****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]

Peter Kennedy 0:00

Hi, I'm Pete Kennedy and you're listening to A Shark’s Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:03

Welcome back and thanks for joining A Shark’s Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 0:22

I am Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me shark. I am a keynote speaker, strategist, a shark diver host of the show and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:30

Would you rather be an astronaut or an influencer? It's a question that continues to show how much young people want to be influencers. Not sure about me, I have way too much growing up to do but more brands are leveraging influencer marketing more than ever today as the industry continues to grow and surpass 17 billion a year in marketing spend. And while brands today continue to turn out a lot of content and often while trying to reach a very broad demographic studies over and over show that influencer marketing content can more effectively target an audience with more engagement. Technologies are continuing to advance to help marketers better plan campaigns, maximize workflow efficiency and get better measurement and ROI. But you still got to find and contract with the right influencer. The question is how do you simplify the complex execution of an influencer marketing campaign?

Kenneth Kinney 1:20

Peter Kennedy is the founder and president of Tagger, a data driven influencer marketing platform.

Kenneth Kinney 1:26

And on this episode, we'll discuss the state of the state of influencer marketing, how social media usage during COVID skyrocketed and help the industry, TikTok's everywhere in SoCal, the definition of a high value influencer, the complex execution of campaigns, measuring what works especially for performance marketers, technology and advances in influencer marketing, the need to create content all the time raising kids in a social media influencer world, mentoring advice to upcoming influencers, Jamie Dimon and Charlie D'Amelio, the Kardashians in the Kajis, losing too many oceanic white tips every year, TikTok and Instagram, surfing spots in So Cal, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 2:03

So let's tune into an influential entrepreneur and an influential shark on this episode of A Shark’s Perspective.

[intro music]

Kenneth Kinney 2:13

Pete, welcome to A Shark’s Perspective. Would you please give us a brief overview of your background and career to date? How does the guy go from an Indiana Jesuit preparatory school to being the CEO of a California influencer media brands?

Peter Kennedy 2:25

That's a that's a long journey. I did my homework. That's going back to high school. Yeah, so I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've done everything from the.com Travel boom, starting an online travel company back in the dot.com era. I've done watersports complexes around the United States, I started a medical device company that we sold a boss instruments, I started an influencer marketing company called Tiger media, and everywhere in between. So it's not a very efficient way to start businesses. Typically people come experts into one thing and then they they hone that craft. And then they start a company based off of that, I take the opposite approach. I go into industries where I know nothing about anything. And then I try to start a company there,

Kenneth Kinney 3:09

you zig and zag, and then use and Zog whatever you keep.

Peter Kennedy 3:13

Yeah. And I also think that you come in with a fresh perspective. And you Yeah, you don't have all these kind of preconceived notions weighing you down. You can come in here and and you might have a little more excitement about the industry as well, because you haven't been in that for a long time. So yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 3:29

if you came in with 20 years at an agency and claimed to be an expert in influencer marketing, it would just poison, you know, not having anything fresh to think about. So I agree with it. You're in SoCal, right?

Peter Kennedy 3:40

I am.

Kenneth Kinney 3:40

Santa Monica area. So it must be weird going on the pier, a lot of days, where it just seems normal anywhere where someone breaks out into making a TikTok video, or that perfect Instagram picture all the time, you must see that a lot.

Peter Kennedy 3:53

Everywhere. It doesn't matter if you're at the pier, if you're walking down the street, constantly, you're in a parking garage. And on the top level of parking garages, there's always cars parked, and there's someone taking a picture of someone else in some crazy pose. And, you know, just, it's you just see it now. And you know what it is, and it's no big deal.

Kenneth Kinney 4:11

Yeah, somebody sitting in their car filming something. I mean, if they're talking, you would have thought in the old days, they were, you know, going crazy. Now, they're just recording a TikTok for the rest of the world. So it's Everything Is Everything is a video for social anymore.

Peter Kennedy 4:25

once said, I have five kids and so you know, you have this kind of parent view of things once in a while. But sometimes you'll see people like walking on a very high structure and you want to like stop and be like, don't do that. It's not a good call. It's gonna be good for the grand but it's not good for your life. So get down but I embarrass my children once in a while when I do that. So

Kenneth Kinney 4:44

Oh, yeah. Well, so the state of state let's talk about the influencer marketing, oral. The market obviously looks good. It's continuing to grow. I saw some stats not that long ago. It was roughly not even a decade ago. It's like at a billion dollars, but it's now 16 17 billion Now do you think this is more of a thing today? Because we've got a more strategic focus for it because of more social media platforms like tick tock tick exploded? Or is it something where people are looking for non celebrity celebrities to tell their products and services? Or is it something else? Why do you think the continued explosion, which has been pretty rapid?

