Benjy Leslie | TellyCast Podcast

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In this episode of TellyCast, Justin Crosby sits down with Benjy Leslie, Managing Director at Connect Management, to explore the dynamic world of influencer marketing and talent management. Benjy shares insights from his experience working with top digital creators and building innovative brand partnerships. He discusses the evolving landscape of social media platforms, the art of finding and nurturing emerging talent, and the challenges of creating authentic content in an increasingly algorithm-driven space.

Whether you’re curious about how influencers navigate the digital world or what makes a brand partnership truly successful, this conversation offers a deep dive into the mechanics of modern content creation. Benjy also looks ahead at future trends, offering his thoughts on the impact of AI, the rise of short-form video, and the changing role of traditional media. This is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of media, technology, and entertainment.

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Transcript

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Hi, I'm Justin Crosby and welcome to another TellyCast. My guest this week is Benji Leslie, founder of Connect Management, a talent management and brand partnership agency. Connect's known for working with some of the biggest digital influencers, building powerful partnerships, and creating innovative content strategies.

We'll be diving into the world of influencer marketing, digital content creation, and the future of the media landscape. For weekly videos featuring interviews with the movers and shakers of the TV and digital content industries, subscribe to TellyCast on YouTube. Benji, thanks so much for joining us. How are you doing?

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Absolutely. Well, it's a real pleasure to have you here. We talk about all sorts of things when it comes to digital and influencer. And this exploding sector that we haven't really covered off in too much detail on TellyCast before, so. 

Benjy: Oh, awesome. I'm glad to speak about it.

Yeah, 

Justin: yeah. I'm looking forward to getting into that. And also, you're a sponsor of Digital Content Forum, which is coming up on November 7th. We are 

Benjy: indeed. I'm looking forward to that as well. We'll see everybody there. Yeah, 

Justin: absolutely. Well, thank you for supporting us on that. So, let's, let's first of all talk about your journey into Tally Cats.

Creating Connect Management is one of the leading influencer marketing agencies out there. How did you get into it? How did you know? What's your story when it comes to building that business? 

Benjy: Right. So we'll start from the beginning. Um, it's a, it's a COVID business. Um, so initially I left school, was never very academic, sort of was the class clown in school, got kicked out of many, many schools.

Lessons got told that I wasn't going to make it wasn't going to be anything. Um, I actually told my teachers that I wanted to pursue a career in sales and they told me that it wasn't a viable career option. Um, Which again, now we know that sales is the basis of all businesses. Um, so lockdown happened. I was actually working for a media agency called Inc.

Global, um, they're a leading travel media agency and they sort out sort of magazines, the screens on airplanes, plane wraps, basically anything to do with travel advertising, they were the ones that would sort that out. So I left school, I went and worked there and basically understood the world of advertising, how brands essentially activated a travel brand.

For example, a suitcase brand would activate and, and. Reach out to travellers. So it all started there. We, we heard the news of lockdown very early on because we work with a lot of the Chinese airlines. So we found out that this thing called Corona virus was coming. We didn't know what it was. We didn't know how severe it would be, but very quickly we learned that we were all going into a three month lockdown and we Our work essentially was null and void because nobody wanted to advertise to travelers because there was no travelers.

So the business that I worked for essentially went from 150 million revenue a year to zero overnight, which it did to a lot of businesses. Um, so I was at home with a basic understanding of advertising, been selling it for three years by at that point, understood what brands were looking for, um, how to deliver ROI and essentially just how to integrate brands authentically into something.

So. I wouldn't be going after brands that didn't relate to travelers because it didn't make any sense. So I learned that and, and whilst I was sitting at home twiddling my thumbs watching Netflix like everybody did, I got a call from a guy called Brandon who was one of my closest school friends and he said, right, I've been posting every single day in the last three months and I've got this following count of a million people that are watching my videos.

Hundreds of thousands of people on every single TikTok. This is Brandon 

Justin: B, 

Benjy: right? Brandon B on TikTok. And I was like, oh my gosh. And this is like a rekindled relationship from school. I hadn't spoken to him in a long time. And I said, well, listen, I'm sitting here doing nothing. I don't want you to pay me anything.

Give me a percentage if I managed to close any advertising deals, but let me just sit here, go out and speak to brands that I've got relationships with, speak to other brands using LinkedIn and products and services like that, and just see if we can do something. I can't say I was completely a hundred percent on the idea.

Didn't know whether it would work. And very quickly after about two months, we realized, Oh my gosh, there's actually quite a lot of money here for, I guess these are normal people that have created careers for themselves over lockdown, sitting, posting. So I started working with him. I realized. Just to delve into 

Justin: that.

How did you do that? I mean, if you've been working on the travel side, was it just a case of, right, I'm going to approach these sort of companies. What was it a case of LinkedIn looking at finding, you know, go doing the hard yards at finding email addresses and marketing people to, you know, how did you go about it if you'd had no experiences?

Benjy: So I guess my day to day job was finding travel brands or brands that wanted to reach a travelling audience and convince them to advertise with our airlines, whether that be Virgin Atlantic, EasyJet. Each airline has a different demographic that a certain brand would want to reach to. So for example, a high end perfume brand probably wouldn't advertise in an EasyJet magazine because it's low cost travel.

