The Creator's Blueprint for Building a Brand in the Attention Economy—Masterclass with Alex Antolino

you've heard the word the Creator economy and you're curious about it both from a brand perspective or as an individual trying to make content you're going to want to stick around for this video with my friend Alex antolino who's my guest today he's gonna be talking about the Creator economy and how Brands can think like creators and creators can think like Brands and the intersection of the two we've got some super awesome resources for you so that you can download the description of the link below let's get right into it Chris thanks so much for having me and hey everyone watching I'm super excited to be talking about how to Brand like a Creator and how creators are building Brands and how creators are engaging with their audiences and what can we learn as a brand and what can we Implement to make Our Brands more engaging and so I believe these young stars are changing advertisement for good and this is a super exciting conversation for me because only learning what these people been doing for the last year or two years and implementing this to the way that I build Brands I was able to get seven times engagement rate for certain ads and three times to get through raid and here's what's best at zero times production cost it's pretty great numbers honestly when I saw this I'm like there's something in this I need to put more time and more focus on it and that's why today I'm presenting as a creative director turn Creator so if you ask me what do you do that's what I would tell to you now a little big backstory about who I am I started my career on film and advertisement so I studied like academic filmmaking and all of that I had my own Studio that was like 10 years ago and I worked for a lot of like fashion brands and stuff like that a lot of like b2c friends and so at some point super accidentally and randomly because I had no idea what tech was I ended up working at type form and so I joined typeform about seven years ago or something like that and the company was like 30 people increase and the company now is about 500 people I stopped working with them a couple of years ago but I went through like this crazy growth of the company especially in the first two three years it was insane and so on this journey I've learned so many things that and then I've been talking like on different stages all over the world talking about branding so if you know anything about typeform typeform is a very like a form Builder they released um video ask which is also another tool that we're going to talk about soon and then I've been also collaborating with hodger and other companies like that so my work has been on the tech space now type form if you know anything about typeform is this very beautiful form Builder that it's all about the experience it's very design driven you've you I think you crazy you're using it because probably it's like giving a good experience and so on so it's a very design driven brand that's built around the idea of Excellence it's gonna build your reputation because it's well executed fast forward to like 2019 they launch a product called video ask which was basically the same idea of like online forms but applied to video and I was offered the opportunity to like build a brand from scratch which was really exciting for me it was a very small um group within typeform so at the time it was 300 employees only eight people one of the co-founders David ogniev started this project and he was like do you want to do this from scratch like you do for a type form like yeah okay let's do it so we started working and it was basically me doing like the whole branding thing for this brand right so I started applying the same things that I did for typeform and the creative team that I built there on my own here for videos what was very interesting is that very soon I realized that what I would when I would start posting content it wouldn't it didn't work and I'm like what's going on like what's happening I'm like it's the same thing we were doing for a typhoon why is it not working the main difference was that people um were showing themselves on camera for this thing and when I was over producing the content people wouldn't like react to it because they felt intimidated so I was like hold on like I need to change the approach otherwise I'm just not going to connect with these people and they're not going to use the product so I kind of like stepped down and started experimenting so what I did is like on my phone I started recording a couple of videos and we need to think this is back in 2020 before the pandemic right before the pandemic and like people are not used to that but Tick Tock is starting to become a thing so I started experimenting and like the videos that I was just literally me on my living room recording for 30 minutes would get 10 times more views and engagement than the videos that I was doing um that we put like a week of time on effort and I'm like oh my God it's just like it's insane so I was like is this a video ask thing or can I replicate this with other brands so I started working with this other company called aulard which is basically like masterclass.com but for electronic music producers super cool what they're doing and it's kind of like my passion project and that's the company that we achieved those numbers that I was talking about at the beginning and I'll talk about this example later I was obsessed with this and I started getting obsessed with the career economy and learning from creators and then it recently worked with tillhob um defining their brand strategy and what I do today is basically I help creators build Brands and I help Brands engage like creators so this is exactly what we're going to be talking about today we're gonna talk about creators and how creators build Brands and how creators are creating these very engaged audiences and changing advertisement then we're going to look at like how this is changing branding and then we're gonna talk about the principles that these people are using to do what they do basically which to me looks like magic but I've been analyzing this and I think there's a way in which we can replicate this so let's take a look at it also I have something for you and everyone watching so if you want to follow this there's some little like workbook that I've prepared some resources that because this is like gonna be jam-packed with like a lot of insight I think it's gonna be way useful if you like write them down some way so you can do this on your notebook or you can use this a little deck that I prepare we're gonna go through like an exercise later so I think that's gonna be great and you can see there's gonna be like a notion template to run your content so you can check it out it's probably gonna be a link on the description down below that's so cool that you put that together so you can pause the video right now you could download these resources and then get them open and continue along or you just finish watching this video and go back to them later if you want let's get started on in a world where content can literally make you the president in the world I know I know I know in a world where content can make you a billionaire I feel like we're all agree that attention is valuable and so I don't know if you're familiar with this book Chris um the age of surveilling capitalism it's an insane book it's it kind of like change I was like working on Tech so to me this book was like I had to read it it talks about big Tech Google Facebooks of the world and how they were like using data to kind of like change behavior and it's very interesting the race of Facebook and all that so I was going through this book and I was like yeah data is like the thing that's why all these companies are so valuable then after a while I was like well data is important but the reason why data is important is because it's used for something else it's used to get attention and I think attention is the new oil there's a video by Alex oromozi that talks about this