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Every year we send out a big deck to all of our clients talking about the holidays. A big part of this deck is that we survey influencers and ask them a bunch of questions about holiday. Like when do they start planning it, do they do gift guides, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We do this because we want our clients thinking about holiday because I think nearly half of the advertising dollars in America are spent in Q4 to support holiday. If you don't know the way retail works during holiday, it is that as far as sales go each day is what they usually make in a week.

Each week is usually what they make in a month. Every single day from around Thanksgiving through the 23rd of December is as important as a week. The advertising budgets reflect that so we send this deck out because we want our clients to spend their money with us because that we believe is the best place for them to put their money. To all my brands out there, if you haven't talked to our salespeople yet, you should. They're lovely and very intelligent and they're waiting, so mail us at sales@fohr.co or just james@fohr.co What do we learn from this? A couple interesting stats. I'm sorry, these glasses I have, I can't see up close.

73% of influencers limit the amount of sponsored posts during holidays to avoid saturation and 46% charge a premium on holiday sponsored posts. Let's tie this back to chicken sandwiches real quick. I think one of the reasons the Popeyes thing has sustained and still been a thing is that it's hard to get. Scarcity creates interest. If we think about the influencer space and what could ruin it, any market is built on supply and demand. We could have a demand side failure. Brands could just say they're no longer that interested in influencer's sponsored posts.

There's a number of things that could cause that. Price is too high, it's not as effective as it used to be, some new shiny thing comes out that they're more interested in. All those things are threats and things that we are thinking about all the time at Fohr. The other thing that could ruin it is supply side. A lot of times when there is a new market where you can make money, in the beginning, there's not a lot of supply. Cut to the influencer space five years ago, there weren't that many influencers out there. Also wasn't a huge amount of demand, but there wasn't a lot of supply. As demand grew, people said, "Shit. There's a lot of money to be made here, so I am going to jump in and start doing this."

Supply grows. Now, in the influencer space, those two things have been growing simultaneously. I would say demand is growing faster than supply is. There is still just-- Luckily, brands are continuing to increase their budgets and continuing to invest more in influencer marketing, but what is unique about this space is- and scares me, is that there is no scarcity baked into it. With an influencer, you can create- I don't know if this is too technical but you can create impressions out of nowhere. Okay, let's talk about Vouge. Vogue is selling advertising based on the amount of people that read it. Those readers are counted as impressions.

They can't just, out of thin air, create more impressions but influencers can. You can always post again. If you say, "Okay, I usually post 20 times a month." You've posted your 20 times a month and somebody comes along and says, "I'll give you $5,000 to post again." You're going to post again. You could do that again and again and again. The supply is essentially limitless for influencers. It hasn't happened yet but a big concern of mine is if we don't bake scarcity into the space, then eventually, prices just fall because there's too much supply for the amount of demand there is. Where this is interesting with holiday is that it's a 73% of influencers are limiting the amount of sponsored posts they're doing.

They are, in this time of year, creating some scarcity, which is I think super smart. I think if you're not thinking about that as an influencer, if you're not thinking about how many sponsored posts you're willing to do during the holidays, you're probably doing yourself a disservice. It's not too early to map out, take a look at the calendar, look how many days are on there that you're willing to do holiday posts. Think about the categories, beauty, skincare, fashion, CPG. Take all the categories of where your advertisers generally come from and think about how many posts inside those categories you are willing to do and try and stick to that.

What's great about it is that if you set that and you say, "This is what I'm going to do." you can create that scarcity. You can say, "Well, look--" Let's say, I'm going to sell 20 sponsored posts in the two months leading up to the holiday, I'm at 18. Now all of a sudden, those last two might become a lot more expensive because I'm saying, "Hey, legitimately, I set aside X amount that I'm going to do for this holiday season. I'm almost there so I have to increase my price X amount. I have to double it." Creating scarcity allows that asset to become more valuable. Ferraris are more expensive than Hondas because they cost a lot more to make, but also because there's a lot less of them.

It's the scarcity of them that makes them valuable. It's a good thing for you to be thinking about it certainly during the holidays, but also just in general. We talked about how at Fohr, we are tracking the percentage of your feed that's sponsored. It's a metric that brands are increasingly interested in in making sure we're working with people who have a low percentage of sponsored content in their feeds. Think about scarcity this year in the holidays.

It is never too early to start planning out your holiday content calendar because brands will start reaching out, I'd say, in the next month to book those campaigns.

Okay. Let's talk about chicken sandwiches. Specifically fried chicken sandwiches which I should say I'm personally not a huge fan of, strangely. I was raised in the south but I was born in Queens. I don't know if it's just something in my blood but I eat fried chicken, I feel nothing except disgusting. If you've spent any time on the internet in the last few weeks, you've noticed that people with nothing better to do with their lives are talking about chicken sandwiches.

