Discussing Data-Driven Influencer Marketing with Vivien Garnes

Of course. I think there’s a triptych that we really try to align: three pillars, which are the brand, CMS of the brand, and the social network. And so, all of them have to be integrated to a degree so that there’s a very smooth transition from the order of inventory. We can really push the unified experience to everyone.

And so, the way we do this is that, as I mentioned, we connect to the system of records for a client—preferably their Shopify, WooCommerce, or wherever their client information exists. When they identify influencers inbound, when an influencer publishes content, no office is tied to the same chain. That’s very much how we like to do it. Then we provide influencers the right tools to have attributable sales, to close the loop: coupon codes and trackable links. Of course, you can embed links on Instagram, so it’s going to be coupon codes. Of course, you have fantastic clicks on the description in YouTube, so that’s going to be tracking.

There are these subtleties, and at the end of the day, it’s how we help our clients really scale influencer identification—creators that will inevitably drive sales. How do we help them measure that so they can really optimize their program moving forward?

Sure, I’ll share a couple of very different examples to show the range.

I’m going to preach to my own choir; I don’t know if that resonates very well, but among our client base, one brand I think is doing fantastic is Wild Fang, a clothing company. They’re excelling in a number of ways. Strategically, they’ve redefined what an Instagram feed should look like, and they offer clothing for people of all ages, sizes, and body types—a message the world needs. Tactically, they execute beautifully: they identify influencers who already buy from them and follow them on Instagram, then offer the right incentives at the right time to drive significant sales.

At the opposite end in terms of size is Pernod Ricard, the world’s second‑largest alcoholic beverage company, with brands like Absolut Vodka, Malibu, Rémy Martin, Champagne and Perrier‑Jouët. In the old world, they were slow to start influencer marketing and pick up speed, but they’ve since done very well across multiple brands. They face hurdles other industries don’t—alcohol is regulated, so they can only work with influencers who are legal‑drinking‑age compliant, and that varies by country. It’s a bit of a nightmare, but that’s exactly what we help them solve on the technology side.

Another one we like is Landscape—I’m sure you’re familiar with them. They’re everywhere. We do a lot of display and offline work, and it’s one of those products that makes you raise an eyebrow when you first see it and wonder, what is this? They’re absolutely nailing it.

Yeah, 100%. People lie. You can create an Instagram account. It’s just a declarative day of birth. It’s very easy to falsify. There need to be some guardrails when you work in that space.

100% so I think a lot of people get the wrong idea about data‑driven and they think all right, I’ve looked at their following accounts and their engagement rates and that’s it, I’m convinced. And the truth is, there’s a lot more subtlety to that, but it’s not necessarily spoon‑fed to you by the platforms as some extra intelligence that you need to crunch.

And so looking at the right metrics, there’s obviously the usual suspects, but some other metrics that we’ve put together I think are really strong. I’ll give you a couple in your influencer selection processes.

For example, the efficiency rate—meaning compared to a baseline of organic posts, how well do sponsored posts do? Do they do better? Do they do less good? You can see influencers who have a baseline as a semi‑given rate; some of them will consistently outperform their baseline for sponsored posts because they put their art into it and it’s really great content, so on and so forth. Some of them just do half‑assed posts and their rates tank, and that’s a really interesting way to see how seriously these guys take brand partnership and how likely they are to invest.

On the side of this very same question is what’s the saturation rate? Do they do one in twelve, one in seven, one in two posts that are sponsored or that mention the brand? Because we see a fatigue in the audience and so we’ll see, inevitably, as saturation increases, a decrease in performance as well.

These are the little things that are not necessarily obvious or given to you by the platforms and are super interesting to look at.

Then there’s some more tactical stuff: when’s the best time of day to have that influencer‑published content, when’s the best day of the week, and some other stuff that we are able to do because so many clients have reached out to so many influencers. We can sort of cross‑reference and say how likely that influencer is to respond to you as a brand and how many hours, on average, they will take to respond—really little things to save your time. I know it’s still a bit of a manual process even though we invest a lot in automation. And so how do we stretch your hours at the end of the day and make more, essentially, with influencers?

Of course, still in the idea to really make more with less, something we’ve started to do. We have a data team that does some machine learning stuff. Once you go through that selection process manually, once I accept to work with that creator and they’ll say, I’m not going to work with that creator for whatever reason, some patterns start to emerge. You might not realize that you are forming these patterns, but they exist.

Once you’ve done that a bunch of times, we have algorithms to propose look‑alike influencers. “Hey, based on what you accepted and rejected, we think these 20 guys are great for you,” and we have a one‑to‑one relationship. So if you spend an hour to select 100 influencers, we’ll give you another 100.

That’s yet another way to feed an ongoing machine to provide better‑fit influencers to work with you for your program. It’s hard to describe the exact mechanics of it, but essentially that’s another way in which data can really stretch your marketing dollars.

So I’d say a combination of three things, not necessarily in the right order.

