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- Influence Weekly #351 - Leaked: The 36-Page MrBeast Guide To YouTube Dominance — And The Controversies It Sparks
Influence Weekly #351 - Leaked: The 36-Page MrBeast Guide To YouTube Dominance — And The Controversies It Sparks
200 TikTokers, Instagrammers Crash The DNC: Why Politicians Are Courting Influencers
Nii Ahene
August 23, 2024
Spotlight Stories
200 TikTokers, Instagrammers Crash The DNC: Why Politicians Are Courting Influencers
Leaked: The 36-Page MrBeast Guide To YouTube Dominance — And The Controversies It Sparks
There needs to be an AI clause': AI hype sparks influencer contract overhauls for name, image and likeness
YouTube Expands Shopify Partnership To Add More Brands To YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program
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Great Reads
The Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) is granting media credentials to 200 social media influencers for the upcoming convention in Chicago, marking the first time creators have been officially included in a major U.S. political party's convention press corps. This move reflects a broader shift in political outreach strategies targeting younger voters who primarily consume news through social media platforms.
The DNCC plans to stream convention content in vertical video format on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. With millions of new Gen Z voters since 2020, the combined Gen Z and millennial electorate is now on par with older generations. The Republican party is also adapting, with Donald Trump participating in social-first interviews and expressing support for TikTok. A pro-Trump influencer initiative called Send the Vote aims to mobilize young male voters.
A leaked 36-page internal document from MrBeast Productions offers insights into the YouTube star's strategies for maximizing viewer retention and engagement. The manual emphasizes creating attention-grabbing intros, seamlessly integrating brand deals, and fostering a work culture of long hours and persistence when denied filming permission.
However, the document's emergence coincides with controversies surrounding MrBeast's past offensive comments and allegations against a collaborator involving inappropriate interactions with minors. Safety concerns have also arisen from contestants on his recent show. As YouTube's biggest creator, MrBeast's methods and the backlash raise questions about the ethics and sustainability of his approach to online success.
SiriusXM announced a new multi-year $125 million deal with Alex Cooper, host of the popular ""Call Her Daddy"" podcast. The agreement grants SiriusXM exclusive advertising and distribution rights for Cooper's shows, including content, events, and global ad sales. Cooper's massive podcast audience and SiriusXM's ability to introduce her to new listeners were cited as driving forces behind the deal. While advertising shifts from Spotify, "Call Her Daddy""will remain available on their platform where most listeners currently reside. The agreement reflects SiriusXM's continued investment in top podcasting talent and their advertising potential.
Campaign Insights
Google's Team Pixel influencer program is facing backlash after introducing new terms requiring participants to exclusively feature and prefer Pixel devices over competitors' phones. The clause states influencers will be removed from the program if they appear to favor other brands.
While Google claims it's a distinct initiative from traditional review programs, tech influencers like Adam Matlock and Kevin Nether have quit Team Pixel over the exclusivity requirements, raising concerns about consumer trust and review integrity. The situation highlights the need for clearer guidelines around sponsored influencer content as the FTC cracks down on misleading endorsements.
TikTok's promotion for Post Malone's new country album "F-1 Trillion" is generating significant engagement, with over 140,000 creator videos inspired by his collaboration with Morgan Wallen titled "I Had Some Help." A clip of them performing live has amassed over 41 million views, signaling strong interest in Post's pivot to country music.
TikTok's #F1TRILLION in-app experience offers exclusive content, interactive challenges, and a chance to win concert tickets. This campaign aligns with TikTok's growing focus on music discovery and promotion through features like artist takeovers, behind-the-scenes series, fan spotlights, and partnerships with major labels. As a powerful platform for viral trends and emerging artists, TikTok is becoming an essential part of the music industry's marketing strategies.
The global influencer market has tripled since 2019 to reach $21.1 billion in 2023, with projections of $24 billion by 2024. Gaming content has found success across social platforms, especially YouTube where mid-to-large creators enjoy a 3.5% engagement rate. Gaming influencers leverage their authenticity and viewer trust to effectively promote games, with 53% more loyal audiences than other industries. Influencer marketing platforms enable better audience interaction, loyalty, and conversion rates for represented brands.
