Transcript

Bennie F Johnson

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of AMA’s Marketing And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. Today’s episode is special. In our series, we explore life through the marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at this intersection of marketing and the unexpected. Through our series, we’ll introduce you to the visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard but are exactly the ones you need to know. Our thought provoking conversations will unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today’s guest is a friend who’s truly an innovator. I’d like to welcome today Alex Morrison. Alex became Pearpop’s first corporate chief marketing officer in January 2022. Pearpop, you might ask, is trusted by the world’s best brands for creator marketing, delivering unrivaled performance on its award winning platform. It’s prior to Pearpop that Alex served as president of Gray Advertising, overseeing the West Coast region, including LA, San Francisco, and Vancouver, and previously served as global managing director for RGA and Content Studio. Alex has had an incredible career of leading with innovation.

And it’s in his role at Pearpop as the creator collaboration platform that we’d like to welcome him to the podcast today. Alex, thank you for joining.

Alex Morrison

Bennie, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Bennie 

My goodness, it’s such a timely kind of pivot. I remember when you were at Grey Advertising and we had the conversation about you taking on this new role. New startup, new space around this idea of building a more collaborative space for content creators. Now take me back, not a very long time ago, just two years ago, where this was an insight that you had. Talk a bit about what drove you to thinking about being a part of Pear

Alex

Yeah, so I like to say that in 2022, I left a hundred plus year old company to join a less than one year old company. So that’s a big leap to make. And the reason that I decided to do it actually goes back to about 2014 when I was with RGA and I was, as you mentioned, running their global content studio.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

And at that time I saw a stat in some, it might’ve been Adweek or something like that, that the average high school senior thought this YouTuber, forgot the name of who it was, was more famous than Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, or anyone else that you and I might’ve thought of as being an A -list celebrity at that time. So I thought, how can that be? How can young people shift it so much? So I had to go look into and what I saw was pretty amazing. I remember going to VidCon for the first time in 2014, went to all the MCNs, like Maker Studios and Fullscreen, and you saw this burgeoning, what is now called the creator economy, really taking off back then. And those were big companies at that time. And so I had this itch that something new happening in this space. And throughout my career, I’ve really tried to stay focused on

Bennie 

Right.

Alex 

Where these gaps exist between where marketers are spending their time in a budget and where consumers, where audiences are spending their time. And so you saw that in the early days of the commercial internet. You saw that in the early days of the commercial social web. And then what you started to see with creators was, wow, people are spending a huge amount of time with creator content, but marketers are kind of asleep on this one. And so at that time,

Bennie 

Right.

Alex 

I basically, in the context of RGA, founded what we called Creator Studio inside RGA. And we built a really good practice, the first one ever at RGA, around creator marketing. Fast forward a few years, I ended up going to take the role at Gray that you mentioned. But in the back of my mind, and partly because there’s such a vibrant ecosystem around this space here in LA, but around the world. This is taking off in a huge way. I knew that this was a space that I wanted to revisit and I just didn’t know when or how it was going to happen. And then there was a very, very serendipitous moment that happened in mid 2021 where through a mutual friend, I got connected to this dynamic young founder, Cole Mason, who’s the founder of AirPod. And it was really just a, I was blown away by how clearly he could see the future.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

The creator space and how brands would intersect into that. He had built some pretty amazing tools out of the gate, but what he needed was a partner to help bring it to life in the market. And it took a lot of introspection and, you know, closing your eyes before you leap. But I decided to do it. And, you know, it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made because Pearpop is really a special offering in the creator space.

You know, all the cliches about startup life are true. But, you know, we are, we’re thriving and, you know, to be a part of this ride has been something I wouldn’t trade.

Bennie 

I love from the bio, it acknowledges that you all have been noted already with that short period of time as one of Fast Company’s most innovative companies, right? You’ve been honored in that space, but it talks about Pearpop helping a community. I love that assist right there, helping a community of more than 200,000 creators earn a living doing what they love while also giving brands instant and direct access to collaborate with relevant, authentic brand creators. So relevant, authentic, and brand safe. That one statement is loaded with a lot of good insight that you have there. Talk a bit about how you started to bring this together, helping a community connect both as creators and as the brands that need to work together.

