Ep 17: The Rundown on Inclusive Influencer Marketing with Charlotte Stavrou
Shownotes
In this episode, Joyann and Charlotte discuss all things inclusive influencer marketing, from Instagram ads and the differences between US and UK influencer marketing to the influencer pay gap and practical advice for small businesses.
Charlotte is the founder and CEO of SevenSix agency, an influencer marketing agency focusing on diversity and inclusion. She is also a successful influencer in her own right and the co-host of Sustainably Influenced.
You can watch the episode on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1wddz-tWqo&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=JoyannBoyce
Useful links:
https://www.instagram.com/beulahdavina/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/the_brooksbrother/
https://www.sevensixagency.com/influencer-network
http://www.mslgroup.co.uk/paygap
https://www.arimacompany.com/blog/the-influencer-pay-gap-ksxpl
https://www.sevensixagency.com/blog/sevensix-influencer-pricing-report
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0M641HKq0iToLVpwo4X5Uc
You can find SevenSix Agency here:
https://www.sevensixagency.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sevensix-agency/
https://twitter.com/sevensixagency
https://www.instagram.com/sevensixagency/
You can find Charlotte here:
https://www.charlottesevensix.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-sevensix/
https://twitter.com/charlotteseven6
https://www.instagram.com/charlottesevensix/
https://open.spotify.com/show/0MkbX7ufdNxcsY3GFJ3Q4T?si=7b77eb4cc9b74dd8&nd=1
You can find Joyann at: https://twitter.com/joyannboyce
Transcript
[00:00:00] Joyann: Welcome to the Marketing Made Inclusive Podcast. I am your host, Joyann Boyce. On this podcast, we're gonna discuss all things inclusive marketing, from persona creation campaigns, and even some of the mishaps we see in the media. Tune in and let me know your thoughts on how we can make inclusive marketing the industry standard.
[00:00:23] Welcome and welcome back. Welcome everyone. Thank you for tuning in for another week. I am your host, Joyann Boyce. You're tuning in to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast, and I am joined by someone who I've known for a hot minute in this inclusive marketing world, Charlotte Stavrou, formerly Charlotte Williams.
[00:00:42] We've probably mentioned her and dropped a couple hints in the other episodes, but welcome Charlotte. How are you?
[00:00:49] Charlotte: Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I'm good. How are you doing?
[00:00:53] Joyann: Good. I am excited. We have been talking about influencer marketing in varieties of ways when it comes to inclusive marketing, but before we dive into that, tell people a little bit about what you do.
[00:01:06] Charlotte: So I am the founder and CEO of SevenSix Agency. We are an inclusive influencer marketing and talent management agency based in London, and we launched four years ago last week. Um, so we are still going strong, which is really exciting. Um, and our aim is to essentially just pair amazing creators with amazing brands and bring them together and create campaigns that truly are inclusive and authentic of the word.
[00:01:33] Um, when I launched the agency, Diversity and inclusion wasn't really a topic in 2019 that anyone spoke about.
[00:01:42] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:42] Charlotte: So it was quite interesting to see the difference between 2019, um, welcoming and 2020 welcoming once we were a year in and um, Black Lives Matter resurgence kind of came about and yeah, everyone wanted to talk about diversity.
[00:01:56] So yeah.
[00:01:57] Joyann: It's been a journey and I think we've known each other throughout that journey. Cause I remember talking before.
[00:02:03] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:02:03] Joyann: Like when we were doing the inclusive marketing workshop, it was like, how are we even selling this? Like what are, what do people want post 2020? It's like, why is everyone asking for this?
[00:02:12] They're now all interested.
[00:02:15] Charlotte: It's crazy.
[00:02:16] Joyann: It is such a journey. But it's so interesting cause I think when I first met you and we were talking about inclusive marketing, it kind of first sparked my idea of what this whole world itself is looking like. Cause I know, as much as the general marketer does about influencer marketing.
[00:02:34] So I don't know enough to be able to advise on it. And I remember I'd always refer people to you. I'm like, if you're gonna go down areas, go to Charlotte, that's your go-to person. Because it's not, you can't blanket apply the same rules.
[00:02:47] Charlotte: Yeah. It's very different. The influencer world is, it's a, it's a special, special part of the world, but it's very specific and it moves so fast.