Two prominent gaming YouTubers, Shadow Fox BG and GNRAK, share insights on monetization strategies like multi-platform streaming and building deep viewer connections through live streams. The Summer Xsolla Quarterly Report provides further analysis on influencer marketing in gaming.
New research reveals beauty brands with the highest entertainment scores and engagement on TikTok experienced over 100% sales growth. The study by Dash Hudson found brands like Florence by Mills, Laneige US, Tatcha, Tree Hut, and Kylie Cosmetics saw notable increases, indicating entertaining content effectively drives ROI.
TikTok's influence on the beauty industry is significant, with 71% of users saying it impacts their product purchases and over 1 million UK shoppers buying beauty items through TikTok Shop. While trends come and go, those initiated by experts tend to endure, making the platform crucial for brands to maintain consumer influence, especially among younger audiences.
Creators and influencers are renegotiating their contracts with brands to protect their intellectual property and content usage rights as generative AI gains prominence. Joy Ofodu, a creator and voice actor, has started including AI riders prohibiting clients from training or modifying her voice using AI systems. Steven Sharpe, an influencer, is scrutinizing content usage clauses to retain control over how brands leverage his likeness with AI.
The rise of AI has exacerbated longstanding debates around fair compensation for creators' name, image, and likeness. Influencers are advocating for legislation to safeguard their rights as AI evolves rapidly. Experts predict increasing standardization around content usage terms and potentially larger payouts for creators licensing their intellectual property to brands utilizing generative AI tools.
The Democratic Party is ramping up its social media strategy for the 2024 presidential election, inviting 200 influencers to its national convention in Chicago. Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign aims to recruit 5,000 online influencers by November. This move highlights social media's growing importance in political campaigns. The strategy includes providing influencers with access to high-profile politicians and campaign information.
While the Democrats focus on diverse influencers, especially in swing states, the Trump campaign emphasizes their candidate's large personal following and engagement in long-form social media content. Critics argue that relying on influencers may help Harris avoid tough questions from journalists. The effectiveness of this approach remains debated, with some drawing parallels to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign strategy. This development underscores the evolving landscape of political communication in the digital age.
Fanfix is helping viral star Haliey Welch transition her "Hawk Tuah" internet fame into a sustainable creator career. The safe-for-work platform provides stable income through fan subscriptions and is betting big on empowering creators. Fanfix CMO Loren Piretra, an industry veteran from Playboy and Twitch, reveals the company safeguards creator brands by prohibiting nudity while offering revenue streams like pay-per-view content. For Welch, Fanfix launched her presence emphasizing authentic connection with fans through dating advice and behind-the-scenes glimpses. The partnership aims to provide Welch consistent income apart from unpredictable brand deals.
Piretra says subscription models are destigmatizing as the White House recently hosted its first Creator Economy Conference, signaling growing governmental recognition of the industry's importance. Looking ahead, Piretra anticipates more focus on fair compensation, creator mental health, and regulating AI's potential misuse of creator likenesses. Fanfix's approach underscores how new platform economies are aiming to empower creators while challenging stereotypes around subscription-based content.
Interesting People
Karys Elise Wright, a 20-year-old TikTok star, has turned viral trends into lucrative global brand deals by leveraging her authentic content and platform-specific strategies. Despite facing challenges like online negativity and burnout, Wright's resilience and partnership with Sintillate Talent agency have propelled her success.
She meticulously plans content tailored for each platform, focusing on reach and engagement metrics over follower count. Wright's journey from filming ""embarrassing"" videos in her village to collaborating with brands like Love Honey exemplifies the potential rewards of perseverance and adaptability in the creator economy.
Alyssa McKay, a 24-year-old full-time content creator, shares her inspiring journey from foster care to amassing millions of followers across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. With a commitment to authenticity, McKay has built a profoundly engaged audience, leveraging Snapchat's unique format to foster genuine connections.
Despite challenges like online harassment, she remains dedicated to her unfiltered approach, offering advice on embracing one's uniqueness in the creator economy. McKay's multi-faceted career spans potential TV ventures and an entrepreneurial streetwear fashion brand, yet her core motivation remains the deep bond with her audience, whom she considers family.
