- How to transition from understanding a business to owning a businesses
- Advice on hiring (or not hiring) friends
- How to manage a business breakup
- The importance of a robust sales system and pipeline to fuel ongoing growth
- Basics of influencer marketing
- Finding the right brand/product placement fit
- The power of nano and micro influencers
Recommended
Transcript
Pursuit of an Uncommon Life
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
A life worth celebrating and savoring.
Meet the Hosts and Guest
00:00:30
Speaker
Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Phillip Ramsey. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project. I am your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. And we have an amazing show for you today. We have Stacey Jones, extreme marketer out in California, to be able to dive in on what she's doing and how she's doing it. I really think there's so much knowledge here that you're going to take away. So let's do the bio and just
Stacey Jones: Career Journey and Insights
00:00:55
Speaker
right into it.
00:00:55
Speaker
All right, Stacy Jones is the CEO of Hollywood branded and LA influencer marketing branded content and product placement agency. She has 23 years of leadership experience building global branded content campaigns for top fortune fiber company and hundreds of brands.
00:01:11
Speaker
including Blackberry, Bumble, Canadian Club, and Pilot Pen. Acknowledged as an expert in the field, she has appeared on top media outlets and spoken at conferences around the globe and hosts the podcast Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. Welcome, Stacey Jones. Hi, guys. I am so happy to be here today and excited to be chatting with you and your listeners. Yes. Those are not small names, please. No. Did you ever think in your wildest dreams when you were going through college that those would be some of your clients?
00:01:40
Speaker
Not at all. I had no idea what I was going to do with life when I was going to college. I was just trying to get through college and actually get out on the other side. Smart. Smart. You could tell we like her. So you graduate from the University of Arizona and I want to just pick up right there.
00:01:56
Speaker
What happens next? Where do you go next to end up where you're at now? Sure. So it's interesting because I never entered into college thinking that this is the career path I was going to have. I actually originally was registered as a communications major.
00:02:12
Speaker
And then entered my first you know three hundred four hundred person lecture hall and realize that that was not for me not for the next two three years. And I had taken a class in high school my senior year which was a tech theater class and I really liked it love the backstage I love the design I love the creativity did not want to be an actor.
00:02:35
Speaker
no being in front of the screen on stage. That was not my personality. I was actually pretty shy. And so when I went to the college counselor and said, what do I do? I am a communications major. I cannot spend the next three years trying to talk in front of hundreds of people with that's part of being a communications major. You actually have to speak in front of hundreds of people. You sure do. And at that time in life, I couldn't fathom doing that at all.
00:03:03
Speaker
And so I looked at all the different majors and I decided that I wanted something that was liberal arts and I went in the direction of theater production. And that opened up the door to where I'm at today and I had no idea it would because I ended up starting a student run theater and it funded it through working with brands in the community so that we could actually have dollars to produce content.
00:03:31
Speaker
we did it by product placement and trade and dollars. And again, had no idea that would lead me to today, but it played a really big impact and influence in that.
Career Challenges and Lessons Learned
00:03:42
Speaker
So after college,
00:03:44
Speaker
I knew I wanted to move out to Los Angeles. I had always had wanted to move out to Los Angeles. I was going to work in entertainment. I told my parents I was going out. I was going to be an assistant or a production coordinator, all these things. Got it. I'll figure it out. I'm like, I'm going to do this. And they're like, uh-huh, great. So off I went, and I started finding day jobs and short-term jobs.
00:04:07
Speaker
You know, after a few months of this, and I was doing fine. I was working at comedy festivals as a PA. I was working on, um, assistant to an art director. My mom said, you know, it would be really good if you had a full-time job. And I'm like, well, I'm working like 60 hours a week. Isn't this full-time, right? Yeah. She's like, yeah, you're working like 60 hours a week at like $8 an hour. This is not going to work out. Yeah.
00:04:33
Speaker
And she's like, you need insurance and not to be on your dad's and my insurance. You would find a full-time job. So I went out, found a job, worked for this woman, and I made it eight months. And she was the, it just, I'm not even gonna go into details. It was a miserable job. It was so horrible. It was just a leanest environment. And I would cry at lunch. I would cry at, you know, driving home. And it was just,
00:04:59
Speaker
It wasn't just a very positive, feel-good office. And I still was listening to my mom because she factors very highly in my life. As all moms should. Yes. And she's like, you have to have your first real job. You have to stay in at least a year. I'm like, I've made it eight months. I don't think I can make it to a year. And I made a big decision. This was probably one of my first big adulting decisions. I'm not staying at this job.
00:05:28
Speaker
And so I went to the Hollywood Reporter. I found a position listed for a product placement coordinator. And my mother, still big influence in my life, said, why would you want to apply to go to grocery stores and turn brand labels towards people? Because isn't that product placement? You're positioning product in grocery stores.
