Happy Friday everyone.
*Applause*
Hope you guys had
a fun Thursday night. Thanks for joining
us. Robert, what's something everyone's
looking for these days? Is it Waldo? No.
Hm, Keanu Reeves? Closer. Could it be
authenticity? Ding ding ding! In this day
and age everyone's looking for authentic
relationships, especially when it comes
to influencer marketing. Influencers are
changing. The role is changing and
consumers are not always trusting them
as much. That brings up some important
questions such as what determines
influence when anybody with enough
followers deems themselves an
influencer? And what exactly does
partnership mean when the only thing
tying them together is money? While
consumers are getting smarter and savvier by the day, so are brands. Brands
realized they can't use the same tactics
they were always using. They have to
create more organic, authentic
relationships. Two mic sets? That's nice. That's
where our speaker today,
Brian Salzman, comes in. CEO and founder
of RQ. He has been building honest
relationships between brands and
consumers for decades. Yeah he's been
spending the past decade working with
brands such as HBO, YouTube, and Pizza Hut
and connecting them with more authentic,
engaging influencers. So please give a
warm welcome to our guest all the way
from Los Angeles, California
Brian Salzman.
*Applause*
Hi. Thank you so much, like it's very nice
of you. I mean, I don't know if I could
answer all those questions but I really
appreciate you having me. I told the kids
in the office, they got people in the
office, like I was coming here and they
were so impressed and excited for us to
share our point of view and why we
started our queue with you, the future
leaders of our industry. The brilliant
minds that you are. I think one of the
biggest things, our biggest competitor
and what we do and I can't wait to show
you is the word influencer marketing. I
mean there's such a standard today in
terms of the idea of what influencer
marketing is, and this transactional
pay-to-play model that we are going up
against. And I think that's why I started
my own company with a business
partner and some brilliant people really
because we saw a white space. We saw this
idea that before the internet there was
influencer marketing with the internet
there's influencer marketing, and now
it's kind of this in-between space. So
how do we define it and how do we make
money out of it. I have very old-school
cards because I've never spoken in front
of this many people before so definitely
feel free to interrupt me ask questions
I am a super casual person. So I think I
first of all I think I'll just give you
a quick background of myself. I went to
NYU. I never thought I'd be a marketer
ever. It had never crossed my mind. I
studied finance. I ended up working at a
hedge fund as an analyst on Wall Street.
I absolutely hated it. I barely knew how
to multiply and I was like what the hell
am I doing here,
but I paid off my college loans and I
was out of there in two seconds. I then decided to follow my
dreams. I always had a passion for
entertainment, filmmaking, TV production. I
love the idea of storytelling. So like
anybody else in the entertainment
industry, I got my first job which was an
assistant. I was lucky that I got a
became a celebrity assistant though and
it seems like I could have stories for
days. So we can spend an hour just talking about celebrity gossip but my
first job being a personal b***h, I
called it for two years, I am the best
dinner party guest in the world because
of the stories that I have. And we can
talk about all those stories, but my
first job was for Julia Roberts. I worked
for her for a year and a half. So yes get it out of the way we've talk about that. She
was amazing. We were just talking like
what is a- what makes a celebrity a "celebrity"?
And it's like they're all very nice
people. The thing is is when you when you
have ten "yes" people around you for years
and years and years your sense of
reality becomes so skewed, but for me I
worked for Julia for a while. And I mean
there were- I did everything from making
sure she went to the airport on time
to the flight was there, whatever.
I remember the third day I was working
there I got her alias wrong and I got in
trouble. I cried for three days. I thought
my life was over, but I survived. After
that I worked for Kristin Davis she
played Charlotte on Sex in the City.
This was long- really late 90s, early
2000s but I am- it was season five and six
of the show and it was phenomenal. I got
to work on set. I got to work with her. Her
little nuances like making sure paper
towels didn't have little characters on
it or whatever. There were breakdowns and
moments but really the best thing is is
I- working for that type of person I was
able to understand the infrastructure of
kind of Hollywood. Like who makes the
decisions. How the decisions are made. And that kind of stuck with me
in terms of just understanding that
ecosystem and who is who and how to
guide my way through. Sorry my cards.
I think overall understanding what that
the navigation of Hollywood ultimately
helped me get to where I am today, which
I'll explain in terms of RQ. But
then I moved to LA. I did production jobs,
script development, and I had a blast. The
problem with Hollywood is that it's very
political, not that marketing is not, but
the idea of making a film, writing a film
which takes years and years. I mean
unless you have a big franchise you're
up against especially nowadays you're up
against so much competition, but in 2002
I met somebody at a dinner party who
worked in marketing. Again, I had- was not
a marketer. I didn't come from marketing and it changed my life. It was one of those
things where wow I could actually tell
stories consistently. I could work with
brands that have a lot of money and
actually do what I want to do. So, I
immediately just switched. I started all
over again as an assistant working for
an agency. I worked my way up with the
agency side. Always kind of bumps- I was a
hard worker so I always was like a volunteer to do everything. I'll do that. I'll stay.
