In a world where advertising and marketing are crucial, especially for the brands that want to be promoted, influencers play a very big role, but just how big?
In this episode of Coming Clean with Indie Lee, Conor shares his entrepreneurial journey with us, telling us how he made the major leap from his software background to working on his own influencer marketing business Tribe Dynamics. In conversation with Indie , Conor explains the influencer market of today, clearly telling us why there's a compromise both the parties make when agreeing on a deal for brand promotion.
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In a world where advertising and marketing are crucial, especially for the brands that want to be promoted, influencers play a very big role, but just how big?
In this episode of Coming Clean with Indie Lee, Conor shares his entrepreneurial journey with us, telling us how he made the major leap from his software background to working on his own influencer marketing business Tribe Dynamics. In conversation with Indie , Conor explains the influencer market of today, clearly telling us why there's a compromise both the parties make when agreeing on a deal for brand promotion.
Links:
Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of coming clean with indie lay. I'm your host Andy Lee. And in today's episode we are sitting down with Connor Begley Connor is one of the co founders of tribe dynamics. Now tribe is one of the leading authorities in social analytics, and used by top global fashion and beauty and lifestyle brands. I cannot wait to dive in with him
Unknown:I was just reflecting on it with our executive vice president who's been with us now for coming up on six or five years. And it's just like, just in the last five years, so much has happened. It's like, yeah, you know, we both had babies. In our case, multiple babies bought a house move out to the suburbs of businesses grown by 8x. During that time, like it's just crazy. So it's been been
Indie Lee:Congratulate. Listen, it's a journey. It's not a sprint, right, as I like to say. So you found a tribe back in 2012. With your long term friend and college friend, I believe, right. JOHN Namath. And it was really interesting. When I was doing the research, you really went on, like your intuition a lot on this and your backgrounds. But my experience is that successful founders like
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, what's funny is, I think growing up, I actually had a negative connotation when it came to entrepreneurs, right. So for me, growing up, my mom was at her company for 30 years, my dad was in his company for 30 years. So literally, from the time that I knew what was going on to the time that they retired, they were at the same place. And so for me, I entrepreneur actually was
Indie Lee:wait a minute. I mean, I know a thing or two about a thing or two.
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, who knows, but that was definitely the spark, right? But we didn't start one immediately. So I went to Australia with my girlfriend who's now my wife. And initially went out there just to travel. So we went to Bali, Thailand, New Zealand, we kind of used Melbourne as our home mazing. Yeah. And so that was awesome. But then ended up doing some consulting for this really
Indie Lee:I'm seeing a trend here. I
Unknown:didn't expect so much of this to be about beer. But, you know, we realized that for us, the bars were kind of influencers, because you know, they'd have 800 to 1000 fans on their Facebook fan page. But those 800,000 people were the bartenders, the owners, the locals, is a highly concentrated audience. And so you know, we'd go to these bars, we'd shoot some really cool photography, we'd
Indie Lee:I don't know mean, either. Oh, yeah. Obviously mean, either. I mean, really pioneered a lot of the the analytics on social sharing, to maybe even share with the listeners on what tribe is what it does, that's probably a great way to dive in.
Unknown:Yeah, totally. So we are a software and data company, we work primarily in the view in the lifestyle sector. So beauty was our initial core category, then we moved into fashion, they've gotten fairly dominant there, across both luxury and fast fashion. And then have recently grown quite quickly in fitness, and started dabbling in entertainment and food and beverage. So in terms of
Indie Lee:even 100 these days. Yeah,
Unknown:exactly. Right. And on top
Indie Lee:of that, I'm adding data to a spreadsheet than actually analyzing it.
Unknown:Exactly. And so. And then on top of that, I think that people are starting to put significant amounts of money into this, spending, frankly, hundreds of millions of dollars a year or more. And they need to know whether it's working or not, right, and they can't just rely on, you know, simple metrics. And so we really tried to spend the time to understand like, you know, how is all of
Indie Lee:The benchmark these days is m v right earned media value, which correct me if I'm wrong, you guys pretty much invented.
Unknown:It existed in some obscure format prior But popularized it. Yeah,
Indie Lee:yeah, for sure. Because it gives us a baseline. And I, when I say us, I mean a brand a baseline to say, Does this make sense? and puts everybody like puts all the influencers kind of at, okay, here's the level that we're going to read everybody, and this one is going to have more impact than this. And you can see what, quote unquote, campaigns. And I mean, just in terms of an
Unknown:Yeah, it's a tough balance, right? Because I think that as a brand, obviously, you want to work with the people that are going to, you know, have the most impact for you, and that are going to help you grow. But it's hard to figure out who those people are, right? It's really tough to figure out where you should be investing and, and it gets where it gets really messy is you start to
Indie Lee:the whole time.