00:05:51
Speaker
because no one knew what product placement was then. I mean, we're talking, this is 23 years, 22 years ago, 24 years, sometime in there, long time ago. And it was not a housework day. There was no survivor and Mark Burnett and seeing brands integrated or American Idol with Coca-Cola. This was not part of the world. No one knew this. Totally. And so I went for the interview. I nailed it. I got it. Of course, Stacey. That's just what you do.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I did tell her, I'm like, I don't think I'm looking at grocery stores. This is the Hollywood Reporter. This is like the biggest trade magazine for the entertainment industry. I think my college education is actually paying off doing something. This is good. And so off I went and I started working there. And after, you know, I worked there over a decade and ended up running the
00:06:40
Speaker
And managing it and doing everything except for owning it hit the proverbial glass scene and the terms of becoming a partner, just were not ones that were going to work out and I decided to leave.
00:06:56
Speaker
and start my own agency, which was a very big jump. Very big. And so off I went, and starting it was something I had no idea how to run a business. I ran a business, but I didn't know how to own a business, and that's very different. It absolutely is. Yeah, so even doing HR, even doing operations, management, projects, it's different.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. So you're taking the goldfish with you and now it's on you, right? So who do you employ? Do you employ anybody? How do you go from I'm working from somebody for somebody else as an employee to now I'm a business owner. Obviously that timeline and learning curve has to be pretty fast. Do you hire somebody right away or does it just you Stacey Jones?
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, so I decided to hire someone right away and I made perhaps not the best business decision because I hired someone who was a friend and I trust it and that was a good business decision and that, but it wasn't necessarily the most economical business decision because I felt like I had to pay them more than perhaps someone who was more- The going rate. Right?
00:08:15
Speaker
So that is not something I would counsel other business owners in doing. I actually would strongly suggest not necessarily going the friend route and so that you have a little bit more objectivity that's built in.
Navigating Business Partnerships and Growth
00:08:30
Speaker
I also ended up bringing in someone who works for me and For years and then he'd gone off to another company. I had trained him. I had taught him. He was like the mini me and I Gave him a percentage of the company despite his lack of putting dollars in I'm like, oh you put in time Yeah, that is also not something I would ever suggest to other business owners to do because it will bite you in the butt and
00:08:57
Speaker
So let's talk through that because I think you're absolutely right, but that seems to be the first area people will give up because they just want people to have skin in the game and they want everybody to succeed. Why do you think we go there as business owners to keep giving away some part of our business? Because at that point, normally businesses aren't worth too much. And so we all, is that the reason? It's because, oh, well, maybe if it is worth something someday, I'm okay with giving a percentage away.
00:09:25
Speaker
So I think it's looking at you have two things that you can get people to be enticed by really dollars or percentages of ownership, right? Or I guess a third of really just being a fantastic place to work and or you're doing something wonderful And so you're getting that philanthropic somehow leveling and that's hard unless you have a nonprofit to get people on board for so if you're a for-profit business and you are a
00:09:51
Speaker
ramping up, you just have the dollars or you have your equity of your business. And we all undervalue because you don't really think long-term and you don't think about business breakups. Yeah. And you don't have a lot of cash flow anyway. So that's like the most valuable thing for you when you first start a business is your cash flow. And so, okay, so I don't have a lot of that. So, but I do have ownership
00:10:15
Speaker
That's okay. Sorry to walk through that. I just think that's interesting. Yeah. And so for anyone who does go down that path and they give up a piece of equity, the first thing you need to do, and I did this and it did safeguard me because that business partnership relationship went totally sideways.
00:10:32
Speaker
You have to have a breakup clause. You have to have that going in. And I was smart about that. I actually put together a pretty good breakup clause of what that would look like. The problem goes when someone ignores the breakup clause though and wants to take it to another level of potentially not so great. So that's what happened to you. You guys had a breakup clause or didn't you at that point?
00:10:56
Speaker
We had a break up clause and you know, business went well. We were growing rapidly. Part of this is saving money. We office out of my house. It was a team of all guys. I had this little two bedroom, two bath.
00:11:13
Speaker
You know, I was at one point i'm like, do not come into my bedroom. Do not use that bathroom These are my my room. You can't come in here. I have to have some sanity because I go wow We had like four guys running around that were at my house Every day and then they were leaving. I mean my house i'm like, this is just grungy and there's a food And so you're like i want to leave I want to leave too and there was no place I could leave too so you know
00:11:40
Speaker
With with all of that we ended up about just under a year because of that I found an office space for us to move into and it's actually the office space we're in right now we'll be inside by a building which hopefully will be soon and so moving to the office space we were able to hire on a lot more people like literally with the move the company
00:11:59
Speaker
Doubled in size immediately because we had more places that we could put butts in seats and you know There was overhead and we kept the cost down. We went to IKEA We got really cool looking furniture, but without having to pay a lot of money into it We had some clients that were on board. We were doing some great things Business was soaring for about three years and then we had a business breakup and
00:12:22
Speaker
And it was out of the blue. It was a surprise. You know, it, it was not a business breakup. You mean like a partnership that your client of yours? No, I mean my business partner. Okay. Yes. The one that I gave equity. So we had built this, built this, built this. He had a, um,
00:12:46
Speaker
Had got married in the middle of this time and she had different objectives of how she wanted him to run his life and how He was running his life and his business and she wanted more time It just there was some issues that came up with it all and it was not something I would have ever expected because it was caused by a third party to lead to the business breakup and
00:13:09
Speaker
You know, that derailed us because there was a bitter fight for clients despite having an ironclad agreement, which in the end worked for me. But I mean, we had, we lost employees. We lost clients over it. We lost so much. And so the scale that we had been building and working so hard on just got broken. And so literally I had to restart. In 2011, I restarted my company for the first time and it wasn't the last time I had to restart.