Whereas an Etihad Airways, the calibre of people that are travelling, especially in the first class and residences of those airlines, is a serious. Customer, right? And that's where you get Rolex, Richard Mille, like all these high end brands advertising. So I understood how to pair certain brands with certain audiences.

I spent a lot of time looking at Brandon's demographics and understanding who was watching his content. And then I understood what content he was producing. So predominantly, it was a lot of VFX content, which is essentially making things that aren't real happen in a video. So he turned And The ice cream statue in Trafalgar Square into an actual ice cream cone, for example.

That was his most viral video and actually this week it hit a billion views, which is incredible for a one short form piece of content. I went out and I basically made a long list of all the different apps that you can use to edit. And then I, that was my first port of action. So I was like, cool, Brandon does all of his editing on Adobe at the moment.

How can we switch him over and say, right, well, Brandon's going to edit all of his videos on said platform. That platform became an app called Video Leap, and we worked with them for three years as an ambassador. And that was the sort of spark, the start of Brandon working with brands. And. The editing apps turned into movie releases, turned into game shows, turned into all these different things that are coming out and needing promotion.

We became sort of a go to for these crazy wacky videos that would just get hundreds of millions of views. And still to this day, we're working with Fortnite, we're working with Lego, Adidas, we're working with these major brands that are using essentially somebody who understands social media to create assets for them that go viral.

Justin: And it's, it's, it's like adverts without being adverts, essentially. It's, it's, it's, it's Engaging and entertaining content without being, you know, a shoving your face by this product. 

Benjy: And I think that's what's special about all of these videos that we create is it's essentially a new version of a billboard.

You know, it's not got a especially a lot of the big hitting viral videos. They don't have a call to action. They don't have a buy this now because We're not using it for that purpose. We're using it to engage an audience and to get people to essentially build a sentiment towards that brand based on something cool that they've done.

That's sort of the power of influence marketing. I'm sure we'll talk and talk about it as we get into it, but there are so many different, like I had different airlines that serve different purposes to different customers. There are so many different influences in this country that serve different purposes based on the brand that you're looking to advertise.

For example, Brandon would, Predominantly not be someone that I would use to promote, for example, a new makeup brand because he doesn't speak or talk about using makeup. So there's certain things in certain ways that we work, especially as an agency, to pair the right influencer with the right brand and actually create meaningful partnerships that make sense.

So that when you're watching it as a fan of that person, you don't think, Why the hell is he doing that? Because that feeling is what unsells, especially when it comes to advertising. 

Justin: Yeah. Yeah. And we, I've, I've seen a lot of Brandon's content when it comes to like Spider Man and a lot of video game based videos that he's created, which are, which are brilliant.

So was that really the, that was the big break. That's where it connect management essentially came from. 

Benjy: That was the catalyst. Initially Brandon was meant to own connect management with me and he was going to be the side of the business that would essentially bring in, um, The contacts from an influencer side and I would manage all of the brand activations.

We soon realized that his life as a content creator basically could not exist if he didn't 100 percent commit to the content creation. So we sort of went our separate ways in that respect. But obviously I've been his agent for the last five years and we've worked on tremendous projects all over the world.

From that point, I realized that, okay, I can make more money here. From a selfish perspective, from working with this one guy compared to a whole year's worth of salary in my job. So why would I not leave, do something that I understand that I'm passionate about, work for myself. Um, so that's where it spiraled from.

And then I had this eureka moment of like, Oh my God, I need to get Brandon to introduce me to everybody that he knows, because if I can do this for him, then surely I can do this for other people. And that's essentially what happened. He introduced me to two or three became four, five, six to 10 to 20 to 30.

And then I shit myself thinking, Oh my God, how am I meant to manage all of these people? It's too much work. And that was like a pivotal point for me. It was a decision of, is this a side hustle in lockdown or is this actually a business? And. I decided I was going to go all in and create a business. And I realized that in order for that to happen, I needed to hire people.

I needed to build a culture and a team to drive it forward. I understood from Brandon that a lot of his friends that have been in the industry, he'd been in the industry a long time. He was a director and a producer for some social media influencers prior to making his own content. So he knew a lot of the ins and outs of the industry and what's been going wrong and what had been going right.

And one of the key things that he mentioned to me was that, Agents are predominantly known for fucking over people. Um, and I sort of took that piece of information and thought, okay, well, good ideas are just ideas done better, right? So with me knowing the main pain point in this industry is that you've got really sleazy agents that are known for saying, hey, mate, will you do this for five grand when actually it's 50 grand and taking 45 grand margin or, um, Faking contracts or doing all of these dodgy things that the agents have been known for as well as obviously the Hollywood agent side Which is even more crazy and messed up Um, so I wanted to basically create an entity in the UK that was known purely for reputation I understood it was a reputation you're based in Industry and that one thing you can make one bad decision, which leads to the complete downfall of your business.

So everything that I've ever done has been based on transparency. So every single one of my talent managers are trained to show the entire process when it comes to working with influencers. All of our influencers have to sign their own contracts. All of our influencers have to agree in writing if they want us to sign something on their behalf.