Popeyes released the chicken sandwich and I think somehow it's now become a political issue because it's like Chick-fil-A versus Popeyes. Obviously, Chick-fil-A is historically backwards in their views on gay rights and human rights. While delicious Chick-fil-A is canceled. I think Trump-- Did Trump come out in support of Chick-fil-A? It's like, "What?" How is this what I'm talking about? What a strange world we live in. Anyway, Popeyes releases this chicken sandwich. They can't keep them stocked. People are going crazy. Everyone's talking about it. The fast food joints are going at each other's throats. We tried today, - am I right? - to get one of these sandwiches, you can't get it.

We're a month after they've released this sandwich, you still can't walk into a Popeyes-- First of all, I wouldn't even know what the fuck a Popeyes is, but if I had somehow stumbled into one I couldn't get a chicken sandwich. I think my interest in this and why we're digging into it is just looking at, I think one the power the internet has. Obviously, this has taken off especially on Twitter and has become a thing and has sustained this buzz a month in, to where you still can't get a chicken sandwich. You also can't really go on Twitter without seeing something about these chicken sandwiches every day.

There's something happening. Popeye's I think has done a good job in riding that wave. I was thinking about this since and saying like, "Nobody cares to see me sit around talking about chicken sandwiches. What can you guys actually learn from this?" I wanted to highlight something on a much smaller scale that has gone viral in the influencer space recently, which is our good friend Grace Atwood has promoted this Amazon dress. I thought it was a nightgown because she always calls it the Amazon nightgown. It just looks like a nightgown. She sold thousands of these things.

What Grace was saying was she thinks this became such a thing because it was really cheap so it was easy for people to participate, easy for them to buy this gown off Amazon. Then she was reposting her audience wearing it and so it encouraged joining into something. It was something that instead of being a passive viewer or just like being a passenger, in this case, Grace's feed, they're participants in it. It becomes this community thing. At its best, the internet does that. It creates these communities, but I think increasingly, as they scale and get bigger, they feel less like a community and more like a mob. I think what memes can do is allow you to feel like you're part of this community. I think if you're going to learn something from chicken sandwiches, think about what you can be doing to pull your community into the feed to highlight the people who are following you and create that sense that by following you, they're part of something and they can actually participate in what you're doing and what you're talking about instead of just consuming it. That's the chicken sandwich lesson for the day. If we ever can get our hands on this fucking sandwich, we will do that.

The last one is going to elaborate a little bit on the engagement post we made. The post that Fohr made about engagement on our Instagram last week. It did really well. One, we talked a while back about creating content that inspires, educates or-- What is it? Inspires, educates, or entertains. I asked the marketing team to take that advice, our own advice and try and do post that. We felt like our Instagram was too self-promotional. It was just talking a lot about the things we were doing. I think it happened over time because we were doing so many more things and we felt like everything that we were doing deserved an Instagram post, so the Instagram became this place where we were just saying, "Hey we're doing this. Look at us. Go to this thing."

We did this thing and it wasn't super valuable for influencers, so we're taking a new philosophy and saying anything that we do. Whether it's a podcast, a Fohr Ground, A Drink with James, anything. We're trying to make sure that it's beneficial to influencers. Just the same advice that I am giving you all. Our Instagram is performing quite a bit better than it has ever with that simple shift. We're still promoting the things we're doing. It's just, again, when we interview someone for Fohr Ground, instead of saying, "Hey today we have a new Fohr Ground up with this person." We pull out what we think are the most helpful and valuable insights from that interview, and give that away without having to dive into the content.

Now, hopefully, you see that and you say, "I'm going to go check that out," but if you didn't, it's still going to help you and you're going to learn something rather than learn there's a new podcast up. Learning there's a new podcast up isn't valuable. Learning the most salient point from that podcast is really valuable. That stuff has worked really well for us. We had our best performing post ever last week. Very simply just talking about engagement. We looked at the 85,000 influencers we have, and the engagement rates across all the follower counts. It showed, I think, a trend that most of you probably assumed was true, but that micro-influencers are getting exponentially more engagement than larger influencers. What's that first group, is it zero to 25?

On the zero to 25,000 followers, it's 9% is the average and above million, it's something like 2.2%. Micro-influencers getting four or five times as more engagement than the largest influencers. I know we've talked a bit about this before, but Facebook-- We'll zoom out and talk about Facebook. Facebook knows that that platform is all about connecting with family and friends and sharing photos. It is why any platform that emerges that people are sharing photos, family and friends, they will do anything to buy it. WhatsApp, there was a stat that came out right before Facebook bought WhatsApp. That was more photos were being sent through WhatsApp every day than were being published on Instagram. A month later, they bought it for $20 billion.