00:13:36
Speaker
And I've had some tremendous learning experiences since then. Yeah. From those restarts, did you just keep kind of morphing of things that you didn't like? Did you just be able to kind of work through some of those issues that you had? What were some of those? Probably ownership and companies, let's be honest. Yeah. What other things did you like just keep resetting the dial? Like, I want to go back. I do that different. What were some of those?
00:14:02
Speaker
Well, the reason the dial was my next mistake that I made was, you know, we had a client from almost day one, which, you know, fantastic client and have had them now off and on for over a decade. Um, but the first time we were laid off by them.
00:14:20
Speaker
when they laid off, we had Blackberry as a client, and they laid off 10,000 of their workforce and their agency. Us, right? And I had over 15 employees that were on the payroll, and Blackberry made up 75% of our overhead. Oh, wow.
00:14:41
Speaker
which is tremendous. So that would be business mistake number two, right? So that was a really good learning lesson that, you know, it's fantastic as an agency or any sort of business, you know, if you have a certain vendor that you're selling to, um,
00:14:59
Speaker
is wonderful to have that much money coming in. It is great. It is, you know, you build for it, you staff for it, you put your operations to it. But if something happens and in life, you know, something usually does happen because things, things shift and that are out of your control. You can rock it. And we were rocking it. We were
00:15:19
Speaker
awesome as their agency i am very proud to this day of that in fact as i mentioned they came back three times more even when the company was sold to tcl in china they came back again so we've gone through a lot of layoffs with them and i've gotten a little bit more accustomed to it but now i know never to put that many eggs in one basket under
00:15:42
Speaker
One client you have to make sure that you have multiple income streams versus one that makes up your majority. Okay, so let's talk through that because it sounds great to say that.
00:15:56
Speaker
But what would you have done differently? So you have this big client who comes to you, knocks on your door and says, Hey, I got a lot of money for you. Every business owner is going to be like, I gotta do it. I'm super excited about it. But then how do you make sure that you're not overstaffed? Is that the, is that the solution is just don't overstaff for it or what would you do differently?
00:16:15
Speaker
Well, it wasn't that we were overstaffed for it. The thing that I would do differently, the only thing I would do differently with Blackberry and having to eventually figure out what to do when we had so much stuff was I would have laid off people a lot sooner. I waited a year thinking that things would magically fix themselves. And that was a year late. And when I did lay people off, the only people who got laid off didn't pull their weight.
00:16:38
Speaker
So, you know, you'll always find a way and, you know, for any business owner or for any employee who's listening out there, you know, if you work hard or you have someone who's a phenomenal worker, someone is going to fight to keep you to the end of days if you contribute to that business. But when the road going gets tough and you have to start looking at letting people go, it's really easy to see who the should that that should be. That's very, very clear usually.
00:17:04
Speaker
But what I would have done and what I should have done and what I try to do now is I've invested more in sales, whether that's inbound, whether that's outbound.
Marketing Strategies and Client Relations
00:17:12
Speaker
I should have had a more massive sales machine going so that I had the income coming, maybe kept things a little bit more streamlined so that I could have actually focused on building and continuing to broaden
00:17:28
Speaker
the client base versus just being like, exactly. So that you have people who are, you know, if you have someone who's 75% and then you get someone else who's 75% two and equal, well now all of a sudden it's dropped down into our 50% range for both of them and it's starting to balance out and you keep on doing that and growing.
00:17:47
Speaker
I see. So you'd almost leverage that bigger company and the name to go get another bigger company and another bigger company to diversify that risk. Yeah, it's just more so the diversification and finding the time to do it, right? Because you get so mired in the everyday of business and if you have something that's a beast of a client, I mean, you're all hands on deck, you're working on it.
00:18:10
Speaker
You have to find time to carve out so you can make these other objectives happen, whether that's you doing it or whether that is someone that you've hired to bring onto your team to do that for you. Working on the business, not in the business. Well, that's the goal, right? So that's the goal for everyone is to work on it versus in it. And it's very difficult to get there. Yeah, absolutely is.
00:18:30
Speaker
Okay. Go ahead. I'm asking all these questions. No, it was good. I think it was a good breakdown of where you've been and now where you're at. And so I want people to get some time here to hear the other side of what you're doing because I think we see it. Philip and I
00:18:47
Speaker
We're in, I think, in the Iowa, like, literally the middle of the country. And you're in Hollywood, California, you know, and you're working with some really neat companies, really neat people, and we see these things in TV, and a lot's happening in entertainment right now with the shift to Netflix.
