Danielle Lewis: Consumers trust advertising less and less every year. So the idea of influencer marketing is to make it like a personal recommendation from a friend. The brands that we have seen do it are getting massive organic reach out of it. We're dealing with humans here, you know, marketers. We're humans. Influencers are humans. So if you have the opportunity to create an amazing experience for either side, that's where you'll get the most out of the campaign.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of e commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High and an E commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to the Add to Cart podcast. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and strategist at e commerce consultancy twelve High. In today's episode, we dive into all things influencer marketing. We've got Danielle Lewis who joins me from the foam pit. Yes, a bloody foam pit of her influencer agency and platform scrunch. In this conversation we talk about what you should look for when selecting influencers to represent your brand, how to brief them to get the best response, and the future of social influencers on platforms such as Instagram and the TikTok Plus. Danielle takes us behind the scenes on how one of her clients, you may know them here you foods uses social influences to drive results. So thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation on influencers with Danielle Lewis from Scrunch.
Nathan Bush: Danielle Lewis, welcome to Add to Cart.
Danielle Lewis: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Nathan Bush: Well, thank you. We're really stoked to have you on to talk everything influencer marketing. And look, correct me if I'm talking in the wrong terms, but can you give us an overview of how influencers are at the center of your world?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. So Scrunch is a influencer marketing platform and agency. So you are right, our entire world does revolve around influencers, but in a few different ways. So from a software point of view, we have developed a global platform that has over 20 million influencers and really it's an analytics tool tool. So we seek to understand the audience behind the influencer so that when a brand comes and uses the Scrunch platform, they can really understand the person that they're going to reach if they use an influencer versus just who the influencer actually is. However, as our company has evolved. We have also realized that there is an opportunity to help educate the influencer community as well and help them build a sustainable business. So we also have become educators to influencers and brands similarly as well. And then on the agency side of our business, we essentially execute the influencer campaign. So your bigger companies like your Amazon's, you Foods Deliveroos of the world may not have the internal resources to run an influencer campaign. One thing people should know about influencer campaigns is that they are very, very tedious, very time consuming. There's lots of moving parts and lots of manual effort. So lots of companies don't have the time to do that themselves. They don't have full time influencer resources, so they outsource it to us. So we are talking to influencers all day, every day and love it.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. And what comes first from building Scrunch as a business? Did it come first that you had a whole bunch of influences that you were connected with or that you had a whole bunch of brands that needed influences?
Danielle Lewis: Oh gosh. Well, the backstory on Scrunch is, is very convoluted. So we did not start as an influencer platform at all. We started out, we've actually been four different things the life cycle of Scrunch, but the one just prior to being an influencer platform was like a social media monitoring tool and an inventory tracking solution. And it was actually through talking to our customers, they actually were the ones that said, hey, I'm really interested in influencers. And we realized that we had access to the data on these influences, data on social media. And so we pivoted into becoming an influencer platform. It's actually a little bit ironic. I personally have started a blog over 10 years ago and when we started the Scrunch business, we never put two and two together to start a blogging or influencer kind of product. It just came full circle at the end and I went, hang on a second, why didn't we start this in the beginning? Since I've been in this industry for a decade. But anyway, live and learn.
Nathan Bush: It's so funny, isn't it? Because even those social media tools, we started one in 2008 and like it was so early but at the time it was fantastic because you could get so much information about people on social media. Like we were able to do the influencer ranking that quickly went away once everyone started locking their profiles down. Became really hard.
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, yeah. And that's social media, isn't it? You know, you've just had to adjust and change basically every month for new algorithms, new trends, new everything. But yeah, it keeps it exciting. I think.
Nathan Bush: It does, it does. So when you're assessing new influencers or potential influencers that you want to connect into your clients, what are the key things that you look for from an influencer perspective?