We are very transparent in that regard because I want to keep that relationship with our influencers that they can trust us. And I feel like as soon as the trust is lost, that's when the downfall begins. And we're not interested in that happening. 

Justin: That's a very simple, straightforward approach. And Obviously it's working.

Tell us about the, the, the, the size of Connect now as a business. 

Benjy: Sure. So Connect began as a talent management agency, essentially managing talent at a margin, organizing travel, um, hotels, like all the basic stuff that an agent would organize. And to be honest with you, that's where I thought the business would stay, but it's really taken off in a few different directions.

So the talent management side of the business is about 20 staff and we look after a hundred and. 50, 160 influencers exclusively in the UK, um, all in varying sizes. Some require one to one management because they're bigger. Some require a few check ins every few days. Some require constant communication.

It depends on who they are. We service and offer a management solution that basically fits you and where you are in your career. At that point, some people want the Hey, how are you doing? Some people just want to be fed commercial opportunities. So everybody is different in that regard. We then have an in house agency because we realized that 50 to 60 percent of our business that we would get would be retained through through other agencies that were pitching brands directly.

When the creative comes through to us, we I have to say this in a nice way, we, we didn't feel that a lot of the creatives that we were receiving were actually fit for social media. Me, my team, we've got an age range of maybe, I mean, I've got 18 year olds that work for us, but 18 to 35, maybe we all consume social media on a daily basis.

That's all our company does as a whole is focused on social media. It's something that we are experts in and that we understand at the back of our hand. Yeah. I can tell you by watching a video whether it will go viral or not, essentially, is what I'm trying to say. So, knowing that, when we're receiving these briefs, our talent managers, who also know what they're talking about, are turning around to me, as their boss, and saying, Oh, this creative is so bad, like, it's going to get 5, 000 views, the client's going to be unhappy, they're going to feel like they haven't, they've spent all this money, and they're going to say, Influencer, and, and, and, We went through this, this phase where influencer marketing was known as the wild west where people weren't happy.

And I did panels. I think maybe you watch some of them where, um, I talk about why it's not the wild west, why it's just not being activated correctly. And a lot of it stems from not. Putting the right creative on social media, trying to fit a TV advert onto socials that doesn't work. Um, so the reason we built out that agency team was essentially to work with brands directly to create creative that comes from the influencers mouths.

So knowing that we manage 160 influencers, we are constantly on top of all the trends that are happening. We're also constantly understanding what's going viral and what's not so that when we create these campaigns for the brands, it's in line with what is going viral What's the reason what's the reason 

Justin: uh for You're getting such bad briefs because you're talking presumably about some major major brands and Do you think is it is it them catching up with understanding?

What social media is all about? Is it is it just a misunderstanding about social media and Ignorance, or is it is it an afterthought where they still think about all the TV commercials? The big, sexy, important part of the marketing campaign. And the social media is just something that we do. I mean, is there still that old fashioned kind of approach?

I think 

Benjy: there's elements of everything. Focus groups is a massive part of a lot of traditional companies marketing, right? So, they'll pull in X amount of people into a room and they'll test them on X, Y and Z, whatever. Essentially, we've got focus groups filled with the wrong people. So you've got teams of people, all extremely clever, well educated, been through marketing degrees, masters even potentially.

They understand marketing like the back of their hand, yet what they, a lot of them, I'm not saying every single person, not painting everybody with the same paintbrush, but a lot of these bigger agencies have traditional teams that have been working on campaigns for the last 10 years. They're senior.

They may be in their fifties. They're sitting around and coming up with a creative for social media that doesn't make any sense. In my opinion, we should have young people that understand the market like the back of their hand who are consuming this content every day. Sometimes I sit down and I'll get briefs from people who don't even consume social media themselves.

They just created this brief off the back of, um, what they think would do well. And to be honest It's right for 

Justin: the brand. It's got all of the key messages and everything that the brand wants to get out there. But But it's not something and it's probably quite 

Benjy: a clever idea. And if you created it and you turned it into a TV show or you made it an advert on TV, it probably would perform really well.

Um, and that's why, you know, the agency that I'm building out, I'm not trying to, to compete with a publicist or OMD or whatever, because Traditionally, we don't know anything about doing billboards or TV or magazines or whatever. So we're just staying in our lane and we're just focusing on what we're good at and what we understand, which is social media.

And we consider ourselves specialists. Um, so for example, an account that we're retained on his Aldi supermarkets, we run all of their, um, influencer and social content, and it's doing amazingly. And, and, um, We've seen some really big wins in terms of actually converting campaign campaigns into actual sales.

Um, all of the stuff that was going viral on TikTok about Aldi protein with these new protein nuggets that everyone was rushing to the stores to get, and then they were sold out just leaving empty trays and stuff like that. That's off the back of the strong social media marketing campaign. Um, And that's what's missing from a lot of brands marketing mix.

Justin: Yeah. And I suppose another good example of that is Prime, right? I mean, Prime has been, was an extraordinary success. I mean, I don't know how it, I don't know how long ago it was now. It was, maybe it was a couple of years ago or something. But now you see Prime is a, is a sort of a not very special product anymore.