There was eight people working at that company when they bought it. They knew that any platform that comes around that people are sharing photos with their family is a threat to Facebook that they cannot take lightly. It's why they bought Instagram. It's why they ripped off Snapchat. It's why they're now working to rip off Tik Tok. For micro-influencers, it looks like the algorithm, the way it works, is that if you're under a certain level, certainly if you're under 1,000 followers, they're assuming your following is mostly friends and family. They want to make sure that that content reaches your friends and family because that's the core of the platform. While we sit every week and we talk about you all's world, you're in the 1%. You're in the top, top, top of followings on Instagram.

Most people just have a few hundred followers and are sharing photos with their friends and families and colleagues. Instagram wants to make sure those photos get to those people, so that the platform stays sticky because if you have 300 followers, and you post a photo, and they're getting the same reach, and only 20% saw that, that's 90 people. That's going to just be a bummer. Because you're not using Instagram for your job, you might be less likely to use it.

It makes sense that the smaller the following, the more people are seeing it. The other thing is, I think a psychological one of if someone has 5,000 or 10,000 followers, you as a follower, feel a lot more connected with that person because if you send a DM or you like a post or comment on it, you can be pretty sure that that person is going to see that comment, that like, that DM. It feels more like a relationship.

If I like Kim Kardashian's posts, which I do all the time, I know for a fact she's never going to see that like. If I comment on every photo, she's probably never going to see those comments. She’s never going to go to my profile, we're never going to have a relationship on this platform. For smaller influencers, that's certainly true. I think what you can learn from that is understanding the core philosophy of the platform and what is working, and the influencers that we see who are doing it really well, they're not as focused on the next follower. They're answering their DMs, they're engaging in the comments. They're acting like a smaller influencers. There's only so much you can do to buck the way the platform is built, but learn from what is working. If you're not a micro-influencer anymore, congratulations. It doesn't mean that you can't try and act like one, and engage like one.

It's certainly exhausting to do so, but give it a try. Again, this is where we're seeing a lot of success come from on Instagram, are those influencers who are super invested in their existing audience. If you haven't seen that post, check it out. We are doing these "for your information" posts more often on our Instagram. We have an in-house data scientist on the team now who's helping Tim and the marketing team pull together these really cool insights. If you don't follow us, you definitely should. There is some cool stuff coming out every week on there.

I think coaching and mentoring is generally probably an underutilized tool in most people's lives. I think that asking or seeking out coaching or mentorship inherently means you have to admit that maybe you don't know everything, which is hard for a lot of people to admit. I don't know that much about the manager influencer relationship. I've talked to amazing managers like Adahlia who I think is incredibly knowledgeable about the space. While she's repping top talent, I'm sure is helping to guide them and mentor them and make sure they're making the right steps in their career.

I've also talked to managers who are very young and don't know that much about the space and don't have that much experience. I worry about the things that they're teaching the influencers. We have influencers that we really like that we can't work with because their managers are so incompetent. I also think that sometimes in influencer management, there's an undue bravado. There's this feeling that they don't really need you, and the influencer doesn't need your business because they're so busy.

That's a pretty terrible attitude to take. If you have an experienced manager who you look up to, and you can get that person to help coach and mentor you and teach you about these things, I think that's great. Look, if I was an influencer and I was managed, my goal would be to leave that management eventually. You should be teaching yourself those skills and be able to bring it in-house. If you're going to build this into a big business and you're going to do $1 million a year, you're going to give $200,000 of that away to your management. Do you think they're going to bring 200,000 in value? Maybe, but you could also probably learn those skills, hire someone in-house for 100 grand. Now you've just made $100,000 more and you've brought these things in-house. I can promise you that increasingly brands and agencies are looking at whether people are represented and potentially working with people that aren't because it it's so much easier, so much faster and less of a hassle.

I think learning those skills and bringing them in-house is, if you're interested in coaching and mentorship, that should be the goal. The goal should be to learn from that person and eventually be able to leave and bring it in-house. It makes good business sense. Look at all the top influencers, most of them have brought those teams in-house and are doing it themselves. I think a manager can be really helpful in guiding you along that way and teaching you. If they're not letting you in and teaching you about like, "Hey, why did you answer that email that way? How did you know that you could push them for more money here? How did you learn how to read a contract effectively?" Mentorship and coaching, end of the day, it all falls on you to ask the questions and to push people.

If you've ever read How to Win Friends and Influence People, that whole book is predicated on the idea that people love to talk about themselves and if you ask them questions and say, "Hey, you're an expert, so I would love to know from you X, Y, Z," they will talk forever because it makes them feel good. It makes them feel like they're teaching someone which people love to do, but it's on you to push people.