Alex 

Yeah. So one of the things that really separates Pearpop from a lot of creator marketing companies is that we are fundamentally a creator first company. So our mission is to help creators earn a living doing what they love. Any creative person, you know, I’ve been a musician throughout my life. Anyone with a creative bone in their body knows, you know, there’s that moment when you have to decide, am I going to go for this professionally or am I going to sit it out and take a corporate route? Right. And a lot of people, myself included, you know, the path was just too difficult to see in this sort of truly creative path, right? And that keeps so many people away from doing the thing they truly love, right? And I thought, you know, what better mission to get behind and to help people with creative spark pursue that spark professionally and do what they love. And the beautiful thing about the creator space, is that people, it’s really the new gateway to entrepreneurialism for a whole new generation, right? I mean, if you’re gonna start the new Procter & Gamble, if you’re gonna start the new media company and you’re a 20 year old in 2024, you should start by building an audience, building a personality, a rapport with people, and then you can start to figure out where you wanna take that, right? This is an unbelievable opportunity for creative.

Bennie 

Right.

Alex 

So I think on that side of what we do, it’s incredibly inspiring. And we’ve built a community of about a quarter million creators who trust us to bring them opportunities that allow them to earn a living doing what they love. And then for the brands, of course, if we’re just thinking about creators, at the end of the day, we need to make sure we are delivering an amazing solution for brands that meets their needs and surprises them with things they didn’t even know to ask.

And so I think on the brand side of the house, the real magic of Pearpop is in the name, really. It’s pairing the right brands and creators using data. And so our dynamic matching algorithm, which is the sort of beating heart of what we do here, helps for any brief, any brand parameters that we might receive, we can find a really, really great short list of creators that those parameters. And then we’ll lay human eyes on them as well. So it’s this sort of man and machine working together to ensure full compliance with the brief as well as brand safety, right? And not just brand safety, but is it brand suitable? Is it actually advancing the brand? Right? We can go beyond do no harm, right? How can creators actually be almost an ambassador for a brand to bring them into difficult to reach communities and audiences, right? That

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right.

Alex 

Maybe tuning into television apart from key tentpole events, right? And so really, it’s this two sided marketplace, creators and brands, and they both need one another, right? And we’re right in the center of that collaboration and aim to be a real voice for a productive, positive collaboration between both sides so everyone gets what they need.

Bennie 

Right. And what I love about it is you really become an accelerant to a new way of working. So for our guests, those who listening, Alex had, at my invitation, he spoke at our collegiate conference last year. And one of the things that was really amazing to watch was the response of the 20 -year -old college students looking at a new world of marketing and coming in and hearing, this was very early on in Peripop’s conversation, but understanding and getting that moment.

I can take the skills that I have and make my way forward and things that I enjoy that I’m learning about in school and apply it in a direct way. had so many students come to us and talk about how that inspired them to think about new ways into launching their career, which is really powerful. And as I look as you’re expanded, now you’ve come from a classic agency background. What are some of the lessons you take from that hard -earned hundred years of agency? That you apply to this really dynamic new space? Because even in the last two years, the Creator economy has shifted and adjusted. What lessons are you able to impart on this new way?

Alex 

So it’s a great question because I think a lot of times in a startup, you get very obsessed with this idea of innovation, doing things that are new, doing things that have not been done before. And that’s really, really important to what we do. We pride ourselves on that. At the same time, we need to be really simple and easy to use, enjoyable to use for both creators and brands. And so when I think about client experience, brand

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

On this platform. One of the things I often say is we don’t want anyone to need an adapter plug to know what we’re talking about. You should be able to, if you care about this metric, we care about that metric. If you care about this outcome, we care about that outcome. And so everything that we’re doing is about understanding a user’s needs, whether it’s a large enterprise brand like Amazon or Microsoft. Or a small business or growth stage company. We really take a lot of pride in delivering an amazing experience for them, harnessing the power of creators’ creativity. So a big difference actually, you asked about the similarity, but a big difference is relative to an agency that’s pitching on having the best creative ideas or the best strategy. Usually the way we have a conversation with a brand is we say, the creators are the star of the show, right? This is the creativity that we need to unlock, and what we do is we help you create the right conditions to not only find the right creators, activate them with success. Right. And so we play much of a role of a partner to the brand and to the creator to help make this a fruitful collaboration. Right. And so that’s where, you know, I think the similarity is that everyone wants an outcome. They don’t want to have to work too hard to figure out what’s happening. So simplicity.