00:19:03
Speaker
Amazon's making big waves. So talk to us. I want you to kind of just talk to us about influence. You hear that all the time, but like, what is that? And then this product management, I know we've seen it, kind of thing. I felt like Seinfeld was one of the first shows that kind of started, you know, dropping products. I can't remember if that's true or not, but that's just like what comes to my head. So kind of talk to our listeners about what is influencer marketing and like, what are the trends that you're seeing? And then maybe, you know, how do smaller businesses like us or other businesses, like when to start down some of these channels?
00:19:33
Speaker
So lots of questions there. So the first one, so product placement has actually been around back since the 1920s, 1930s, even James Dean, when he was paid to put on a white men's undershirt because they needed to see sales boom versus just seeing, you know, strapping young man's and all their buff, they needed actually to raise
Evolution of Product Placement
00:19:58
Speaker
that up. So that was something that was a concerted effort that was done, right? Yeah.
00:20:02
Speaker
So product placement, it was very rough and tumble in the 70s and the 80s. It was not really very strategic. It was, hey, I have a warehouse of brands. Would you like to come over as far as a product placement agency, your production? Are you interested? What can we get you? There wasn't a lot of accountability and a lot of companies got burned.
00:20:23
Speaker
and didn't really like that whole world. And then in the 90s, luckily around the time that I was getting involved in the whole business, started getting more strategic, right? And so you started looking at more movie promotions and partnerships where a brand would be in the film and then they would also put media dollars behind that film and create a TV ad or a print ad utilizing assets from the film.
00:20:46
Speaker
as well to bridge that whole gap. You started seeing dollars being put into it. So instead of it just being a trade off opportunity where you're helping the production save money because now they don't have to go out and purchase product. They don't have to get clearance for product.
00:21:02
Speaker
You're actually helping drive some dollars or again that promotional opportunity because that it's worth way more than even $100,000 that can be millions of dollars and value of driving eyeballs and awareness around a property that a brand advertises with Right operates into their advertising Seinfeld is certainly one of the shows that has done a lot of product placement if you all remember the episode with
00:21:30
Speaker
Do y'all remember the Frogger episode? Yes, with George. Yes. So do you remember what happened to the Frogger machine? Yeah, it got hit by the car, right? Or the truck?
00:21:39
Speaker
by a truck, by a freight liner. That was a deal I did, actually. Oh, wow. What? Stacey, making deals. Yeah, right? It's fine. So I got to be on set. I worked with Seinfeld all the time. Their serial changed it to make sure it was post, make sure it was like all of these different brands versus it was. But I still remember that day because I actually was on the set and had the big rig there, demoing it, talking about it. I did not drive it.
00:22:10
Speaker
and we sold it in as that would be the tractor trailer that would take out Frogger. So, we're fun things like that. That's so cool. So, what would you, what kind of advertisement is it when somebody's doing like, I don't know, let's say podcasts, I'm thinking of my uncle, Dave Ramsey, and he goes into some kind of board game they played that weekend. Or, for example, like, I want to be sponsored by Acura, the car dealership, because I love Acuras.
00:22:39
Speaker
So when they're just talking casually and then they slip into this like, do you know what I did this weekend? I played a game with my kids and it's being paid for, but no one really feels like it is. Is that influential marketing? Is that what that is?
Influencer Marketing Essentials
00:22:51
Speaker
Absolutely. It's a live read, right? So whenever you're using TV shows, feature films, music videos, if you're using a podcast, if you're using a radio guest host opportunity, you know, there's all these opportunities for brands to actually subliminally or not so subliminally,
00:23:07
Speaker
get embedded in that content. If it is a podcast that's, you know, you can do your traditional advertising and you can have your 15, your 30 second in there, or you could actually have a partnership where they are doing live reads with the host and they know what marketing and messaging points they need to get across, but it's going to be done in a way that is just very like laid back and easy to talk through and not so over the head. Let's beat you down. Yep. Okay. All right. That's good to know.
00:23:36
Speaker
And even with movies or TV shows, you know, there's a couple of different ways that brands can appear and that is through a prop usage, right? And so someone's touching it. They're using it. It could be a storyline. Someone's talking about it. We just did a partnership with Riverdale and Bumble, the relationship app where two of the characters were talking and the guys flipping away and
00:23:59
Speaker
Archie said, oh, what you doing? And he's like, oh, I'm on Bumble and he should get a screen insert shot of that. And it seems very natural because he's looking for a day and he's like, I'm not having much luck in life. And then at the end of that, he gets a match, right? And he thought things were looking up, right?
00:24:16
Speaker
So there's that type of storyline or there could be, you know, talk shows with Ellen DeGeneres, right? That's where an opportunity, you know, so many brands have said, Oh, I want to be back in the day on Oprah to make their sales happen. Or I want to be Ellen's the new Oprah. I want to be on Ellen in order to make sales happen.
00:24:36
Speaker
Now there's talk shows, there's local news, there's all sorts of opportunities available for brands at every price point. So no matter the size of your brand, there is a way to use content that acts as an influencer to help heighten your awareness and heighten the prestige of who you are. And it just depends on what your marketing budgets are as to what type of content opportunities you can go after. Same thing with influencers, right?