Danielle Lewis: So the biggest one is to first not think about the influencer. So really. And this goes back to like, this is marketing 101. I think it's really funny when people think about influencers, they kind of forget about marketing fundamentals. So we always say to a brand, go back to your brand, your product and your customer. So really understand who it is you're trying to target, what message you need to get out to them, where they are, what platform they are on, and that will actually inform your influencer selection. So yes, if you're a fashion or beauty brand, it's probably going to be on Instagram because that's where people are consuming that type of content. But if you're a B2B brand, your influencer might be on LinkedIn or might have a personal blog. So it really comes back to figuring out where your customer is and who they follow. And that should sort of filter down to the influencer level.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes total sense. And when you've got brands stepping into this space, do you normally see them start with, and I may be talking, something that's sacrilegious. Do you start big numbers of followers for your influencers or do you start more?
Danielle Lewis: The micro level depends on budget and what you want to get out of it. So obviously the more followers they have, the more expensive they're going to be. But it's also tactical as well. So if you, if your outcome of running an influencer campaign is you just want mass amounts of content in market, the most cost effective way to do that is with micro influencers. So we would suggest going and finding a whole bunch of people that maybe have 20,000 or less followers. If you want to do a TV campaign and you want to pick an influencer that's super well known, has lots of followers, you might go for someone more macro. Also down to thinking about the call to action as well. If you want to drive product sales, you need to make it really easy for the followers to actually buy the product. So then if you're on Instagram, you'd need to be working with people that have 10,000 followers or more, so they can have a swipe up link in their story as an example. So again, it kind of comes back to the strategic piece at the start figuring out where your customer is and what outcome you want out of the campaign and that will then drive your influencer selection.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. And in terms of costs, and I know it'll vary per influencer, but if you're kind of looking at that 10 to 20,000 follower count for an influencer, what kind of price range are we looking at there?
Danielle Lewis: So you're probably looking about $50 a post and also a product. So making sure that you actually send them something so they can create unique content for you.
Nathan Bush: And are they generally picky around which brands they work with or. I'm assuming it varies.
Danielle Lewis: It totally varies. Some people, you know, you'll look at, you'll look at these Instagram pages and you'll see product, product, product, product. And you know, some brands don't mind working with people like that. That's totally fine. There's definitely a place for it. But people that have a very strong, I guess, brand identity may look for influencers who kind of have a bit more of a spirit spread of just general content and then kind of pepper in the product shots.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, you can, you can tell it straight away, can't you?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I think your point around the 10,000 followers or more for that direct buy from Instagram is a really key point. What about in terms of that direct conversion attribution? You see a lot of influencers having coupon codes or specific codes. Is that generally the best way for, to attribute success of a campaign? If it is a sales focused campaign?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, coupon codes and unique tracking links. So if you do have that swipe up capability or if you're using the influencer content in an ad, then just making sure you're using a utm, if you are just sort of doing more generalized and maybe using a variety of different levels of influencers, then a coupon code is really good. The thing about coupon codes is that not everyone will use them. You know, people forget. I do it every time I go, oh, I'll buy that because I've got 10% off. And then I forget to use the coupon code. So it doesn't, it's not kind of bulletproof, but it definitely gives you a good track. So if you looked at your coupon code usage and went, wow, that's really amazing. It's probably, it was probably better than you thought it was.