Peter Kennedy 5:18

I think that all the things you mentioned, are contributing factors to it. I think the largest contributing factor though, is consumer behavior. We spend a lot of time on social media. And why do we do this, because it's entertaining, you know, it's a way to connect with friends, it's a way to learn about products I want to buy. And so I think this consumer behavior has really driven the need for influencer marketing. When you look at COVID, for example, the increase in online consumption of content just exploded, I mean, we propelled ourselves five years into the future in terms of just e commerce based off of COVID. And even if we drop back a few percentage points, you know, as people go back to the real world, it's still an enormous increase in consumption of online contents, social media, and E commerce. So I think consumer behavior is the number one thing, and then wherever there is consumers, there is marketers that are going to go there. So even as we start to look at other new social media platforms that are coming up, like be real, for example, there's a lot of users there marketers gonna go there. And I think it's really interesting when, when marketers take a chance, and they start to try to buy some media on these new platforms. The economies of scale are incredible. I mean, you can get really, really inexpensive inventory. And so smart marketers go there early on, but you know, the measurement is not always there. So it's hard to measure it. But But yeah, I think all the things you're mentioning, mentioning, but it's consumer behavior, we're just, we love social media. We'd love to be there.

Kenneth Kinney 6:47

So ballpark idea of the demographics for us on influencers, least what's successful, what's the ballpark percentage of, you know, what we think of is, say, young females that fit the stereotype, is that 60%? Is it 40%? Is it? Do you find it to be mostly males, mostly females? What's sort of the mix of demographics that you sort of see, he kind of Heads Up highlight what buckets they would fall into?

Peter Kennedy 7:12

Yeah, well, we look at data from our existing clients and our existing clients. And really, who are they trying to go after? Right? That's really what you're doing. When you're when you're hiring influencers, you're going after specific audiences. Early on, it was very travel beauty, you know, fashion, so it was very skewed towards women. Now, we have b2b companies, tech companies who are clients, they are looking for tech influencers, tech decision makers, who influenced a lot of people. We're working with health, health healthcare companies, who are looking for nurses, or they're looking for oncologist. So the the group of audiences that you're trying to attract via influencer marketing has increased dramatically. Still, you know, I would say that the easiest market to go after is, you know, young women, right? Young men are easy to find as well. But what's really interesting, what I get more passionate about is these niche audiences that are very specific to an industry or very specific to, really to and to an occupation. Yeah. So it, it spreads it. I mean, there's no I think it's like, who you're looking for right now. Is it women, men, oncologists, whatever it is, it's like everyone in the world now is using influencers to tap into the right audience.

Kenneth Kinney 8:29

So if they're looking for like a keynote speaker that loves to swim with sharks, and podcasts and stuff like that, you know where to go.

Peter Kennedy 8:36

I know where to go.

Kenneth Kinney 8:37

Yeah. And I think it's always interesting. There's a poll just few years ago, and I believe it was like a Harris Poll covering the US and parts of Europe and China also. And it was eight kids, I believe it was eight to 12. I read that 29% of them wanted to be an influencer or a YouTuber, more than an astronaut. And I still feel that of that 29% Probably 10% of those wanted to go to the moon just to get the perfect selfie, if anything, but you know, with somebody that's got five kids, who's also running an influencer platform, where do you sort of try to figure this out on your own with how you educate your kids to not be the ones you're seeing at the pier and on the rooftops, nonstop?

