Obviously: influencer marketing made simple

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by Anna Munhin Jun 1, 2023 News
Obviously: influencer marketing made simple

Mae Karwowski is the CEO of Obviously, a company that was recently acquired byWPP.

The best content to be created is what brands want. They want the process to be easy so they can scale their marketing efforts.

There is a lot of messy marketing done by influencer marketers. It is difficult to guide numerous content creators to create content that makes sense for a brand and its audience. It is not possible to scale that mess.

Karwowski says, "That is why we built our own proprietary technology to make it easy for global brands to work with, say, 50 creators to create amazing content that delivers fantastic results that brands can then scale to working with500 people or even 10,000 people."

There is more to come.

In 10 years time, Karwowski predicts that a lot of content associated with brands will be created by people on social media. People spend upwards of three hours a day on social channels for the average american. That presents a great chance for brands.

Content types are broadening as audiences grow. Content used to be centered around images. Over 80% of what we do is in video format, including TikTok reels, YouTube shorts, long form video content on YouTube or streaming on twitch. There is still a place for images, but there is also a huge appetite for videos. That can be helped by us.

Success does not always rely on access to a huge audience around the world. Their following is very specific and we work with them. She says they work with people who have at least 20 million followers. There will be very different objectives and the way a brand works with those two people will be very different.

The beauty of Obviously's technology platform is that it helps brands spot very specific categories of influential people. Some brands would like to find a professional footballer who lives in Ohio. We might suggest broadening that approach to work with people who love football, who have a football podcasts and talk about it on social media and reach the same audiences as the football players in Ohio. It could result in a fraction of the cost and the content could be better.

Distribution and the right content for the right channels.

Brand, content, creators, distribution channel, location and so on are some of the factors that influence the success of influencer marketing. Obviously looks for experts in telling their stories, on channels they are experts in, to audiences they have grown organically. Social channels have distribution systems built into them. If you want to achieve your marketing ambitions, you need to create compelling content that works in the system. Frequency and regularity are what get the audience on board. This is too much for most brands.

The concept of quick turn content is also used. Content can be ready to go in a few days. The brand can jump on that trend before it goes away. There's a lot of traction with that.

What does it bring to the table?

Clients are global. They are enterprise brands that are household names. Karwowski said they need scale and reporting. We have built technology to help these companies.

Karwowski will be able to move influencer marketing forward because of the synergy between the two companies.

She says that the company has a large tech, data and product team. It's a big reason why we've grown so quickly. We will continue to push that technology. Changes on social media have to be accounted for. It is important to stay up to date with the latest news.

It's important to be able to access all markets with an appropriate solution and understand brand safety. It is possible to influence all demographic at the same time. She says that they work with people in niches like small business owners.

One-third of our work is with creators who are creating video and photo assets on behalf of brands that the brand can use. TikTok accounts, email, billboards, product pages are powered by us. It's a cost effective way to create a lot of great content.