• I was thinking about this one before I came in here, and asking, do you need to love a brand to promote it? I don’t think so. I think that you need to believe the value proposition of that brand. You need to believe that what you’re saying is good about the brand is true. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to love it or be a customer of it.

    I love expensive glassware. I’m a zeldo man for through and through. That’s a $70 wineglass. There’s an $8 wineglass that when people ask what glasses they should get, I tell them those. I don’t have them. I don’t love that brand. I’m not a customer of that brand, but I know they make high quality good-looking glassware at a low price. It doesn’t break that easily. For a lot of people, that’s perfect. While I don’t love the brand, I do believe in the value proposition of it. I think that the idea that you have to be this authentic, huge fandom of brand to support them is unrealistic.

    Now, influencers working with brands that they don’t believe in the value proposition and they don’t like the brand, is ridiculous and is always a recipe for an inauthentic, terrible host. Why do brands do that? A lot of them aren’t that good at this. They should be working with us, first of all. Also, it’s hard. It’s easy to find people that love you if you’re Chanel, it’s harder if you’re tied or degraded.

    There are certain brands that make it easy to love them. That’s how the whole business model is set up. We call it emotional loyalty. [clears throat] Excuse me. We call it emotional loyalty, where you are irrationally loyal to a brand. It is because for some reason, you feel real, genuine affection and love towards that brand and what they stand for. It is incredibly rare in the marketing world. I’d say maybe 5% of the brands that you engage with, you legitimately love. If a prerequisite for advertising for a brand is loving it, there would be only ads from Nike, Chanel, Dior and Gucci or something. That's ridiculous.

    For some brands it's hard. They have to work with influencers that don't love the brand. Ideally, those people understand the value and appreciate and believe the value proposition.

    Good thing to ask yourself when you have somebody reach out to your brand that you're maybe not a customer of or you haven't thought about, look at the value proposition. Ask yourself if you believe it, ask yourself if you feel comfortable with your followers spending their money on that product. If you feel comfortable and good about that, then I'd say you're fine to go through with collaboration.
    Episode #125
    - Influencer Selection, Engagement vs. Likes, Outgrowing Brands