Peter Kennedy 9:16

It's interesting. So I it's based off the child, right? I have five children from a college student down to twins, who are 12 years old. And one of my daughters actually wants to be an astronaut. She's a she's a 14 year old girl, and she wants to be an astronaut, right? She loves social media as well. So it's really what their passion is. I think my kids, for example, are pretty realistic in terms of what are the odds of becoming an influencer? And do they actually want to do that, you know, you have to have some, even you have to have a need to create content all the time. I mean, my son, for example, is a great surfer and he loves to post content about surfing. He doesn't do it enough in order to create an audience because it's a full time job. And he has so many other interests. He loves the cross. He loves school, he loves travel, he loves all these different things. So you have to be hyper focused into one thing. And you can be that type person. The stat I read was not about astronauts it was, would you rather be an actor or an, or an athlete or a social media influencer. And the numbers were outrageous. Like when I was growing up, it was all about acting, and athletes are singers. Now, it's not that. So, you know, I don't know how you guide children, you know, I think kids are just who they are and what they're exposed to. And, you know, some people want to grow up and be you know, dive with sharks and do podcasts and other people want to run influencer marketing companies. So

Kenneth Kinney 10:33

yeah, I think it's fascinating when you think to the people that are the influencers, maybe 20 years ago, may have been a fortune 500 CEO, you know, that wrote a best selling book. And now nobody's gonna know who those people are anymore. I mean, if I said Jamie diamond, you know, one of the most influential business minds in the entire world, nobody would know who he is. But everybody knows who Jake Paul is, and Charlie Amelio, and all these other people, and it's just, it's fascinating that out on the street is one thing and out on Wall Street's another thing, it's just very interesting to see how brands are trying to connect with people anymore. So

Peter Kennedy 11:07

Yeah it's interesting. There are CEOs who are, you know, as big celebrities, as you know, which you've never reported, you know? Is it a function of the is it a function of the companies that they run their total net worth? Or just what they say, in a provocative way on social media? You know, I mean, if you think about some of these big time, celebrity or big time celebrity CEOs, they're typically pretty provocative people who get there. Jamie diamond is not a very provocative person, you know.

Kenneth Kinney 11:36

Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, everybody knows who he is. And his net worth compared to Jamie's as I'm sure, infinitesimally smaller, but it's growing quickly.

Peter Kennedy 11:44

But more more entertaining to watch .

Kenneth Kinney 11:46

More interesting and much more.

Peter Kennedy 11:48

Maybe that's it. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 11:49

So what to you is the definition of a great influencer, or at least a high value influencer that and does that fall in line with the education that brands and agencies typically have today? I mean, I know the industry as a whole is starting to adopt influencer marketing today. But whether or not they're really connecting with the right kinds is really you know, where your platform also helps guide people to find those right ones?

Peter Kennedy 12:11

Definitely, I think the definition of an influencer and what I think is a great influencer has changed dramatically. You know, since the days when you ran influencer campaigns back in 2012. Right? Back then it was like, How do I get the most scale? How do I hire the king courage Kardashians of the world where I'm getting, you know, pretty much everyone in the world. I always say that when you're buying a Kardashian, you're buying the Super Bowl, because everyone in the world follows them. And it's like buying the Superbowl ad. Now, I think what makes a good influencer is a much more concentrated, much more predictable audience who's super engaged in what you do. So I would rather go out and hire, you know, an audience that is primarily women who live on the west side of LA, they all shopped at goop, and they all wear golden tissues, okay, because they're much more predictable. I know, they spend a lot of money on very high fashion. I know that shopping really nice stores, and I know that they drive really nice cars, okay, so that niche is able to be identified. So if I'm an influencer, and I can craft that more, listen, it's fine. Because there are some brands who want this kind of 5050, male female and you know, all over the board and turn turns ages, it's a lot easier those immediate buyer to go and find an audience that is super constrained, because I can find a lot of those people and aggregate those audiences into larger groups. So you know, when I'm looking at influencer and their audiences, 50%, male, 50% female, that's great for big awareness, you know, campaigns where you're just like an everything brand. But now brands, whether it's Pepsi, or whoever it is, you know, they want they're not just like spreading their marketing dollars across every single demographic. They're being very specific and influencer marketing, you can do that. And so a good influencer is a pretty constrained audience.

Kenneth Kinney 13:51

So who is coming to you for help? And what are they getting? Or not getting? For example, from other platforms? Is it the technology? Is it the right mix of influencers? It's something else, I think, basically, when somebody at an agency or brand is looking for, you know, this kind of technology, what differentiates yours?