Number one is scale. I understand if you’re a small brand you don’t have a very extensive budget or the ability to work with hundreds of influencers, but it really compounds. Even if you work with 100 influencers who have 100,000 followers, they won’t be unique people, right? There will be significant overlap, especially if you’ve done a good job selecting the influencers you want to work with. It can contribute very nicely to your ability to generate sales. If you’re on Instagram and every two stories you check the same product comes up, that’s a repeat impression and a strong indicator of sales. Scale is a nice way to build and compound your influencer marketing work and stretch your project, even though you can do very successful smaller‑scale projects as well. As you noted, it takes a little bit of time to take off.

Number two, authenticity. You can’t really expect someone who’s never really talked about your product line to be super convincing when talking about it. It’s nice to take a deeper dive into the creator—what kind of content and brands they work with—and that definitely helps.

Third, a combination of the previous two: what value proposition can you offer? Reaching out to creators doesn’t necessarily mean they will gladly work with you. What do you bring to the table? It’s easier to be convincing if you have a great connection with the creator from the start or if your product is a match made in heaven for that creator. But determining the right value proposition can be more art than science. As a brand, if you want to maximize your output, try to find a value proposition where the perceived value is higher than the monetary value. For example, if I give you $100 in cash, it costs me $100 and it’s a one‑to‑one relationship. If I give you $100 in product, it may cost me $20 to produce and $5 for shipping, and now it’s a one‑to‑four relationship. You can afford to be more generous with influencers and have something that works.

A good component we see more and more is incentivizing influencers on the success of a project. Here’s a coupon code: 20% off for your followers, and you get 10% commission for every sale you bring in, or you get a split of $20 or whatever it is. That incentive means the influencer you chose to work with will be excited to go the extra mile and can make extra money. I think that’s very important to align everybody’s interests in the same direction.

More commerce. We mentioned Instagram Checkout and so on. They’re rolling out that feature in more countries and are going to experiment with live shopping features. To some degree, Instagram is going to start to look like QVC, which is fun and has a component of FOMO—you’re missing out because the window of opportunity to make the sale is closing. It’s not like that story will be here in six hours; you have an hour to buy the product.

More long tail as well. Historically, brands have always reached out to the big creators that everybody knows and sees, which has created a lot of inflation on prices at the head of the distribution. That’s not necessarily good, because there’s an inverted relationship between the size of the community and the engagement rate. So you spend more for less to a degree. A lot of brands have started to do a longer tail, which is great. Now we’ve all heard of micro influencers, nano influencers. I’ve even heard of pico influencers recently. We’re getting a longer tail. Case in point, these are great because people aren’t necessarily saturated by brands. Sometimes they’re just happy to work for free or for a 10% commission or a coupon code, and it can be a great way to scale your programs and have a very authentic relationship with these people.

Definitely more long tail, and I’m going to sound like a broken record, but more and more performance‑based as well. Pre‑COVID, it was very rare and hard to convince an influencer to say, “Would you mind a very small fixed fee and some variables?” A lot of creators, especially those in the hospitality, travel, and fitness industries—the spaces that suffered the most—had to take a humble pill and say, “All right, I’ll take what brands can offer.” A lot of it hasn’t been back to normal for many of them.

I want to believe that as creators get more familiar with their ability to drive performance and measure it, they will say, “Okay, I can actually make more money doing this than just taking $200 and whatever happens.” I think we’re going to see more of that in the years to come.

Love the question. And honestly, I don’t think I will tell myself all that much. If I look back at my life, figuring things out on my own was most of the fun. I know it’s about the dream and the destination kind of narrative, but I probably will tell myself to enjoy the trip and maybe buy some Amazon stocking points. I wouldn’t spoil the road ahead too much.

I think it’s a little bit of an overstatement, but I have a home beer brewing kit that I’ve used. I’m not very good at it. I think I like the skill as much as I like the time, and I really enjoyed the process.

Another thing: it’s about the journey, not the destination. I can’t really say that any of my bill was any good, but I think in a few years when I have a bit more time and can focus my time elsewhere, I would enjoy creating a brewery or something like maybe a D to C brand for beer family—also something exciting.

Yeah, so I love this question as well. Going back to the beginning of the interview, we talked about Leon. We talked about music and, obviously, entrepreneurship. So I think I would take one of each.

For Leon, do you know the book The Little Prince? One of the best‑selling books of all time. The author, also in the south of Dubai, happens to be a native of Lyon, my beautiful hometown. He was an ace pilot in the Second World War and crier. He was an author. He was an inventor; he had 20 patents for machinery for the aviation. I think he would be a fantastic guy to have around the table.

For entrepreneurship, I think that would be Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos. He wrote a book called Delivering Happiness, which I read at the very beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. That book had one of the largest impacts on my view of things; I was very impressionable at the time, but I really enjoyed it. He was very eccentric and passed away recently. I’m sure a lot of people have seen that, but Tony was larger than life, and I would have loved to have him around the table.

For music, I’m not going to go for a guitar player, but for a piano player, my all‑time favorite musician at the moment is an Armenian guy called Tigran, who’s a piano prodigy and a fantastic player. He composes music that’s a blend of his ethnic Armenian music and jazz, and to a degree metal. The rhythm is incredible, the harmonies are incredible, and I love everything he does.

I think that would be a pretty unique combination of three very different people around the table.

So I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. My email is very easy to find, so if you want to drop me a line, I’m always happy. I’m pretty active on Quora as well.

So if you guys have a question that you think I could answer, fire away, and I’d say victory.