Unknown:I don't think you have my hairs like this been the same since like eighth grade, right? But so as you can tell, it's like still partly in sync. So but then what you don't think about is like, okay, say I decide to go and work with Connor? Well, I'm inherently choosing him over someone else. Right? And so and particularly if you choose somebody who's like, not been a big fan to the brand,
Indie Lee:I completely agree. I mean, as someone who I'm, I'm very lucky that we've had some brand enthusiasts since the get go. And it was for me, it was always about creating authentic relationships and building a true community. I mean, for me, India, was about creating a community and empowerment it was the products actually just served to underline that community, to be honest
Unknown:Yeah, it's a big part of the problem that we solve as well. As you know, it's not just about Instagram, right? You have tik tok and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and their website and your blog. And so I think being able to bring all of that into a single location just ends up saving people a lot of time and make sure you don't miss things, right? Because like,
Indie Lee:So how quickly did you realize that beauty was were you going to go to it because you guys weren't beauty enthusiasts? Right? As far as I know, as you just said, You've had the same hair do since Yeah. So beauty wasn't like your thing? Like why beauty was it that you saw that the info beauty influencers were really what influencers started out? But you just said, you know, you also were
Unknown:Yeah, we had zero background. I can tell you it's I did not expect to know this much about the beauty industry. You are like a beauty person, like a beauty guy now, like, one of the more well connected people and it's weird, and it's like,
Indie Lee:a people is like a who's who and like, God, dang, he's connected. It is fantastic and well deserved and earned. Don't get me wrong, but
Unknown:that yeah, definitely not the plan. I think there's a few things right. So, you know, when we first started out, and you're like, you have this kind of rough idea of Okay, there's all these people out here, right. In our case with the brewery, it was like, Okay, I'm a brewery. There's all these bars out there. I want to know what bar have big social presences. And who do I need to be Peter teal, and I can't remember the other one. But what they all centered on was, if you look at kind of high growth technology companies, what you find really consistently is those that have been successful, tended to focus on a particular niche, where their technology was significantly more important. And then to really dominate that niche, and then to move into kind of other areas that are gonna be more likely to adopt new technology to solve the problem. And number two, if we really focus on this group, we can build something that is much, much better with less resources, right? So you, you know, if I tried to build an influencer tool that worked for entertainment, and beauty, and fashion, and gaming, and all these things out of the gate, that's an incredibly complex tool, it
Indie Lee:And what you've done is incredible, because you truly have been scaling past the beauty, as you said, into the fashion into lifestyle into wellness, and above and beyond from that platform, then truly when I think about beauty makes so much sense because so much was relied on the influence was from the publishing industry, which was really going through such change, and then becoming
Unknown:you'd like to say that like, like, the thing I look at is if you look at Google searches for influencer marketing, from around the time that we started to today, it's grown over 100x during that time, right? So there's not many things when you like start a business that you enter an industry that grows over 100x In a, you know, a 10 year timespan or less, in this case, like, you know,
Indie Lee:Yeah, I was like, I mean, you guys, it's like,
Unknown:oh, there's a lot of luck there. Right? Like, I think that, you know, at the same time, we very much had a thesis, right, we had a thesis, which is, okay, I as a consumer, cuz john came from the ad industry, right? So he did a lot of Google ads, these other things. He's like, Who's clicking on these ads, he's like, this is not how I decide how to buy a product, right? Like, the way I I love the right man, I
Indie Lee:love it. I love it. But no, but it's so true. I mean, when you think about it, why an ad is someone paying to get my eyeball on it versus someone who is doing this on a regular basis and fell in love with the product?
Unknown:And who's an expert, right? They're an expert on a topic. And they're not doing this because generally because they're not doing this because they're getting paid? And in a lot of ways, right? Like, they're actually held to a fairly high standard. Because you know, if they're out there recommending shitty products, pardon my language without they're recommending crappy products.
Indie Lee:If it's fine, perfect, go for it. So,
Unknown:you know, if they go out there, and they're putting out poor quality products and recommending them, then what happens is I lose trust in you, right? They go, Hey, why did you recommend that? That doesn't make any sense, right? And over time, that really erodes the trust that they have in the audience. And that's why I say exactly, their currency. Yeah. And so it holds them to, frankly, I
Indie Lee:I mean, look at canceled culture this these days. I mean, it's you have to be on your game, and really speaking from the heart and the things about, you know, and you have to also be squeaky clean. Yeah, because people are looking for that authentic relationship. They're looking for an emotional connection with a brand and with an influencer. And so both sides of the coin need to
Unknown:Yeah, it's a really good question. I think that there's a variety of ways that you can pay, right? So you know, you can pay them in product, right? So I'm going to send you some product, you don't have to talk about it. But if you want to talk about it, go for it. Right? You can pay people an exposure. So you can say, Hey, you know, whenever somebody talks about me, I'm going to share for them to talk about, like, that's something that doesn't inherently hurt their audience, particularly if there's somebody who has proactively talked about you in the past, right? And so I think what's happened over time is the sophistication around how you pay people has gotten a lot better. It's still not great, right? There's still a lot of people, they're doing things that they don't
Indie Lee:But now, everything is changing yet again. And you're seeing more and more platforms arrive on the scene. I mean, tick tock came on in like two years by storm. Now you're seeing Yep, house join the ranks? How does that shape your business? And how do you see that shaping the industry? I mean, you see it firsthand, you have that data before everybody else does, to be honest.
