Your USPs aren’t necessarily selling your brand to the audience.
The influencer knows their audience better than you do.
Strategy eats trends for breakfast.
Above are three truth bombs fired by experienced creator marketers, Christine Göös and MacKenzie Green, who will be bringing their demolition show to IMS USA in a couple of weeks.
With an arsenal of knowledge, these two experts will be blowing apart illusions and misconceptions that have stayed embedded in the industry for far too long.
“Influencer marketing has been around for a while, but it’s still very much a Wild West,” says Göös. “We talk a lot about best practices – and I don’t necessarily want to use the phrase ‘worst practices’ – but we do want to explore the challenges that players fall prey to.”
“What’s unique about our session is that we’ve had brand experience, agency experience, and creator experience,” chimes Green. “We know what it’s like to receive a brief and realise the brand has missed the mark.”
“People thought I was crazy…”
Both Göös and Green have spent 14 years in influencer marketing, early adopters of the model during social media’s ‘adolescence’ in the early 2010s – a time when these platforms really started to mature and offer more than simple insights into your friends’ lives. Suddenly, new careers were being launched.
While working at a financial advisory firm, one of Green’s clients told her how they wished they could make money from Facebook since their kids were always on it. Green knew that this could be done, and the idea led to her founding her own social media marketing consultancy.
“People thought I was crazy when this started,” she says.
Similarly, Göös began by building a community for a brand on Facebook.
Becoming a pioneer in a field gives you a unique perspective. I asked the pair what drew them to influencer and social marketing in the first place since it was still so unusual at the time.
“For me, it was when I realised it was creative and quantitive mixed together,” says Green. “I could build out the storytelling, but then also measure the social analytics and show these to investors as potential buyers.”
Göös agrees, “To me, it’s the democratisation of business and storytelling that I find so fascinating. I come from a small Nordic country, and I was able to make a name for myself in New York City through social media. I could showcase my expertise and then build on that.”
Both of these visionaries spotted the potential in the channel early on. Now, they’ll be taking us through the incoming pitfalls at IMS USA.
Harsh truths…
“We’ll walk the audience through the truth bombs they need to hear” says Göös. “During my time, I’ve seen campaigns where everything looks great on paper. But, then it falls completely flat because it just wasn’t interesting, or it didn’t work with the algorithm.”
The session will detail the data, insights, and processes necessary to avoid these traps.
Another lesson will be how brands and creators ought to collaborate.
“Creators are savvy now,” says Green. “Gone are the days when you could work with a creator on the basis of exposure. They have terms now.”
For brands not engaging with this channel, Göös believes they risk being left behind.
“It’s not a given anymore that just because you loads of money to put into marketing you’re going to still be king of the crop. Now, you have brands that are able to break through because they’re building social first strategies and communities. They’re able to challenge the big players. I think that’s fascinating.”
To keep up with the industry’s truth bombs and learn some important lessons for creator marketing in 2025, be sure to join this session at IMS USA. Secure your pass here.