I think if you're looking to broaden those skills, just looking to your manager is a mistake. You should certainly pull back and look at other people that you respect and try and learn things from them and push them to teach you. I think we've talked about it before but if you reach out to someone and you say, "Hey, I'd love to meet with you." You never send the email that says, "I'd love to pick your brain."

I think people in a position of power get a lot of those emails and it's not super helpful. We've talked before about when you go into those meetings, you need to have a clear agenda of exactly what you want to talk about. Keep the small talk to a minimum. The worst thing is when someone's like, "I'd love to sit down with you and pick your brain." 30 minutes into the conversation, they haven't asked you a single question of consequence and you're like, "What the fuck am I doing here? I didn't take this meeting to small talk." I know when I meet with an influencer, after two or three minutes I'm just like, "How can I help you? Why are you here? What can I do for you?" Because that person probably wants it to be helpful for you and you have to push them. They don't know how to be helpful for you, so you have to come prepared with questions.

When you reach out to someone, make sure you frame it in that way. I just sent emails like this to a bunch of sales executives that I respect where I was like, "Hey, here's a specific thing that my team is struggling with right now. I don't have an answer. I don't know what to do. I thought you might know." I framed it a little bit to give them some background and said, "I'd love to grab 10 minutes of your time to talk about this one thing and nothing else." Now, we might talk for 30 minutes and go into other things, but that's so much better for them. They're super busy. I've said, "Here's a specific thing that I think you might be able to help me with and I don't have an answer to. Can we talk for 10 minutes?" It's an infinitely better email to get than, "Hey, can I pick your brain?"

Don't be shy. The worst thing people can do is say no if you reach out. I wouldn't also reach out-- I've gotten a few of these emails in the past where people were like, "Hey, I'm looking for a mentor. Would you be interested?" That feels like a big responsibility and it's a big ask because I don't know you, or the person you're emailing doesn't know you, so to take you on as a mentor, it's like, "Who the fuck has time for that?" You have to let that relationship organically grow, and you have to know how much of someone's time you can take and how far you can push them because you don't want to come off as too needy.

You have to balance that need for you to ask the questions and to ask for what you want and to ask for people's time with knowing that it's generally a marathon not a sprint, and you should be making sure that when you are reaching out to them it is for a very specific reason, and you're not wasting too much of their time.

First question is not really a question, but I think a good time to kind of reflect on the last week in Bangladesh and being out there with influencers. I was out there with Christina Caradona, Urban Koi and Stella Simona and we were in Dhaka the capital of Bangladesh, and then we went down to Cox’s Bazar to the largest refugee camp in the world and visited those for a few days to see the work that Concern Worldwide was doing.

Incredible perspective-shifting trip. I've never really seen anything like it. I've never been to a proper third-world country. I posted a bunch of about it in Instagram. I'll continue to do some more posts where I kind of go into greater depth on the work Concern is doing, and also I think its effect on me. Just speaking from an influencer perspective, I think it is an interesting balance to cover something like that that is way outside of the norm.

One of the things that worked so well with the trip is, it was such an emotional thing and all the influencers that were there felt a deep connection to the crisis in Bangladesh, both in the cities and out in the refugee camps, and the work that the organizations were doing out there. It was really refreshing, I think, for me to kind of see that real emotional connection to the things that they were talking about and I think to them as well. Everyone left the trip feeling refreshed, feeling a little better about what they do and I think it's a good reminder.
Again, I know we talked about using your following for good and the idea of this kind of like digital philanthropy and giving your reach instead of money, to raise awareness about causes.

I do think there's a moral call to do that. I also think as an influencer, if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling disconnected from your work, if you forget why you do this, and you aren't as passionate about it as you used to be, it's a nice way to step back and remember that reach you have can be used for more than selling a product or making yourself more famous. I think as an influencer, you need those breaks sometimes, you need those reminders that what you're doing is important and isn't totally vapid or self-interested.

I don't believe this space is inherently self-interested. Obviously, I think the work that you all do is important and disrespected in the space, in the world rather. Again, if you're feeling a little down about it, I think we've talked in the past about just taking a break from Instagram and seeing kind of the change in the influencers this week.

I would add to that advice and say that, maybe go out and do something totally different. Do something like one of these trips. There are thousands of NGOs throughout the world doing incredible work. If you guys can get yourself free rooms at the four seasons in Paris, I'm sure you can get yourself to one of these countries or highlight the work that's happening here in the United States as well. I think you'll find yourself refreshed and feeling kind of ready to get back at your job and connected to the work that you do more. Can't suggest it enough for you all, go out, find a cause that you're passionate about and give your feed over to them and see how you can help. You'll be better for it. We'll be better for it. The world will be better for it.