Nathan Bush: So yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And in terms of vetting influencers to make sure that their follower count is real and that they actually get real engagement, because I'm Assuming you they won't let you inside their Instagram pages to check what kind of engagements they're getting on their, on their pages, how do you vet them for your clients?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, so there's a number of different ways that you can do it. And we are fortunate now that we've got the technology to just do it programmatically. But I always like to tell people that you can kind of do it the manual way or the paid way because obviously technology platforms, there's a cost usually. So if you're doing it kind of yourself and you just want to be able to look at an influencer and assess it, there's just some red flags to look out for. So their engagement rate. So if they're in their audience isn't engaged with what they're talking about, A, that could be fake followers, but also you probably don't want to work with them anyway because the audience doesn't care about what they're talking about. And your image or your product won't be seen by a lot of people if they are reluctant to give you screenshots of their analytics. That's also a red flag. So when we look at it in the Scrum software platform, if they are, let's say they're a Melbourne based fashion influencer, but 50% of their followers are in based in Singapore or somewhere, just somewhere really random, that can be a bit of a red flag. There's also things to look at in terms of the breakup of accounts following them as well. So from a manual point of view, if you just looked at their followers, if you can see a whole lot of followers that are just random letters and numbers, don't have profile images, those types of things, they're often bots. If you use a technology platform, it'll just tell you the split of male, female and other or brand accounts. So that can just be a quicker way. So really there are other things too in terms of like how quickly their followers grow and things like that. But sometimes they're a little bit hard to look at in isolation, especially if the influencer has gotten press or something like that. So we always say there's a combination of different data points to assess so that you can really understand whether they are fake followers or fake engagement.
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Nathan Bush: In terms of some of the clients that you've worked with, have you got any examples that come to mind where you've paired them with an influencer for a really fantastic outcome?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. And we've got a few different examples and different clients that use them in different ways. One of my, just because we've been talking about attribution, one of my favorite ones is always you foods. And mostly because they have their house in order from a marketing point of view. So sometimes when customers come to us, they, you look at their social media and they don't even post on it. And it's sort of like, well, why use influencers to drive consumers to your social media or your website if you're not keeping it up to date? So from a conversion point of view, you do really have to think about the full customer journey. Influencers won't just like change your business overnight. And so you reads are amazing because they absolutely get that. They are all over everything. You know, their website conversion, their social media, their content. They, they advertise everywhere. So from a touch point point of view, everyone's seeing you food somewhere, which really helps. Obviously influencers as well, they attribute influencer sales through coupon codes as well. So I love that because it means we can actually track the effectiveness of them. And they are also amazing at giving influencers freedom and flexibility. So yes, they always have a product that they're pushing or a campaign message and that type of thing and they have guide rails. But they're so amazing at letting creators just create and that always translates into amazing content. The type of stuff that we see come out of the you foods campaign is just stuff you'd never think of to direct. Direct an influencer to create. So not only is it amazing content, but it converts really well and they track it all the way through to a product sale as well. So they know it's working, which is. Yeah, so they're one of my favorite ones to work on.
Nathan Bush: And did it take time for them to develop that trust with their influencers or did it kind of kick off from the get go?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, so they, they were great from the get go. And we. So because we manage the influencer campaigns for them, we are a bit of a first line of defense in terms of what content actually is allowed to go through, which I think helps as well. So when we get a brief, we translate that brief into an influencer brief which sort of sets out the guide rails for the influencer when they're creating their content. And we're also the QA partner as well. So we make sure that it does, it is actually on brief before it goes back to them. So that I think helps speed up the process. But they're, they're always I just as a business from an internal culture point of view, they're just open to new ideas. So I think from the get go, they probably were a little bit more trouble than some other brands are.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. So if they're briefing you, I just want to get an idea of what that brief looks like. So if you go, we want this end outcome and we've got this product and we know we want to use social media and we want to use influential people to get it out there, it's kind of up to them how they do it, how do they brief you, what makes a good brief?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, that's a really good point. So sometimes a good brief is actually a loose brief so that we can be collaborative. From a you foods point of view, they, they really know their customer. And yes, they're open to testing, but they know their product, they know their customer and then they kind of optimize from there. But what makes a good brief is potentially a customer that is open to figuring out who their customer is and open to testing. So back in the early days of some of the campaigns we ran with them, we actually tested different audiences as well. So obviously if you were running a Facebook ad or Google Ad, you would be testing different audience segments, different copy, different creatives. You can actually do that with influencer marketing as well. And some people don't realize that. So what we did with them was we designed essentially five different tests where we looked at different audiences and different influences that spoke to their audiences, different creators, different call to actions, and actually tested them against each other using the coupon codes. So that over time we've been able to optimize. So going back to the original question, which was what makes a good brief? Essentially these are either knowing who your customer is or a willingness to figure it out and go through the testing process. So if you can have information about what your brand is, who you think your customer is, and then different ideas on what you want to test and different creatives, but I guess being open to collaboration so we can effectively use our decades worth of working with influencers to provide a little bit of direction as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. So it kind of comes back to what you were saying at the start is that don't throw out the marketing fundamentals that you've always worked with and use those marketing fundamentals to work with people like yourselves and the influencers to come up with creative new ways to deliver your message.