I'll work the event- the door at the
event. I'll go to meetings. I luckily
had a boss who was phenomenal in
some ways always not, but um he let me go to every
meeting. I went to- I was kind of like the
guy in the back just taking notes and
the greatest thing was the meetings were
with people like John Ran and Omnicom or
Andrew Robertson or these big CMOS. And I just had to learn how they think. I
learned what mattered to them. They kind
of want to leave a legacy. They want to
make some change. They want to take a little bit of risk, but don't want to piss people
off. I say later but one of the best
things I think in marketing that I've
learned especially on the agency side is
you always  have to validate a spend. If
someone's gonna spend money, no matter
what it is, influencer
marketing. It's their belief of influencer
marketing. If it's an experiential
event or- if you could validate a spend
through any type of data or research, the good thing is
there's so much data in research you
could almost validate any spend. But I
think being creative helps. I I think
one of the unique things working on that
agency side and working in the area that
I did, I quickly realized that I had this
mini superpower. And I think in
advertising or marketing in general you
learn that there are certain things that
you click with. There's certain things
that just become like it just clicked in
my mind. Mine was client services. I love the
idea of our counselor service. I love the
idea of working with clients and helping
them on this journey of creating
something. I mean one of- our agency and
the other agency that we work with a lot our motto is always "Make our client famous".
Like we don't take credit for anything. I
mean we know that we do all the good, fun
work. I mean I could, no offense, if there's any brand people here, like I
couldn't work on the brand side. I'm horrific at politics. I don't- I just want to
get sh*t done. Let's do it. Let's have fun.
So on our side, we get to do that. I mean
it's difficult sometimes because we have
to deal with clients who say no, but at
the point is like client services
became- I love pitching and ideas. I love
sharing exciting news. I love making them
smarter. I read constantly every morning.
I'm doing Flipboard. I'm reading all my
news and I love sharing articles with
clients because making them smarter
makes me a better service for them. So
one of things, I also learn on the agency
side is people in our industry they want
to work with people they like and they
want to work with people they trust. So I look
from a client perspective or agency
client perspective, I always wanted them
to like me. So I mean, I'm pretty cuckoo
and I curse a lot and I have no filter
and people like that I guess. I'm also
gay so people are like oh my god he's the gay
guy, but the clients like they love
hanging out with us. We have a good time,
but also they trust. I mean, I want to
talk about the company that I built but
I work with like the best f*****g people
in the world. And in terms of how they
deliver, what they deliver, we're all such
a team. And if we consistently deliver
good work, people are always gonna work with us.
I mean I think one of our biggest
biggest successes today now is we've had
the same, except for Airbnb...long
story, but everyone else has like stayed
with us. See my client from Google was my
first client and they're still my client.
And we make most of our kind of growth
internals, so we don't have 50 clients, but we have seven clients. And like in
YouTube we have nine clients in YouTube.
And we have four clients at Google,
and Pizza Hut we have two clients. And I
mean so it just says if we work really
hard and people trust us and they like
us, I mean you're golden. I mean you could
do basically whatever you want, but we have really great clients. So anyway, so
knowing my superpower was really
important. I mean I was the client- I was
the client guy, so that gave me enormous
confidence. And like getting ahead,
steering kind of my own career so I
didn't say I do everything, like I
knew what I liked. Hold on. Sorry.
Oh, so the ad of my ad world out
of my like career path I- we have these
amazing clients but two things I
noticed, which led to our queue, was like
why our brand clients with huge grunts-
I mean, Samsung and Microsoft, I never
understood- it's huge brand equities.
Everyone knew who they were. It wasn't
like a startup company. Like why brands
always paid people to pretend to like
their brand in marketing communications.
Like they paid people to be in
commercials. They pay people to create
digital content. They pay people to show
up at events. I mean they have media events all the
time. They hire a celebrity to say how
much they love Samsung or whatever it
was worth. I mean I know it worked
because he got the ROI and the KPIs
were all good, but in essence like you're-
if the fundamental reason marketing is
this is to build relationships with
consumers, but you're basing it on a
dishonesty. It's like if I paid you to be my friend or if I paid you to tell
her to be my friend, like go f**k
yourselves. Like I mean, it wouldn't-
you wouldn't like connect, so for me it
was like they're- I don't want to- there
was just a missing gap. So we talked
about entrepreneurship and like did
I always want to be an entrepreneur. No.
I'm not- no. I wasn't like this
entrepreneurial person but I saw this
opportunity to say gosh if if we just
had the right person in there like who
actually liked the brand- this is a
really great story, but I used my old
agency
I had in my previous world I worked for
LeBron James
and his team's guy Maverick Carter. And
we like helped them build from the
brand side. Samsung was a client so
like I went to the Olympics in London
and they had just released this note
phone which was like the big phone. By
the way, I just changed to an iPhone. I've been a Samsung fan for way too long. Oh
but I loved Samsung. Falling apart here, but I was at the Olympics and we did this deal
with Nike. This guy *inaudible*. Did a
deal with them. So we hosted the
basketball team's suite for the Olympics,
which is it's awesome. I mean, I'm not a
big basketball person but everyone was
way taller than I was. But we were at the
Olympics and I had like like 20 phones
or 40 phones for the men's team and the
women's team because we wanted to give them phones for while their time in
London. So we set them all up. We got SIM
cards blah, blah, blah. LeBron was there because he
was on the team obviously and we started
talking. I showed him the phone and he
was like so into it. I mean his hand was
so big that the note was like perfect,
but besides that he was like the biggest
geek. Like he loved just playing with
it and we had this guy from Samsung
showing him how to use it. And he just
loved the phone. I mean it was awesome. And then I think I
remember I came home I was uh looking online or something and the
head of MSN was the website I was using
back then. And I remember like looking
London Olympics, LeBron James walking
down the street like this with his like
Samsung phone. I was like score. It
was amazing. I literally- it was the best
thing, but point is after that we ended
up doing a deal with Samsung. I don't know if anyone
remembers, he was like the
spokesperson of Samsung, but it was a
rooted in the idea that he actually
liked the phone. He believed in the phone.