But the way it was launched. By KSI and, and Logan as well, wasn't it? Um, and that became just, you know, crazy. Kids, school kids were on it, spending 20, 30 quid. On a cannon, 

Benjy: yeah. 

Justin: Selling, selling them in the playground or whatever. I mean, I would say it was extraordinary, but that was You know, that was a social media fueled drinking a buzz and a hype 

Benjy: for it.

Justin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There was 

Benjy: a, a lack of supply and a lot of demand. Yeah. Um, that's usually what works for sale products. I mean, back in the day, Supreme was one of the biggest brands Yeah. Ever. Everyone was wearing Supreme. People were queuing outside Supreme shops for hours on ends to get a T-shirt with a box logo like this that says Supreme.

And you could probably order the same thing on Ali Express or whatever for like 30 p. So. It's just the proof of good marketing. And if sort of these things weren't here, then I guess all of us would be out of business and out of jobs because it shows that the power of marketing is still very much needed.

And you need people that understand marketing to drive businesses forward. 

Justin: So influencer marketing As a, as an industry has exploded in the last 10 years, particularly in the last five years, maybe it must be incredibly competitive. How, how, how have you seen it evolve? First of all, over the, over those years and, and what are you doing to stay in front, basically in front of the pack?

Benjy: I get asked this question a lot, like what's changed in the last five years since you started the business? I think. I used to hop on calls and my main objective was to convince somebody why they should use social media to advertise. There's none of that anymore. People know that if they're not using social media to advertise, they're missing out, like they're missing a key part of their marketing mix.

So that's evolved in, in the sense of it's a legitimate industry that, that marketers value and respect. And they see that they see the benefit in activating. 

Justin: And they've shifted all their money from TV into this zone as well, which, which we're seeing the result of that in the TV industry. A lot of 

Benjy: traditional PR, a lot of traditional TV adverts.

I mean, You still see these crazy adverts on TV and I like them. Like, I can't remember what company it was, maybe a mobile provider. They had a seal in the back of a speedboat. I saw it yesterday between the football ads, um, the football, sorry. Um, So there's definitely a need for traditional tv adverts it just if you're coming up with a creative for a tv advert There's still a way to spin that in a social way and make it viral Um, it just needs a a separate brief for it.

Um trying to get people to React to an advert It just doesn't work. 

Justin: Yeah, I remember when I worked in in uh, Consumer PR, um, the power was always with the media agency or the advertising agency and as the PR, you would be the second or the third priority. So you would like, you know, your brief would end up being.

PR the advert, you know, rather than actually PR ing the product, uh, because there was so much focus on, on that TV advert. But, um, but things have changed as you, as, as you've, uh, as you highlighted. I mean, there must be now, you know, the number of agencies that I'm coming across in this space, uh, you know, it must be incredibly competitive now.

Benjy: Yeah, I mean, you've got Multiple talent agencies that are all going after the same pool of talent. Um, you've got influencer agencies, which are, and we actually saw a big influx in these agencies, setting up winning contracts, doing a deal, not paying people and then just shutting down. Um, last April, that was very, very prominent in the industry.

And a lot of my friends who all own different agencies or, um, talent management companies were getting stung by essentially just agencies that work, didn't manage their cashflow properly and hired based on contracts that they had at the time. Fulfilled the contracts, lost the contracts, had all these staffs and overheads, had to make everybody redundant, realized that they couldn't make the company work, company goes bust, don't pay any of their invoices.

Suddenly you've got 20 influencers all with invoices outstanding that haven't been paid. You're being told to go through the insolvency lawyers and whatever, which you just know you're never getting a penny of that. So, um, Yes, it's rampant. I think it's important for brand. My main thing is that brands is you need to be doing your due diligence, due diligence when you're hiring an agency to work with you.

Um, because. It's very easy to have a nice website and a cool Instagram page, um, without, and you may do a really good pitch and really have a great idea of how, um, the campaign is going to look run the campaign. Great. But if you don't pay those influencers, the negative impact that that then has, um, say you hire 50 influencers to work on a campaign, you've now got 50 angry influencers with a load of followers and a load of power, all saying this brand never paid me.

I reached out directly to a lot of these brands. Some of them are. Very big blue chip corporations, um, who essentially turned around and said, we've already paid the agency. We're not going to pay you twice. Um, and my Email back was essentially well, you owe it to those creators. You're the person that chose that agency granted It wasn't an intentional decision but the decision that you've made has cost all these people money and you guys your reputation and I Haven't had one come back yet an offer to actually pay it 

Justin: because I don't pay it twice So do you you made the point earlier on is you talked about it being the Wild West or used to be The Wild West is it still?

Benjy: I'm sure there's elements. There's definitely elements of it being Wild West esque, um, with these, exactly these sorts of situations where agencies just pop up, take a quick bit of cash. It's equivalent to all of these, like, crypto rug pulls. It's like, quick, in and out, make some money, how can we leave? Um, that's something that, it doesn't work in any industry and all that.

Justin: Is there a code of conduct or is there any sort of association of so you've 

Benjy: got the asa the advertising standards agency that um will essentially be the rulers on everything social media, um, they tend to go after a lot of people that are, for example, not disclosing that they're using adverts, um, posting adverts, sorry, or, um, brands that are promoting themselves without claiming that they're promoting.