[00:02:58] And it's, um, it's not, it can't be treated as traditional marketing, traditional digital marketing or traditional PR. It is very much its own, um, entity. And I think that's somewhat of the problem when people think about, um, incorporating influence marketing into their strategies. They don't fully understand A, how it works and B, what the results could actually be.
[00:03:21] Joyann: Mm-hmm. And they don't appreciate, like on the marketer to marketer side, they don't appreciate it. I've been around so many conversations we're just like, oh, we'll just get a couple of influencers. And I'm like, okay, do you already have them? Do you already know who they are? Have you already sourced them? No, just, you know, send it to a couple people.
[00:03:40] Charlotte: Nice. Yeah. Cool. Good luck with that. No, I think that's one of the biggest issues where people also don't understand what the need is for either having an in-house team that looks after your influence marketing, um, and that co could be your PR team, but they just have to be, you know, uh, they just have to understand what goes into it.
[00:04:01] Or working with an agency because influence marketing's actually just about building relationships.
[00:04:05] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:06] Charlotte: And having your community and network. Um, I actually went to an event yesterday to just disclosing when, what day we are, uh, recording, but yesterday was a tube strike in London and it was almost impossible to get around the city and something that was
[00:04:22] really interesting is there were loads of events, I don't know why, but there were like a hundred events just on that day and a lot of them didn't get cancelled. Um, so when I went to an event, it was a 9:00 AM breakfast event, which I would never normally do. And it was in West London and I live in North London, so that is like a journey itself.
[00:04:38] Um, but the, the brand said they'd get taxis for everyone. So that was, that was really exciting. Um, just a note on this, um, background note. I am an influencer marketer, but also moonlight as an influencer sometimes. So if you don't know who I am.
[00:04:51] Joyann: Moonlight.
[00:04:53] Charlotte: That would be confusing. But I, yeah, I moonlight as an influencer.
[00:04:57] I went to this um, event and the room was full and I was so shocked. It was a tube strike and everyone got there, but it was the power of the PR. So the, the woman who does the PR for that brand is really lovely and makes it her mission to personally know the people that the brand works with. And I think everyone wanted to come not only because they liked the brand, but, and I didn't know much about the brand at the time.
[00:05:25] I just knew I liked like the clothes. Now I'm obsessed cause the founder's amazing. But it was the, the PR that got me there. And I think that is something that you don't often hear about is like the unsung heroes in the influence world. It's that the professionals who make it their mission to be the evangelists for the brand that they work for and get people on board.
[00:05:48] And that could be an agency that people just love the ethics and the people within the agency.
[00:05:54] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:54] Charlotte: And then they just know that the brand that they're gonna work with fit into, you know, into that category. Or it could be the brand itself. But, um, yeah, having a community that you could just be like, it's a tube strike, but you can, you come to this 9:00 AM breakfast and everyone can come and still turns out.
[00:06:11] Cause there was another brand that I didn't know that had a lunch, um, event to go to. And in my defense it was actually impossible to get there. Like, I, I had to walk an hour across London to get to where I needed to be in the afternoon. Um, I couldn't get there, but there are loads of people I know that just said I can't go to that event.
[00:06:28] And it's, if I knew the PR, I'd probably really try to get there. There'd be a way. But, um, I didn't, I didn't have brand loyalty there and it was really hard to get there. So, um, with all of that I felt really bad. But yeah, that, um, it makes a difference.
[00:06:53] Joyann: Yeah, it makes a difference. But speaking about moonlighting, sorry.
[00:06:59] Was that, cause I have always known you as both influencer and agency owner.
[00:07:04] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:07:05] Joyann: Did the being an influencer influence influence you, inspire you to start the agency?
[00:07:11] Charlotte: So I often get interviewed and people think that I was an, an influencer turned marketer.
[00:07:19] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:19] Charlotte: Um, so I always wanted to work in marketing. That was always my plan. When I was at school. I used to put on, um, I actually got reminded of this the other day, but I got, I used to put on gigs in my local area and everything was like marketing based. We used to have like what we call flyers. There was always a charity link. It was just like, I was really into like, pushing these events.
[00:07:38] They were always sold out. We always made loads of money for the charities. Um, there was a lot of underage drinking and that's probably the reason why it sold out. But they're, um, it was good times. I was also 16 at the time, so that's 16, 17. Um, but the, uh, the idea of marketing and social media has always been embedded into my brain.