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah, so how do you let's say we're not that client but let's say like a client says we want to be an elder Ellen did you get us on Stacy? What would you do? What would be your pot path? What would be your thought process? Would you like all of it? Sure So, you know before we would race off and be like, ah, we're gonna get you a home run. We'll do it We're gonna actually see if Ellen's the right fit, right? So is it the right fit for them and and is the brand the right fit for Ellen?
00:25:32
Speaker
And they're both equally important for the other because you know we did you know this fantastic partnership with Bumble again with Ellen where Ellen talked about Bumble in her monologue It's only the second time she's ever allowed a brand to be in her monologue and it was a great fit because I
00:25:52
Speaker
Her audience was someone who, we actually had people in the audience who were Bumble users and Ellen worked with them to update their crazy cat photos or bad hair or whatever it was that was keeping them possibly from dating as well as they could be. Within that monologue with a big overview and pop-ups and it was awesome and it was beneficial because the brand and Ellen were complimentary to each other.
00:26:17
Speaker
That's the thing I took away from that. Like you need to be an advocate for both sides, not just one side. And when you do that, your credibility skyrockets because now Ellen knows like, Hey, she's not going to be sending me stuff. That's something completely off of my brand.
00:26:32
Speaker
And also that, you know, you don't want just as the brands like, Oh, I want to be with something that's prestigious. You know, Ellen wants to only work with brands who are prestigious and who are going to, you know, enliven her brand too. So you have to find out where's the cross. What is a nice fit like with Ellen, she does not
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, you can tell me that you are this fantastic watch, that you would love to be on it. You have lots of money to be on it. And then you tell me that your band is leather. You are never going to be on Ellen. She is a vegan.
00:27:04
Speaker
She does not allow leather products. We have put Clark's and Dansko shoes on her show because they make alternatives to leather products, right? So it's finding the affinities of what actually works for the show as well. And so, you know, there's so many different opportunities out there.
00:27:26
Speaker
It's it's about the money and the costs. It's about the affinity that the two brands have and it's also about what you want out of it, right so Some shows will give you you know calls to action or drive to your website and we're talking talk shows, right?
00:27:42
Speaker
Some shows won't and it's just talking about the brand and that's it And are you going to be happy without that call to action and that
Marketing vs Branding: Understanding the Differences
00:27:50
Speaker
drive? Are you happy with a brand awareness play or do you need someone to push out and say hey go to? Www dot whatever that might be call to action different Complete objectives. So tell me this we've talked about a little bit. What's the difference between marketing and branding?
00:28:08
Speaker
I know that should be like a no-brainer that I just shoot back at you and be like, marketing is this and it's a textbook and branding is this. Okay. So to me, they really should be the same, but I don't think people treat them the same way.
00:28:23
Speaker
Branding is building who your persona of your company, your product, your image, whatever it might be. You are creating brand. We all have brands. You both have brands, right? This podcast is part of your brand. You are part of the podcast brand. You and all of your makeup that comes into that, your beliefs, your
00:28:47
Speaker
Your way that you interact with people all of that is how you package it, you know, you're humorous You're not dull you tried it. Yeah, there's yeah, right Your brand is you know, you guys are smart you are on top of current day finance financial options for people you
00:29:12
Speaker
Your brand is that you bring in knowledge and education. Your brand is that you bring in like hardness and humor. You know, someone who's going to be working with you guys are not the same people who would want to look at working with someone who's very in a box and very maybe older and old school, right? So you have a different brand that you guys have created about yourself. And with a product or a service or whatever it is, it's all about
00:29:41
Speaker
taking those assets of who you are and then allowing people to see that. And that's what building a brand is. It's opening the doors to let people see what that entity is that the makeup is. And that's going to be more and more important with the younger generations we're seeing than ever before. They care what a brand is. They care what a brand thinks. They care how a brand treats others. They care what a brand gives back. Sure.
00:30:10
Speaker
Marketing would be, are you using advertising? What ways are you getting your brand out there? Marketing would be, what are the tangible? Are you throwing advertising on it? Are you doing blogs? Are you doing PR? Are you doing like, what are all the ways that you are letting people know about your brand? Sure. It's good.
00:30:31
Speaker
I mean, I have a 12 year old with a cell phone. So you're seeing this a lot with the Instagram stuff and these celebrities making money. I just saw like Kelly Jenner now is a billionaire supposedly. And like how much of that is real money and like real business and how much of it is like a smokescreen?
00:30:53
Speaker
Um, as far as Kylie Jenner goes, it's really kind of this whole Instagram and more of like maybe the celebrity influencer, like I'm a professional influencer, not for a brand, but for, you know, products, that type of thing. Are your clients utilizing that type of stuff?