Unknown:Well, some of our brands would argue with you that they'd say, we're pretty slow. But I think that it's both. It's I mean, it's obviously challenging, right, as a company, you're having to keep track of all these different channels. And, you know, for us, investing in a new channel is non trivial, right? So it costs a lot of money and time and effort and focus to get really good at Tick
Indie Lee:And I think that to your point, the competition is good, right to have other platforms. Yeah, and kind of evens the playing field a little bit, both for early adopters. So maybe some, you know, influencers got on Tick Tock before, you know, earlier than people who became influencers on Instagram or YouTube. So they have an opportunity to kind of capture a market early on.
Unknown:Absolutely. And that's I mean, it's, we're working on it's top secret. So don't tell anybody
Indie Lee:I know, this is the pod,
Unknown:we are working on a product for the creators, it's still very early days, but 125 influencers that are testing the product right now, that helps them to have the same kinds of analytics that a brand would have, as well as helps them to reach out to brands, so they can actually find direct contact information for who's the VP of Communications at you know, Josie Mary, right. And so, so
Indie Lee:Yeah, I know. I just say like, for example, for us, you know, we use something called decision, right? So how are we going to get in touch because we want to reach out and sometimes you don't have an email, you don't know what the con, you know, especially in publishing, where people are moving around. So you're like, Okay, wait, no, they're not at this one. They're at that one. So
Unknown:So we try to be as comprehensive as we can, right from a monitoring perspective. So our goal is to really measure the entire influencer ecosystem, and then how you're performing within that ecosystem. So obviously, with things like Tick tock, you know, I think that that's a newer channel, it takes a little bit more time to like become comprehensive there, right? A real investment. This they're clearly embracing new platforms just quite interesting.
Indie Lee:I love it. I and I think that the way to have these real relationships is not just I mean, yes, you want to follow people who are specialists or experts in their area, but you want to know more about them than just how they apply makeup and what their favorite makeup is. You want to know what they're eating, you want to know where their favorite place to go, they want you want to know
Unknown:one of the things that's really hard, I think about being vulnerable, like that, right is like, I think that generally, you know, we've been trained not to complain, right, we've been trained not to air our grievances. We've been trained not to be seen as negative, right? And that's something that I always struggled with, in terms of being vulnerable digitally, is like, how do you find
Indie Lee:let you know how it goes. See, my goal is to be one of those high ranking people on tribe just me personally. There you go. I mean, there's a lot of money there. Because, you know, I don't have enough on my plate. Yeah, yeah, that's extra time. Right. Exactly. But for me, it really is, you know, I've never wanted to just be skincare, I wanted people to live their life in the most
Unknown:I think it's really tough, right? I think that this is the way I've always thought about it right is, you have to be intentional with how you spend your time, right. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about how I spend my time. And, and, and what I mean by that there's this article I always really liked, I can't remember what school she was at. But she was running a small to medium
Indie Lee:to be anyone four hours, right? Yeah,
Unknown:so you're gonna be less active in the other end. So for me, you know, I made a very intentional decision when we started tribe, to focus on kind of work and family, right, like, those are the two things that I decided to focus on. And so and you know, as part of that, I spend a lot less time with my friends, right, as part of that I spend a lot less time than I probably would on my health. As weird as that sounds
Indie Lee:romantic.
Unknown:As well, you know, you can forgive debt if you want. But as a as robotic as that sounds, I think that think about how often you argue with your spouse about like, I'm like, I'm doing way more work than you are. Or Oh, like, I've been watching the kids for this long, and you haven't even watched them in the last few days, or whatever it is, right? Like it takes that ambiguity out. And more
Indie Lee:I agree. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking time and putting me and I greatly appreciate it. Like I said, I've been a longtime fan of yours and what you're creating is truly impacting how businesses are able to reach their community. So thank you for what you do.
Unknown:We try and congrats again on your success. Obviously I've been a fan as well. And so I appreciate you bringing bringing me on. It was fun.
Indie Lee:Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks awesome. Bye. Bye nd Bye. Thanks again for listening to come and clean. And if you like what you hear, please hit the subscribe button. Absolutely would love a review. And more importantly, if there's a topic that you'd love for me to address or perhaps a guest you'd love for me to interview please feel free to email me at coming clean at indie lead calm