[00:07:58] Myspace was my, everything. Like that is where I decided that whatever this is, I wanna do that as a living. I dunno what that is. So I was really into coding, um, and all of that stuff. So I studied languages at uni, went uh, graduated and during my last year at uni, I was doing a bit of freelancing for a social media company.
[00:08:19] Did some internships, um, slash apprenticeships, but unofficial. They were just basically really poorly paid jobs that, um, I learned a lot from. And, uh, just started doing social media for, for like brands that didn't really understand it, but because I've always understood it, because I made it my mission too.
[00:08:40] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:40] Charlotte: That's just what I wanted to do. The blogging came at a similar time cause I started blogging 2010, but that wasn't really to be a blogger or an influencer cause that. It wasn't really on my mind at the time, that came in 2012. Um, I started a blog cause I wanted to document my travels cause I, I did a year abroad and then I found like YouTube and the blogging world.
[00:09:07] So I was like, oh, this is cool. And then I created a fashion blog, but I never took it seriously. Like I took it seriously as in like, I bought the domain. I did all the marketing stuff that I knew how to do. Cause I was a professional marketer, but I always knew that I wanted to work in marketing. I wanted like that corporate role and then—
[00:09:25] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:25] Charlotte: The stuff was like a bonus. Um, and then as I got more into my career, so I used to head, um, the digital side for Hello Kitty, well, Sam Rio, which is the, the brand that owns Hello Kitty. And I used to look after the E M E A markets and I loved that because influencer was a really big part of my strategy and, um, I knew loads of influencers cause I wasn't influencers.
[00:09:51] So I was able to really build great connections with creators at the time because I was going to events, I was meeting them, I was seeing what other people were doing, and I was like, oh, we should use this person. And we just created really cool campaigns off the back of the fact that I had a really good network.
[00:10:06] And it was a mixture between being an influencer and always being out and seeing people and going to the events and posting content and building relationships online. And then also, um, being a professional marketer. And I realised then that was 2016. But I realised then that that for me was always gonna be my, my path.
[00:10:29] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:30] Charlotte: Um, even if I didn't do so, there was like a year where I did loads of campaigns as an influencer, which was great, but then there's time like now where I don't, I think I've done one this year, um, because I just don't, I don't really have the time to do it, which, it's sad cause you know it's great money. But.
[00:10:49] Joyann: Yeah, I would say like. So it sounds like you have the hybrid of a really good networker in marketing because I think that's what happens with marketers who are good at networking. They become known one way or another.
[00:11:03] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:11:04] Joyann: With now doing more agency stuff. Yeah. Do you still feel, because there's this always this level, there's more senior, you go to less the practitioner, you actually are in the thing.
[00:11:15] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:11:16] Joyann: How is that feeling?
[00:11:17] Charlotte: I feel, I have been feeling a bit disconnected from the influence space because I've gone from working on campaigns and, and being an influencer myself. And then on the other side, working in campaigns with my team and being like the creative director for a lot of the campaigns to now being the CEO.
[00:11:35] Cuz in the last year I've jumped from founder to C founder and CEO, which was an important step for me because I, I. I didn't ever feel that comfortable calling myself a CEO cause I didn't do what a CEO did. I didn't understand what that was. And now I've, I've, um, I understand my job and I've, yeah, I've created my role to be just a bit, a bit more boring.
[00:11:56] Um, but it's, it's good. It's gonna build the business to where it needs to be. But, um, I definitely feel disconnected. So something I'm doing now, um, is launching my TikTok and it's really humbling and funny, but I'm not doing it to become a TikTok star. Um, even though internally we joke about it, um, I'm doing it because I need to understand how this app works for the creators.
[00:12:23] Cause on Instagram, I fully understand how it works and so do on my team in the, in the sense that we use me to test things. So if something goes wrong, it doesn't matter cuz it's me. So we like use my account. There are things like putting spend on influencers posts can sometimes affect their engagement.
[00:12:43] And now we, it's happened to me recently where my engagement has dropped from like 3.5% to 0.86% because a brand put money behind my post.
[00:12:54] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:55] Charlotte: Um, in January. And it just didn't, it just didn't work in the way it should have. I, the, the, the audience wasn't the correct target audience. It, yeah. The engagement just wasn't there.
[00:13:06] So because of that, um, my, yeah, my numbers dropped, but we knew this was happening and we've been warned by other talent managers that they don't want spend behind their posts and, and things like that. So, um, now I've got a case study where I feel comfortable showing my numbers and maybe not my own talent because they don't wanna be kind of thrown under the bus.
