03/10/2021
Influencers that PAY!
Do you wish you had influencers? People that the public really knew and trusted? I’m not talking about controversial Internet Doctors or fitness people in a niche. We are talking full-fledged globally recognized icons.
This may sound like an impossibility to you, yet we have discovered a way to get influencers to not only pay us but to bring more along for the ride. Better than that they are self-incentivized to share the brand more times than you could hire them to.
Now, I want to be clear you may not be able to do this your first time out. In fact it took me 20 years in the industry to be in the position to do what I am about to share yet, I might be a slow learner. The truth is what I am going to share COULD be done the first time out if YOU knew what to dig for.
This started for me about three years ago when a Doctor in Beverly Hills brought a men’s skin care line to us. He was a globally famous dermatologist with a very high end practice and fancy clients. He had a partner who was an “A list” celebrity. They were both super great people. I had high hopes as the product was great and the celeb was very likeable and incredibly famous and relevant.
Now as I was working on this project, another Doctor down the street, one with less luster and public prestige came to us for his project. This Doctor was a chiropractor and his product was an office chair. An expensive one that was very unique and a bit clunky at the prototype stage. He also had an arsenal of celebrities that he treated who he told me loved him and would do anything for him.
One project was funded with millions, the other had about 150k in funding at the time.
Off we ran with both. The skincare project flamed out very early in the marketing effort partially due to the constraints the celebrities team put on the creative. There were all kinds of concerns about “image” and how we would deal with attraction in a age. Through no one’s fault in particular we were eaten by the cost and the clock. Everything ran out and we packed up defeated.
Meanwhile the project with almost zero cash went a different direction. We were forced to go to crowd funding via Kickstarter then IndieGoGo. We built a very low cost and simple 6 minute spot which is twice the recommended length of traditional Kickstarter’s but our expertise in infomercials made the content to be as long as it “needed” to be close the sale.
As we worked through the process I got to spend time in this Chiropractors office and it was like sitting in the boardroom of Paramount Pictures. Every day I was there four or five “A-listers” would walk through. I even ended up once sitting in Scooter Braun’s living room with a massive great white shark painting looming behind.
Justin Bieber, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Piven, Ted Danson, Lady Gaga… these were just regular drop ins. I knew we had reached a bit of the pinnacle when one day the Doctor texted me a photo inside Elon Musk’s house.
Launch Day came for Kickstarter and we did a live feed from the doctors office. We invested some of our own founders money in our own inventory to hit our threshold which is a normal way to spike the algorithm in KS. We hit about 25k in a few hours and we were off to the races. As part of the launch day experience my expectation that doing Facebook “lives” with all thee stars would create virality.
I could have not been more wrong. Nobody cared that we were sitting live with any star of any caliber. That part of the plan was literally a waste of everyone’s time. The good news was we were now obligated to give each one of these stars a free product once the build was complete. This was expensive and seemed cumbersome but in actuality proved to be incredibly valuable.
At the end of the Kickstarter and IndieGoGo phase we had raised about 800k in 12 weeks which gave us the money for tooling and building the first set in China. The reason we had to go to China was several of the existing components like the air shocks and wheels were “off the shelf” elements already perfected and used by other manufacturers.
The process was longer and more arduous than expected but eventually chairs came in and were distributed. Initial customer feedback was 90% good 10% hated the feel. That is actually not a bad ratio in our world so we now knew why some people didn’t like it and we became better at disqualifying those customers in our marketing to eliminate the expense of returns.
Celebrities that utilized the chair for the most part were very satisfied. Now mind you they knew the Doctor and were getting treatments from him so they also got expert instruction on how to properly use the chair.
One of the early discoveries was that because it engaged the core, for many the chair was incredibly uncomfortable for about 3 days. The body had to learn to adjust and loosen itself. Once past that window customer satisfaction rose rapidly.
So now we were online retailing and sales were starting to grow. We were pretty much hand to mouth with cost of goods and marketing as a bootstrap.
I failed to mention earlier, originally I was not and investor in the chair. As a Kickstarter client normally pays me 20% of their raise as my fee for creating the perfect pitch and video as a royalty. So these guys had originally came out of the gate basically owing me and my partner 160K at the end of the crowd funding yet that fee would have put them under. They asked if we would consider converting that to an ownership interest. Since the valuation at that point we had basically created, we got very favorable terms. We said yes, and my partner effectively stepped in as the CEO of the company with a deep background in supply chain from Asia.
So now we are fractional owner operators and my role is to create extremely low cost Facebook Ads in production and boost sales through social. We took a few clips from celebrities that seemed to get the attention of consumers and could drive them to a transactional landing page to learn more and get the sale.
Some folks worked well in the short term including Bieber, Paula Abdul and Bruce Willis. They did not create a massive windfall. In fact, the strongest pulling ads were not from the company directly but came from a third party site I own where I honestly reviewed the product, revealing I had an interest in it.