This is the second time they've been bought. You all know or maybe you don't but I'm only sitting here because of Tumblr. Tumblr completely changed my life. It was the first thing in my adult life that I felt good at. It was the first place in New York that I experienced any sort of success. My career and life in New York until then had been pretty mediocre and honestly, disappointing.

I talk a bit about that in Fohr Ground episode one with Tim if you haven't listened to it. Tumblr was really special place for me. It's where I got more confident in my creativity, in my writing, certainly in my photography. It was this amazing community of really supportive interesting people who many of whom I'm still very close with today. The guy who's making drinks for our event tonight, my friend, I met him through Tumblr. Tim, I think found out about Fohr because he followed my Tumblr.

There's probably a handful of people that work at this company because they used to read my blog. I love Tumblr and I was really sad to see it die. I'm not sad it got sold for $3 million because it's been dead for so long but to sell five years ago for $1.1 billion and then this week to sell for $3 million, it's a cautionary tale for what can and generally does happen to platforms. When we started this company, Instagram was a joke. It was just a total non-factor. Tumblr was really all people talked about.

We really started the company because you couldn't see how many followers someone's Tumblr had. When we started this company, Instagram was pretty much a non-factor. It was fairly new and nobody really cared about it. A big reason we started the company is that you would find a Tumblr that you liked and you had no way to know how many followers they had. By connecting to Fohr through an API we could show how many followers a Tumblr account had. That was really one of the big key features and benefits of Fohr and one of the reasons that we started.

To have in that short amount of time the platform go from dominance to a joke is heartbreaking and shocking. I think that should be a wake-up call that while Instagram and Facebook have a lot more money, a lot more power and generally are better run organizations than Tumblr ever was and I think have much more staying power, obviously. Instagram will never maintain its hold on culture that it has today in perpetuity. It is just not possible. It's just not how culture works.

Tumblr is a small example I think of what you can expect for Instagram in the coming decade and a reminder to everyone that you need to diversify, that you need to try new platforms, and you need to understand that to have a long career in this space is going to mean constant reinvention and is going to mean having to figure out a way to take your audience with you not only through your own life changes of aging and maybe starting a family or moving cities or whatever it might be, changing taste but also in and out of new platforms.

I cannot stress enough that hope is not a strategy. You can't just hope that Instagram will continue to be as popular as it is today because it's just never going to happen. If you don't have a contingency plan I would freak out now because you still have time to fix it because we have years before something catastrophic is going to happen to Instagram but it absolutely will. If you don't have a plan or you're not working on one today then I would just subtly start to freak out.

If I wasn't afraid of staining my beautiful 60-year old desk I would pour out some of this rosé for Tumblr for what it used to be, for what it did for my life, for all the people that I have met. It was a beautiful time in the internet, my favorite time of the internet. I look back on it fondly. David Karp, you don't watch this show. We had drinks once, you probably don't know who the fuck I am but I thank you and I bid you adieu.

I called my friend Jess Hoffman, it's not her last name anymore, that's her old name. Her name is Jessica, gosh. You know what? No. I'm sorry Jess and Max. I've officiated your wedding so I should definitely know your last name as I married you.

I was focused on other things that day like remembering the entire little speech that I wrote. It's like Miller Max Med, something like that. Anyway, doesn't matter. Jess is amazing. She's a fantastic lawyer and specializes a lot in contracts and usage and things like trademarks and things like this. I asked Jess, what do you do? First thing was, you don't necessarily want to start super-aggressive. Yes, that brand is in the wrong.

There is no situation in which a brand should be using your likeness in an advertisement without your permission written in a contract, 100%, there's no excuse for it. You want to first send a cease-and-desist and say, "Hey, you're using my image. This is a problem. I need you to take this down immediately." I think that for me, I would treat digital ads differently than something in print.

I think if it shows up in an Instagram ad, that sucks but it's harder for you to do anything other than say, "Hey, take this down." Look, if you don't start in really hard on the brand and you don't come in being like, "I'm going to sue your ass, like strap in." I do think you can use it to say, "Hey, obvious you guys like this image, would you be interested in buying it from me." We talked a little bit about usage rights and a few shows ago I think a good metric is for 60 days of usage, half of what you would charge for a sponsored post.

Maybe in good faith, they'll tell you how long they were running the ad and maybe they'll back pay you for it. You can use it as a sales opportunity to say, "Hey, obviously you enjoy my likeness, you like my photos, how about we work together? How about you buy this photo? How about we work together in a future sponsored post?" That's why I would say don't go in hard, to begin with, you have the law on your side so you don't have to be really aggressive in the beginning because you will always win the argument if it came to court.