[00:13:26] Joyann: Yeah.
[00:13:26] Charlotte: I feel comfortable throwing myself under the bus because I'm very aware of like the. What my job is and being an influencer is very much a side, side part for me. So yeah, I um, there's definitely a disconnect at the moment, but I'm gonna fill the gap because I've got this new side hustle where I'm building my strategy around TikTok, but then that helps the creators that we work with.
[00:13:50] If I can build, cause I'm the strategy leader, so if I can successfully build, build my own strategy, then obviously I'm gonna be able to build everyone else's.
[00:13:59] Joyann: So I'll somewhat challenge you on the successfully part, because it's a weird one. I think when you are practitioner and a strategist, I think we successfully experiment.
[00:14:11] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:14:12] Joyann: Cause I've had it where people are like, oh, you're a social media manager, your account should be this. And I'm like, I'm not an influencer, I'm a social media manager. I, that was my background. I experiment on my account. I don't expect it to be successful because I'm trying so many things, so many strategies.
[00:14:27] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:14:27] Joyann: It, it doesn't make sense to the algorithm because it's all over the place. It's not consistent in one thing.
[00:14:33] Charlotte: Exactly.
[00:14:34] Joyann: Um, but yeah, that's the kind of the sword, the sword we fall on.
[00:14:38] Charlotte: I don't think I, so I have this, um, a friend of mine who's a social media, um, freelancer, and she has one of the most incredible accounts I've ever come across.
[00:14:48] It's beautiful, but she doesn't have loads of followers, but she doesn't care. She doesn't wanna be an influencer. She's just creating beautiful content and she, yeah, it's just amazing. But she, she's not posting to grow and I always look at her and think, it's so funny cause I know how talented she is as a social media, um, professional.
[00:15:09] And I'm like, I wonder if any of her clients ever look at her con like, yeah content and be like, oh, you know, she doesn't get that many, she hasn't got many followers. She doesn't get that many likes. But if you look at the content that she creates, that is really showcasing her ability. Um, but yeah, it's just, it's an interesting world because the marketing world is all about vanity, me, vanity metrics and, um, you can really get lost in it.
[00:15:35] And I see a lot of agency owners or people freelancers who just switch overnight and like actually know I wanna become an influencer, um, and then start kind of selling their soul in a way that's not actually, uh, yeah, it's not who they are or, or what they're actually capable of. And I just find it really interesting though, that social media blows my mind, but I think that's why I am a really bad consumer because I understand marketing so well that—
[00:16:07] Joyann: You analyse it. Mm-hmm. I have like, every, the disconnect I'm having now is people saying that they've bought stuff off Instagram ads and I'm just like, I have never felt the need to, but probably because I'm breaking down the ad rather than consuming the content to buy it.
[00:16:22] Charlotte: Yeah. I love Instagram ads. So I have, um, like a whole photo of like ads that I've seen on, like, I'm really into like, buy my course, sign up to my newsletter, da, da da.
[00:16:35] I love those ones. And I don't have a course that currently is selling online or anything, maybe in the future, um, or a newsletter like that that I'm pushing to consumers. Um, but I love to analyse them and I down, I, I'm a sucker for those ones. I download things, but it's cause I wanna analyse what it is.
[00:16:53] Joyann: Yeah.
[00:16:53] Charlotte: So I've got another email address that I literally, if you go in it, it's like, it's awful. It's just loads of those, um, like get-rich fast schemes where I'm just trying to analyze the content cause they do work, these people do make money. So I'm like, tell me more. It's just a different world. Whereas like product, I'm not, I've never bought product off of an ads like an advertisement.
[00:17:18] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:18] Charlotte: But I have definitely bought products off of influencers, um.
[00:17:21] Joyann: Yes, influencers and that side of things that I have. But I've seen people in front of me swipe on an ad and buy it there and then, and I'm just like, I, I don't understand because. But mention something about the differences in between the styles of influencing and I'm wondering if there's anything you can share in regards to the American style and the British style.
[00:17:45] I feel like it's different on the external looking in, but have you experienced differences?
[00:17:50] Charlotte: We don't work too much in the US we're very Europe based. But it is something I talk about a lot. So influencer marketing, from what I can see and with friends who work in the States, um, in the US is it's a bit more hardcore.