it's like explains it way better than I do but I think this is a key concept that when you look at the most powerful companies in the world today it's just very obvious to me the Amazons of the world are powerful because they use attention to change Behavior if you listen to what I'm saying I have chances to change the way you think and act if you don't listen to what I say there's no chances attention can be used for many things can be used to you know run a country can be used also to entertain and attention can be used to educate kudos to you my friend that's right let's go let's do it but I'm like Chris like if this is so obvious and on our faces like why isn't everybody doing it like to me it's I don't get it I'm like why are we not doing content as we go to the gym every day if we want to have like a healthy online Persona like why we're not doing content and uh I've been reading a lot on LinkedIn and stuff like that and I've really I've realized there's a big problem and this problem has to do with measurement and attribution so we've probably seen this quote what gets measured gets improved yep I think the opposite applies what doesn't get measured doesn't get improved and this is why this guy is actually very happy because as we don't figure out how to measure organic content and all of these interactions we keep spending money on paid ads trying to get that access Target that reach but that doesn't mean that this organic content doesn't work right because very recently we've seen Amazon partner with the NFL to bring this big Madge football match on Prime video for Black Friday next year so they wanted to turn these into like this little tradition where like every year for Black Friday there's this match and like guess what that's gonna happen on Prime video and it's gonna be for people who are subscribed to Amazon so AKA qualified users or customers that on the biggest sales day of the year they're gonna be on the platform ready to spend and excited about the match pretty interesting move from Amazon I think then on the other side there's on the other side there's Tick Tock which by the way um are putting like facilities on the us to start facilitating sales on the platform that's something very recent that happened and to me all of this basically is just hinting that Tick Tock is trying to become Amazon and Amazon's trying to become tick tock or in more general terms content and commerce are getting together now let's talk a little bit about advertisements so this is how traditional advertisement works so big company has a back gets a fancy agency to create like a very cool commercial that is dramatically expensive and then they buy space on different channels to actually promote this well it's happening over the last years and we know it as maybe influencer marketing I call it Creator advertisement it's basically the company has the same back now instead of like giving it to like a big agency it gets distributed gazillion times to a lot of creators which each one of them have they their tunnel now this is very interesting to me because in the same way the budget gets distributed the message and the point of view gets distributed too which if you ask any marketer and you have seen you said this like a thousand times on on the future videos the most successful marketing strategy is which one I don't know what about oh we're not oh you got me on the edge of my seat here I'm gonna give you the answer for the next question because I don't like it's like you now yeah all right so the most successful marketing strategy is Word of Mouth and what this looks to me is worth miles at scale so I think what's very interesting here is that Tick Tock has normalized Word of Mouth at scale why because for some reason we we're at home during the pandemic board to hell and we're like let's grab my phone this is the only thing that I have and start making videos which feel very natural and very like homemade and like very from a friend so as a brand if you're tapping into that you're basically getting access to that word of mouth at scale that we're talking about this is what I call a decentralized audience this is something that major players are jumping in for example Walmart launched very recently a Creator program where now creators can start promoting Walmart in a platform for creators that they launched now there's also this stat that is very interesting which is YouTube past all streaming Platforms in watch time recently can we like appreciate this for a second that means your channel Chris can potentially get a lot more watch time than movies on Netflix and that means that you can even make more money than movies on Netflix can't wait for that day insane it is I mean this day you'll be surprised some of the Netflix movies are actually profitable they are or not anyway I think we're living in these days Chris and like you are a good Testament on on that like a lot of the things that I'm talking about here I learned from you so I think it's like incredible that we're in this opportunity and a lot of people talk about this as the Creator economy and I wanted to give a shout here to Colin and Samir they have like a very cool Channel about this on YouTube and I think it was them that said at some point the career economy is not the Creator economy anymore it's just the economy and I have to agree with that right because how would it how would it be possible for you to like promote stuff in the way you can if it wasn't for like content creation now there's something very exciting about this which is that there's an open War now between Shorts YouTube Tick Tock and Instagram the major platforms to try and fight to your your attention because there's new this new format the short form video vertical format that Tick Tock introduced a few years ago that it's becoming the thing that everyone wants to watch now and there's no clear category King so maybe we'd say that Tick Tock is the one like dominant platform for the ad but everyone wants to own that and so there's we're in this moment which it never happened before when you can actually create a post don't do anything at all and post it in all these three major platforms without touching a single thing and it can potentially agree good in all of them how like that has never happened before you would have to do a car sale and then the same idea repurposing to like some video and like then other captions and like reformat like a square format or vertical and whatnot and like all these things which were like so painful but now you can actually do that what's even more exciting and I I have to talk about this because people are like oh my God but it takes so much time to build an audience yes it does but I actually think that it takes much time to build an audience because you don't know how to do it can you please what do you think about that I'm really curious to hear your thoughts about this is that true like I generally believe that it's not that much about the time it takes to build the audience but for the creators to figure out how to do it if you had to build the future too but now it's a cooking channel which by the way I'd love to see that the thing would take you the same amount of time that it took you to build the future to what is today or because you know the tactics and how to do it it will take you less time I see I I would like to think it would take me it would be much faster to do with the second third and the fourth time for sure and we have proof of that because Matthew and Cena was our content director who's heavily involved with the creation of videos on our Channel and then he left like a couple years ago he started his own YouTube channel and it skyrocketed up the time in which it took him to get to 100 000 subscribers was in an orders of magnitude quicker than it took us as the future 100 and I've been following that Journey too and it's it's incredible it's like so inspiring and I I believe that like it's all about like learning the craft that's why it takes like Mr Beast 10 years to do that but if he would start a different channel that has no