One of the greatest- I'm going so out
of practice this, but I think the
greatest thing about marketing is that
when people are like in a commercial
this whole idea of paying people. So when
you're like in a commercial or you're- I
pay you to create some content when the
job's done, the job's done. And you go
home and you live your life, like LeBron
like when he went home, he like still
talked about the phone. I mean the human
network is just as important as the
digital network. So he ended up
converting like 25 percent of the NBA,
don't quote me on that, but a huge part
of the NBA- 50%, 70% but like all the dudes
on his- I think he was on Cleveland at the time, all the guys on the on his team were
like using Samsung. I mean it was LeBron
so he was the best, but he ends up
bringing us into the clubhouse and we
changed. It's like a nightclub in here.
*Laughing*
But anyway, the point is is like that got
me spurred to think like holy sh*t like
there's got to be something here. It's
like, I mean nothing changed except for I
found out LeBron liked the phone
before we did the deal, so we did the
deal. So he was in all the
commercials. He showed out to some events. He
like created all this content, but outside
of that he was the best ambassador. So I
like, that like clicked for me. That was
something that Samsung wasn't doing. No
one was doing him. I said sh*t so besides
that, if the most powerful form of
marketing is this a word of mouth, why
are these huge brands that I work for
not doing that. Like I'm not activating
word-of-mouth. They're not- they're paying
people. So for me that's when the idea of
RQ kind of and it wasn't called- it
didn't have a name back then, but that was
the idea when I was like. That's the
white space. Like it's- I'm not- at first
it was like I'm gonna create the sixth
pillar of marketing, which is like
awesome change robes. Then I was like
that's stupid. I'm gonna have, you know,
I'm gonna figure out how relationships
because I mean the idea of influencer
marketing got so out of control and
still is out of control.
How do we bring something and package it
in a way that I can validate the spend, I
could create movements for the brand,
blah, blah, blah. And that's where I came-
the white space was for me as a
marketer. I have a quote here it's
like if 90% of consumers say they value
a recommendation from someone they
trust like the inner circle or the squad.
I um- with any form of marketing I really-
my clients at the time which were huge brands
were spending literally millions of
dollars or billions dollars to like
breakthrough or to connect with
consumers. Like I didn't really
understand why anybody was doing that in
terms of they were just doing big ads and
spending- our clients would spend like
two, three million dollars on an event at
South by Southwest. And it was just very
like structured. It wasn't like
connecting and that was
where I was like oh I'm gonna change the
f*****g world. I'm gonna like show them
whatever I was saying to myself. And I
mean that's why I started RQ. I
think I really valued that relationship,
and the Lebron James thing
kind of just stuck in my head in terms
of it doesn't take money. It didn't cost me
money to give LeBron, I mean I had to fly
to London, but it didn't cost me money to
like gives LeBron a phone or talk to
him. See his personal reaction to it,
so if brands could just multiply that or
scale that like can you imagine the
movements they could have. So, I luckily I
had a friend that worked at Google at the
time and my first client was Google, but
I started playing with the vocabulary of
playing with like what is it- but how can
I articulate this narrative for brands.
And the idea of RQ came up and I
forgot I'm supposed to do this thing. I
had a fun thing. Oh wait. This is me. I
forgot. That's where RQ came out
and RQ stands for Relationship
Quotient. It's the idea of how brands build
relationships. I can go through that but right
now, we're really lucky we get to work
with unbelievable brands. I mean this is
our current. We just signed Chipotle last
week. We do not work with Airbnb anymore.
I love AirBnB, but talk about that
later.
These are some of the great brands we
work with. I started RQ in my
kitchen four years ago with four people.
We're now 32 people and three dogs
strong. I have the best- I really wish I
had a picture my dog. He's the best. We
have the best group of people. I mean, I
think one of the greatest things and I
was telling it actually earlier is like
I really after working in so many little
jobs and crazy jobs running around the
city of New York getting groceries
for some celebrity it was like I wanted
to create an atmosphere that I truly
believed in in terms of a culture. And I
love going to work. My office is ten
blocks from my house in Los Angeles, but
the most number-one priority was and
still is creating this culture. And I
think that's one thing as you go into
the work world, I mean, that fit is so
important. I mean listen it's 2019 I know
everyone's likes free food and all
that sh*t but like it's really about the
people who inspire you. And like these
people that I've grown up with, I mean,
built this business with inspire me
every single day. It's
amazing. We were talking earlier also
it's like as much as I love marketing
and I really believe I'm a marketer and my
superpower is client services, when you own
a business everything shifts. Like I would
say 80% of my job is my team focusing on
building them, building their career
paths, like helping them think like-
think like I do. It's like a cult, but not
really. But uh helping them which it's
actually more inspiring than doing the
work. I miss the work. I mean, we just
signed Chipotle two weeks ago, which is
awesome,
and it's been two weeks of like
downloading and getting in the trenches
with them and understanding the brand.