00:31:11
Speaker
Every day, 100%. So there's four different levels of influencers when you think of them. At the highest that land, that's the Kylie Jenner, the Kim Kardashians, the super big personalities, they're the celebrity super size influencers. And
00:31:25
Speaker
You know, I am not a Kardashian follower, although I end up reading absolutely everything that goes out about them, because I get interviewed by media outlets, because something's happened, and I am now a celebrity brand expert, besides being a product placement and influencer, and all of this. Now, media outlets come to me to actually give my opinion on celebrities when they get themselves up a creek, and everything's going down. People come to me to find out what my take is on how they've damaged their brands.
00:31:54
Speaker
What happened there? Yeah. Yeah. So listen and do they have a chance of recovery? It's weekly. It's weekly. I get great publications and talk magazine outlets and digital outlets all over the world.
00:32:10
Speaker
because of this, which it's interesting. It's like kind of a little side hustle gig that I never knew I'd have, right? Oh my gosh. Okay. I have to figure out how to really make it monetize at one point, but it exists. So, the Kardashians, I have so much admiration for what they have built and actually how they have led the industry of the celebrity influencer, right?
00:32:38
Speaker
So they are a powerhouse and not every celebrity is going to be. They know how to engage. They know how to create content that people want to be part of. They know how to interact with their audience.
00:32:55
Speaker
Content is just, there's two parts to working with influencers, and then I'll go into the four types again, but there's two parts. You have the content creator. When you are hiring an influencer,
00:33:09
Speaker
you're hiring them to be the copywriter, the producer, the photographer, the model, the editor, the everything that goes into that. Just as if you were making an ad that you were going to be putting in a print magazine or producing a video as a TV spot. You are typically hiring a one individual, unless they're so big that they have people who work for them, but you're hiring one individual to act as all of these different people to create this content.
00:33:39
Speaker
So that's the first part. The second part is you're hiring this one individual to then use their social landscape as a media buy, as they are the magazine for you. So they're having to not only prove and guarantee that they can create really cool content that will actually be watched by people,
00:34:02
Speaker
But then they have to actually serve it up on a platform where they have the knowledge of what type of content to give to them, how to serve it up to them, how to speak to them, and how to engage and interact with them. So an influencer who's actually a good influencer is such a brand asset. It is a powerhouse of potential. There are so many things that you can do, and brands are completely in companies
00:34:31
Speaker
not taking advantage of the level. And a lot of this is because people think that, oh, it's a celebrity influencer, right? But you have your celebrity influencer, that's millions of followers. You have your
00:34:46
Speaker
your true celebrity. You have kind of your, your, your slob influencers, a million plus, right? There's two different years, your celebrities, you're on TV. Then you have your, what we say celebrity influencer, which is like a million plus followers. Then you have your macro influencer.
00:35:02
Speaker
And so that's going to be anywhere from 50,000 followers up to almost a million, a couple hundred thousand plus. It goes into a hyper. And then you have your micro influencer and everyone listening today can afford a micro influencer. There's no one out there who can't. And then there's now what's called a nano influencer. And the three of us are all nano influencers because if you have any following whatsoever,
00:35:28
Speaker
are impacting people. Kind of like the zero to 5,000 or something like that. Yeah, it's like zero to 5,000. And the thing is that the nano influencers and the micro influencers are better for smaller brands, starting up brands, smaller businesses, because they have higher engagement because people have a higher trust in them. Trust. Yeah, absolutely.
Working with Influencers: Tips for Small Businesses
00:35:50
Speaker
So walk our listeners through. We got a lot of business owner, entrepreneur listeners of the show. Walk our listeners through what they should be doing with that. You just talked about the micro, the nano. What they should be doing locally. And then when do you cross over to Colin Stacey Jones of getting Hollywood representation? Can you walk our listeners through that?
00:36:12
Speaker
Sure. So starting off, you need to figure out what your objective is. I kind of mentioned it with even TV. Do you need a call to action? Are you trying to get someone to do something? And if you think that using influencers means that you are working on an influencer deal and then tomorrow you're going to see sales, you are dead wrong and you need to just stop.
00:36:35
Speaker
It's just like, hey, I'm going to do a magazine ad and tomorrow I'm going to get instant sales. Nope, not happening. Hey, I'm running one TV ad and then after that one TV ad, I'm going to get sales. Everything in marketing and advertising is about replication, right?
00:36:56
Speaker
It's about brand awareness. It's all top of the funnel. You have to get people who are aware of you before they're even going to consider a purchase of you.
00:37:08
Speaker
And not only do they need to be aware of you before they consider purchasing you, they actually at one point need to like you or find a need to have you. So there's a funnel there that you can use influencers for, but the first thing that influencers are so great about is creating content for you.
00:37:29
Speaker
where now your content that you're going to not be stupid, you are going to get them to allow you to re-amplify and use this content on your website, on your digital channels. It's magic content. Someone else has created it for you. You want to share it. You want to give them kudos. You want to give them love. They're going to work with you. You're going to work with them. It's going to go back and forth. You're creating a long-term relationship.
00:37:53
Speaker
You're going to get the content and you are going to look for ways that you can make it into becoming a sales driver for you. You are going to create a relationship. You're not going to go out as a brand and say, I want to hit 50 micro influencers, have them post one time and be done. That's an old school way of doing it.