[00:18:07] And I think it's just because they've got a bigger audience. You know, we're in a tiny island in the UK so we're really not pushing that many people unless we're doing an international campaign. Um, in the US it's a lot bigger, so they've got more opportunity. So I do definitely see things like. They're not as consistent with their kind of legal side.
[00:18:35] So like we are, the ASA, the Advertising standard Authority in the UK are really cracking down on influencer campaigns and not using hashtag ad or ad or advertisement and disclosing your ads appropriately. They're really cracking down on that, which is like, I'm all for structure and I think it's really important that we have rules in our, in our, um, industry.
[00:18:59] But I don't fully agree with how they see advertising in the influencer space. I think they are very disconnected. Um, they compare, in the UK it's a bit of a, um, tangent, but in the UK they compare influencer marketing as if it's like TV advertisement or entertainment. They, it is very much the same thing.
[00:19:21] So like recently, um, and actually Sarah Mc, well, Corq Studios and Sarah Mccorkdale, the founder, um, of Corq, have just released a podcast and I listened to it an episode yesterday. Um, it's just like influence insights. It's like four-minute snippets. Um, and they, um, were talking about the ASA and how they're cracking down on, um, influencers who own brands.
[00:19:49] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:50] Charlotte: Not disclosing when they're posting about the brands. So if I were to have a water bottle brand and I was saying, oh, you know this, I love this water bottle that is from my brand and I don't use ads, um, there's like this assumption that the audience doesn't know they're being sold to, but like, if I was to talk about SevenSix that I have an assumption that my followers know that I have an ulterior motive because SevenSix is my brand.
[00:20:18] Joyann: Yeah.
[00:20:19] Charlotte: So I think they, I and I. I have a lot of issue with ad using ad because it does sometimes, and I know the platforms don't like to say this, but we can see it, you know, it's there, the data is showing it, it does, um, sometimes plummet and ruin your ads. So if you post just the hashtag, just the word ads is there's something algorithm algorithmically that.
[00:20:45] Joyann: Okay.
[00:20:46] Charlotte: It just like if you post an ad, ads are tricky cuz you're not always gonna get this unless you can, you're a creator that can be consistent with all your content and you can get buy-in from the brand to make sure that you, your, even if it's an ad, it looks like an organic piece of content that you would've naturally posted.
[00:21:05] Um, rather than following like a strict brief. Um, aud audiences don't normally engage with your content as much if it's an ad because they know they're being sold to. So that's fine. But we can see like story views go completely plummeting, um, going down when you post an ad. But like, how is that, in my opinion, I'm not a data expert, but like the, the audience hasn't even seen the story yet, so how can they think, oh, there's an ad coming.
[00:21:40] Joyann: They, they, they don't know it's coming on a data science, AI aspect, it would make sense and they wouldn't be able to explain it. There are aspects of AI models that are just left to satisfy who they're serving. So if a vast majority of people naturally click off ads, they start assuming it across the board and then that gets naturally associated with that tag.
[00:22:03] I'm curious though, because if that's the case with the hashtag ad, which is a very short tag,
[00:22:08] Charlotte: And it sometimes it's not even a hashtag, sometimes it's just ad, it's just—
[00:22:11] Joyann: Just the word?
[00:22:12] Charlotte: Just ad, yeah. Ad or hashtag ad, because you don't actually have to use a hashtag. It could be ad hashtag ad or advertisement.
[00:22:19] Joyann: So the stats are showing that it's going down. Then what about, cause I also saw some stats around when you hashtag Black women or hashtag anything that was like LGBT, there was some negative situ, negative results for influencers using those hashtags. Mainly on TikTok, I saw it.
[00:22:36] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:22:37] Joyann: How does that look when you combine those two things? Because I know a lot of the influencers you work f with, uh, or work with, uh, part of various communities.
[00:22:46] Charlotte: Yeah, so we've actually been all right with the creators that we look after. We haven't had. We've had one of our creators who violated guidelines because she naturally swears quite a lot. So that's one thing that we didn't realise.
[00:23:00] And recently we've been like, oh, she's now been banned from using certain products on certain platforms because she just says the, can you swear on this podcast?
[00:23:09] Joyann: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:23:10] Charlotte: She just says, bitch a lot. And it's not like, she's not being horrible to anyone. It's not abuse, it's not, um, bullying behavior. It's like also, a lot of the time, it's to her friends and, um, she's been, yeah, banned from using certain tools as like punishment for it.