Danielle Lewis: Exactly, exactly. The biggest thing about influencer marketing is it's, it's supposed to be authentic, it's supposed to be in lieu of advertising, you know, people, consumers trust advertising less and less every year apparently, according to all the studies. So the idea of influencer marketing is to make it like a personal recommendation from a friend. So the more collaborative you can be whilst using all of your data and analytics, the better.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, cool. And just out of interest for that you foods campaign or the ongoing campaign which influences did you end up using.
Danielle Lewis: So they actually will CV is an ongoing test. So they use micros all the way through to macros, they use video, they're often, they're mostly on Instagram as a channel but they are consistently changing, consistently testing and optimizing. So you know, tomorrow could be different
Nathan Bush: in terms of a strategy around that because I think that's a really interesting point is that a lot of people, you know, come from an old world of brand ambassadors and you kind of pick one or two brand ambassadors and they're your people that are on TV, they're on radio, they're kind of flogging your message 24, 7. It's a very different approach that you've got there. Do you find most brands find a handful of influencers that they stick with or that they're constantly changing.
Danielle Lewis: So the idea is that you should be optimizing so you should do an initial test with say 10, 20, 50, 100 influencers and then figure out the group that works so that you can then put those people into a longer term contract and almost have them as your ambassadors and then subbing in a new set for other ones that didn't work so that you're consistently optimizing and testing over time. So from an influencer point of view it's on social media and social media is a conversation. So doing a one off campaign can be great and can achieve objectives but it should be considered as an ongoing body of work to really get the best results.
Nathan Bush: Yep, makes sense if we take a look at a bit of bit more of a worldview. Are there any brands or retailers out there that you see are using influencers in a really kind of innovative way?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, definitely. So it's really interesting to see the types of brands and I guess the, the age of the brands as well. So There are a whole heap of brands that are quite young and quite lifestyle and they have been built by people probably in our age demographic. And they get influencer marketing because they have grown up on social media and they do it so well. They design products in collaboration with influencers. They always have influencer content. They're sending out free product to everyone all the time, having this mass content in market. Their whole marketing strategies center around influencers because they know that their customers or the consumers are looking to those influencers. And that's kind of the benchmark. One of the big brands revolve. They're probably the ones they attribute, I think, think $70 billion a year of their sales or something crazy or 70 of their billion dollar sales. Either way it's huge. Whatever it is to influencers, it's just crazy. And that's their whole marketing Strategy is influencer first versus, you know, this is the 10 ways in which we advertise and influencers is one of them, you know, so that's probably I guess the, the global benchmark. And then it's funny because then we see, I guess some older brands just sort of dipping their toes in the water that do doing these sort of off campaigns and wondering why it hasn't kind of changed their lives.
Nathan Bush: No, that makes sense. And I think what we're seeing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we're seeing influencers, exactly what you said, change business models, but influencers become their own businesses. So take Kendall Jenner as the poster child of this, right. Is that before it was millions of dollars to get a post with Kendall and she went, actually I'm going to start my own beauty company.
Danielle Lewis: Exactly.
Nathan Bush: One of the biggest beauty brands itself.