And is absolutely so exciting it's like
old days, but as you build the team that
becomes your priority. So it's been fun.
Like I said, that's who we work with. And the greatest thing in one way or another is
that these brands have come to align
with our belief system, which I'll tell
you in a second, but for us that is the
most- I'm so grateful for that success to
have an idea four years ago to say look
this is how we're gonna change the
industry to not work with these people.
So I am lucky. Okay hold on that's supposed to say
LA. Isn't that cool? Somebody found that in my office. I just wanted to call it- we're based in
Hollywood and why I think it's so
important that we are based in Los
Angeles and I'm sure many of you have
been there, it is truly the creative
capital of the world right now. I used to
be film and TV.
It used to be actors and lighting people
and directors and all that great stuff. Now
it's like video games and producing
digital content. There's the art world is
insane. The fabrication world. There are
these enormous factories downtown that
are just making things for events, like
it's insane what Los Angeles has become.
The music industry is insane there from a writer's perspective and
video production for music videos. So for
us LA encompasses who we are but it also
is the most, one of the most incredible
sources of inspiration. We have- one of
the great things about RQ what we
like to do is each person has
kind of 10% of their job as they own a
vertical like art, fashion, music, sports,
and it's their job to understand that
ecosystem. Not just who is like now like
famous, but who's next with the
infrastructure. We can talk about
influence in a second- the idea of
understanding how that influence kind of
circles around. I mean, I might draw this
thing muttering pitches. It's like if you
think about the individual people um
that are, have the greatest influence
think we call it the greatest RQ, in
their spheres of circle- where those
spheres overlap is when that
consistency happens. That's the movement
that we want to happen. So at RQ
everybody has a vertical, but the point
is Los Angeles is amazing, so come out.
I also work for the Tourism Board of Los
Angeles. I think we have this- This is,
really quick, why we exist. So again I
said earlier Samsung was a client mogul.
We've done extraordinary work for them
for many years, but what sucks is that we paid for all these people. One of the things
I might have said earlier is that it
clicked for me when we were paying
people to walk down the red carpet at
events and they repeat lines to the
media of like why Samsung is amazing and
blah, blah, blah.
"I love my Samsung." And at the end they'd
pick up their iPhone and they'd go home.
And I literally was like looking at the
scene and I wanted I say, "What the f**k
are we doing?" Like this is so mad and
they're going home. We're missing an
opportunity. We're also the meet people
are smart people. Like we are so sick of
hashtag ad, so sick of like seeing that
they know that Christina Aguilera is
tweeting from an iPhone because it comes
up on our Twitter. So I don't get it, like
why we think we're fooling people but
were not. So for me, oh then we also did
TV commercials with like Paul Rudd and
all these people and we had to do these
contracts. I said you can only use a
Samsung for three months post
Superbowl commercial and like I'm like
I've been a celebrity assistant. You were
never gonna enforce that. I mean what are
you gonna do?
Get your money back? I
mean it just was- it just didn't work. So
again I think the idea of
influencer marketing was so skewed one
way, so I just want to say in 2016
influencer marketing was a 1.7 billion dollar industry. Last
year, it was 4.6 billion and next year
it's 6.5 billion. So there is an
absolutely no doubt that influencer
marketing is part of the marketing mix.
It's- it's here to stay. It's going to increase
in value. I know it's not like PR or
creative advertising but it is going to
increase. Increase in terms of value to
the overall brand. I wrote it represents
a core realignment of the brand. That's
right represents a core realignment of
the brand customer relationship and it
recognizes that a new fundamental truth
that's emerged. And I think this is where
we use this a lot. It says we can no
longer focus on just a brand narrative
without considering who is delivering it.
I mean there is such a focus on trust
right now and brand trust. The idea that
brands say trust me, trust me and no
one's trusting them. There's- it's like- I
think it's lower. There's a stat
that's like there's less brand trust now
than ever before, but we use both of these
lines. You are who your friends are. If
other people are like, "Hey, trust me", it's
a phenomenal thing because it's like
it's what marketing is about but it's
empowering the right people. You are who your friends are and you want those right people
talking about you. You don't want the bad
people talking about you. I also wrote influencer
marketing isn't new. It's literally been
the most effective marketing since the
1500s both online and off. And I think
that's where we come in different in
terms of the offline and the online.
There's still no better partner than
someone who actually loves and believes
in what you're doing.
The goal was finding those people. I said
before the internet was around it was
called word of mouth and we've forgotten
that term in 2019. I think in terms of
how brands are spending their money, they're calling it "influencer". It's very
transactional. Let me see here. Sorry I'm
gonna go through this really fast
because I'm boring and we could
answer questions. But I think one of the
things here this is my favorite slide in
the whole world because this is the
vision I had with RQ. If you think about
influencers kind of always lived under
social media. They're like they have a
group of people that they- they have a
campaign. They call them. They have a lot
of followers. You have a lot of likes.
Make some content. That's influencer
marketing. The thing is the PR team
uses influencers too because they host
events. Like come up and show it like- I'm
sorry. They host media because
that's the stories. That's like a story.