[00:23:26] So we're working with that. Um, but that makes sense. It is, it's a profanity. Like, I, I get it, but I found it quite funny. Um, It's not funny at all, uh, for her platform, but I just, the, the context.
[00:23:41] Joyann: It's the context, but in going back to the ASA related it to TV ads, you can say bitch on TV, so.
[00:23:47] Charlotte: Yeah. So it's not necess, but that isn't ASA, that's like the specific platforms and it's like protecting, um, from bad behavior, like bullying and stuff.
[00:23:58] So I don't, I don't know, but um, yeah, we've been really lucky with our talent that we haven't had, as far as I'm aware, anything negative. Um, but I don't know how much a lot of our creators use hashtags to be completely honest with you.
[00:24:14] Joyann: Really.
[00:24:15] Charlotte: Um, yeah, some of them do, some of them don't. I think they thrive off of just, um, making great content that gets sent around. But yeah, the shares are quite high for a lot of our creators.
[00:24:31] Joyann: I know one of your creators pretty well, Beulah, um, Beulah is like, she had a phase where she was going through memes and was just hitting the mark.
[00:24:41] Charlotte: I love that phase. I want that phase to come back. Yeah.
[00:24:45] Joyann: Meme queen. But yeah, so a lot of your, for those who don't know, Beulah is, uh, influencer mainly in the hair world and she's very dark-skinned.
[00:24:53] And we've had conversations, I think I have on the podcast actually, I've had conversations with her about just the lack of representation of darker skin hair influencers within the Black hair community.
[00:25:03] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Joyann: And I had a look on the website and you have quite a lot of influencers who are from those backgrounds that aren't getting spotlighted as much in different, in makeup hair.
[00:25:16] Was that your intention to work with those influencers? How, how did that come around?
[00:25:20] Charlotte: Absolutely. We, um, so we launched the talent management side in 2020.
[00:25:29] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:29] Charlotte: Um. And it's something I always wanted to do, but Covid and that lockdown and our growth really pushed us forward with that, which was great. I thought we were going to launch it in like 2020, maybe like this year, 2023.
[00:25:41] But 2020. Um, we went straight in and I said, I want to lo as a business, we were focused around working with people of colour and minority groups, um, pushing them to the forefront of campaigns, putting them in spotlights so brands can see them. So I said, when we launch our talent management side, I specifically want to work with people of colour, um, because they are under, underrepresented.
[00:26:06] A lot of agencies in 2020 weren't picking them up or us up. Um, and it was a need. Um, so when we launched, we launched with I think four different creators. Um, and now we're on 11 and growing. As our team grows, we're able to grow the roster, but we are a boutique agency so we can't grow too far cause otherwise we're not gonna be able to get anyone any work cause it will be too, uh, too thinly spread.
[00:26:40] But we really wanted to share with the brands that we know. And bear in mind, I've worked in marketing and as an influencer for the last decade plus. So my little black book is quite big.
[00:26:55] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:55] Charlotte: So I wanted to share these creators with the little black book that I had and then create more contacts and that's what we've done.
[00:27:02] But it was because we knew that a lot of these creators that we, we signed, they had like fan bases. They had people that were like, excuse the Gen Z term, but like gagging for their content. Yeah. Like literally like Michael Brooks is someone that we look after and we signed him. He was like one of our first signings.
[00:27:24] He is one of the few people I know that has like. If you look in his tagged photos, he's got fans, people recreate his, his work, his art, and that is so beautiful to see. And he is mixed race, light-skinned. So he is racial, he looks racially ambiguous and that's something we, we talk about a lot. Um, so he, something I love about that man is how he refuses to take up space where he doesn't feel like he should, um, be, or where someone else's voice should be heard more than him.
[00:27:56] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:57] Charlotte: And I am just obsessed with how his brain works and how empowering he is or the empowerment he gives to specifically Black women and skin, Black women. Um, so I'm a big fan of his and, um, we wanted to showcase, but he's also from the LGBTQ community. He had so many people using his looks and, and sharing, you know, his content, but perhaps just really weren't seeing it.
[00:28:21] I met him in 20, 2019 at an event. And one of the questions he asked at, at the panel talk in, in, in, in this event was, um, I'm looking to get more brand partnership deals, but at the moment I'm just getting gifting and I don't really know how to like, turn that, um, turn that around. And I remember the answer.