Danielle Lewis: Totally. It is so smart. And I think, you know, that's really what we're trying to say to influencers now as well is you are a brand, you are a business. So you need to conduct yourself in that manner, you know, when you're working on campaigns. So you know, being professional, doing all of those bits and pieces and understanding the business side of the equation. But for longevity building your, your, you own the conversation with your audience. So there's a few things there. Some people have built their influence just around one channel only. So Instagram, we all, I guess marketers know that that is not a great move because Instagram, Facebook, any of these platforms can turn you off overnight. And that's exactly what we've seen happen is you know, brands complain that they don't get organic reach that they have to boost same Thing happens to influencers, so they post and barely any people see it. So then that's why boosting came into play. And now we boost influencer content. But as an influencer, that's what your whole business is predicated on. So, you know, really thinking about how you own the customer conversation by creating your own website or email list or something to bring them back to, then that kind of sets up the foundation for you to be able to launch your own products as well in the future.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. Is that something that you need to take into account that obviously partnering with the influencer, but then also paying for ad spend to boost those posts as well? Is that something that you factor into your campaigns?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, definitely. It's something that, again, from an optimization point of view, you can kind of figure out later down the campaign. So we always tell the brands to set aside some media spend and then as the campaign's running, we can figure out the best performers and boost the one that are working.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. So you don't pre boost, you just see how it lands and then, yeah, give them, give them a boost from there, love. Yep. You talked a little bit about Instagram and we talked a lot about Instagram and obviously a dominant channel for influencers at the moment. Do you see that trend continuing? Do you see a move off Facebook and Instagram continuing its growth?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, I don't think it's going away anytime soon, but the conversation is different because it's now a paid platform. So, yes, you have your influencers, but you've got to boost them to reach the audience. It's becoming more and more like an advertising model. So then new and emerging social platforms like TikTok, where you now get the most organic reach. So obviously it's a different market on TikTok, but we are seeing. But it will commercialize. So right now it is the young kids doing their dances, but the bigger brands, like your Sephora's of the world, are already on there building their audience because they know that's where attention will move to. I think this, this moment in time that we're going through has seen a lot of people move over to TikTok just to provide themselves a level of entertainment so the brands will quickly follow. And I think that's what we've learned over the last decade of being in digital and social media is that every one to two years there is a new trend or a new platform we're talking about. So I think people would, you know, if we just look at history, that it's Fairly obvious that that's going to continue to happen.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I'm a guilty Tiktoker, Right. I'm not a dancer. I don't post anything. But it's always that moment. Find me if you can. It's always that moment after the kids go to bed. And then it's like, I'm just gonna TikTok for five minutes. And you always can guarantee a laugh. Hey, like you can always find Something that's just 20 seconds of fun.
Danielle Lewis: Yes, exactly Right. And then an hour passes and you wonder what you're doing in real life
Nathan Bush: and then you're posting videos of yourself dancing in your lounge room. And then it gets really. I knew it.
Danielle Lewis: I knew it.
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Nathan Bush: on the TikTok thing though. One thing that's been going around in my head is that Instagram is accessible for most people. Right. It's easy to take a photo, put a nice filter over whatever it is. So it's kind of average Joe. TikTok to me seems a little bit more putting yourself out there at the next level. Hey, do you think that makes it more influencer ready? Because it's not going to be for the average person to get on and create content.