Experiential, who loves- brands love when
a celebrity stops buy or posts
something. And media and creative: people
in commercials. So what our goal is
at RQ, this is our biggest value
proposition, is how do we like take
relationships away from just social in
terms of how do we centralize
relationships. If relationships were at
the center of the mix it's a phenomenal
thing. I mean we've done this with
Samsung on the home client side. We do
this with Pizza Hut by centralizing the
relationships. Not only break down the
silos up above in terms of the social
team's working over here, the PR teams
working over here. If they're focused on
people, they they see the value of the
people. A celebrity has PR value. A
celebrity can create some content,
put them in the commercial. They have to
actually like the product. It's like a
home-run. So we try with all our brand
clients to centralize these
relationships and when it when it works
it's actually phenomenal in my
opinion. So it brings efficiency. It saves
money. I think the goal here is to have
the client- the best part is the marketer
who gets it. A lot of times they don't
get it, so when they take the risk and
then at the end I'll show you some quick
case studies, but it's really it just
changes the whole industry I think. Let's go to the next slide.
Oh this is...How we doing? I wish I had music. I just I thought I'd be useful to show you how we
approach the process of building
relationships really quick in terms of a
strategic point of view. Like what we do
on a day to day basis with our clients
and we use three basic pillars, yeah. Let me just put this
down. My cards are so organized. I said there's- we use three pillars like when we approach a
brand. First, know thyself. Being authentic
to yourself is the most important thing
in the world both on a human side as
well as a brand side. We don't- when
being honest about that, so when we talk about our clients like Pizza Hut they're not
like the Ritz-Carlton of Pizza. They're just- they have amazing pizza and I love
their pizza, but we know who they are. We
know what they stand for. We know the
Nostalgia. Being true to yourself and
every brand has to do this is really
important because then when you look at
the influencer of a partner, you
mirror those values in them and then the
person. So we always say our influencer
is good apart, better together. Meaning
they're strong, this is where one plus
one starts equal ten or eleven, because
there's strong people. First of all,
we never work with professional
influencers. I mean, that's a career. I know a lot
of kids say they want to be a YouTube star
and I'm sure they'll make a sh*tload of
money, great, but the idea of a
professional influencer for me it's like
someone who's looking for a check and
they just want to eat and are gonna move
on. People who influence their real influence is people that have
a strong network where the brand becomes
a tool and what they do better, so if I'm
like, let's say a fitness and wellness
person. I am a trainer and whatever.
There's like Pizza Hut probably wouldn't
be very good brand because it doesn't
really connect, but something like a
health shake or something. Where does the
brand help them do what they do better? I
mean that's the good, sorry, good part
better together. It's like they both
elevate each other because you're
mirroring the values. But most
importantly, I think one of the things
that we do differently at RQ is the
methodology. Our approach is always
dating. We use the funny thing it's like
obviously you can- I can give you 50
bucks and I can get a prostitute in two seconds, but like the idea the
idea of of going on a date is pretty
amazing. So if you think about prostitution
and the world we live in now, brands
they're paying people to do shit all the
time that's like- like here's fifty
bucks. Make some content. I mean our whole
thing is dating. Let's build a
relationship because that relationship
is so different. I mean you get so much
more out of it. You have mutual respect.
You have different- you work harder or
you go out to dinner every once in a
while. You meet the parents. The goal is
to get married. I mean if either- if
you've married a brand, you like you work
for each other. You believe in each other.
I think that is the greatest influence
of relationship that you could possibly
have because I mean we talk later about,
like not that much later I only have
that many cards left, but we talk about
what the influencers do for the brands
more than the brand doing for the
influencer. And that's like the dream.
If influencers can come and show you
like like the- once they build the
relationship, if they could say hey look
I have this idea
I'm gonna bring you into my world. In
one of the greatest case studies we have
now, HBO is a client and they are
really focusing on multicultural, so
LGBTQ, African American, and Latin X. It's
like they want to figure out how- they
we're sponsoring a lot of sh*t.They were like we know there's a huge fandom
that we love, that we want to support
them. We want to commit to them. And
they have no LGBTQ, well maybe they do now, but they didn't have any LGBTQ
characters even on their
channel, but they had a huge fan. And they
wanted to get back and they were just
sponsoring all this sh*t. They're like the
LGBT GLAAD thing and the film festivals
and stuff, but they weren't in it. So we were
like let's build you a tribe and they're
gonna bring you into their community.
Like let's go find those 15, 20 people in
each market that was important to them
and we did that. We have an unbelievable
tribe. The greatest thing about that is
all these sponsorships started to change
because the tribe that we built for them
it's like telling them where to show up.
It's like come come into my world,
sponsor this, partner with this. And imagine instead of spending fifty
thousand dollars at the GLAAD Media
Awards, they're spending fifty thousand
dollars on something else, but they have
this group inside who's like talking
about them. So it- the idea, the tribe
should be giving back to the brand as
much as the brand is giving to them. Um
back to this, sorry. Anyways so dating, I mean
and this is funny because I was saying
the best thing about this methodology is
at the end you get every marketing
buzzword you could think of, like positive
sentiment, advocacy, conversion, and blah, blah, blah. And I think, listen, we do work in
marketing. You have to show movement of
the brand, which we love, but I mean if
you do this right and again this could
take months, this could take a week. Some
people will go right to- some people will
go connect with a brand
instantaneously, but you do get all this.