he's that he doesn't show obviously his face so he doesn't have this competitive like IP Advantage I would think like he like he knows how to do it now it'll take less time so the reason why I say this is because a lot of people feel like oh my God it takes so much time to do this but if you actually learn how to do it it does doesn't necessarily have to to be like that and in the case of like shorts and stuff like that because there's this fight for attention you could literally post with no followers a video and and get a ton of traction and I know this is like cliche and so on but I'm like Testament of that like I experienced this this week where like I posted a video on Tick Tock and it went viral to like 1.1 million views in like two days and I had 150 like followers on Tick Tock like no thousands just 150 and the reason why I share this is just to get people excited that you could literally start today because this was this week so you could literally start today and like keep doing it and like consistently keep working on it and it just it just it's accessible that's what I'm trying to say so I encourage everyone to like at least give it a go because you know what's cool is like these people are doing it and when they promote like they're getting all this attention for free basically on the meantime you have like all these companies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in paid advertisement not getting close to the numbers of Engagement and reads that these people have and so this at the end is like building a brand what's even more crazy crease is that these people when they are ready to launch their company or their like other brand or their products now it's not just that they get attention for free but now they're getting paid to Market and I think that's a really exciting time and it's probably not making this guy that happy anymore maybe that's why he's like going into the metaverse I don't know but my bottom line here is learn how to make content 100 that's what I've noticed about the advertisement and how things are like progressing and evolving on the online space and I was like okay these people are building Brands like how is this different from traditional advertisement and this is what I'd like to talk about for a second so let's focus on how creators are shaping the way we build Brands today now if you've watched any other future video you'll understand by this time that brands are built on purpose building a brand is all about sharing your purpose and finding people that think like you now I learned these from the future and I also learned this from these other guy a few years ago that put this video that everyone's like seeing gazillion times and made a book about it and probably Simon cynic the best example of this is um apple and Steve Jobs the way he built apple and you know this campaign is probably the best example for The Crazy Ones know thing about the product everything about the belief system of the brand now when I Was preparing this session um I was like wait a minute like how would like The Tick Tock account from Steve Jobs would look like I think that'd be very interesting to see like Steve Jobs doing Tick Tock would he do it or would he just like be on Twitter like I'd be in really interested to see that right so as I'm preparing this I'm like when did Steve Jobs die do you know this one no I didn't know we are here okay 2022. I looked on Wikipedia because that's what you do and so Steve Jobs died in 2011. that's over 10 years ago when I saw this I had one of these like Spice Girls moment where like I'm like oh my God that was like 20 years ago I'm like so old but yes it's it's been like already more than 10 years and it's kind of crazy Simonson Nextbook start with Y was 2009. that's like more than like what 12 years ago I'm not a good a month but anyways the thing with this is that I'm thinking about how would Steve Jobs Tick Tock look like but at the end of the day I'm like how would his Instagram look like because Facebook didn't acquire Instagram until 2012. that's how the icon look like so like where like everything changed so much since then that it's hard to get my head around this and honestly Tick-Tock was an introduced until 2016 and didn't become a thing until we were all bored at home for some reason like three years ago so this whole idea of purpose-driven branding which is the way in which I build Brands today and for a few more years I don't think that's changed but I'm starting to also see a different way in which some of these creators build Brands which is not that much about the purpose but about the relationship and so I've been looking at this Trader I've been looking at these Creator Brands and this is how I think they're building their brands it's all about characters and stories so instead of starting with why they start with who instead of aspiration they are built around relatability I know you I like you instead of excellence and being perfect they're built around the idea of connection instead of centralized and now I want you in my channel they're building their brands in a decentralized way collaborating with our creators and whatnot and instead of one directional they're making it interactive so it's all about the conversation we'll talk about this later now there's one last thing that some people might not like but it's not about design anymore it's about video is the way that you'll build the more engaged audience because we connect with people not logos and a lot of these creators are leveraging video to build these engaged audiences what I call Creator Brands and I don't think this is just available for creators I think any brand out there whether you do B2B b2c or you sell socks or you sell Thai food you can tap into this and get that engagement and we're gonna see how when I was looking at Mr B's and his Burger brand I'm like how does he describe his brand what's the purpose of Mr Beast Burger so I did what like you would do go to the about section of the page and this is what I found Mr bees and his friend means the reason his best friend Chandler Chris and Carl hosted thousands of fans during a pop-up event for Mr bis Burger there's no like we believe in it's all about characters here's another one prime this is what they say it's what happens when Rivals come together as brothers and business partners it's not about we believe water like drinks or energy you know it's all about stories Rivals getting together super interesting so I guess this is the million dollar question how can we benefit from this what can we learn and how can we implement this and this is where we run a time to talk a little bit of like the principles I've spent some time looking at these creators trying to figure out what they do talking with you them and we'll see what are the principles that these creators apply and how we can actually look at some examples of some brands that are actually implementing this with like great success and now Chris I had a lot of fun preparing this section that comes now I called it the seven Creator virtues and here we go I also on the workbook that I've prepared that you can download There's this page we'll go now through like the Seven Virtues of the creators and there's this white boxes where you can actually write some ideas on how you can actually Implement that virtue to your brand as it is today without changing anything else what would it look like for you if you were a little bit more this way right so let so let's get started the first one and the most obvious one is obviously authenticity every Creator out there is perceived as authentic and that's why we like them because authenticity is something we trust very important for brands now a good example of this is Ryan Trehan he built his YouTube channel recently from like 6 million to like 100 million like doubled in followers like crazy in like a month just because he was like putting videos every day kind of like block but gamified and just being like freaky and you know awkward and that's what people liked about it so went like crazy authenticity the