• Let's first talk about some in-the-box ways to get brand's attention. The first thing, we've talked about this before, if you want to work with a brand, the best way to get their attention is to start working for the brand. We do this all the time at Fohr. Sometimes, we want to work with the client, we'll be in the middle of the pitch, and they will have something coming up that they could potentially use help with, and we just help them. They've got an event that Friday in a store in Dallas. We will send them hundred of our influencers from Dallas that we think would want to go to the event or they are looking for an intro to a specific influencer, and we help broker that for them.

    We just start working for brands before we're paid and what I say to the sales team is that we assume the sale. We just are saying, "Hey, we're going to work together. I know that we have to work this through legal and you have to go through your boss and all these things to get it approved," but we're confident that we're going to work together. In good faith, we're just going to start working for you. As an influencer, especially if you have a following that's substantial,let's say it's over 30,000 or 40,000 followers, your biggest tool at your disposal is that following and your ability to just talk about the brand.

    If they're bigger brand, they're probably not going to see your post unless they have a social team that's really on top of it. They're probably not going to see your post especially if it's in a story, so I encourage you to post about the brand, send that post to them, send any comments, highlight comments that you've got that are product-specific, not comments from your influencer friends that are meant to look good. Again, just as a side caveat, like everybody sees through that so you know.

    Everyone in the industry sees through when you do a sponsor post or work with a brand and all your influencer friends comment on it saying, "Oh my God, I love that. I need to buy that. Love that product. I love those shoes." We know that you're doing that to make the comments look better, and I don't think you're doing yourself a favor. In fact, I think it makes you look less influential. It makes it look like you're part of, whether or not you are part of it, it makes you look like you're part of a comment pod of influencers who are commenting product-focused comments to try and make the comment section look more appealing to brands. Detour over, we'll get back on to it.

    Posting about the brand first and best thing that you can do, send an email with the post, any comments, DMs, information that you had, whatever it is to make yourself look good and say, "Hey, I've been a fan of this brand.
    Here's a post I recently did. Here's the comments. My audience loves it. I'd love to work with you, love to get on a call with you and hear what you guys have going on."

    On Fohr, there's content search. If you haven't been to Fohr recently, you haven't done a content search, go into your profile and scroll down to the content section where you have most engaged content and recent sponsor posts. Under there is a bar that says search your Instagram. Type in any brand that you post about, and it will open up a page that you can then generate a report and send to a brand to say like, "Hey, I've talked about your brand 40 times in the last three years. Here's all of those posts with the average engagement rate and the total impressions." Those reports are great.

    I know that Jess Kirby used it, not too long ago, to get a collaboration with Barber. She went, searched, said, "Hey, I've been talking about this brand for years," [unintelligible 00:08:52] the brand." They paid attention. Opened up a dialogue, and she started working with them in official capacity.

    That is the easiest and best way. When you think about out-of-the-box ways, I don't think you have to get too gimmicky to work with a brand that you want to work with. I find in general that most brands are pretty accessible. These departments are pretty small. They don't actually get a huge amount of inbound interest that is real. My girlfriend works in marketing for fashion beauty brands, and she will sometimes forward me emails from influencers, 98% of them are an email that says, "Hey, love the brand. Love to collaborate." That is not an email that will ever get a response.

    When I say brands aren't getting a lot of inbound, they're not getting a lot of inbound that is thoughtful and worth paying attention to. I think what you can do to stand out outside of the box is just spend some time and put a thoughtful e-mail together, pull the content together that you've already created for the brand, do something to show that you actually care. You don't want it to look like, and it shouldn't be, a mass outreach, right? If you've ever gotten an e-mail that says like, "Dear blogger," where it's clear that, like in an Excel sheet, instead of your first name, they have blogger and then they sent a mass e-mail out, and they didn't change that, that's really frustrating because it feels impersonal.

    The same is true for brands. If you just say, "Hey, love your brand, we'd love to collaborate." It doesn't matter if you have half a million followers. That's probably not going to get a response. So, instead of telling you that you should be doing some crazy thing to work with the brand, I think that you should get good at doing the simple things and building a case that shows the brand that you care about them, that you're passionate about what they do, and that you really do want to work with them, and your motivations are not just monetary. Well, obviously, you're entering into a business relationship and that means that there has to be some payment on their side, be it through product or money, you don't want to reach out and have it feel like, "Hi, pay me." That is never really going to work.

    `Outside of that, if you're a bigger influencer and you're looking for a big partnership, and that is going to be, let's say, over $20,000, $30,000, so a long contract term for a lot of money, you can also always go above the person that you may be working with that might be making that decision. One out-of-the-box method might be to try and reach out to the CMO, or reach out to the CEO.

    Again, you guys get a lot of e-mail and you read most of your e-mails. So while it may be difficult to get a response from the CEO of a large organization, or maybe because I'm terrible at e-mail, it doesn't mean that they didn't read it and that they won't forward it along.

    We had an issue with a bank years ago where we had a bunch of money stolen from us, and I was having trouble getting it back. I e-mailed the CEO of one of the largest banks in the world everyday for 14 days in a row. Eventually, somebody e-mailed me back, said, "Hey, the CEO has sent your messages. Let's talk." That connection led to a resolution of the issue and is a lesson in that everybody is accessible in some way, and if you really want something, you can definitely get someone to at least read your e-mail.

    Don't be afraid to go to the top if you really want to work with the brand because the higher up you go in an organization, especially if it's a founder, they appreciate hearing those stories of people that genuinely love their brand.

    So, if you're not getting something from the person that does the influencer work at a certain brand, e-mail the CEO. Not about wanting to collaborate, but about how much you love the brand, and all the work that you've done, and how you just respect what they've done. Make it about them and not you. A lot of ways to get in there. The first thing that you want to do though when you're trying to work with the brand is you need to build a relationship so you have to get them to answer that e-mail. Just keep plugging away and trying.
    Episode #160
    - Getting brand attention, aligning values, using influence for good