They're going to take the digital ad down and I think it's harder to claim damages on a digital ad just because you'd have to see exactly how much spending they put behind it, how long has it been out in the world, blah, blah, blah. I wouldn't be as concerned, personally. Now, let's talk about print. The problem with print is if they put something in print and it goes out to half a million people, they can't take those magazines back, they can't. That's already out there, and they should have paid you and there's no way for you to get that money back.

In that case, I would again send them a letter and I would absolutely push for money. I had a friend who a magazine, not even a very big magazine, used his image. He's a photographer and he had uploaded one of his images in Google connected to a restaurant, like he was the user photo in a Google search result for a restaurant and a magazine, fairly large food magazine, wrote a little blurb on that restaurant and used his photo without crediting him. I think he got $15,000 from them. This was a national magazine.

If somebody is using your likeness of your photo in print without your permission, there are very clear standard usage rights that say how long they use it, how big the circulation is and it's pretty easy to find what that would cost for them to buy it and I think you're absolutely in the right to push them to pay you for what they would have had to pay you had they used the image in the correct way which was reaching out and buying it from you.

That was Jess' advice and I tend to agree that I think there's this idea sometimes that when you're wronged and you're trying to get what you want, that being really angry is the way to get it done. There are certainly times where passionate disagreement or a little bit of anger can help move your cause along. I generally find again this is a small industry that giving people the benefit of the doubt and going into it assuming it was just a mistake and it was not because they were trying to screw you over is the right way to go about it.

Because again, end of the day, if you want to keep pushing it, you've got the law on your side and there's nothing they can do about it so you at least give them the opportunity to do the right thing before ranting and raving and turning it into a tense situation before it needs to be because the one thing that-- especially a bigger brand has that you don't is that they can exhaust their legal team and they can pay legal fees much bigger than you can.

If it's a bigger amount of money that you're fighting for these companies can throw a bunch of lawyers at it and can outgun you or you could be in a position where you're paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees which is just not a situation you want to be in. I find if you give people the opportunity to do the right thing sometimes they surprise you, sometimes they don't.

For this one, I actually reached out to Sydney, who has been on our show. Right? Yes. Sydney from LaFORCE who does a lot of the work for Veuve Clicquot. I reached out to her, she's been on the show. I just wanted to get the perspective of someone who was at a brand. We chatted about it for 10 minutes today and we're pretty aligned. I think that one thing is brands are-- I think the smart agencies and brands increasingly are doing less unsolicited gifting than they did in the past.

There is a trend in the industry towards relationships and brands wanting to build relationships with influencers, instead of just what I'd call spray-and-pray of just like send out a bunch of shit and hope people post it, which is still totally common and probably more common than not. I look at LaFORCE as a leader and the fact that they're actively saying, "We're doing less of the spray-and-pray." I think that that's going to generally be a trend.

Now, if you get stuff that you don't want, you probably can't stop the flow of packages out there. I understand, as an influencer, not wanting to say, "I'm not taking any gifting." Because if Dior is sending another round of saddlebags around, you're going to want in on that. There's probably a lot of stuff that you get that you feel really fortunate and lucky to get, so it's tough to say, "I don't accept gifting." There are big influencers, I know, that say that, that they just straight-up don't accept gifting because it creates an expectation.

Something to consider as an influencer is that, unfortunately, when someone sends you something, they're expecting you to post about it, so even if you don't like it, they're probably going to follow up. I know it causes stress that, again, you didn't really ask for, but you have to deal with. You don't want to say, "Don't send me anything." Because if there's someone at a PR agency and they have 10 brands they rep and you say, "I don't actually want gifting anymore." You may like the nine other brands they rep, just not the one they sent you.

It's a difficult line to toe as an influencer of when do you say no, how do you stop the flow from being overwhelming and then what do you do with all this stuff that you don't want. In talking to Sydney and we were aligned on this, I think that honesty and candor are always appreciated in the industry. I think if you get something and you really don't want it or you can't use it, reaching out respectfully saying, "Thank you so much for thinking of me. I really appreciate it. I know these products aren't cheap. It's not something that aligns with my tastes. Is there any way you could send me a return packing slip so I could send it back to you?"

They may do that and you send it back. They may say, "You know what? Don't worry about sending it back. You can just give it to a friend or whatever or keep it. Regardless, in that case, you've asked. You've said, "Hey, I don't want this." Certainly, as an influencer, you shouldn't be expected to pay to ship it back to them yourself but you're saying, "Hey, I don't want this and I know it's not free and maybe there's somebody that would want it so can you just give me a return packing slip so I can send it back to you?"

They will probably say, no and then I think you're much more free to do what you want. I understand the brand perspective and Sydney agreed that finding your product for sale is a tough position that you're putting the agency rep or the brand person in because they had to get you approved probably and they probably said, "Hey, I think this person's great, we should send them this thing," and they sent it and then the VP of Marketing is on Poshmark the next week and they see the brand new limited-edition thing that they sent you up on Poshmark.