second one is relatability Mr Beast is the top Creator on YouTube he has all the money in the world as we can see on his videos now why do his videos look like this like he could literally hire every cinematographer from Netflix movies you know have this like Studio setup shoot the videos with the most expensive cameras but you know his videos look a little bit like like homemade he said it a few times in like a couple of podcasts he does this by Design he makes them look bad quote unquote bad but by Design because that's what people want to see because it makes them more relatable because you could see yourself in those videos yeah it's because we don't trust things that are overproduced we feel like we're being manipulated we're we see something that feels like it's crafted and manufactured versus we're just peeking into something that's happening in real real life I want to put some context into what you just said in case you're not tracking along Alex used to work with some pretty premium brands in in the world of advertising brand building from the last 10 20 years it's all always been about the most pristine image heavily retouched like you hire the best cinematographers in the world the art directors and the stylists and you're you're creating that perfect 30 second spot and the reason why you do that is because the media buy was so expensive you had to make sure that you got everyone's attention and you could stop him in the track so it was a game of one upsmanship where everybody was trying to outdo the next person they would get this director and this direct was even bigger than the last director and they would say instead of spending 500 000 spend four million dollars and spend 20 million dollars making a 30 second spot but here's where I see something that's really interesting Alex is that there's a convergence of Technologies that's happening right now right now there's a high-end production we would say like the Ridley Scott Michael Bay production super expensive to do then we have the average Creator let's just say your mom and the technology that your mom has in her hand in her pocket in her purse is starting to come really close to what these creators can do so today Mr BEAST's video reflect what the common person can do with a point and shoot video camera but that's going to be changing because our standards and the way that we see video and photos is also changing so I think eventually they'll start to look very close to each other what you're saying is actually very interesting because I've been thinking a lot about this and how advertisement has it both and I was looking at the very early advertisement you know posters and maybe tv ads we're like so when we look at them now they're so corny because they're like so product oriented that is like even cringy and I'm like what is that what when did this all change and I feel what happened in a way was that advertisement people look at what people wanted to watch which at that time was movies like people went like to the movies and like saw films and like were engaging with that so advertisement people starting to replicate that and so we got things like the Apple commercial which looked like a movie the um 1984 commercial we've got things like this crazy Nike ads that look like movie and like that that's what I wanted to do when I was a kid actually I was impressed by that right I feel because the consumption is now changing it's our due diligence as Brands and creative directors to look at what people want to consume like we've seen before people want to consume YouTube it just makes sense to pick from what these people are doing to try to bring it into advertisement and the way we build brands and this is an example that I like that that blew my mind that I gave you numbers at the beginning so when I was in LA I I was contacted by the founder of our artist's Master Class company for music producers and they were recording with Tebow who is the music producer from Kanye West from the album Jesus like a few years ago and they were recording masterclass with him this is the trailer I want to show you from the ad that they did I want to go into a few things that are really particular to my process foreign how I produce the techniques behind my tracks and how to make your first steps in this industry [Music] all right that's pretty though in my opinion these guys are super talented this is a great ad in my opinion it's like super well done nice design excellent when we were on the shooting I was there I was like let me try something because I already had these ideas in my head it's like okay let me try something hey guys I have this master class please go check it out so I gave her my phone I was like can you say this on camera and so we recorded this other piece hey this is Jay Pope multi-grammy winning music producer and one of the industry's best kept secrets I just released my master class go check it out one of these two pieces Crees seven times engaged man and three times click through rate because which one it was well you're presenting a caser so I know what it's going to be it's going to be the second video the one that's shot with your iPhone it's the one that shot with my iPhone that costs zero dollars because there's no editing no color grading no nothing it just made with the phone and straight to to the ads as a test for as an Instagram story for ads so relatability is massive what I want to say about this is I have a 20 no I'm sorry he's 19 years old I have a 19 year old son who's telling me Dad don't do any color correction your images don't do any filters I'm like what how come it's just basic color correction right it's best practices he goes because young people don't like that if you want a younger audience don't put on anything just leave it raw and look let it be whatever it is it's like that doesn't sit well with me but now that you're making this argument maybe my boy's on to something I think he is into something for sure because the more we start doing things on the content the more we start feeling like we're trying to like too hard to say something and when someone's trying too hard you know they have an agenda and if you're saying this on social the agenda is most likely they're trying to sell you something which is what you were talking about a minute ago and I feel like that's why we need to retrain ourselves it comes natural to them because that's what they know like they're they do they they're growing up with Tick Tock and stuff like that so it's natural to them and the over produced thing is like this quirky like old that's how I think they they look at it it's like why is this like so that you're trying too hard so I think this is fascinating and we actually need to learn from them collaboration it's a very obvious one every single podcast is built on this idea Colleen and Samir again your future podcast it allows you to tap into someone else's audience and like brings them potentially to your audience too but there's something special about collaboration which is people like to see the people who they like in other contexts because it builds the character so this is an example from an experience I had so as I said I've been working with tohab helping them Define their brand and so when I was in their offices in Rotterdam doing a brand workshop and whatnot I was like we should like partner with something together so I recorded like a couple of like video blogs with my phone when I was there and we put them together on Instagram as partners these two pieces got like for me like 46 000 views which is an insane number for me because like all the other videos you can see it's like four thousand two thousand and this like kind of like blew up in like what I'm used to what's interesting is that even though they have like 200 000 followers on Instagram which is normal then that we get this engagement those are the pieces that also got them more engaged man for what they're used to so this one piece got 2 000 likes which is a lot even for them and I think the reason is because now they're seeing a new layer that someone