The same way if you do a magazine advert, it has to state that it's an advert, or if it's an advertorial, it has to state it's an advertorial. Um, So that's sort of their focus. Um, as an agency, we're part of the IMTB, um, which is essentially a conglomerate of, um, different agencies, management companies, et cetera.

Um, and they do like monthly meetings talking about all the different guidelines, new rules, leg, regulations and stuff like that. So I guess my advice would be to use an IMTB regulated agency. Um, because those are people that pay a subscription every year to actually understand what's legal and what's not.

Um, and I think that if you can afford to pay that yearly subscription, you're probably a substantial enough agency that. Is not going anywhere, if that makes sense, um, a lot of these two bobs, smaller pop and drops, whatever you want to call them, they're not spending thousands and thousands of pounds to seem legitimate.

Justin: Yeah. So, um, let's talk about influencer management then. What are the common challenges that you face when it comes to working with brands and influencers? What are the main pain points that you have to deal with? Yeah. 

Benjy: There's plenty of pain points. I think you've got the pain points of working with influencers, got pain points of working with brands and then I guess the pain points of just being a business owner and running a business and managing a team.

Um, we didn't actually finish off the bits about the size of connect, but we're at 37 employees right now. Um, so a substantial business. I wouldn't consider us a startup anymore. Um, So, yeah, I think from a brand side, a lot of brands are getting a lot better at handing creative freedom to influencers. This is a piece of content that's going on their pages.

It's a page that they have run since it started. They understand what's going to perform and what's not. They understand that it's an advert and that there's elements of key messaging that you've got to fit in there to, if you're getting paid, you've got to put what the brand wants. If it's a chip brand and they want to talk about how crispy their chips are, we've got to talk about how crispy the chips are.

But there's an element of doing that in a way that actually feels natural and it doesn't feel like you're shoving it down the influencer's throat. So from a brand side, I would say the biggest pain point is the fact that it's hard to hand over those reins to the influencer, somebody that you've never worked with before.

Um, and Basically, like, be like, come on then, come up with something really funny and viral. 

Justin: The trust for them, that's, that's the barrier, isn't it? It's like, this person is an individual, they're not a media company. This is one person who's maybe creating content in the bedroom. They may have two, three million followers, so hugely influential, but not necessarily, you know, regulated.

So to put your brand that you've, you know, could be a chocolate brand. That's that's a hundred years old to put the reputation in the hands of that person. You can, you can see the, the, the barriers and the challenges, but equally the, you know, the modern way of marketing is that they have to trust. It's a trust issue.

Benjy: Traditional companies, you know, you've got a head of marketing or a marketing director that's probably 25 years. They, may understand the value of social media, but they may not fully believe in it themselves. I think there's a big difference between understanding and knowing that you have to use something or enjoying using it and thinking it's the right thing.

Um, so A lot of the time, these marketing managers are scared to take risks or to do things that are slightly outside of the box because they don't want to lose their job. And I would be the same. I wouldn't be. The reason I can afford to take risks is because there's nobody telling me off. So sometimes my wrists work and sometimes they don't.

And that's just part of the fun of it. And that's why I feel like if you look at all the brands that are successful on social media, a lot of them are not big corporations. Why? Because probably the marketing team is a small team that are just being reactive on our jumping on trends, jumping on things that are viral and making good content.

Whereas 

Justin: well, that's that's how they level the playing field, isn't it? They don't have those huge multimillion Uh, marketing budgets, but they can work social and be reactive and be noisy and PR. I mean, we've seen, we've seen Brewdog do some, uh, you know, uh, approach a similar way when it comes to more traditional marketing in, in the last decade or so.

But that's, that's the opportunity that they have to have a bigger share of voice online than some of the biggest companies in the world. 

Benjy: Yeah, it's not got to go through layers and layers and layers of approval. And I feel like, especially with social media, the more layers of approval that you put on a single piece of content, you're just adding different things and reasons why it's not going to do well.

Reasons 

Justin: not to watch it. Yeah. So where do you see influencer marketing going then the next five years? I mean, that's a long time span. I realize it's a long 

Benjy: time. Um, I definitely think that we're going to see a massive flip back to long form content. Um, obviously the growth of TikTok and that explosion of growth pushed everybody into being essentially a short form content creator.

Like you take the likes of the Sidemen, Beta Squad, these big long form YouTube groups, they've had to adapt and create a load more short form content to basically market their long form stuff. Um, but But I feel like a lot of short form creators are struggling to create a quality of long form content that matches those guys that have basically grown or Um built their careers off the back of long form for example youtube Um, you can see that tiktok's allowing minute long videos three minute long videos even 15 minute long videos if you wanted to so It's clear that they want to go after that market share as well.

I just think that there's nobody that does it better than YouTube. Um, my agency is a official partner of YouTube. We help them with a lot of different commercial projects, but also just supporting our creators through their YouTube journey, doing, um, Training lessons and stuff like that on how to go viral and so on and so forth Something that they're bringing out which we were going to talk about and touch on later is youtube shop.