Bennie

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

And efficacy, you know what I mean? Like just actually getting the job done, headache. And yeah, like it’s cool that we have amazing technology in the box, but if it’s not easy to use, like we all have to take a page from Apple at some point in lives, right? And you know, if it’s not easy to use, if it’s not a pleasure to use, then people aren’t going to come back and keep it. So that’s one of the biggest things I always try to impart on our team, whether it’s the product and engineering side or our brand solutions teams.

Bennie 

Great, great.

Alex 

Is really making it a joy really to work in this space that often is associated with a lot of banging your head against the wall and hurting cats and all these kind of things. It’s like creators have a tendency to wander off, you know, they’re human beings, they their own ideas. And so if we can make that collaboration a really positive one, that’s always a focus for us.

Bennie 

So what surprises you about the creator community? Is there anything that, you know, in the last two years that surprised you about this, this kind of untapped community that you’re bringing together?

Alex 

I am always blown away by how switched on, articulate, entrepreneurial, and just like incredible the average creator is. I I think about myself at age 20, and some of them are much older, right? But like the degree of autonomy and self direction that creators have is mind blowing to me. I mean, there’s this word on the street that creators influencers are shallow and all they’re thinking about is hawking fake supplements and what like this is like this is the baggage that a lot of creators carry around with them if they tell their uncle what they do. Right. But in fact, this is going back to my earlier comment. Being a creator is really the gateway to any entrepreneurial pursuit that a person could want right now. It’s really the best first step, the only first step to build a business in the consumer sphere. Right.

And so you get these people that are, they just, really have a real sense of center in themselves. And it’s just so cool to see. Like you really don’t see it in many places, but the creator space brings it.

Bennie

Right. It’s so interesting to talk about people having a space to cross that threshold of making a living doing what they love. Right? Because that’s often the threshold in there. Is this sustainable in this space? I was thinking about your reaction that people have with their families. Can you do this? Some of the spaces are often the baggage that we had a generation ago in like direct selling. Right? The baggage of if you’re going out and creating your own way in this space in there, can you really do this? Is this viable? When you look at creators, the amount of resources that’s been invested in there. It makes it possible for someone to actually learn, earn not just a sustaining living, but a thriving living.

Alex 

Absolutely. mean, the top end of the creator economy, these people are making millions of dollars. Now, obviously, the average creator may not be earning nearly that much. And there have been plenty of statistics that show there’s quite a lot of income disparity in the creator, so called creator economy, right? So just because the top guys are in some pool in the Hollywood Hills doesn’t mean everyone is, right? Mostly, say creators are more likely to be your barista than to be that millionaire model. But people are on their way. And this is the thing. It’s a journey. I think a lot of people in the early days, very early days, the creator economy said, man, I feel bad for these guys. They’re going to get a huge head. They’re going to think they’re king of the world. And then someday they’re just going to have to go get a J -O -B. But in reality, if you’re smart and you’re entrepreneurial, this, like everything else in life, can be part of a narrative in how these creators build a life and career.

Bennie 

Right.

Alex

The smart ones, and most of them really, are, are thinking about this as a means to an end, not the end in and of itself, that they’re gonna build their voice. They’re gonna establish their voice, and with that, they can do so much, and they’re correct. That really is an amazing thing to watch.

Bennie

So I’m going to switch to the other side of the marketplace and ask you, what advice do you have for brands who may be looking to move into this space, right? We know the first movers and real creative brands are always going to take the risk in there. But what do you have for that fattier part of the curve of brands and the brand leaders who are listening to this podcast and maybe thinking about exploring creator economy as a part of their marketing mix? What advice would you

Alex 

Yeah. Well, so first of all, I don’t think there’s any reason to be scared of getting involved. The creator space is incredibly diverse in every facet, every dimension of that word, right? So there are creators who are risque, there are creators who are absolutely ten and two and keep it dialed into everything you want to say. There’s absolutely 80% of marketers are already in the creator space in some way, way, or

Bennie 

Right.