else is bringing to the brand so I feel like that's why collaborations are so interesting interaction you can have a conversation with your audience you can bring them in this is one of my favorite examples of this The Cheeky boyos build their own whole thing on Tick Tock based on this very simple idea just replying to comments with a video so Their audience will basically tell them I want you to do that they'll go and do it check this out go to a drive-through with a shock collar on no no and a small cheeseburger please is everything okay yeah yeah thank you so much I'm sorry thank you thank you I'm sorry I'm sorry it's too good and it's even better I just can't every time I watch this video I'm like it's too good but it's even better because this is exactly what people are asking them to do and it just it's also a way to prove it's also a way to make content that you know it's gonna land because you've been asked for it number five is spontaneity so reaction videos I don't know if you know this but I was shocked when someone told me reaction videos are the most popular videos on the whole YouTube no wonder no wonder why Mr Beast has a whole React channel with over like 20 million followers now and all he does is just watch videos and react for some weird reason that I don't understand human beings are very excited about watching other human beings react to things which is like well how can we do this as a brand and I found this very good example this is a coffee shop in La I don't think they're anywhere else in the world just in La they have few venues they have 6 million followers Chris when I was in Barcelona talking about the project giving them references for Content I showed this to someone in Barcelona they've never been in LA and they're like oh yeah la la land yeah I know them I'm like wait what I'm like yeah I follow them on Tick Tock I'm like how why would you follow a coffee shop in La that's a local business if you've never been in La before That's The Power of content and they've leveraged that power using reaction that's all they do on their Instagram account they just get nice reactions are you from the USA well USA beautiful human being I love your glasses and your outfit s yeah [Applause] yeah fantastic then one of the last ones is video this one I'm not gonna spend my time here it's pretty obvious we've talked about this but I'm just gonna say one thing if one of the most popular newsletters in the world is actually promoting their work which is literally just words with video on Tick Tock that to me is just a reason enough to consider making videos I'm not gonna say anything more and so the last beer or two from creators the last thing we can learn is obviously storytelling and I have one last example for this that is probably one of my favorites that ticks every single box that we've seen and is this one poppy is a drink also in L.A and they were starting to sell in different like grocery stores and so on and they made this video she's the founder of the brand she made this video overnight really quickly I think it took her like an hour collaborated we collaborated with JT who is something I recommend you follow on Tick Tock um who was giving them strategy for this and they did this video check it out hey guys my name is Allison and yes I got a deal on the show Shark Tank and it was for my product Poppy so I started the company because I was having a ton of health issues and I didn't feel very good and I started drinking apple cider vinegar every single day and it made me feel incredible but I hated the taste of straight vinegar so I went to my kitchen created Poppy and then I believed in my product that I quit my job we went all in we went on to Shark Tank got a deal and I found a way to make it taste incredible so poppy helps with boosting your immunity glowing skin gut health as well as you know I believe in it so much that I went on the show nine months pregnant so cheers I'm like cheers to you girl I mean come on like you literally took every single beauty of a Creator and like put it in like a super simple video that you did overnight no wonder why this video got I don't know how many like 49 I think I'm like over it let me show you 49 million views and for everyone that's saying it's a lot it's crazy and for everyone that's saying oh but like Tick Tock that's all our abuse it doesn't convert I'm like no it converts they sold out in 24 hours after this video went viral so it's so good because it's authentic it's relatable you know it talks about her being pregnant it's just like low production value it's just so relatable and has good storytelling it's like oh I had this problem then I solve it over again you know like it's everything is there I think so good she's amazing I I love hearing about these kinds of stories the question is have you had poppy no I haven't but I don't drink it I don't want to try it this is the thing like you should because they're in La so what's interesting here is like you can reach a lot of people and I might not try Pop because like I don't think I'm the target I don't drink anything that's not water most of the time but to be honest like if I see if I go to Whole Foods or like any grocery store and I see this I already have that kind like I think about her I'm like oh this is the brand and maybe I don't drink this but I'm like talking about it to my friend and maybe they buy it so I think that's the power of content like that we're like when we think oh every piece of content needs to convert like that's the all mindset like that's the whole problem with attribution we were talking before where like not every piece of content needs to bring you a customer it's the compounding effect it's the invisible comments conversations that will bring you more sales okay crazy so we're reaching the end of like this you know first part with ideas we're reaching the end of the idea part and like the things that I've been learning that I wanted to share but how lame would it be for me to come here and just dump all of this here to you and not give you what I think would be like an easy way to implement all of this so I created these very like little section like short section for implementation so if you're running a brand and you wanna you're like excited about this you believe in this you're like oh my God like yeah like that's what I've been thinking how do I do it okay let's talk about how do you do it so implementation I'm gonna say one big thing fees that you see on screen was my dream since I started doing film it's actually very funny and not many people will believe this but when I was in film school this was my dream while people were looking at Spielberg and like you know all these movie directors I'm like I want to make an ad and people were like oh my God you're like you're selling out blah blah blah it's like why would you do advertisement it's so lame it's like I'm like if people are gonna pay you so much money to condense one powerful message in something that's gonna be seen everywhere something that's gonna be seen on Times Square on TV I'm like I want to be that person I want to be the person that can actually put a message package it to you and that can influence people with their buying decisions that to me is super powerful because I see a lot of things that I don't like and that to me is impact and that's a way to change things so that was my dream that's what I wanted to do and everything I did in my career was trying to take me to this moment now when I build my team a typeform and when I had my own Studio everything that I told you before I built it this way in a traditional way leaning to that moment I built it to excelling campaigns to be doing great campaigns one of massive big commercials to be displayed everywhere I built it for design and even for film skills I build it for excellence to be perfect to be the Best in Class and I build my teams to be one directional because there's no comments on TV what's interesting here is that Creator Brands kind of like gave me like a massive slap in the face because with very less resources