So for example Someone's watching the the video version of this podcast. They might like your t shirt They could click on your t shirt in the video go straight through to a link and buy it So The same way TikTok shop, you can literally buy stuff without leaving the app on Apple Pay. I sit there all day and all night flicking, and then I see a video of someone talking about something, I go, Oh, that's quite cool.

And then there's a link at the bottom. I just click it and buy it and it's at my house in two days. Um, I had that with an ice pack and with, um, an air con unit and just like random stuff that you don't really want, but it's like always on telesales. Um, so I feel like YouTube are gonna find a way to keep people In their app both for long form and short form obviously youtube shorts has done really well as well It hasn't got to the level of like a tiktok but I feel if they can if they can create a way to to keep people On the short form and the long form in one platform.

It's game over for everybody else um And obviously youtube the reason people love making long form content is because it's monetizable and it makes good money There's no platform other than youtube that you can make that sort of cash from views like tiktok There's some creators that will learn 10 grand a month, for example on Monetization from over one minute videos.

Maybe someone's making 20 000 if they're doing hundreds of millions of views But from my experience the cpm is very very low. If you look at a youtube creator you take the sidemen, mr Beast, for example, one video is generating them half a million pounds sometimes so The difference is just staggering and people that want to reinvest and keep creating strong quality content They'll realize that the only way to actually make that financially viable is by using platforms like youtube 

Justin: Is there a misconception of influencer marketing that exists that you want to clear up for for anybody that doesn't know?

Too much about it. They obviously know what it is in principle, but are there any misconceptions that you want to clear up? I'll tell you the big 

Benjy: the biggest misconception. It's something you said before Um, no, you didn't say in a bad way, but Most influencers are sitting in their bedroom making content.

That's the biggest misconception out of the 160 people that I manage exclusively. Granted, these are people that are being super successful and commercializing their offering, but these are people that do not rely on themselves. They have videographers, they have script writers, they have editors, they have teams of people just like you have teams of people here.

producing this content, they also have teams of people that are there full time. Like you look at Brandon, my first ever creator, he's now got a team of 25 people that he uses to action all of his content. Um, Luke, a guy that I work with, um, who is like one of the most talented presenters that I've ever worked with, bundle of energy, any room that he walks into, he is just eyes on him.

Everyone is obsessed and he wins so much business. Is this Luke Vernon? Luke Vernon. Yeah. Um, so I'm sure you've seen him. Yeah. He's 

Justin: also going to be part of the digital content team. So yeah, so 

Benjy: you'll see him talking and see how he sort of grasps a room and really just engages everybody. He's got videographers, scriptwriters, people behind the scenes doing his, his accounting.

Like this is a proper operation of five or six people just to create content for one person, for one channel. Um, and that's the misconception is that these people are just go viral on TikTok, suddenly become unprofessional, coming to loads of money. These are people that are running businesses. The successful ones, the ones that are working with lots of brands that are doing lots of activations.

It's not just one man bands. This is, this is teams of people that are 

Justin: mini studios, essentially studios of tomorrow. 

Benjy: Correct. And that's something that as a, as a management agency, we're trying to really push on of all in all of our creators is we're going to make you some money. That's fine. But we want you to actually do something with it.

We don't want this just to be a one and done. Yeah. You're going to be here for five years, make a load of cash and that's it. How can we create How can we create shows? How can we create product launches? How can we create all these different things that will add different? My analogy, whenever I have a new talent signing is your business is a table, right?

If your table has one leg, AKA brand deals, if I come and buy it, Boot the shit out of your table. You're done. Where else are you earning money from? You need to have a podcast leg, a monetization leg from YouTube. You need to have a business that's generating revenue. You need to have this, that, and the other.

If someone comes and kicks your brand deal money, okay, that's a bit of a shame, but you've got so many other different legs that you aren't affected by it. And that's how you've got to think as a content creator. You've got to be in the mindset that, okay, this could all switch off tomorrow. So what am I doing to give myself longevity?

Justin: Well, they already have to do that because the different platforms that they're publishing on and the different algorithms that could change at any minute, right? And uh, all of a sudden YouTube might, uh, monetization might drop by 50 percent overnight. And they're used to that, right? Well, TikTok gets 

Benjy: banned and then suddenly, okay, how am I doing any brand deals on TikTok anymore?

I've lost 60 percent of my revenue. 

Justin: Yeah. 

Benjy: Okay. But how are you diversifying your offering? 

Justin: How interesting is TV to your clients? 

Benjy: In terms of the brands that we work with. 

Justin: No, in terms of the influences that you work with. Oh, 

Benjy: TV is, it's funny because traditionally it doesn't pay very much money. It comes with a lot of headaches.

And a lot of hard work, like you're on set for hours and hours. Can you do that again? Can you do that again? I'll say that again. It is a tough industry, yet everybody wants to be a TV star, no matter where you've come from. And the reason I think that is, is because, yeah, so if I ask my grandma, for example, um, to take a look at a video that I've gone viral on.

Her reaction will be, oh, that's lovely. If I showed her me on a TV show, she would lose her mind. It would be the most amazing thing. She'd be posting it on Facebook. She'd be taking pictures and showing every single person she meets for the next two, three weeks. That is their scale of success as a celebrity, right?