You get this in such a more powerful way
than doing just pure PR and media doing
just creative. If the communication
starts with these people that really
believe, it's truly unbelievable, but hold
on let me really fast. This is how we
quickly- this is our methodology in
dating. How we do it. We identify. So we
have a lot of tools we use. I mean I would say
70% are digital tools so social
listening tools, which are really
important. Data, obviously. Blah, blah, blah. But the human network is really important so
we have a lot of human input. When we
look at- part of our jobs of each person
is - sorry I'm going really fast here. I
probably shouldn't *inaudible*, but our
dating mentality is our North Star on
everything we do. So no matter how we
approach any single person and
influencers are coming through our
office all the time because we've become
known as that group that connects brands
to influencers in a way that's not
transactional. And it's a really powerful
position to be in both obviously from a
client side, but also the brand side and
also from the influencer's side. So really quick we identify. We have all these tools. We
also do this thing called a gut check,
chemistry check. We talk to people. It's
not about how many followers or likes or
engagements. It's like what are you doing?
What are your projects that you're working on? How can this brand be a tool?
Chipotle for example, we're so excited.
And the idea is like look it's a fuel
for people their whole thing, they've had a rough couple of years,
but yeah their whole thing is this
natural foods and that's actually they
have an unbelievable positioning on
sustainability in terms of they all have
all these farms. And they only use like 4%
of the meat in the world because it's
not hormone and all this great stuff, but
they want to use athletes to fuel their
body. If I'm an athlete at the Olympics and I
win a gold medal, the fact that I fueled
my body with Chipotle shows that the
natural foods are phenomenal. So the idea
is like understanding what they're doing
and how they're doing it is more
important than just finding followers. We
say hi. Our whole thing approach again is
we go on a first date. We take them out. We
meet in an office, hopefully. Usually a
brand person's there and we get to know
them. We usually seed them product. No
transaction has happened. Again, it's
really just what are you doing. We tell
them our brand narrative. Why we- what we
stand for as a brand, not our cute little
Chipotle or whoever Samsung. So that-
again, that forces the approach to be
completely different from the beginning.
It's not a transaction. It's a
relationship. Then we nurture. The best
thing is this is- we have a huge section
of our company about nurturing. We have
all these models that kind of make it be
scalable, but it's simple as milestones.
You're up for an award, you win an award,
your anniversary, blah, blah, blah. We're
just there. We're present as a brand. That
commitment goes incredibly far just
imagine if you're dating somebody. The
funniest thing is like we really joke, like
60% of our office is single but all we
do is deal with relationships. But we
nurture these relationships. Hopefully,
we're doing it right, but um that idea of
nurturing, so if you think of these as
the gates in almost in terms of the
tribe building for our clients, after
nurturing they're a member. They're a part of our team and they kind of- think of a
golden pot around all the marketing mix.
Our goal is to report back to everybody
so we can- you're only as good as
you report back in terms of
merchandising. And so every week we send all of our clients we call it a Bible
sheet in terms of like all the
influencers that are in their tribe, what
they're working on to hopefully spark PR
ideas, spark digital content. So once they
get through that, they're in the
activating phase.
And like I said earlier the greatest
thing about the activating phase is that
they come to us more than we go to them.
So the opportunities we're bringing to
our clients are usually super unique to
the clients because they're sitting in
cubicles in whatever city. Like, they
have access to all that so we really, this
is like a full circle and everyone like
I said they are at different stages all
the time. This is always going. We're
always bringing people in.
We're always activating people. We're
always nurturing people, and we're always
getting ideas. I'm almost done, I promise.
This is important in that our networks
are tribes for our clients. It's all
about diversity. It's a diversity in
terms of profession, age, race, everything
because you you want- you, again, you are
who your friends are is so important. We
look at people that have an enormous
digital following, that are powerful
online in the way that we talk about, but
we also have people who have no digital
footprint but their human network is
extremely powerful. Again that word of
mouth was something that we missed so
much in terms of brand marketing because
there was never really, "Wait. I'm not
following people around". I mean like who are you talking to, but what we've been able
to do is figure out that balance. I mean,
if you think about before the internet
there was a pendulum of this way it was
all word of mouth. There was everyone
just talking. Like I always say some mom
sitting on a porch in Chicago drinking
wine, like, "Oh my god, I just bought this frige. Amazing!" And then everyone goes to buy
that fridge. Then all the way to this
side where it's all digital or
everyone's investing all their money in
like media and digital influencers to
like say, "Buy my fridge. This is the best
fridge I ever had", like it just
didn't work. I mean, it works to a point,
but it doesn't really work. So now, the
pendulum is back in the middle so what
is that balance. That's what I think
our cue of our agency we
believe it is that balance of
identifying influencers. I think that's
our differentiating point and its
what we just teach people's like don't
forget about the human network because
that creates the movement. This just
shows how we look at people, so everyone
from the passion player
that's more of like the celebrity I
guess, in terms of people that are just
driven to do what they do.
The infrastructure
people with no digital following but at
the same time they have a human
network.  A guy in Hollywood named Ari
Emanuel, he owns a company called William Morris Endeavor. I think it's  just called
Endeavor now. He has no digital
following but his human network is all
his business partners, he owns IMG a
fashion company with celebrity
clients, you better believe if he's using a Samsung phone or
eating Pizza Hut at his desk or eating
Chipotle everyone's gonna go running there.