They send a note to their brand contact saying, "What the hell? Why is this thing for sale?" Now that person is in trouble. Again, I understand from the influencer side because it's like you didn't ask for this shit. I'm sure you guys give some stuff away to family, I'm sure you give some stuff away to charity, give it away to friends, give it to people on your team but the volume is so much that there's things that you're probably like, "You know what? I'm going to sell this because I didn't ask for it and it's $1,000 coat and I can get $500 on Poshmark," and I get that.

Fair or unfair, when they sent that to you, there was an expectation. The expectation is that you're going to post about it. Again, that's not necessarily a fair expectation, I think brands should always do opt-in gifting. I think that they should be reaching out and asking you if you want something before they send it to you. I don't think that putting it up for sale is the right thing to do if you want to continue to have a relationship with that brand. I think if they catch you selling it, it is going to be hard to explain that and it's going to be hard to repair that relationship.

Now, if you said to them, "Hey, can you send me a return packing slip, I don't like this." Much nicer way than that but that's the gist and they say, "No, it's not we're sending you a packing slip, you just keep it." Then can you sell it? I think you're probably more in the clear to sell it. You have done your best to try and return it and do the right thing, they have said no. That feels not like permission but I would feel better putting that up there because if they found it then, you could be like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I tried to send it back.

I told you that it wasn't my taste so I just figured I'd sell it. Sorry if that's a problem."

You're in a more defensible position than just not selling it. Nobody likes to be made a fool of. You have to put yourself in the brand's position. Even though they're putting you in an unfair position doesn't mean you should do the same. It's going to come down on that brand person if their boss's boss or their client finds that the gifting that they're doing, that you talked them into, now a bunch of those clothes are up on Poshmark.

I'm telling you, the brand's do check it. The fact that the person who asked this question, the fact that they are checking means that this is a thing brands are looking at and I just don't think it's worth ruining a relationship for whatever you're going to make on the clothes. Try and send it back, if not, do what you will with it.

In my career on the internet and running this business, I have not done as much philanthropy as I could and probably should do. I have talked about the things I'm passionate about the fact that Trump is a white nationalist, racist, bigoted asshole, that we need stronger gun control laws, that people shouldn't be persecuted based on where they're from or the color of their skin or their religions, that women deserve equal rights and equal pay.

Any number of issues I have been vocal about, but I don't really have a huge platform. It's easy for me to be vocal about those things. We are doing this trip to Bangladesh this week. We're bringing three influencers with us. It is not going to be an easy trip. It's not going to be a normal press trip. We've already talked to the influencers.

There's no outfit post, there's no Bangladeshi skincare routine. We are going there to one of the gravest humanitarian crises in the world right now to watch and see the work that this charity is doing and to hopefully try and, one, raise money so that they can do more of that work and maybe, more importantly, bring awareness to the work that they're doing and start that conversation.

I think that as influencers, you underestimate the power that you do have. If you look at AOC and The New Green Deal which isn't even a bill, it's not an actual thing. I don't even know what the thing is actually called, what The New Green Deal is. Yes, everyone is like, "Hey, it's not possible" and right now it's not possible. It's like, "It'll never get passed in Congress." It's like, "Right, it's not even a bill." It can't get passed, it's not a thing that can get passed but it is driving the conversation.

It did put climate change into the front seat of the news cycle for quite some time. It, I think, is forcing Democrats especially to move farther left on global warming and our response to it. In that, it's massively successful.

I think as influencers, if you can move your audience a little closer to an issue or you can get them talking about it with their families or their friends or their loved ones or their colleagues, you're doing your job. Again, the easiest thing you can do is to become educated on the things that you're interested in and passionate about. If you build a following, I think you have to care about more than makeup or clothes.

Those things are massively important, I believe that. I, obviously, wouldn't dedicate my life to this business if I thought that what you all did was silly or stupid. I think it's really important and just reading the testimonials that influencers have been getting it's clear how much impact you have over people's lives in building self-confidence and not feeling like they're alone.

If you're not naturally political that's totally fine. You don't have to talk about politics, but become aware of the issues in the world and read up on them and see if you connect with some of them. If you become passionate, then I implore you to talk about them. Then to give your feed over to talking about those issues even if it's going to cause you to lose followers, even if those posts aren't going to do as well. I think you have a responsibility to talk about it.

In the same way that philanthropy is a counter-balance for extreme wealth, this is something that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would say is broken and how our economy is rigged and that philanthropy has to step in where government maybe should be if the super-rich paid more taxes. They have so much money, so much wealth that there is a moral imperative to give some or all of that away for them to be able to continue to live their lives.