The Sunday Times has released its inaugural Gaming Rich List, highlighting the UK's wealthiest gamers and game developers. Topping the list are Playrix co-founders Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, with a combined fortune of £12.54 billion. YouTube stars KSI and the Sidemen rank highest among gamers, jointly placing 21st with £50 million.
The list features creators behind popular games like Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Grand Theft Auto. Notably, over a quarter of those listed are under 35, with an average age of 45. However, the list includes only three women, highlighting a significant gender disparity in the industry. Other notable entries include PewDiePie and the creators of Worms and Dredge. The list showcases the lucrative potential of the gaming industry, with fortunes built from both game development and content creation.
Major influencers from all political leanings are becoming entrenched in the 2024 presidential election campaigns. Both Democratic and Republican parties have built vast networks of creators to reach voters directly through social media. While Republicans tend to collaborate with influencers having larger overall followings,
Democrats target niche audiences through micro-influencers. Influencers now get credentialed access alongside journalists at major political events like the upcoming DNC convention. This shift highlights how political influencing has become a mainstay strategy as candidates vie to connect with fragmented online audiences in new ways.
Industry News
Traackr, an influencer marketing analytics platform, has released a new ""Creator Lifecycle"" tool that aims to help brands boost their influencer campaign results by 4x. The tool provides in-depth data and analytics on creator acquisition, retention, and churn, allowing brands to optimize their relationships with creators for better long-term performance.
Traackr CEO Pierre-Loïc Assayag explains that by treating creators as valuable business partners rather than disposable content sources, brands can significantly improve authenticity and results. The Creator Lifecycle provides granular insights to identify good vs. bad churn, make data-driven decisions on creator partnerships, and cultivate ""scalable intimacy"" through strategic seeding and human touch.
While challenging existing agency relationships, early adopters can gain an unfair competitive advantage. As influencer marketing budgets shift towards creative production, brands leveraging retention analytics may see 20x better performance than competitors. The tool aligns with creator preferences for long-term brand deals over one-off campaigns. Ultimately, Traackr envisions a future of professionalized, data-driven creator-brand relationships.
Meta’s Threads platform introduced new web features to help creators and businesses understand their audience and optimize content strategies.
The update includes analytics tools, post-scheduling capabilities, and a draft-saving system.
The new insights feature provides creators with metrics on post-performance, including view counts, replies, reposts, and quotes.
Users can also track their follower count over time and access demographic data such as age, gender, and audience location.
Threads allows users to save up to 100 draft posts indefinitely to assist with content planning. This feature enables creators to store ideas and refine them before publication.
Additionally, a new scheduling tool lets users plan and automate post-publication for future dates and times, with the ability to schedule multiple posts per day across several days.
Publicis Groupe ANZ launched FLUENT, a new initiative that transforms influencers into dynamic storefronts for brands, combining tools, technology, and talent to maximize impact. FLUENT integrates talent identification, e-commerce integration for driving sales, and a proprietary measurement framework.
At its core is FLUENT TALENT, a service for influencer discovery, management, and collaborative content creation. The 'Return on Influence' framework quantifies ROI by emphasizing e-commerce metrics and exploring shoppable content. Led by executives from agencies like Herd MSL, FLUENT aims to unlock new sales channels for brands through strategic influencer partnerships measured by tangible business outcomes.
YouTube is broadening its partnership with Shopify, allowing more merchants to participate in the platform’s Shopping affiliate program.
The expansion enables eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the United States to join the program through the Google & YouTube app on Shopify.
“In 2023, people watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos on YouTube, helping connect shopping creators and their fans deeper, easier, and more fulfilling,” YouTube said in a blog post.
According to the company, this surge in shopping content consumption has led to stronger connections between creators and their audiences.
TikTok has surpassed YouTube as the preferred platform for video marketing among brands and retailers. According to Digiday+ Research, as of summer 2024, 67% of brand and retailer professionals reported posting content on TikTok within the past month, compared to 60% for YouTube. This marks a reversal from the previous year when YouTube led the pack among video-focused social platforms.