Alex 

If the last 20% are on the line here, I would encourage you to take a good look because the benefits of participating in the creator space are massive. And what I would say to that is, know, creators have this uncanny ability to connect with audiences that are very, very difficult to reach through other types of media. I think I mentioned this clear, but I almost think of them as

Bennie 

Right.

Alex 

To communities, right? It’s not, yes, they create content, and sometimes that content is beautiful and hilarious and all these things. But what they are is really a skeleton key into difficult to reach community. And if you look at them as purely a one -way messenger of your talking points, you’re going to get a certain amount of benefit, certainly. But if you actually, we ran a survey recently where we asked creators, what do you wish brands knew about you? And they said, no brand has ever asked me for insights about my audience. I talk to these guys every day. And I think that the true, like the 201 course for the marketer involved in the creator space is start thinking about creators as an extension of your marketing team. These are people who can bring insights and they can bring your message out into the world in a way that will feel relevant and authentic to audiences reaching. So I think that

Bennie 

And, mm-hmm. Right.

Alex

As long as you can do it responsibly, meaning you’re not just hiring people and letting them say whatever they want, you’re de -risking. And then on the other side of it, you have huge, huge upside in terms of your ability to connect with meaningful audiences for your brand and not just young people, by the way. That’s another misconception. Yes, there is absolutely a concentration of 20 somethings on social media.

But by the way, same with 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds, 60-year-olds, they’re all on, everyone’s spending time doing the vertical scroll these days. So let’s face it, we all do it. And so if you do it, the odds are your audience is doing it. And so if you don’t have a strategy to engage in that vertical scrolling environment, that’s really what’s at stake here, is thinking about how do we create content that feels native to that environment in the same way that years ago, we strove to have TV spots that looked as high quality production as the game show they were next to, right? And now we just need to think in a very similar way. What does that content look like that people are loving? And how do we live naturally in that environment with those audiences? And that’s what creators

Bennie

Right. And I think it’s your point is really powerful there that the creators become an insight gateway for you. If you as a brand and as a brand leader are open to listen, right? What can I do? Yes, I can get you to the corner with what you’ve delivered to me, but we can unleash the entire neighborhood if you know, we can engage in that space. And I think it’s important for you to talk about community. Community isn’t just defined by proximity or age. So we’ve got creators who you know, are across all four major generations in our marketplace. We’re driving value for for the brands,

Alex 

Absolutely, absolutely. one of the key things, know, so the first thing when a brand starts to get serious about the creator space is they want to understand who the right creator partners might be to bring in as collaborators, right? And that’s where the use of data is really, important. Not just about the creators, but about the content they tend to create stylistically and otherwise, as well as the audience they have an ability to reach. There is data on not just who the creator is on face value, but look beyond that creator to who they are reaching. And then you can map that back to audiences you really care about. And I guarantee you, is any audience that you’re thinking about reaching, there is a creator or many creators that have a high degree of persuasiveness within those communities. And so if you do the work or hire a partner that helps you do the work to identify the creators that will bring you into those spaces. Places, then it becomes about collaboration and really creating. You know, at first you may not think about hiring a creator for a long period of time. It might be a one off, but really thinking of how every time you do a one off, it’s almost like a little mini audition. Like maybe this could work out. This person could become someone that works with us over a period of months or even years. And so think keeping that open to ongoing collaboration.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. So we’ll switch back, we’ll toggle in the marketplace. How have you been able to help creators mature as business leaders? know, one of the things, it’s one thing to create content, it’s another thing to have your content become your business. How have you all been able to help partner with these emerging creators to build their business enterprises?