It's like anyone who's that rich has done probably terrible things to get that rich and their businesses are probably ruining people's lives and the planet. They have to counterbalance that with philanthropy. As influencers, you have a different kind of wealth. You have a wealth of attention. You have more attention on your life than most people. You are in the 1% of the world as far as the platform that you have. I think there is a similar imperative to use that platform for good and for something that is not in service of you and your bank account and your stature in the world.

I hope that with the trip we're doing to Bangladesh, it's the start of many things like this that we're doing and more influencers are doing because I also believe that using your platform is great, but I do think that there is more that influencers can and should be doing. I think it will be harder and harder as an influencer to continue to enjoy the success that you do without doing those things, without at least using your platform to shed light on issues that are important to the broader world.

My last point is it doesn't have to be political. Countries being ravaged by disease and poverty, that is not a political issue. Nobody thinks that children should be starving in other countries. That is not political. You don't have to talk about Trump. You don't have to talk about even the things happening in this country. There are a lot of great organizations and they make it really easy now. You can post on your stories, there's a donate button, you can pull up almost any charity and you can raise money through Instastories without a swipe up. It's really simple. You can do that today. I implore you to do that.

I think all of us need to, especially as we start to come into some success, think about how we are going to share that with people who are less fortunate because in many instances we just won a lottery of where you were born, to what parents and what station in life. I think the sooner you recognize that and shine and spread the love and the wealth and whatever you have to give, the better the world will get.

This is obviously a question that's been asked because of things that have been in the news cycle recently. I just spoke to Glossy. We can put a link to that article up. I just spoke to Glossy about this same issue of what do you do as an influencer when a brand's morals or behavior don't align with yours.

I think one of the great things about this industry or the best things about it is that it is full of individuals, and that those individuals are generally autonomous, and are in charge of their own destiny, and can have the flexibility to say what they believe in without any corporate oversight. So, I think as an influencer, you have a responsibility to your audience to be true to your morals and to be true to your code of ethics and the things that you believe in, the things that you think are okay, and the things that you think are not okay.

If you are a customer of a brand or you're working with them and you don't believe in what they're doing or you find that their morals aren't aligned with yours, it is 100% your right to walk away from that partnership or stop being a customer of that brand. It is your right to talk about that on your channels and tell your audience why you are not aligned with that brand.

I will caveat it by saying that this is also your business. As you grow as an influencer and as your business grows, you shouldn't compromise your morals in pursuit of capital, but you should remember that this is a small industry. Make sure that if you're going to exit a partnership because of something in the news, because of some morality issue, to make sure that you do it in a way that is as classy and fair as possible. These issues are not new. We have H&M, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Prada, all of them doing things that are insensitive and that cause a well-deserved uproar on the internet.

I think it's important to remember that the people you're actually working with at the brand, that are working on the contracts, that are your day-to-day contact, they probably had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. I feel for the social teams and the PR teams at these brands because they're probably going through the same moral and ethical struggles that you as an influencer are. Except for them, taking a stand would mean quitting, which would mean all of their income disappears.

Whereas an influencer, let's say you work with a hundred brands a year, it's 1% of your income. It's much easier to take a stand when it's 1% of your income versus 100%. I feel for those in-house teams that get this thing thrown on them that was not their fault and they have to deal with it and they are taking the hate and acid from the mob.

I think that if you are going to step away from a paid partnership that you're contracted for, one, absolutely speak to the teams first. Speak to the teams on those brands. If a brand is finding out you're walking away from a partnership from your post, you have made a huge misstep. Let those teams know. E-mail them, try and get on a call. That's a conversation that should, I think, be had on the phone. I think you owe them that, at least, to talk through it. I think that there is a way to walk away from these partnerships in a way that you continue to be in service to your morals and your ethics and the way you see the world without joining the mob in bashing a company unnecessarily more than it needs to be.

You can say, "Hey, you guys know I've been working with this brand. You've seen the news. I'm no longer working with this brand." That is very different than going on a huge tirade. Again, I'm not saying that that is not ever justified. We have seen that influencers and celebrities have real power in this space. When they stand up and say, "Hey, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and I'm going to lose out on money because I believe so strongly that what this brand is doing is wrong. I think that is a very just and honorable and admirable thing to do.

I just think that you need to also just make sure you give the teams that you're working with a chance to know that's coming and not be blindsided by it because they will have long memories about this and they might go somewhere else. You don't want to get the reputation of being unfair or reactionary inside the community because again, it is a small community.

I will also say on the brand side in our contracts we have morality clauses. We have the ability as do our clients to walk away from an influencer who we feel like is their actions or beliefs are not in line with ours or our clients or their actions are negatively impacting our business or our client's business. I think it is totally valid as an influencer to have those same morality clauses and know that, "Hey, if you do anything that I don't agree with, I'm allowed to walk away from this."