Or as somebody of influence. So that's 

Justin: personal validation, really, rather than commercial Correct. But I think that 

Benjy: a lot of these guys are seeking that TV appearance so that they can have validation from a lot of the people in their lives that may consider what they're doing as not a real job. Uh, there's a lot of traditional parents out there that even if you showed them a paycheck for a million quid a year from social media, they probably still say, yeah, that's not going to last 

Justin: when you're going to get a proper job 

Benjy: when you're going to get a proper job.

Right. So it's a case of that. That traditional being in the charts when it comes to music, being on a big TV show, like I'm a celebrity, celebs go dating, come dine with me, all of these different things. It may not do that much for that specific person's career, but it's something that they're deeply desiring to do basically.

Yeah. 

Justin: And they also have the, they also have the traditional media, uh, interest around that when it comes to newspapers and traditional media, media organizations. Yeah. 

Benjy: I think. There's definitely a change coming where TV shows will have to use these influencers, creators in their shows. You take, I'm a celebrity.

They've got Nella Rose, Sam Thompson, like these people that traditionally are social media influencers onto TV. And look at the way that it's flourished in terms of numbers and in terms of social activations, like social media for the first time in a long time when it had Nella Rose on was full of clips of I'm a celebrity.

It was never full of clips before that. Why? Because you've got young people talking about it. That's literally it. Um, so it's a case of it's going to happen. It's going to happen. Like it's a slow. You've got to keep the traditional TV viewers happy. You can't just make it a full influencer show because half of the people that watch that probably actually 75 percent of the people that watch that are going to just be like, well, I'm not interested in watching that anymore, but at the same time, they want to attract this younger audience that is glued to their TVs.

When I meet with my friends and we sit around the television, we don't watch Netflix or Amazon prime, we're watching YouTube. That's what we watch, um, and it's, I feel like it's better. It's short, 20 minute or 10 minute bursts. Everyone can watch, can suggest a different video. It's not like you're sitting down and you're committing to a two hour movie.

Um, and that's sort of where the world's evolving to. 

Justin: And now it's time for Story of the Week, where my guests get to highlight the TV or media industry story of the past seven days. That's caught their eye. Benji, what's your story of the week? 

Benjy: Right. So my story of the week is leading on from all of the football stuff that we've been discussing, um, in the back, in the back, behind the scenes, whatever you want to call it.

Um, you're a Leeds fan. Will Ferrell's obviously invested in, um, Leeds, my agency, my family were invested in a football club called Eastbourne Borough. Obviously you've got Ryan Reynolds, you've got Tom Brady. Yeah, well that's it. And 

Justin: actually, very much for my shirt. There you go. There's the Eastbourne, uh, Eastbourne strip.

Benjy: Get the Connect logo on the side. Oh 

Justin: yeah, the Connect logo. On the sleeve. Yeah, there we go. There we are. Yeah, we're sitting 

Benjy: second in the league whilst this is being recorded. So we're in a very positive place. Okay, brilliant. Ahem. But yeah, no, it's the it's the mix of, I guess, celebrities moving into football and seeing that as a viable investment or a bit of fun, whatever it is.

Um, I mean, look at what Ryan Reynolds has done with Rex and they're in League One. I mean, that is ridiculous. You've taken a club that had a substantial following, but in terms of the footballing ability, we're not really there. Pumped in 30, 40 million pounds, I believe it is, um, and taking them all the way to the top.

Well, as close to the top as possible. What he's pumped in 

Justin: is star power as well and making sure that they get a, uh, uh, they get a streaming show out of the back of it and then build an international fan base. 

Benjy: They've got a proper international fan base and I guess that that's good. Key to what we were talking about of like, how do we take celebrity slash influencers and turn them into something that has legs and longevity?

He's gone from an actor, I'm sure making very, very significant amounts of money to essentially one of the best known businessmen in the, in the, in the world, even, um, What he's done with Aviation Gin, with Rex, and with all these different brands, he's essentially just become the face of the brands. He's realized, cool, people are paying me millions of pounds to advertise their brands, and I'm sort of, yeah, I'm making a paycheck, but actually they're probably making 20, 30, 40 fold what I'm making.

So surely if I just buy these brands as they're not nothing but smaller brands, put my face to it, I can create these Dominant brands in the industry and he has, and I'm sure he will continue to do so. 

Justin: And this is what we're seeing more and more influencers doing themselves, creating their own brands, maybe doing licensing deals with Iceland supermarket or whichever media brand out there.

But basically. And this must be something that you're very much focused on is moving your clients into creating and launching their own consumer brands. 

Benjy: 100%. I think that it's important to, for example, if I'm a travel influencer, I need to be thinking about what I can create that fits my niche. And I don't think it's relevant to just start thinking, cool, I'm an influencer does presenting.

I'm going to own a beef jerky brand because what's the relevance, right? So it's important to make sure that whoever you are. You're not a lot of the time you're not on the level of a Ryan Reynolds. You can't just buy a football club, be the face of it and suddenly have success. You can't just buy a gym brand.