they were doing achieving better results because at the end of the day if you're doing branding advertisement it's not to impress people is to sell potentially so Creator teams how I like to think about them now instead of for campaigns they're built for volume it's not about one massive big piece that's gonna be super expensive that I think it's gonna work it's now about okay let me do a lot of thing throw them to the wall see what sticks now they're not built for design if we stock they're built for video it is the one the language now we all talk video they're not built for excellence they are built for optimization and they're not built for one directional communication they're built for interaction if you agree with this I believe doing this transition it's way simpler than most people think and what I like to do now Chris is to kind of like brainstorm a little bit on how if you have a brand or you're in charge of you know content or branding or marketing for a small company or maybe you're a founder or if you are in charge of like making a brand grow and you believe these things that we've been talking about here what's the first step that you can do tomorrow to start transitioning your brand in that direction let's do it I have this little sheet here that is also on the workbook so you can do this at home as we talk you can also use a notebook so basically what I want to do here is like let's think this is a roadmap okay and let's imagine that we want to start with why then understand what we wanted to do then who is going to do it and then how are we on actually going to make this happen Okay so why don't we just do it for me I'll answer the questions as if you're helping me and then we'll build around that right so you're saying what's my clear metric my clear metric is right now growing our audience size on YouTube in particular and I want to grow our YouTube audience to 3 million we're at 2.02 so we're a million away essentially from the next Milestone and this is very important to me so growth um it's good like I can see you doing like all these short videos so that makes a lot of sense to me what if you're doing this together with us think maybe for Chris's girl so he wants to get to 3 million what is the growth for you like what what this growth mean maybe like it's starting to build an audience maybe it's just like starting to validate your ideas because one of the things that I really like is to use content as research this is exactly why I actually started making content on video apps because I wanted to test things and the best thing to test things is to put them out as content because you read the comments you're like oh my God they're using other words or they're more interested in that and that's the best way to learn step number two is what do we want to do to learn what you want to do in terms of content strategy and what type of content you want to do I would strongly recommend that you learn from other creators foreign Chris which Creator do you like and are you like looking at right now to learn it's a tricky one I watch a lot of YouTube uh and sometimes I run into something uh that I like like big think have you heard a big think before no okay big thing they make these 10 minute videos and they interview notable authors and they share their insights and they teach something really quickly it's like masterclass less produced and more succinct it's also like like Ted Talks so it's kind of like a person sitting on a white psych they sit on a stool and they just tell you like my name is X and here's the big idea they just tell you the idea right away oh I love this so this might be also interesting for me to look at um so there you go so you have like you can start making a little list on like what are the creators that are interesting so for me for example I want to really be good at storytelling and like take you know the whole like things that will talk about branding out of this room like into the street so I'm looking a lot of like creators that I might not necessarily like follow for their content specifically because I'm not their target like the air acts of the world or like Mr bees but I actually really like the language they are using and so how can I Implement that I think that's a really interesting thing to do now for who if you in this case Chris we're going to think about a company that doesn't have a YouTube channel yet because that's the case for a lot of businesses that they don't have a like a strong social media following or they just want to get started and they don't know how to do it I'm like oh I don't know how to make content so it's really hard for me to start I would say something that you can do is just hire a Creator to do it for you so when you're hiring a Creator I'm gonna say it's very important that you're not hiring for influence so you don't want to reach out to like the influencers or creators with like 200 000 followers like the million followers when you're starting to make content you want to look for people who have validated their skills but they're willing to collaborate with you to experiment with you because also these people they're building their own Brands they're going to be very expensive and it's probably going to be less engaging for your audience so what I would say when you're getting started is like try to find a Creator on your Niche that validated Their audience that they are between like 10 000 followers or 50 000 followers something like that in the platform you want to grow this gives them the validation that they know how to make content that is interesting to people you can partner with them you don't need to hire them because you don't know if this is going to work you can offer them a contract for like two three months and see how that goes don't also give them just one piece because that's the other thing we talked it's about volume so bring them in collaborate with them see how that goes and don't put too much pressure on it let them do their thing and then reevaluate after three months a lot of creators are going to be very excited about this especially at this sites because they want to collaborate with audiences they're gonna work their ass to like make it work and I think it can be a very highly beneficial collaboration where both parts can learn a lot so higher a Creator I think I prefer to call them creators because the reason why you're hiring them is not for the influence again you're gonna create content probably it's gonna live in your brand so you're hiring them to create the content for you so instead of like let's say hiring a designer you hire a Creator I actually think this is one way where a lot of companies are gonna go moving forward where they're gonna hire creators instead of you know designers or writers or something like that because it's just a skill that's necessary and if you actually want to move in this direction there's a lot of ways in which you can grow your creative team and by default you will like what I've been doing for many years like hire Creator hire the writer I like start building this team and Outsource film I started I'm starting to believe that there's a different way I'm not saying that in every case but in some cases I think there's an interesting way to do it the other way around where you can bring a creator that knows a little bit of everything and that will allow you to actually Implement those things and then you can bring more people if they think grows and then the last one is okay how do we do it and my last recommendation for this would be create a Content system a Content management system that allows you to track so you're not obsessed about every piece of content [Music] so create content [Music] and you can do this with notion you can do this with Asana like any tool that you use and it can be a database if you don't know where to start I have included a template that you can download on the resources so like it's easy for you to get started and obviously you can modify that I actually got inspired with Matthew he had like these great templates on how he was doing