TikTok’s ascendancy comes amid a steady increase in usage and ad spending on the platform.
In the summer of 2022, 42% of brands and retailers were active on TikTok. This figure rose to 63% in 2023 before reaching its current 67% in 2024. Concurrently, ad spending on TikTok has grown from 24% of brands purchasing ads in 2022 to 40% in 2024.
LinkedIn introduced two new content marketing features - Sponsored Newsletter Articles and updated Sponsored Articles. These allow businesses to promote long-form content directly to their target audiences on the platform. Companies can sponsor serialized newsletters or individual articles and promote them through Company Pages or thought leader campaigns.
The offerings aim to improve content targeting, faster distribution, and enhanced brand engagement. LinkedIn has seen a 47% increase in newsletter engagement over the past year, along with record user numbers and sessions. The professional network also recently ventured into gaming by launching new daily puzzle games to foster engagement.
A new trend has emerged among creators on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, where they are embracing a stripped-down, unedited style of content. Creators like Dan Hentschel, Sam Sulek, and Davis Clarke have found success by simply recording themselves speaking directly to the camera with no cuts, graphics or effects.
This raw, unfiltered approach is resonating with audiences who find it more relatable and authentic compared to the heavily edited videos that have dominated social media. Experts say the no-edit style allows creators to build deeper connections with followers and provides a reprieve from the overstimulating content that has become prevalent online. For creators, the shift has been liberating, allowing them to produce more content faster and at a lower cost.
Recent research examined the effects of influencers turning off comments on social media. Seven studies found that disabling comments undermines key assets like persuasiveness, likability, and perceived sincerity for influencers and their product endorsements.
While avoiding negativity seems rational, restricting comments can backfire by making influencers appear less authentic and trustworthy to their audiences. The studies suggest influencers should thoughtfully manage feedback rather than blocking it altogether to maintain credibility and endorsement effectiveness.
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Athleisure brand Alo Yoga has turned its invite-only fitness studio in Beverly Hills into a marketing powerhouse. Located inside the company's headquarters, this exclusive club has become a hotspot for celebrities, influencers, and models. The facility offers high-end amenities including a gym, Pilates studio, saunas, and cold plunges. It's also used to film content for Alo's YouTube series. The club's exclusivity has generated buzz on social media, with TikTok influencers showcasing their experiences networking with A-listers.
Alo is following the lead of brands like SoulCycle and Peloton by cultivating celebrity fitness instructors. This strategy has transformed a simple gym into a coveted destination, blending fitness, networking, and influencer marketing. The club's rising popularity demonstrates Alo's savvy in leveraging exclusivity and celebrity culture for brand promotion in the competitive athleisure market.
The "tradwife" phenomenon, popularized by social media influencers like Hannah Neeleman and Nara Smith, has sparked intense online debate. These women, who embrace traditional homemaking roles reminiscent of the 1950s, have millions of followers but also face criticism for promoting regressive gender norms. The controversy highlights a broader cultural tension between modern feminism and nostalgia for idealized domesticity.
Interestingly, tradwives often use the same aesthetic elements and consumer products as their critics, blurring the line between genuine ideology and savvy brand-building. This ambiguity has led to confusion about who truly "owns" domestic aesthetics in the digital age. The tradwife trend raises questions about the relationship between image and substance in social media, and how traditional gender roles are being repackaged and marketed in the 21st century.
Former YouTube beauty influencers like Jeffree Star and Tati Westbrook are finding new success on TikTok through lengthy livestreams focused on selling products. This shift mirrors the QVC model, allowing influencers to directly engage with audiences and sell products in real-time. While some viewers find these streams "cringey," they're proving effective for both creators and brands. The strategy merges old-school YouTube content with TikTok's fast-paced platform, potentially earning significant revenue through product sales, viewer donations, and increased brand awareness.
Industry experts note that this approach benefits influencers by requiring less production effort compared to traditional YouTube videos while reducing the risk of scandals. Despite some criticism, many longtime fans appreciate the nostalgic sales style and increased interaction with their favorite creators. This trend highlights the evolving landscape of influencer marketing and e-commerce in the social media era.