Peter Kennedy 14:08

Well, it's interesting, I think that lots of brands and agencies who come to us, you know, they think about I need to start with finding influencers for campaigns that I'm running, we start way before that, because we track about 550,000 brands around the world. So now I can start to look at your industry brands that you compete with to understand what are they doing in market, how much earned media value they place you in the market? What kind of influencers they are and what audiences are they going after? Right? So I can actually look at that. Now we can actually go it's so cool. Now I can we understand your industry, then we can go down onto the product, product level and the SKU level to understand, you know, say you're a luxury goods company, and you sell bags and sunglasses and fragrance and all these different things. I can actually look down into the product level to understand how do you compete within that market? What are your competitors doing? Who's been the most in what territory around the world? So now we're seeing brands and eight and cease using our platform in order to move media dollars globally. I mean, it's just stuff like this, like, I'm so excited about. So So that's like, you know, that's why we're kind of an always on platform. But you know, you could spend all this time on research and strategy. And then you get to the point of selection of influencers, and then you get the workflow. And the workflow is you need a perfect workflow, because it's such a difficult media execution. It's not like going to Facebook and buying like an ad and being able to target 50 million people tomorrow. I mean, you have to go find these people, contract with them, send them proposals, it's a very long process that we do really easily. It's it really makes the process easy to do. But I think it's the upfront strategy work and understanding what kind of media should you should you be placing in the market that really moves the needle for your campaigns?

Kenneth Kinney 15:49

What do you see successfully working with making that difficult execution work well?

Peter Kennedy 15:56

Yeah, so it really is, what are your goals, when you outline your goals at the very end of the campaign, then you can really make sure that that that campaign is successful, you might be running an awareness campaign, which is completely fine. But now we're starting to see more and more of our clients. You know, they sell, whether it's your own ecommerce site, or you're selling on Amazon, or you're selling on Walmart, we can start to have visibility into the sales and all these different platforms. Okay, especially with Shopify, that's an easy one as well. So for us, it's more about how do we make sure that when we're working with the right influencers, we're seeing the KPIs that are important to you. And again, if you're an E commerce platform, you know, how many sales did you do? What's the cost of this campaign compared to the the sales lift, you might want to brand lift studies to at the end of these campaigns? So you know, I think traditionally, the the measurement has been a little light on influencer marketing. I think that's why performance marketers have always kind of leaned away from influencer marketing. But that has changed completely. I mean, we can measure these campaigns, same way you measure your other media mix. Even more now. So. So yeah, it's it's interesting how it's, it's kind of evolved.

Kenneth Kinney 17:02

I was driving lead gen for a company, we were working with an influencer, who was had no idea about really about attribution, produce some great content, but really didn't know where to gear the campaign, very affordable, had a very engaged audience. But I found it very interesting that you know, a lot of the performance marketers, that's all hat for us with trying to connect the dots to see where it worked and make the CFO happy. And then sometimes you go to the influencers, and they don't, on their end, necessarily know how to execute the media across the board well, and tie the engagement together to make sense of it all. And it's been clunky for a lot of people to start. So I know that you're not the agency itself. So you're not always seeing all the media spin, but I'm sure you're engaged with them and hear a lot of it from the agencies and brands you work with. But what are you seeing as far as results go now for influencer marketing campaigns? And has that been growing in return rate? Or is it been stagnant? What are you sort of seeing as far as the mix of what's happening with that marketing?

Peter Kennedy 17:59

Yeah, we're seeing more and more media dollars flowing into influencer marketing. And the main main driver, there is measurement. You know, think about Facebook, back in the day when used to buy Facebook, and you couldn't really measure Facebook very well. And so marketers were saying, Okay, I'll put some money into Facebook, but I'm not gonna put all my money into it, because I can't measure it. Well, then once Facebook was like, Hey, we can measure these things really, really well. We can tell you how many sales you've done. We can retarget people as well. Marketers, like I'm gonna dump all my money into that because it's measurable. And it actually works. We're seeing now that the same thing with with influencer marketing, and ultimately, you know, as you think about, like, what happened with COVID, and everyone's consumption of social media, all eyes are on social media. The only two ways to be on social media? Well, really, there's three ways one, I can create content on my own channel as a brand. And we know that brand performance content usually sucks. It's not very good, right? Influencer content is you know, three to seven times better engaged than a brand's own content. So I can either put content on my own channel on Instagram, Facebook, tik, Tok, whatever, I can buy ads on social media, which is super efficient, effective, works really well. But it's ubiquitous and anonymous. And you know, or I can buy influencer, right? And I can hire them. Because it's more word of mouth marketing. And what marketers found is that that is a much more effective way to get conversion when you as a friend, so kind of now you and I are friends. I trust you when it comes to shark dive. And guess what, when I go shark diving, I'm calling you to find out where I should go. Right. That's influencer marketing. So we've seen you know, the dollars keep flowing into influencer marketing, but again, a lot of it's just all about measurement and being able to measure it. And I think that, you know, what's really interesting going forward is in the past, it's been very difficult to have audience visibility into identifiable individuals, you know, an influencers audience. And, and that's, that's kind of what media has already done. And so we talked about this term influencer is media, and it's really about how do you You're an influencer in new media where I can do the same things with my Facebook ads I can do with influencer marketing. And it really comes down to being able to identify individuals within a influencers audience. So, you know, I can kind of lead more towards measurement. And that's where the dollar is gonna flow,