So there has to be some form of synergy there. Why is that something that you want to do? There has to be some sort of storytelling behind it. Um, I had clients that were desperate to make a board game. We made that happen for them because their content, um, revolved a lot around Basically playing games as a family, we thought all these people you're advertising monopoly and this, that and the other all these different brands.

Why don't you just create your own game, bring together all the pieces of what you think is a good game and put it in together. And I think that sold 10, 000 units in the first week or something like that. So there are multiple brands that we're working on a lot of the time. Now, from my perspective, anyway, as a connect thing, we're doing a lot of these shows where people Traditional TV channels will obviously spend a lot of money on producing these formats that are owned by them, and then they'll pay people, um, appearance fees or whatever to be in them.

We are creating shows that our influencers not only own, but also host. So they're in control of the full 360. Um, and. What we're hoping is that we can produce these IPs that then eventually will get bought out by your Amazon primes, your Netflix, your YouTubes, et cetera, 

Justin: your banner, Jay Z, Fremantle's and, uh, all the distribution companies, exactly.

Benjy: Um, so an example of one of them is a new AI dating show, um, that we're still testing, but it's in the, it's in the production line and, um, a mix of a few different concepts that have all worked really well jammed into one with a really engaging presenter, some really fun guests, um, and that's the sort of thing that like that, that's a business in itself, creating a format and an IP for an influencer that they own, that they pioneer, they choose the scripts, they choose who's coming on, and they feel like they're part of something rather than just being asked all the time, here's a fee and come on this show.

Justin: And how about Hero of the Week then, Benji? Who's the Hero of the Week? 

Benjy: Um, right. My hero week of the week is a guy called Zach. He works for Eastbourne Borough Football Club. He's in charge of all the social media and he is doing, you should check it out, probably one of the best jobs as a social media manager in lower league football.

We've got 117, 000 followers on Instagram, 45, 000 followers on TikTok, all in the space of a year. 

Justin: Did you bring him into Eastbourne or was he there before? 

Benjy: You know, we brought him into eSpawn and he was actually working with Brandon B. Oh, right. Okay. So he's got chops. He's got chops. Yeah. And Brandon's trained him very, very well.

Um, but yeah, just crazy virality. You know, you've got to remember that eSpawn as a team has a small fan base of maybe three, 4, 000 people. Um, These are global audiences. These are astronomical numbers based compared to what we're seeing. And it's just spreading eyeballs, um, off the back of the work that he's done.

Um, we managed to sell a player from Eastbourne borough, which is a lower league football side, not, not for bling league team to the premier league to wolves, um, for a record fee in the league. Um, And that is just product of what eyeballs does. He scored five goals in one game. We made a compilation. Wolf saw it.

They thought, wow, that's amazing. Let's get him in for a trial. And suddenly we sold him and he's living his life as a Premier League footballer. Social 

Justin: media football scouting. 

Benjy: Yeah, and he scored five goals in the last X amount of games for the under 23s, and I'm sure he'll get his League debut soon, so I'm very excited to see that 

Justin: and who or what are you telling to get in the bin Benji?

Benjy: This was not a hard one Philip Schofield's return to television. What's that all about? 

Justin: That was a surprise for everybody I think 

Benjy: I saw it and I didn't know if someone was like making a meme because that actually would have gone really viral but Of him obviously sitting on a beach with the sort of um bull with a face on it from uh, Shipwrecked or castaway castaway wilson.

That's the one um Yeah, what's going on? Like why are we giving criminals in the nicest way shape or form? Um platforms 

Justin: Yeah, 

Benjy: you've got you've got travel influencers super viral travel influencers that could have led that show um And it would perform 10 times better It probably would have cost 10 a fraction of the amount because they probably paid him a stupid You large appearance fee.

Um, and if anything, it's just created more negativity about him. You wouldn't bring back all of these crazy people and give them a TV show. It's, it's quite bizarre really. Um, and I don't know whether that just shows the mindset of some of these producers in TV and what they think people actually want to watch.

Um, I think more interesting would have been a documentary about what happened and people can understand the perspective rather than Just give them a platform and acting like oh, that was all A terrible thing and you know sweep it under the carpet and let's see what's next 

Justin: um, it does feel like somewhat of a uh, Press washing exercise and getting ready for the next stage of the TV career, but we'll see.

We'll see that we've seen many, many, uh, uh, celebrities do similar thing in, uh, in the past few years, but, uh, okay. Well, Philip Schofield's getting in the bin. Benji, thank you so much for coming on TellyCast. It's been brilliant to chat with you. Um, really interesting. Uh, everything that you're doing over at Connect Management.

Congratulations on your success. Thank you very much. Um, and, uh, I want to also keep an eye out for, uh, for those, uh, those new show formats that you're developing with your influencers as well. That's really going to be really fascinating to watch. And, and we'll see you at the Digital Content Forum, 7th of November.

One of our key sponsors. So thank you again for that and, uh, all the best. Thank you so much for having me. 

Benjy: It's been wonderful. 

Justin: Well, that's about it. for another week's show. As always, thanks a lot for listening. TellyCast was produced by Spirit Studios and recorded in London. Don't forget to subscribe to TellyCast on YouTube for weekly videos featuring interviews with the movers and shakers of the TV and digital content industries.

Until next week, stay safe.