like the YouTube videos so my mine is a version of what he put out for free so I want to pass it on like as my version too now so like we keep like sharing all of that but it actually like changed my life and like how to make content to learn from someone that's been doing it because I have no idea right so getting those tools and like those Management Systems in place can actually work really well especially if you're collaborating with someone so at video asked I had one Creator we were using this and it was just working really well so Chris I want to ask you is there anything else that you would consider for brands that are trying to like be better at content because you've been doing this for like ages and you're killing it I like a lot of the things that I've learned I know from you and the future so what would you recommend people to do in terms of like who to work with or how to get started okay I I want to Second what you had said about when you're working with a Creator give them some money don't make it too serious and let them do their thing I find that from small brand collaborations to really big ones they think they know how to tell the Creator what to do and they get into this micromanagement thing they want scripts they want storyboards and then you're killing the entire creative process and I find that certain brands who allow me to do whatever it is that I want they get the best from me they just say here just do something if it works we'll do more with you and we'll just keep doing it so just try whatever you want we don't need to approve anything just don't say anything bad and then we're good and this is a lot of trust and Trust goes two ways you trust them to create something they trust you to build a relationship with them and it's a really nice thing so when you find a Creator make sure you dig into their past a little bit to make sure their values are aligned so that they don't do something crazy so for example if they if you're worried about um like bad language you just watch your content if they use a lot of bad language that's probably not a good person you're going to partner up with because you don't want to utilize their their Charisma their personality and then say well we're just we want to cut this part out we want to excise this part and that's a that's a horrible way to work so find somebody you like someone who you trust and let them play and you'll get a way better return on investment I love it and yeah I think you put it in a great way people need to be trusted in what they do because that's the reason why you're collaborating with them because they know how to do something that you do not and sometimes especially when we're talking about these type of advertisement a lot of it is on learning the things we've learned for so many years and they're doing it so just like let them do it and don't expect anything because you know these things take a little time for them like to test and experiment so I want to give you one last thing that I've seen as a pain point for many people which is okay how do I get buy-in because if we have this problem with measurement we have this attribution problem like how am I gonna show up you know next Monday and tell my boss yeah give me like three thousand dollars a month to like collaborate with a Creator like that's a lot of money right so I want to give you a sentence that's worked well for me and I'm also curious to see what Chris what you think about it so I know for a fact that every company out there that has an online presence is spending a lot of money in paid ads some companies spend thousands of dollars some companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month so I would start there and I have a little template here so I would say hey Susana I've been thinking about organic content and looking at what these creators are doing I know we're spending x amount of money a month would you be willing to experiment with five percent of that money or ten percent of that money during just a little amount of time two three months with a Creator and see how that goes to see if we get some results that we can consider and so I have here for you a template and you just need to fill the gaps it's very simple and I've used this before and it has worked every single time and I'm gonna tell you why so hey trees yes would you be willing to experiment with 10 of that budget which honestly if it's ten thousand dollars a month but it's that they are spending on ads which is not a crazy amount for a lot of companies that's like a thousand dollar amount that you have to experiment and test working with a creator for let's say three months the reason why this sentence is so powerful is because would you be willing put them in a situation where it's really hard for them to say no I learned working with typeform and with the science communication Professor that the word willing is a magical word because no one will say no to be willing to do something especially if it's experimenting because now if they say no they're like not innovators and whatnot like 10 also is not a big amount of five percent is not a big amount because you're comparing to what they're already spending and if you give them the numbers this is something that can actually change things now those two three months you can have to work a lot and try to get some numbers but you have like that Runway which you're not now trying to like make one piece work or two pieces which work like you have a relationship with a creator that will allow them to try and do something special so Chris what do you think I like it I like that you created a little formula so that you can ask the powers that be to try to do something with a Creator and hopefully help the company innovate and break away from those traditional models of advertising exactly that's what I think we all should be trying to like move forward and try to give the message that we want to put out because we think it's important because we think it's impactful but packaging in a way that people actually want to consume it so I just gave you even the sentence that you need to go tomorrow to you know your business your team and start trying some of these things if you believe at least 10 of this to be true I would say there's no reason to not try it and honestly the only way to make content is just do it it's just getting started and do it because you don't you have zero control about the algorithm you have zero control about the post getting better you have there's no way you can control that so I wouldn't worry about that but the one thing you can control is actually getting started and starting like showing up a certain amount of time every week so I'm gonna say if you've never done this before your first metrics they should be based on execution and time spent making content not even the output just allocate the time a week two hours one day one hour whatever you want do this for a month first metric execution the second metric when you know that you can do this and you've been working this like thing for like a month or two now you move on to Output and now you're like okay I can get this out I know I can commit to like a day a week one hour a week let me see if I can put one piece out a week and then when you're putting this content regularly maybe it's like one month maybe it's one week I don't think it's one week but like maybe it's like three weeks down the line or three months you're like okay now let's look at the numbers because you have some data that you can look at and you you've learned something you can actually start looking at numbers but if you've never done this before you want to start the first thing is like allocate some time and use some of these ideas and like experiment with it because content is all about experimentation great let me ask you a question because you said something that is kind of a little bit I don't know inflammatory when you say attention is the new oil make a case for that tell me why attention is a new oil right so I think it's very simple I think that we all live in these bubbles where