Kenneth Kinney 20:17

At least from the conversations you're having with agencies and brands, what are they pulling money out of? Typically, if it's not an increased budget, which a lot of them haven't always grown up, but they're pulling it from somewhere that do you? Do, you generally hear a sense of where they're pulling it from? Is it less on social, so on display ads, less on TV ads, whatever it is to pour into influencer marketing?

Peter Kennedy 20:38

it's definitely depending on the brand, right? And the industry that they're in, there are some very traditional brands where TV works really well for them, it still does. We are seeing obviously, and this is nothing new, we're seeing a lot of budgets being pulled from TV, radio print is pretty much for the most part kind of gone. So we're seeing a lot of those budgets coming into just digital by themselves. And then when you start to look at who controls the media budgets within an agency or a brand, where that's coming from, a lot of times we're going to be starting being pulled from from social, right, so your your Facebook ads, or Instagram ads, and then it pulls from a greater digital campaign, as well. So

Kenneth Kinney 21:21

What is growing with the technology trends that you're seeing today, with the advances you've had in your platforms, and what you're seeing in the industry as a whole?

Peter Kennedy 21:30

Yeah, there's there's two pieces, there's the really fun, shiny coins that everyone wants to go towards, right, which are, which are fascinating, interesting. And then there's more of the mundane things that that I get excited about, that our clients get excited about. And that's workflow efficiency. So, you know, when we think about what we do it, workflow efficiency is the key, because a lot of our clients are hiring 1000 influencers per campaign, it's that scale. And, and so you just need a really sophisticated tool that allows you to, to hire that scale, measured efficiently. But But I also, you know, think that audience building is the most important thing, because we always say, when you're hiring an influencer, you're not hiring an influencer, you're hiring the audience. So the more I can understand the audience, the interest of those audiences, the sentiment of those audiences, yes, we can understand the demographics and geolocation, those things are kind of table stakes at this point. But it's really being able to hone in on the interest. But most importantly, if I go and hire an audience, I want to know and have, you know, certainty that that audience is going to have propensity to want to engage with my content, and buy my product. And so it's those predictable analytics, kind of AI analytics, that we're adding into the platform constantly to be able to have a bit more certainty that this group is going to buy, based off of, you know, key metrics.

Kenneth Kinney 22:51

When they're using your platform, how do you keep a customer coming back after they've managed well or not manage? Well, a campaign because again, this is it's not like this is all predictable that we've said this, but there's been a lot of campaigns flounder, and a lot that you felt would have flounder would have succeeded in all forms of media execution. This is so new to a lot of people, though, it sometimes scares people away after they stick their toe in the water.

Peter Kennedy 23:14

Sure, we don't think about our platform, for example, as this kind of like, hey, I need to come there, when I'm running a campaign. This is an This isn't always on platform, because again, you know, we're tracking 550,000 brands around the world, you know, your competitors are always putting content in market, whether that's being paid, or it's organic, a lot of times influencers are creating content for you or your competitors, and you have no idea that it's actually happening. So that is a wealth of content, a wealth of information that you can actually start to look at and be like, Oh, I start to see trends within organic content within my industry. Those are trends that I might want to hop onto or build campaigns around, or, you know, one of my clients or sorry, one of my competitors, is having a huge push in Texas, amongst this group of people. Great. That's something I need to identify is that type of campaign I want to build into or are we starting to get already enough organic mentions, I was looking at Nike recently. So cool. Nike, if you look at Nike, Adidas, Puma Under Armour, Nike has a 95% Share of Voice in Texas. Okay, whether you're looking at gross number of points or posts, or you're looking at like earned media value engagements, whatever it is, they own a 95% Share voice. And when you look through it, and you see it's all organic, what does that tell Nike? They don't need to spend a dime in Texas, because they already have all the organic mentions their Puma, Adidas, Under Armour was that tell them they need to start hiring influencers in Texas in order to increase their share of voice amongst the social community. Right. So that's the type of information that you could spend the next month on just constantly looking at and understanding these trends within your industry. So again, it's not really about just campaigns that you're running. It's really about, you know, we've listened to and stored 15 When post, I mean, every day we listen to another 40 million posts. I mean, it's, it's astronomical, right? But all of that data is just constantly changing. So. So yeah, so it's not just about like, am I running a campaign today? It's, you know, it's about what's happening in my world.