00:38:16
Speaker
It would be better to go out there and say, I want to find 10 micro influencers, and I want them to post at least five times for me over a set period of time, right? So now you've built a relationship, and when you're in their feed, their followers are going to see you over and over and over. Because the first time their followers are like, oh, it's interesting. Next time, a little bit later, huh, they did this before. Wait, what? What is this thing? The third time?
00:38:45
Speaker
Huh, they like this. This is like real. This is like a real deal, right? And it just builds from there. And so that's how people need to look at influencer marketing and the power that it has for you. That just scaled my mind immensely because we just had this person in our town who posted something on Facebook and said, who are the financial advisors that I should go talk to?
00:39:10
Speaker
And, you know, there's millions of different posts. He reached out to the people who had like a non-bias, non-related referral. And there was like three or four. And those three or four were us and two other people that we really know, like, and respect. And so we just had coffee with him yesterday. And it was interesting. And I asked him that exact same question of like, how did you choose the people that you were going to go to? He's like, because of basically these nano influencers,
00:39:35
Speaker
We're telling me and now it's out in the universe or whatever For other people to see it's like I went to other posts to see if that actually would have if somebody already asked that question No one asked that and so it's very interesting to think through that I want to ask you one question to scale this and then we can kind of push gears because that was really interesting Who would be a good
00:39:55
Speaker
major influencer for us, you know, more bigger celebrities than we do. If we had the money and the influencers, who would pair it up for on Commonwealth partners? Oh gosh, guys, I can't even have a chance to think about this. Ian Drummond.
00:40:14
Speaker
You know, honestly, I don't think I would go necessarily the realm of like a celebrity celebrity. I would look more at a reality, potentially celebrity, because it's going to be a little bit more realistic. Not that you guys couldn't handle a celebrity, because you can certainly handle giving advice, but as far as, you know, what people have to think about is when you're looking at who your partner is going to be,
00:40:42
Speaker
with an influencer or a TV show or a feature film or a podcast or whatever it might be, is it leading them back to something that is realistic and makes sense? So if I said, hey, you should totally, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, let's just take that dating triangle because you'll get a lot of exposure.
00:41:04
Speaker
Exactly the clientele we want. That's not realistic, right? People aren't like, oh, they want to see someone who's more like, oh, well, I want to be like them. I could see myself being at their level. And they're handling, you know, oh, like for me, I would think that, you know, you look at your HGTV stars, look at your
00:41:28
Speaker
you know, Magnolia Farms, Chip and Joanna games, like something like that where, you know, they kind of are like your everyday people and that they have a business and they're successful with it. And now what are they doing and how are they leveling it up and layering it? And maybe not even to the level of where they are today, but take it back a few years of where they were at and still building. That's the type of celebrity that I think would be a good partner for you guys as an influencer.
00:41:57
Speaker
That's a great answer. Great answer. So on this, you kind of mentioned your multiple income streams for your business and your experience with Blackberry. And so part of that you're doing yourself for your business. So I wanted to kind of get into this is you've kind of created some online courses to help people go zero to 60 with this stuff because obviously we all know it is the future. And I think you even said it too. And I'd like to kind of dive in a little bit deeper on this is we're running out of time here, but
00:42:24
Speaker
People are just scratching the surface with this. There's thousands and thousands of businesses out there. Can you speak to the content you're creating for people to learn about this and then just continue, I think, to dive in of what is the potential out there? Maybe nationally, locally, some of the things we're talking about.
00:42:43
Speaker
Sure. Back in 2012, I started blogging and writing instructional blogs on how you could do these things yourself to give insights. I'm very much so about education. I think that our clients and our prospective clients need to understand the landscape in order to be able to make wise decisions on how to use it. They don't need to know how to do everything.
00:43:08
Speaker
But I'm someone who likes to be able to read very deeply into something before I sign off on it and get the gist so that I have confidence in whoever I'm hiring.
00:43:18
Speaker
is actually going to know what they're doing. And I might read something and eyeball it and not necessarily do it, or I might actually replicate it internally and be like, this totally works. And I'm going to have higher admiration for that person who has put together that content. And I went off in that direction for our whole educational strategy. So started a blog.
00:43:39
Speaker
from the blog, started a podcast, a solo podcast, did over 100 podcasts of that, talking about how to best leverage influencers, how to work with them, how to work with TV content films, event activations, celebrities, celebrity gift bags, like everything that's within our wheelhouse is an agency of Hollywood branded.