There is value in those human
networks. Obviously, I wrote
essential celebrity its the difference between your ornamentalist and celebrity.
An ornamentalist is just a celebrity
for celebrity's sake. Essentialist we
call them because they have morals
value, their also working on
stuff either producing or doing
something like philanthropy that a
brand wants to be a part of. Then
emerging who's next is always really
important because you could either do
who's now we always look like who's
Beyonce talking about who's jay-z
talking about. That who's next is so
important because it not only keeps us
around as an agency because we have a
pipeline of influencers coming, it's also
good for the brand to know like what's
coming. I mean if you think about it we've
been planning 2020 for our clients
since February. It's so far ahead we have to always
have that pipeline.
This is one thing I wanted to talk about we at RQ you have been for about a year and a
half now have been working on this white
paper idea of shifting slightly away
from the agency structure. What is the next  
want IQ and I have thought if you
think about IQ was around then, EQ like
what is the next?
Is it RQ?  relationship quotient. I think as we look at the influencer connections that
brands have, how they spend
their money we know there are millions of
dollars being spent. What is that next one?
In our present-day 21st
century it's clear that our culture has
been identified by relationships and networks. Think about just social
media I think it was like three
something billion people every month use
social media. We are tribal
kind of human beings we understand like
there are all these membership clubs popping up.
Likes and followers were
so important they're not anymore
but it was so important like that's who
we are. Is RQ next?
Can we define it as the next kind of metric?
Next is aptitude, so I think I'm gonna
give a super high level because we're
still testing it but, we came up with six
personality traits that people with high IQ's have.
That define how we look at people
like consistency are they reliable and
predictable, they follow
through on their promises and behave in
a consistent manner. That's really
important because if you'r e a brand and
you've already earned it. You don't
want someone that's gonna go have a
video with someone dead in there room.
Something like never happened with
Youtube, but that's really important
consistency. Authority is the next one
it's like deeply knowledgeable on at
least one topic. A professional 
influencers yes she could be a beauty
person a beauty creator, but are
they really in authority. Is it somebody
who's like gone to school who has
experience or somebody who you trust and
who you would go to for information.
Attentiveness are they active, engaged
listeners, again this is true with your
friends too hopefully, a good engaged
listener and friends. But, we look at
people we meet with them we do
chemistry checks, are they actually
engaged are they interested in or they
just waiting for the check. Reciprocity
do they have an innate
understanding of mutuality which
expresses itself as returning favors.
You get to know real people are they
in it for themselves is their ego too
high or is it something that you want to
connect to them with other they want to
get back. Facilitation, this is
something I do all the time they're not
protective of their relationships. I
love connecting other people it's my
favorite thing to do. I was at this hotel and there
was this cool card box. It's like the most
powerful women little note cards or
something. And I bought like five of them
because I'm gonna send my friends
and connect my friends with that.
I love that! For me it's like
if this person can help you and you can
help you, it just make me feel good.
Probably not a very positive thing
overall. Because I don't connect it with
myself, but the point is, it's I love
connecting people and I think that
facilitation is really important for the
people that we like. Because if you think
about the word of mouth and their power
of influence that's how they connect
people. Then self starter or when
they're armed with information, are they
gonna run with it and do something.
So if we use these kind of metrics
on our cue now. So we're working on
trying to figure out if IQ and EQ, is our
cue the next one and if it is how do we
build a metric around it. And I think
that's something that we are working on
internally. As soon as we write it I
really would love to share it with you
and get your thoughts. But that's that. I
think I do have- hope you're still awake.
We do have some case studies, I'll show
you.
This is Pizza Hut, let's see how I do this. Hold on.
Wait,
There you go, that was that.
Wait, I think you should stay here.
No, i'm joking.
So that's- the good thing with that is that we
paid absolutely nobody for that.
I mean Pizza Hut came to us and we're
like, look we are an amazing brand but
there's the relevance. They have huge
nostalgia but they have, but they're not
relevant right now. They're now a big
part of culture. So we went and we found-
I mean for us it was like Pizza fuels
the creative process.
So how do we get that creative kind of
class. So we went to- like we talked to
Shonda Rhimes. We fed all of the
writers rooms. Then we went to
different people who were doing
different things and they're like come
to Sundance. Come to Comic Con.
The idea was like how do we be
consistent in their world.
Thank you so much
How do I be consistent in their world in
a way where we're not handing out checks
to people. And it worked, I mean the tribe-
we have about 80 people now who are content creators to people who have
no digital following to writers rooms
all over Hollywood.
People are calling us now to sponsor
like Oscar parties. Where like two years ago
people were like Pizza Hut's crap. We
don't want that at our party.
So we changed the whole positioning within
that world.
The reason again why Los Angeles is important is that they're putting
it in TV shows now.
People are bringing Pizza Hut, ordering
pizza like they never done before.
So that's just showing the value
of a tribe. That we paid none of those
people. The Jimmy Fallon thing, let me see
if I get to the next-
The Jimmy Fallon thing's pretty cool.
Jimmy Fallon is a really cool thing. One of the greatest parts of marketing I think is being reactive pretty quickly.