Kenneth Kinney 25:17

We've talked a lot about brands and agencies in the state, the state in the platform and the advancements. I'm kind of curious what your advice because I'm sure people come to you, you know, that, you know, through different channels, what's your advice to an influencer today to be recognized well, and noticed by brands as they build their own level of influence?

Peter Kennedy 25:36

Definitely, I love this. And I work with a lot of influencers. So they'll come to me, and especially when they're early on just trying to say, hey, how do I? How do I become recognizable? And I always start to say, Well, what brands do you want to work with? Okay? And they say, Well, I want to work with Levi's or want to work with Ray Bans, or whoever it is. And then I start to look at the campaign's on our platform that they're running. And who are they going after? And do you look like those types of people? A lot of times when you're starting off, you're not really focused on a particular demographic. And so you'll find that your audiences have men have women, they live all over the place, right? Not as appealing to most brands, right? They want a very specific audience. So try to hone in on that craft. Why are the men following you? Why are the women following you pick and choose one and then create content around that group? Okay. So, you know, the more you can be specific, the better you are, and the more kind of kind of engaged audiences that you're going to, that you're going to attract. And then the same thing with the algorithms short look at the algorithms, they've done a really good job in the last couple of years of really recommending content based off of what you've interested in. And so if I'm an influencer, who creates just a wide range of content, I might not be delivered my recommendation to specific people who are really interested in these kind of niche things. So again, you know, just the more niche you can be the better.

Kenneth Kinney 27:00

Agreed and I think we spoke about this briefly before, but I'm coaching a lot of influencers now who are trying to build their brands beyond just that bang, energy drink deal they got because they had a few followers. And I think it's absolutely fascinating see where the next level of what they do with their career, how they take their own thing, if they don't become an ongoing Charlie Amelio, and they don't become Ryan Kaji. I mean, it's really interesting to see how they're gonna learn from the business world to go beyond just a few brand deals. It's a lot of exciting things to come. But it's also going to be probably going to see a lot of failures go through that realm as well. So

Peter Kennedy 27:34

yeah, and there are millions of brands out there, right? I mean, what's cool about what we can do, you can look at an influencer. And you can look at their audiences and start to understand their audiences affinity in different brand categories through a platform. So for example, you can be like, Alright, I want to look at this influencer. And I want to look at all their food and beverage brands that their audience cares about, or I want to look at the fashion, you can even go and see the aviation brands that their audiences care about the car brands, that just opens up the whole world of brands to influencers where they can start to say, oh, I can start to go into the aviation space. Or I can go into this space, if your audience makes sense for that category. Right? So

Kenneth Kinney 28:12

yeah. Well, what excites you the most today about influencer marketing that maybe we haven't we just talked about? And what gives you the most pause about the industry as well?

Peter Kennedy 28:23

Yeah, I mean, two things that I think that are really interesting is this influencer is media. So once influencer becomes the same way that you can bind media, I think that's really interesting. Being able to identify individual people within influencers, audiences, is just going to change the way we're doing business, we're already starting to do that with some clients. Now, I think that's interesting. The other thing that makes me really excited is the need for content. You have to as a brand be creating content all the time. And if you're not creating content all the time, you almost don't exist on social media, or even in the E commerce world, email marketing, whatever it is, you need content, content is expensive, right? For me to create an Instagram post, it's simply $300. For a brand. Well, now we're seeing a lot of the campaigns being run in our platform have nothing to do with attribution has nothing to do with awareness. It's all about, I need 40 pieces of content for $200. Who can do that for me. So that to me is influencer marketing at scale, where brands can start to create all this content. And then you can take that content and really AB test that whether it's in your email marketing campaign, or on your e commerce website. So what I'm excited about influencer marketing, everyone thinks about, it's all about just like, you know, creating a post for this influencer to drive something. It's not that anymore. It's about how do I create content at scale? Using influencers who matter? And since they're so you know, up on the trends, they know what kind of content is going to resonate with those audiences? Way better than a brand? can, you know, I mean, you'll get these influencers that have 600,000 followers. Why did they do that? They do it because they know how to create content, you know, branches don't know how to create content that's that compelling.