00:43:59
Speaker
And then realize that I had kind of a goldmine of really cool content and took that to the next level where we created courses where we have, um, it's at learn.hollywoodbranded.com. There's my plug learn.hollywoodbranded.com. Yeah. And so with that,
00:44:21
Speaker
It allows people to go in and we offer three different levels of courses on celebrity partnerships as well as influencer partnerships and then another course system on product placement and movies and TV shows and events so that people could actually take this in-house especially if they weren't quite ready for our agency because now you have to have budgets to hire an agency and I found myself and I still find myself I like helping people
00:44:48
Speaker
And I was derailing myself because I would talk to a lot of people who didn't have the budgets to actually be able to invest in the strategies that we offer as an agency. And I would try to come up with ways we can help them. And I'd undermine myself because I'd be like, oh, what can we do for you? And how much can I reduce a package? And I realized that I'm never going to give them the level of service that they need and expect from an agency if I just
00:45:15
Speaker
reduce our pricing so far a low. So instead I created entry-level options that anyone can afford. There's no one out there. If this is really something they're interested in, they can purchase some how-to guides at an entry or a comprehensive or really advanced level and bring that in to themselves as either a solo practitioner or to their own agency or their own company in order to execute off of.
00:45:45
Speaker
Wow. Very cool. That's good. So, okay. Last question. Cause I mean, I could go on forever. Where are we going from here? What's, what would Brad look like from here? And what are you excited about? So our agency, uh, you know, we've been doing more and more global partnerships, which is something that when I started this agency, my first logo had a map of the world and our logo on top of it.
Future Visions and Educational Goals
00:46:13
Speaker
So that is a direction we're definitely going. But what I've found is where I really, what I love, I love teaching, I love educating, I love helping. So we are going to be going more in the direction of doing a lot of training for companies as well as agencies. I've just written a book. It's going to be published in the near future, at least it's edited now. So this has been like a process, right?
00:46:36
Speaker
But we'll also be doing seminars where we're doing training I also do one on one consulting so it's I think as I have been able to spend so much time working in my business I am getting to the point where I want
00:46:52
Speaker
to take us where I'm more so working on the business and creating avenues where we can build the whole world of product placement and influencer marketing so more people actually participate in it because it is, it's magic. There is so much magic to this stuff.
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah. And when a campaign hits and it goes well, it is unbelievable. But you have to be there and you have to be playing in the game in order for that magic to even happen. Yeah. Yeah. I want to touch on something because you said that. I think this could be the cap to the whole episode. So you had a map of the world with your logo on the top of it. Is that what you just said? It is. And how many years ago did you do that?
00:47:41
Speaker
When I started when I founded the business 12 years ago so decade plus and at the time that probably you know people easily look at you like you're crazy right and I just watched Captain Marvel with my kids and I don't want to spoiler alert it for everybody, but basically she keeps getting back up
00:47:58
Speaker
And I think what you shared with us is you just kept getting fucked up, right? And we all make mistakes as entrepreneurs, business owners, but you haven't given up on that dream. And now it's like you couldn't imagine. You probably couldn't even imagine back then what's in front of you right now. And because of all the mistakes, you probably feel more focused and able to capitalize on it.
00:48:23
Speaker
There's so many mistakes I've made that we didn't even talk about. There's so many mistakes and we lost all of our money. Our bookkeeper fell for a fraud and sent every last penny of our operations and savings to Hong Kong and down to Nigeria. It was gone back in
00:48:43
Speaker
Gosh, back in 2016 now. Lost everything. Lost every dime. And that was a great learning experience. So I have had some hills and valleys along the way. And what I will say is the more hills and valleys that you have,
00:48:59
Speaker
The easier it actually is to recover from each because you realize things keep on ticking. And you see the wins that you have and we do. We work globally with companies all over the world. I mean, we work with productions in Madrid. We fly to China. We fly to Italy. We are in France. We're in, you know, Central or South America and Canada or wherever it might be and all over the United States.
00:49:25
Speaker
We have conversations, I have a call a little bit later with a company in Russia that we're looking at. I have made that reality of wanting to be a global agency. We are recognized as one of the very top players in our field. I know that as a business owner that all of the hills and valleys, gosh, there have been some grand canyons along the way.
00:49:49
Speaker
Grand Canyon's, they have allowed me to realize that I'm more resilient than I even knew I was. And that another day will always come and you just gotta keep it together and keep on ticking and be positive and have that idea that you're not going to be mired down in something when it is dark times and just keep going.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah. So you can tell why we like this woman. We've got to have you back on the show. I would love to be back. Okay. So how would our listeners reach out to you, find more about you, Stacey? Sure. So our website is Hollywoodbranded.com and you could certainly always email me, Stacey at Hollywoodbranded.com. However you decide you want to spell Stacey,
00:50:34
Speaker
it will show up in my email box. I think I figured that one out over the years. And then if you are interested in any of the online courses, that would be learn.hollywoodbranded.com. But we have, gosh, over a thousand blogs and podcasts and ebooks. And I mean, I wear a content creation machine here. So if there's anything you want to know about Hollywood and influencers, I'm pretty sure that we'll cover the topic. So check us out. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:03
Speaker
Stacey, this has been a riot. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you guys so much. Had a blast. Always do that talking to you guys. You're awesome. I appreciate that. We appreciate it so much. Thank you for all of your insights. And I know you are just getting started, I feel like. Oh, absolutely. So I can't wait to talk the next time. You've been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Dewhurst. Send us out. Thanks again. Bye.
00:51:27
Speaker
That's all for this episode of The Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.