Jimmy Fallon was on his
late-night TV show and he was talking
I think last year Pizza Hut had
this thing where during the Superbowl if
somebody gets a point within something, I
 don't know football,
something happens you get a free pizza.
He's like but the bad thing is you
have to be part of Pizza Hut rewards, Hut
Rewards program and everyone laughed.
We worked with Jimmy and his assistant, I've
known as for a long time.
The next day within
24 hours, we sent I think 150 pizzas to the production house.
They tweeted, they were laughing, they thought it was funny.
He tweeted twice from his personal and the Late Show.
Which again, cost us 150 pizzas.
Enormous amounts of press, millions of millions
of followers.
It started all this dialogue. We're about conversation not
just post, so all these dialogues.
Pizza Hut was interacting. He thought it was
funny. Then we ended up sending him
something else saying, we have these
things called Pizza movie boxes or something.
It's all the stuff
for him and his family to watch pizza and a movie.
Gave him more pizza, he posted
about it. He was like, thanks we love it!
Then  we did this thing where we
made this jacket for him, Pizza Hut Rewards member jacket.
I don't have a video but there were like 10 Instagram story posts about it.
He was so
excited and this is all just having conversation.
We got so much digital
content and it was just about the approach.
It was his birthday, they had the
show's birthday, I think.
It was like 150 episodes or
something.
We sent a big cake with Pizza all over.
We'd built this incredible relationship.
He calls us all the time for pizza, he posts
all the time.
Dan Levy is another great example. He was shooting up in Canada and he ordered Domino's, I guess.
He posted on his Twitter, the pizza came
upside down- the Domino's pizza.
He was like, something like, you stuck
Domino's or something. I don't know.
But literally within 24 hours we sent
him a pizza with his face on it!
He wrote, he was tweeting, well played
Pizza Hut. You're amazing!
Now he calls us all the time. We have this great relationship.
So being reactive for pizza has really helped us insert us in the conversation as well.
Do I just click on it? I don't know how to do this.
The Samsung is a really great example.
Every one of those people are influencers in the tribe. We did pay them and thing is they got through the gates long enough.
Where when Samsung had their holiday campaign, when Samsung launched this new refrigerator.
We actually went back into the tribe and I think 80% of their content came from the tribe members digitally.
The creative team, Avenue, which is an agency. Used them as- consultants use them
One of them in the commercials for an experiential
standpoint. There was a thing
related cutting there. We did all of
our experiential in the influencers like
creative spaces. So for home appliance the tribe has become an incredibly
centralized part of their mix. Look
we are paying these people, it's not like
it's free cause they work hard. But 
not only we're getting significant
discounts. We're getting 10 times more
content. I mean if you think about the
transactional way now, we do
do it with some clients. We have a
contract where you have $150,000 and you
have to post three times and you have to
say this narrative. Like none of that,
that's not the first thing we do. Now yes,
when you have a campaign, we need you to
post a certain amount of times but we
end up getting so much more content. So
Samsung has been a phenomenal case study for us.
We are very centralized in their
kind of agency team so we work with our agency.
I think there's one more. Do I click on here?
So many really interesting things, we did a
pilot site. We did a pilot program for
them last year and they- mini needs to be
cool, innovative and amazing. And then it
kind of became more about the car, the
structure and luxury and blah blah.
They wanted to get back to their roots. I
wanted to figure out how do we like work
with the people that zigzag rather than
go from A to Z. So we did not pay any of
these people. We identified
them as people that are that creative,
are that fun, cool people. And we create
experiences for them. We're like, hey XY & Z influencers.
Valerie, she's an
amazing chef and we're gonna create this
unbelievable experience up and down the
coast for you and your friends, blah blah.
And they love that! They jumped on it,
Valerie would usually charge, you know,
$25,000 - $50,000. She's a professional
Baker but she does do brand stuff. But we
created this. It was a different approach
of like, let's start the relationship with an experience.
We gave them the car,
we planned up the whole thing.
Then two of the influencers actually came back to
us after their experiences.
They saw one was at the Trading Post, he was like, 'look I love mini.' He actually bought a mini!
He was like,  'I'm doing this thing for my art' like at the Trading Post. 'You want to partner with me?'
For mini it was $10,000,
 $5,000.
For him, it was the whole world. It helped him do
what he does at a bigger platform and
to build those relationships. Every piece
of content in that piece came, from an influencer.
In the creative for the last campaign they were doing,
they use six pieces of content. I mean
the creative agency used the influencer
content because it was so amazing. It's so
beautiful.
So that's all I have.
Thank you, I think the most important
thing for me is like,
Look there's a way to do things, Influencer marketing.
And we went this way. The idea of not being
afraid to share a different way of doing
a traditional thing, has it gotten us
huge success. Because listen, we're not a
multi-billion dollar company. We have 30
employees. We're not like 72 and Sunny or
an Omnicomm agency. But we love what we
do and we're building. We're having a
lot of movies. We're gonna Hollywood.
We have so much fun, we get to work with
creative people all the time. People come
to our office like celebrities or
infrastructure people, we're on sets of
movies. We're at Sundance and I think
being relevant in culture, you can go as
a brand and pay your way through. You can
sponsor Sundance, you could sponsor South
You could sponsor film festivals. But
I think what we're teaching them to do
is like, let's get from the ground up. Be
a part of it and then you can sponsor it
but when you have those people. So, there's that.