In this advertising we were very clear on the downsides of the product as well as the upside. The upside obviously outweighed any negative. Truthfully it did. For instance, the chair is 63 pounds in the box. It’s heavily as hell. Yet it takes about 3 minutes to snap together and you discover it is built like a Sherman tank, to last forever.
Now about 6 months into this the Holidays come and one of our team members suggests we get our celeb friends to come in and do Christmas type ads for the chair. My heart stops knowing the costs and logistics of working with celebrities. I pivot the conversation. As every time we sell a celebrity, they bring this chair into their office, we kind of have a sales person.
The chair is quite novel looking and worth discussion. Our celebrities are all trained on how it works. I know that each of them has actually sold several. I make the suggestion that we reach out to our celebrity list via text and tell them we are going to GIVE a chair away to one of their friends personally in their name as a Christmas gift from THEM. We make the simple ask that they pick someone famous as this is a marketing play.
Well, to my surprise this worked like MAGIC. These folks were so happy to double the staple of celebrities we had it was mind blowing. An Executive at Snap-Chat sent a chair to Bono from U2. I know this personally as I flew to his house on the 23rd of December in Ireland to personally deliver it. We made marketing content around that.
So this all drives us to very healthy volumes online and sets us up for a healthy run during the lockdowns. We had millions of captive folks at home on a computer. We had a better chair. Plus there were many companies offering wellness incentives that we pitched our chair for. Volume was good.
In the middle of this we were able to arrange for my partner to get on Shark Tank, which proved to be a fabulous advertisement and companies started seeing the value of our chair for employees health in all kinds of businesses from call centers to offices.
So now to the influencers in our expansion. We finally arrived at a stasis where real money could be spent on either media or celebs. One of the things we have learned in this age is that celebs are only relevant to THEIR narrow audiences. You can’t give stock for appearances nor can you give cash. There is no consistent upside.
Enter Tony Robbins. Several of our team has been friendly with Tony for years. He is a patient of the Doctor. He is a long standing business partner of a close friend and investor. Tony is a guy folks want to meet. We pitched him on becoming an investor and he loved the chair and what it does. Of course, we may have to build a special one for the Gentle Giant at his not so average height and musculature.
Then it struck me. The way to get to the really “A-List” people was to create an owners club. The company has a great valuation, which means there are shares available but nobody has to go broke or risk a lot. Mind you actors are typically out of work and the millions you hear them making does not account for the 10-15% chunks their agents, lawyers, publicists take.
So we decided to create a network of studio heads, producers, actors, musicians, technocrats and the like. We rapidly shared a list like one does when building funding for a movie. We shot texts to all these people which we had gathered through the network. We made it clear that this was a quiet angel round and that participants would be connected to the others and invited to a couple of private elbow rubbing events each year.
We took it from fund raising or influencer marketing to a private club of entertainers, lawyers, advisors and deal makers. Oddly we as the public assume these folks all know each other. They don’t. LA is like a very large high school who move like a school of fish. People flow in and out of popularity rapidly. A network provides a little security in a very insecure place.
We were vague about the investment ask but kept it between 40k and 100k per participant so individuals could gauge their risk and place themselves inside the hierarchy where they chose. Remember inside our culture there is nothing quite as shameful as poverty so joining he club for a larger amount communicates something to the rest of the group.
Within a week we had investors. Forty plus plunking down checks to join our group and share our chair with the world. Every time one shares it, that encourages another to, because people are people. We are even building a campaign that makes it clear that this chair is reflective of the character trait of GENIUS in the user.
The investor celebrities all have their own followings and media channels where their connections meet them. Some are Insta users, some Facebook even others e-mails and investor network platforms. The point being each influencer is actively influencing and endorsing to an customer that is highly likely to take their recommendations just like your friends are of you.
I personally have sold several hundreds of chairs to people that trust me and have been very happy with the purchase. That’s human nature. We buy from people we like.
Now, yes it took me twenty years to discover this and it took me 1 hour to write this to you so you can learn it now and save 20 years.
Find a great product with a great result.
It is extremely helpful if the developer is already in a network of individuals that are held in high regard or have good distribution networks.
Leverage a few key relationships early on.
Leverage the success to enroll the other influencers as early stage investors AFTER you have proven the concept and have happy customers. No one wants to take a risk on a risky idea.
What we are doing is building a grass fire and proving there is heat.
It takes TIME.
It is worth doing slowly and correctly. You will be learning a bundle in that time. You will be making connections in that time, particularly if your product or business really delivers overt benefits that can be felt.
Then leverage the relationships and the EXISTING media distribution channels they already have in place.
Notice how little I discussed clever ads or media dollars.
Have a thoughtful and strategic week.