Alex 

Yeah, it’s a great question. And you look at some of the top creators from Mr. Beast and Feastables and Emma Chamberlain and Chamberlain Coffee. These are some huge consumer brands at this point. Not to mention Prime Hydration, as polarizing as that can be. And even going back half a generation to The Honest Company and Casamigo. You can’t think of them as creators because they first were movie stars.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

But it’s very much from a similar clock, where at a certain point in time, and in certain categories, this is still true, the biggest advantage was distribution, getting your stuff into the right shelves. And I think in packaged goods and food, this is still a massive, massive advantage that is needed to get to scale. But in many businesses where you can sell direct online or it’s a digital product, you know, that advantage goes away. And now you’re talking about, who has the ability to reach and connect with an audience the fastest? And that is your unfair advantage. So we’re always thinking about, okay, well, yes, there’s the Mr. Beast and the Emma Chamberlains and Jake Paul and all this stuff. But every creator, I think, is at least starting to have this thought process of, should I be attaching my name to a new product? Should I be developing my own offering?

And then, you know, this unlocks a whole different topic, which you may or may not want to get into, which is affiliate marketing as it relates to creating. Because if you don’t want your own brand, what you do is you start to think about brands you can attach yourself to as a sort of supercharged creator economy style affiliate. And this is taking off like crazy because then the work on the creator part is minimal. But what they’re doing is taking a share of every sale.

Right? And creators are making a lot of money that way. I mean, it’s turning into a pretty big share of the creator economy as a whole. think the 2023 estimate was the affiliate marketing space was about a $17 billion industry in and of itself. And that’s not even counting for all the other creator work that’s going on. its creators have a huge economic opportunity. If they lean into it and for people who want to launch new products, new music, new films, whatever it be, that’s kind of what I was getting at is they built a platform from which they can launch new things. And that’s ultimately for the forward looking folks, the opportunity.

Bennie 

Right, right. It’s so true. And what you really describe is kind of an age -adage that you’re betting on yourself. Because you can take a fixed-fee contract, or you can say, I know I generate this audience. The platform, my experience, my brand shows that I have this reach. I trust that my community will follow through, and I’m going to bet on myself to earn out through the transaction, which

Alex 

That’s right. That’s right. And you know, it’s interesting because I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a comment on creator compensation to some degree, which is to say both are valid, right? Like affiliate compensation and a commission based structure is great. But many creators really do prefer to have some fixed fee component to what they do. And the way I look at that is for the really good creators, like the top folks who have who brands might really dream of working with, I think of it as almost like a base salary and a bonus, right? It’s like, okay, you want someone to show up to work and do their job, it’s quite helpful to pay them a salary, right? On the flip side, you want them to exceed and like all performance benchmarks and all this, giving them some variable upside is a really good idea. And so if you’re only going to pay the affiliate fee on a commission basis, what I often say is don’t count on them for they might kill it. They might absolutely come through for you, but you can’t ask them for deliverables at that point. They might do it. They might over -deliver, and they might be your best salesperson of the year. But I would, at that point, think about a law of large numbers kind of strategy where you’re getting lots of affiliates lined up. And through that, there’s some predictability. But if you want creators to do something for you, typically what we hear from the creator community is, OK, great. What’s the fee?

And that’s a very reasonable interaction. I, in a way would want to make that feel like creators are out of line, because that is, they are worth all that and more, most.

Bennie

Right, right. Right. And what Pearpop does is it creates a safe, equitable space for you to have those conversations, right? And provide you with a certain bit of transparency and structure and norms that are essential to having a good, productive community, right? All marketplaces are built on trust. And if you don’t have that space in there, then you cannot advance it. As we look around the corner and we think about the future for creators, what do you think the biggest challenges are going to be for creators going into the market the next year?

Alex 

Yeah, mean, think, you know, creators, think predictability is always a big one for creators because, you know, it’s everyone’s always waiting by the phone, so to speak, for their next phone call from a brand or from a collaborator. The best creators are becoming more proactive in how they plan out their activity. And so I think one of the big challenges for creators will be just understanding how they want to structure

Bennie 

What do you think? Mm-hmm.