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, so the average people are on there creating content. I think that the thing is, is they just get filtered to the bottom. So. Yeah. And because it is, it's almost more technical on TikTok as well. So you see lots of people doing these crazy videos with colors changing and bits and pieces and it's sort of like out of the box. How do you do that without googling how to do it? So absolutely, it's more influencer friendly and that's how they've gone to market as well. So historically, you know, platforms like Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook have been kind of anti influencer. And then, you know, Facebook and Instagram have changed their tune now that they realize that they can make money out of influencers. But I think TikTok kind of went influencer first, which was really interesting. So I think we will see more and more influencers start to move there. And it will just be a matter of time as to how long they can hold their organic reach and how quickly they can build followers. Because that's the thing, I guess, if you're an influencer who has a hundred thousand followers today and you move to TikTok, you know, how long is it going to take you to build up that same kind of following and how. And you know, right now everyone who moves there has kind of got that first mover advantage, but that's, that's quickly going to dry up.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Have you had the opportunity to do any experiments with any of your clients on TikTok yet?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, we have. So again, you know, more different types of brands are sort of being more cautious because they don't understand the platform yet and they do see it as a very young millennial style platform. But the brands that we have seen do it are getting massive organic reach out of it. So, yeah, if you're willing to test it, I think brands should definitely be testing it right now.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's kind of the gold mine time, isn't it?
Danielle Lewis: Definitely.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. So we're recording this at the moment during COVID right in the middle of it. We've seen ad spend, we're still here. We've seen ad spend decrease significantly in Facebook, Google, and it seems to be on the way back. What have you seen in terms of influencer spend?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, so at the very start of it, influencer suspend froze. So we, and because I think people didn't know what to do, to be honest, so when, I mean, even personally from a scrunch point of view, we had clients in the event space and literally overnight they were told that they couldn't go ahead. We had clients in the food space. Everyone started hoarding food, so they weren't allowed to be seen to be advertising. So I think in the beginning everyone kind of panicked and just froze spend. Then marketers realized that social media consumption tripled within the space of a few weeks. So not using influencers and not using social was actually a really bad idea because that's exactly where consumers were. So we've seen it start to flip back now and people start to reinvest in those advertising channels. So. And the ones that actually got on it early did really well because there was such a huge move in things like, you know, activewear, things for the home entertainment. There's so many categories of people at home right now that need to be entertained, they need to be fed, they're bored out of their mind. So the opportunity for brands right now is just enormous. If they're hitting them where their attention is, which is social and influencer makes total sense.
Nathan Bush: And how are influencers creating interesting content? Being stuck at home?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, huge challenge. Huge challenge. And that's. And that's interesting too, because that's where brands have this amazing opportunity to connect with influencers. So by sending them really cute care packages to brighten their day. You know, right now, everybody loves deliveries, right? Because it's just like a break in the day. So we've seen a few brands send care packages to influencers that they've worked with in the past or influencers that they want to work with in the future, which has been absolutely amazing for not only the relationship that they're building, but also to get, you know, a little bit extra bang for their buck out of their campaigns when they do work with influencers. You know, the thing that we need to remember is that everyone. We're dealing with humans here. You know, marketers, we're humans. Influencers are human. So if you have the opportunity to create an amazing experience for either side, that's where you'll get the most out of the campaign. But, yeah, if you're, you know, also providing props for your influencers or anything that can kind of invigorate the content they create, even if it's like sending them a fresh bunch of flowers or something like that. And there's amazing backdrops and stuff that you can buy too. So seeing just people get creative once they've exhausted kind of their own bathroom shots or whatever, you know, just ordering props and different pieces online and having brands send them. Them things that they would love to see them work with as well is really good.
Nathan Bush: It's such a good point because we, you know, if we just treat them like humans and what we get excited about, they probably get just as excited, even more excited about Inside Retail. Last year, I was at. I saw a presentation from the founder of. I think it's Silk. S H, H, H, H. Silk.
Danielle Lewis: Oh, yeah.
Nathan Bush: Yep, yep. And she's had phenomenal success with the Kardashians. I can't believe Kardashians are getting two mentions in one episode.
Danielle Lewis: This is outrageous.
Nathan Bush: Outrageous. But business took off because she got Kim Kardashian to post about one of her products. And the way she did it, she actually just forced away. I don't know if this is legal, but into. Into the compound and just landed a product on her doorstep.
Danielle Lewis: And I think it was personalized as well. She actually personalized.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then have developed such a great relationship with her. She said that she sends her basically 10 packages and for every 10, every 10th package, one's the product. But the others might be a bottle of champagne to celebrate something or just flowers just because. And then a product arrives.