Kenneth Kinney 29:58

So is there any big I get every concern that you have within influencer marketing?

Peter Kennedy 30:04

You know, not Not really. I mean, I think that it's a traditional....

Kenneth Kinney 30:08

Just we make sure it doesn't become a fad.

Peter Kennedy 30:10

Yeah, I just don't think it is a fad. You know, I mean, my wife is so funny. She's like, Listen, I love what you're doing you regulations, but like this influencer marketing thing. Come on. And I'm like getting your phone. I'm like, you follow like 50 influencers? She's like, No, I like that person. Because she's a decorator. She's an exactly. And so I don't think this is a fad. If we think that word of mouth marketing, whether whether it's online or between your friends is going to go away at some point, then it's a fad. I just don't believe that. I think that I'm always going to take your advice, Kenneth, when I'm gonna go shark diving, just, you know, you know more about than I do, and I'm gonna take your advice, and that's influencer marketing.

Kenneth Kinney 30:46

Yeah, I think my biggest concern is trying to figure out how well influencers continue to educate themselves to help in that which is which you said in a sort of a complex media execution, really understanding how to help, just like any performance marketer with how to make the C suite and the CFO in particular happy with the money that they allocated towards there. Beyond just a vanity metric, or a direct sale only there's, there's value there that has to be quantified to some degree, the emotion we'll get from a lot of the vanity metrics, but really being understand its unique value in the marketplace, and not comparing it to a banner ad or a something they created on their own, or whatever it is. It's a different form of content, a different form of media execution that needs to be thought of well, so Pete, is this of all my guests. And I must ask, since you're close to Santa Monica in the waters there, what is your favorite kind of shark and why you're a surfer?

Peter Kennedy 31:40

I am a surfer. So my favorite shark is an oceanic whitetip shark.

Kenneth Kinney 31:45

Yeah, not nearly enough of them have been decimated,

Peter Kennedy 31:48

They're being decimated, and they they're cool looking thin. And those things if you see one in the ocean, you know, their bass hunting in the middle of nowhere. And if it sees you will probably want to eat you. So

Kenneth Kinney 31:58

Well, I wouldn't say that. But their populations have declined by like 93% in the last 15 years. It's deplorable. And that's part of the problem is they run into a lot of commercial fishing because of where they sit at the top of the water column, close to where a lot of the commercial law line fishing boats, and then they just end up getting decimated for their fins or they become bycatch. And that was more that was probably TMI that you didn't need to know. But it was just

Peter Kennedy 32:20

I know all that. Yeah, I love sharks. I've been studying sharks since I was a little kid. But yeah, the other thing is, it's probably the the most sought after fin within Sharknado soup. Which is too bad.

Kenneth Kinney 32:31

It's horrible. But we'll we'll do all we can to help that misunderstanding. Well, Pete, it's a special time in the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting, important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Peter Kennedy 32:40

That's why I'm doing the show. Let's hear it. All right.

Kenneth Kinney 32:44

Man, we have set the bar too high. All right, number one, Ryan Kaji or a Kardashian, take your pick whichever one?

Peter Kennedy 32:51

I'll take Kardashian.

Kenneth Kinney 32:52

Why so?

Peter Kennedy 32:53

I mean, it was this Can I marry a Kardashian because I want to. I want to tap into the billions. No, I think the Kardashians.

Kenneth Kinney 33:00

They all come with a lot of baggage, you know, and some videotapes to depending on which ones Yeah,

Peter Kennedy 33:06

I think the Kardashians have done an amazing job of not just becoming influencers, but building massive brands around themselves. And honestly, they're super smart people. So

Kenneth Kinney 33:17

Incredibly smart. Alright, number two types of influencer campaigns you'd like to best giveaway contest or sponsored social posts?

Peter Kennedy 33:26

sponsored social post.

Kenneth Kinney 33:29

Why so?