Alex

Their income, right? Because there’s many ways to succeed as a creator. But if you really want to be reliant on brand deals, the smartest creators are now building their whole presence to be brand safe and appealing to mass market brands, right? And they’re getting smarter about, you know what, I’m not going to curse. I’m not going to talk about certain topics, because that’s just polarizing to brands. And you’re seeing a greater sophistication emerge. So I think, in many ways, the challenge for creators of predictability could also be the biggest opportunity, which is seizing this moment that we’re in of being able to get into the driver’s seat. And I would also say the biggest challenge a lot of people cite around the creator space is AI, right? Is every creator going to get replaced by an AI? I take the exact opposite view, which is to say, most creators that we talk to are already using multiple AI tools to improve their workflow, their creative brainstorm process. So I think it’s, to quote Steve Jobs, it is the ultimate bicycle for the mind as it relates to creativity, right? And being able to just have this as a tool set for creators, think, you know, there are more, put it this way, there are more tailwinds than headwinds in the creator space right now. And so I think the smart creators are just embracing all of these new technologies that are coming out to be just more and more prolific in the kind of output they

Bennie 

Really great when when we started you were a creative community and it’s it I’ve noticed the tagline was refined a bit To have creator collaboration. What is this future of collaboration? What do you think that looks like as brands become more sophisticated and creators as we mentioned become more sophisticated? What do you think the opportunities could be for collaboration?

Alex

Yeah, it’s a very astute observation about our language updating, because it does reflect the ever-changing nature of the space. So when we started just three years ago, one of the novel things about Pearpop was that you could basically turn on what we used to call influence on demand. So you had a brief, you needed people at the ready to promote something. Imagine being able to snap your fingers.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

close your eyes and all of a sudden 80 people are promoting your new movie release or your new product coming out or whatever it might be. But it also, you know, arguably is a little bit transactional in nature, right? These people are showing up as mercenaries and then they disappear, right? And that made a lot of sense in 2021 because the algorithm of TikTok was really at that time, there was still a huge amount of potential in purely organic reach on that platform.

Bennie 

Right, right. Mm.

Alex 

And by playing the numbers game of having lots of creators shouting your name from the rooftop quickly and then disappearing, you could actually catch a little lightning in a bottle sometimes, right? And as things changed, both with the platforms as well as with brands and creators’ expectations, what became more more true is it’s important to have these deeper, more authentic collaborations where people started to

Bennie

Okay.

Alex 

Recoil at the idea of these work for hire promoters on behalf of a brand. wanted to feel, audiences wanted to feel like their favorite creators were aligning with brands, not just shilling for brand. And so this idea of a collaboration, I think is the key to success in the creator space. If you come into it thinking you’re just you know, go on Fiverr and hire a creator for a quick gig, it’s not gonna go that well, right? But if you go and do your research and understand who the right partners can be, brief them like true partners, take their questions, give them the information they need, they’re gonna have a lot more success on your behalf representing you in a way that’s authentic to their audience.

And so I think what we really, and that’s just for a one -time post. Ideally, what we start to see is from that one -time post, that creator now wants to work on an ongoing basis with the brand and vice versa, where we really start to see this outsized impact from sustained collaboration. And it’s not necessarily going to be LeBron James and Nike for 20 years, but it could be for six months or a year. And that’s a wonderful thing, right? And so really, we did…

About a month ago, actually at Cannes, we unveiled some new research that we commissioned alongside a company called Creator Vision and the Harris Poll called the Creator Rosetta Stone. And the Creator Rosetta Stone, we went into it without knowing what we would find. We just polled 600 creators on their biggest pain points, their biggest strengths of their current brand collaboration experiences.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

And what we heard was that the biggest issue creators face today is just communication. There was a staggering number of creators, 85 % said they never heard feedback from a brand on their concept or their content draft. They’d never heard any feedback, right? 89%, the stat I sort of alluded to earlier, said that they had never been asked for an insight about their audience from

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex

Right. And so there’s still, I think, we’re still a little bit in this 1. 0 creator collaboration headspace of these are hired guns, you know, I’m just going to let them, you know, go wild and I’m going to give them a really tight script to read. Cause God forbid they go off script. Um, and it’s, it’s a very prescriptive, frankly, not fully respectful collaboration, right? Not that anyone’s being disrespectful. It’s just that there’s somewhat, uh, arm’s length nature to

Bennie 

Right. Yeah, and it’s up to your point. It’s limited in the engagement, right?