we we believe our reality that is based on our perception and thanks to social media we create our own reality so your reality craze is very different from my reality now what's interesting is that before we would create these realities based on TV or the newspaper I read and all of that but now we all these reality is based on social media so we get the illusion that we live in the same space but the algorithm is actually manufacturing a reality based on your interest your needs and whatever who you are and your demographics and all they know about you I think attention is the most important thing because it's the only way to build businesses these days it's the only way to get your message out what's changed and the reason why before that was different is because they were Gatekeepers like you cannot have a movie on Netflix unless someone buys it you cannot have a show on TV unless you you make it happen through their Studio through their production company now this is changed literally you can set up a Tick Tock YouTube Instagram account and start talking to people and reaching to people that's what's changed that's what actually changed the whole industry in the whole world actually so now it's all about who you reach and what's happening with attention is that because it's limited the prices are going up this is what I realized working on video ask the prices would go up and we would reach less people so it's less effective to buy this attention and it's and it's more expensive so that's why I think like if to me advertisement is an expense it's a business expense content creation and brand building is an investment because it's something that accumulates over time and that will bring you traffic attention reputation a lot of great things then advertisement will just give you Roi so that's why I think attention is so important these days because it's it's getting more and more precious so those who know how to get thy attention and turn it into something good I feel like there are they have a really good advantage point do you have any examples where people who have been able to grow capture and leverage attention have done really well for themselves why is this the essential thing to be able to do because that's a big statement to say attention is the new oil because oil runs the world or used to maybe that's changing yeah I do have a good example like it's in front of our faces Mr B is literally went from saying like 12 hours straight PewDiePie bye to actually you know becoming like a millionaire we just leveraging attention like a lot of people are like oh me Serbia is like a great Storyteller I don't know about that I like to talk with Mr Beast about storytelling what I know he is great at is capturing and managing attention and he's he's been able to build this massive Empire and he's Contin he's going to continue to do that um through through doing that through getting attention and managing it and like you know sending it to different places so I think it's a great example and I think it's also a very interesting one because Mr Beast like him or not it has a this message of like giving away right that's what made him grew so much um you know this idea of like sharing with her people I don't care about the money I have I'm gonna give it away so whether you like Mr Beast or not you have to um you have to admire the the man's hustle his ability to capture attention through creating Hooks and and videos that are almost guaranteed to be viral and his whole business model is built on that because when what he does is he practices some form of 21st century philanthropy there's some questions about how philanthropic he is because he's giving money to his friends and it's kind of a strange thing but it's working and now during the pandemic we're all isolated in our own homes and he was able to do something crazy he was able to launch a national Burger chain that was only available through his app and for a period of time became the number one most downloaded app on Apple's store how did he do this let's rewind the tape a little bit here so he's like we're going to open a burger stand and we're going to give Burgers away for free so there's this massive line that's like a mile and a half two miles long it creates all kinds of problems with Highway Patrol whatever and you pull up and not only do you get the burgers and the drinks for free every once in a while he's like here take ten thousand dollars can you answer this question oh even if you get it wrong I'm gonna give you money you choose a or b you need a new car here's a new car and so it's just fantastic video very entertaining simultaneously I knew there was a business play involved I think he launched like over a hundred Mr Beast chains throughout America certain locations and he's building a massive business he was recently on a couple different shows and he said he was offered a billion dollars to buy all of his companies and he turned them down because he thinks he's worth more than that that is the power of attention who is basically a small town kid making videos and being super determined hyper relatable knows how to grab attention is able to build now a billion dollar company you would say prior to this moment in time that a YouTuber who dreams of making a billion dollars being worth that much is a crazy far-fetched idea not so far-fetched anymore I share One More Story with you not that she needs more attention or more money but Reese Witherspoon the actress has a production company and she has a massive following I I I suspect the reason why she has a massive following is because she's a beautiful woman but she's not so beautiful that she's intimidating she's kind of like the girl next door and seemingly very grounded it down to earth right and so she has a book club and the book club has two and a half million members in the book club and when she recommends a book quite a few of them buy the book so that's a lot of power that's a lot of power to be the king or queen maker so for an author to be considered for the book club they have to Grant her the TV and the movie rights to their book now from the author's point of view being able to have two and a half million people potentially buy your book that will make your life that'll change your life even if you get a dollar book that makes you a millionaire overnight so of course they agree and So she recommends the book that's good they read it and depending on how excited her audience or Community the attention she's being able to Garner she then options to create the TV show or the movie and her company hello sunshine her production company was sold for almost one billion dollars 900 million dollars this is incredible so if you're still on the fence thinking about does attention matter yes it does maybe it's debatable whether or not it's the new oil or not but it's hard to deny people like Conor McGregor with proper 12 Irish Irish whiskey Dwayne Johnson's tequila DeGeneres the Kardashians and what they've been able to do with their product launches and selling out in minutes it's incredible attention it is the new oil a hundred percent and I think her company is fantastic and the one thing that I've heard recently on a podcast and I don't remember who that was so don't blame me for that but someone said look it what is harder to make a product and make it better over time or to build an audience probably building an audience is harder so it just makes sense that those creators who know how to build audiences can launch their products or partner with um other CEOs to launch their products like festivals with Mr Beast and those companies that need to get attention that is progressively getting more expensive are struggling more now to build those audiences especially if you're building up from scratch so that's why it's so important to not only understand how attention can you know make or break a business but also how to the skill so how can we get that attention how to how can we manage that attention it's something we can learn and I think it's a great skill to have on your belt all right