Danielle Lewis: Exactly. And that's it. If you treat people like they're your friend, then they go out of their way to be friendly back to you. It's really funny how it's not rocket science.
Nathan Bush: So true. Love it. That's such, such great tips. Is there one tip that you want to leave our listeners with if they are considering bringing social influencers into the mix of their marketing?
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. It's always do your research first. So understand who your customer is and make sure that the influencers that you plan to work with speak to that audience. You know, obviously Shameless plug, that's exactly what the scrunch platform does. So it doesn't have to take you hours and hours and hours. But if you want to do it yourself, just make sure you do that step.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Now I can't let you go because you have actually started your own retail business in the midst of the COVID craziness. Tell us about that.
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, so it's an interesting story. So we, at the end of last year, we had been talking to a beauty chemist about creating products, products for influencers and we had been working on developing different brands and a different, a different team to essentially bring these products to life so influencers could have their own products. And yeah, in the wake of COVID we, I actually, you know, personal story, don't talk about this much but I am actually diabetic and I was, my partner and I were really frustrated that we couldn't get access to hand sanitizer and hand wash. And we were having a rant about it one night and we were like, hang on a second. We actually know the people that could actually bring this to life. And so we called them up and said, you know, what's the possibilities? And you know, massive challenges in supply chain because people were, you know, price gouging ethanol that you needed to manufacture them and whole lot of crazy things. But we said, well, you know, basically within a week we had solved all of those problems and brought the answer to life, which is the new E commerce brand that firstly specializes in hand sanitizer and hand wash. But we've actually developed it as a bigger health and wellness brand. So that post Covid, we can continue to grow out the brand offering, but it's been absolutely amazing. Obviously it solves an immediate need but we really wanted to make sure that the brand considered more than just getting crappy sanitizer out to people. We really wanted it to be a beautiful product that encouraged people to use it long term. So a lot of people are finding now with the kind of cheaper products that it's ripping their hands apart and it's not a great experience and we actually, we know that we need to get people to be more hygienic over time. So we developed it in conjunction with this beauty chemist to add moisturizing agents and use essential oils. So and they're all derived from Australian botanicals and we support Australian farmers and all that kind of good stuff. So it's been a massive journey and you know, all the craziness of starting a new business just condensed down into a number of weeks. But it's also been amazing as well because it's let us use our knowledge of marketing in our own product. So that's what been super cool as well to actually start applying everything to a product and a brand that we were very well connected to. So yeah, it's been cool.
Nathan Bush: That's cool. What's it called?
Danielle Lewis: It's called the answer. So it's www.theanswer.store.
Nathan Bush: beautiful. Love to see where that ends up. I think it's a really smart tactic to make something that solves the immediate problem but also is something that will last post Covid and the new way of living that we'll have.
Danielle Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Nathan Bush: Danielle Lewis, thank you very much for coming onto add to cart. Where can people find out more about
Danielle Lewis: yourself or scrunch they could let's go scrunch rather than just bashing the handles around. So find us at www.scrunch.com and you'll find everything else from there.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Thank you very much.
Danielle Lewis: Thank you for having me.
Nathan Bush: Now if this conversation has inspired you you to get involved with influencer marketing, Danielle has given you a superb 101 to get started. The key takeout for me is to know your customer but to allow your influencer partners to unleash their creativity that that same creativity that made them influential in the first place. So if you have some influencers in mind, Danny gave some really practical tips on how to vet that they are real. Her three takeouts are one check the types of accounts that are following them. Are they actually real people? Two, check the engagement rates on their recent posts and three ask for screenshots of analytics including the location of their followers. Of course if you want to make it real simple. You can always partner with influencer experts and tools such as Scrunch. Now I'm off to Bunnings to build a phone pit as the new podcast studio. See you next week.