Alex

That’s right. It limits the actual results. And so as a result, would argue brands are overpaying these creators and underperforming the potential of what these collaborations could yield because it’s just this constant transactional attitude. Think about your favorite employees or collaborators. If you didn’t spend the time to inspire them and to give them

Bennie

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

The reason for, you the vision for where things are going, you’re never going to get top performance. So it’s worth it to treat it like a collaboration, even if you’re being completely self -centered, right? Like the business results prove it out. And so, yeah, we’re really focused on this communication gap that exists in the creator space, which is why we released Creator Rosetta Stone, which by the way is at creatorrosettastone.com. So you can check out the full findings there.

But collaboration only happens if there’s communication.

Bennie 

It’s so true. I mean, one of the things that I love to ask and then share a bit of what we’ve been thinking a lot about with creators, which is the fact that creators are marketers. And I say that statement like full stop because sometimes we don’t identify as in that space in there, but they’re marketers in the sense that we’re creating a community that’s embraced to say, hey, here’s some other tools and trips and strategies that we can add to what you’re doing right now, which can help accelerate that collaboration, help ease some of the misunderstanding. Because a lot of those challenges are tactics and marketing engagements that fill in the gap in between how the brand operates and how a creator operates as well. So we’ve been kind of opening up and saying, hey, here’s a safe, productive space to bring the new skills that you have to bear to here’s some other tricks in the bag that can help move you forward. Which is one.

Alex 

I love that. I love that. Yeah, I mean, think creators in many ways are their own mini media companies. In some cases, not so many. They certainly have a sense of their personal brand, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have every trick in the bag that a marketer would develop over their career. So I love that role for the AMA supporting creators in building both their personal brands, their personal enterprises, as well as making them collaborators on the other

Bennie 

Right.

Alex 

Because that’s that we try to educate and provide resources to creators as well to make them successful participants in campaigns and in marketing programs, right? But I love the AMA stepping in in that way. I think that’s that’s a really wonderful role that you guys

Bennie 

And it transitions that. So then I’m going to start. I’m going to end where we often start. In the work that we do, we always start with the brief. The brief is kind of powerful. It’s magical. It’s mystical. It’s structured. And it’s kind of a space that we all come back to when we all start off with. If I were to ask you, if you could remix and renovate the brief, what are the things that you would do for the brief to get the most out of the brand experience? The most out of the engagement and the most out of the creator.

Alex 

Yeah, it’s a great question. Well, I think I always believe that the number one thing that leads to great work is understanding what we need to accomplish while also understanding, especially in the creator space, that there are many ways to get to that goal. Every brief that we have, there’s a real focus on what’s the outcome we’re trying to create. And then we also need to know all the background, all this kind of stuff. But in the middle, and speaking to the findings of the research study I was just mentioning, what we really, know, in many briefs, in many agencies I’ve been at, there’s a thing called the one thing, right? Like what’s the one thing we need to communicate to audiences, right? That’s typically how it’s used. I like to flip it on its head when it comes to creators, which is actually framing it as a question to the creator, which is what’s the one thing that you are going to bring to this that we didn’t think of yet, right? Where the creators can actually bring themselves

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Alex 

And some nugget, some insight to that brief, to the output of that brief, and allowing creators the space to bring one thing to the party that makes it truly authentic to them and resonance with their communities. And I think obviously you need all the particulars in there from the brand perspective, but I think leaving that space for conversation in the very design of the brief is something we’re starting to do more and we’re starting to creators like sort of light up when you ask them, right? It’s one of those cool things. yeah, that’s my one addition. The one thing I would add is the one thing as a question to the creator.

Bennie 

It’s one thing. And I think that’s a great way to close our conversation. A strategic pivot from the statement to exploring the question of what’s the one thing. Alex, thank you for spending this time. Thank you for sharing the insights behind Pearpop and the community and helping us think about what this next generation, next wave, next impact that marketing can have from creator to brand and beyond. Thank you for joining us. For those listening, thank you for being a part of our AMA Marketing And Podcast. I encourage you to check out Pearpop, the content marketing platform, and check out the AMA for more resources to help you with content and brand marketing. Once again, I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson, and this has been an episode of Marketing / And. Thank you.