Peter Kennedy 33:29

Do you say giveaway content?

Kenneth Kinney 33:31

Giveaway contests.

Peter Kennedy 33:33

Contests. I hate this. I think those are fake and they inflate metrics and they're not real. So

Kenneth Kinney 33:40

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Number three, TikTok or Instagram?

Peter Kennedy 33:46

Man, I'm gonna get in trouble for this. I will. Okay, I can only answer one time, I guess I'll say TikTok. TikTok's entertainment.

Kenneth Kinney 33:55

It's the best user interface of any social platform ever for killing time and just enjoying yourself

Peter Kennedy 34:02

the best recommendation engine ever. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 34:05

All right, number four. Since we're talking about surfing and the California surf spots near you, Huntington Beach or Newport Beach?

Peter Kennedy 34:14

ooh, I would say Newport because the wedge is so fun.

Kenneth Kinney 34:17

Alright, number five. And the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread?

Peter Kennedy 34:22

I thought about this a lot because I've heard this in the past and I'm gonna go on I can't I don't like sugar. So I'm gonna get a biscuit. It's more versatile. You can eat it with anything.

Kenneth Kinney 34:32

That's fair. That's fair.

Peter Kennedy 34:33

Am I right?

Kenneth Kinney 34:35

Go to Cracker Barrel where you can get two. I don't know if there are any Cracker Barrels in Santa Monica but you get both when you get a Cracker Barrel.

Peter Kennedy 34:42

I'm from Indiana. I've been to many I have never met a cornbread I didn't like but you know. Yeah. Not very good for you.

Kenneth Kinney 34:49

All right. Well, Pete where can people find out more about you keep up with Tiger media and a lot lot more.

Peter Kennedy 34:54

Yeah, check me out on LinkedIn. Also, my email address is Peter at Tagger media.com. Are you free to reach out to me, always open to discussing anything?

Kenneth Kinney 35:04

Pete, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark’s Perspective.

Peter Kennedy 35:08

Thanks Kenneth. Appreciate it.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 35:14

So that was my conversation with Peter Kennedy, the founder and president of Tagger, a data driven influencer marketing platform. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from a conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 35:24

First, to his point about the rise of influencer marketing, where and when it was growing steadily, it skyrocketed in growth during COVID Because the pandemic helped people adopt the usage much more widely of social media, so much so much more, and I say helped. But you can debate that societal issue on your own, but who wanted to hear from brands directly during that time on social? Well, very few people wanted to hear directly from the presence and influencers fill the gap with how they speak to the use of a product or service versus how brands speak about it. You be the judge on who wins that argument. And he mentions even if we pivot back a point or two on social media usage, it still is advanced well beyond where it should have been expected to be at this time. And that's again, good news for influencer marketing and its adoption.

Kenneth Kinney 36:05

Second love when he talks about what makes a great influencer. And that's changed dramatically over the last decade. The Kardashian model is the one that many still think of first, but it isn't the right model for many businesses. Many marketers still overthink reach versus targeted to their specific audience. Pete likes it influencer campaigns with targeted audiences are more predictable, and that niche is easier to identify. It's also easier to craft that audience. awareness campaigns often need to go bigger. However, smarter marketers know to be very specific and target further. He said, and I quote, a good influencer has a very concentrated audience. And that's so very true.

Kenneth Kinney 36:43

Third, it's a difficult media execution is an understatement. For many vanity metrics are easy to measure. But what drives sales? And how does it all tie back to what the brand is doing? Well, that's a whole other difficult execution on its own to measure. He said, though, that the measurement is better today. And that I agree, measurement still sucks to me. But I do get excited about where the technology is going. When you start looking at an influencer platform, with a touch of social listing, and a dash of CRM with some workflow efficiency, and a hint of this platform or that and start tying it all together. Well, then you can start making the CFO happy, as well as putting out better content that buyers often won. And you also make the shark a little happier. That's exciting stuff. And I'm glad to see technologies like Tagger and moving that forward, helps the industry and it's going to continue to change the way we do marketing. And that's a good thing.

Kenneth Kinney 37:32

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a sharks perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 37:36

Thank you again for the privilege of your time.

Kenneth Kinney 37:38

I'm so thankful everybody listens.

Kenneth Kinney 37:40

Be curious. Be fearless and dive deeper. And today, be extra influential. And join us on the next episode of A Shark’s Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)