[00:28:40] I was infuriated. The answer from the panel was, oh, just, you know, if you work hard, the brands will see you. And and I, I was, I was literally like clenching my fists, grinding my teeth. Like this is not okay. So I went up to him, I was like, I'm a really big fan of your work. I, I followed him on Twitter at the time and I was like, if you ever need any help, just let me know, but you are doing a really great job, but it's not you, it's the industry. Just know that.
[00:29:06] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:06] Charlotte: And then a year later, um, I messaged him, I was, I dunno if you remember me, but I'm obsessed with you and I really wanna sign you. We don't have any experience in this. And you'd be our first signing. Um, So you have to take a, like a, a chance on us, but you know, we love you. And now Yeah, he's still with us.
[00:29:25] He is thriving as a creator. He's really come into his own, um, professionally. He's a professional creator by trade. That's the what he does. He used to be a makeup artist. He stopped, um, makeup artistry. Um, in that sense. He now just has private clients, um, as and when, um, but his focus is on art in the beach space.
[00:29:48] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:49] Charlotte: And he's a perfect example of that kind of turnaround of like, he just needed someone to back him. And the same with Buer, same with all of our other creatives. They just needed someone to back them and be. Oh, you wanna come? So we get a lot of, um, people come for like a certain type of influencer cause we have a full spectrum of creators and that's always been really important to us.
[00:30:12] Just making sure that you can see the world in our roster.
[00:30:16] Joyann: So question on that brief aspect. Um, I have had, so in some of my workshops where they're like, oh, we've tried to get influencers from this agency, but they keep sending us white men. And I'm just like, did you ask them for Black women? Oh, we can't ask for that.
[00:30:33] Charlotte: Oh, you absolutely can.
[00:30:35] Joyann: Thank you. I just needed someone to say it
[00:30:38] Charlotte: Like you, there's a need. I don't, I don't see that as being a problem. If you can spot a need in your content or on your platform where you are not targeting enough, you've got a Black audience that you need to serve or you want to serve a Black audience and you don't have them.
[00:30:57] You're gonna have to find creators that fit, you know, fit into that box. And you have to be specific. So we launched our influencer network off the back of that. So if you come to us, we've got a database of, uh, I dunno what the numbers are now cause we've, we've just, um, we're actually rebranding it. So when this comes out, you are probably here it as the Creator Club, not the Influencer Network.
[00:31:18] Um, so I think that the switchovers next week, but, um, we are just over a thousand, so about 1500 influencers that we work with on a non-exclusive basis. But it's a database on our end. So you, we ask them very specific questions around their, them as a person. So their ethnicity, um, where they, you know, where they're from, did they speak other languages?
[00:31:41] Um, Are they part of the LGBTQ+ community? Do they have a, a long-term illness? The, all these kind of things. And if someone says to us, okay, we really wanna focus on Black women in Manchester, who are beauty creators, um, can you send us a list? Yeah. We're like, click, click, click. Here you go. Um, so we do a lot of that with brands and they love us for it because it's so quick and easy.
[00:32:08] Um, we're always trying to add more creators onto the, onto the database or into the club. So that's why we're, we're rebranding it and making it really fun and accessible and exciting. Um, because we just wanna attract the, the most amazing influences. And you could be signed or unsigned you to, to join the club.
[00:32:28] Um, for us. We'll always go through your management. Um, if, if you are, if you are signed, but we just wanna have access to really strong creators and we have it. But you know, there's. Millions of creators across the globe. We wanna get as many of them in front of our brands. So yeah, that's what we do. But it's so important to just know what you have.
[00:32:53] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:54] Charlotte: We have this network of amazing people. We know who they are. We know anecdotally, cause we've met a lot of them, what they're capable of. So if recently we've had like someone that we sent abroad for a campaign and we knew who they were. We knew they could drive. It was for a car company. Um, it was a travel thing, like everything like aligned for this person.
[00:33:16] We didn't even have to think about anyone else. We're like, oh, they're perfect. Sent, sent them, you know, to Spain for this campaign. Um, but that's what I love about my company. We just, we do really random things that just tend to work.
[00:33:31] Joyann: But I think without directly saying it. You've done the thing that a lot of people in this sector, when they're looking for diverse influencers miss. You still make sure they fit brief overall.
[00:33:42] Charlotte: Oh yeah.
[00:33:43] Joyann: It's not just, you've been saying it and I'm just like, I don't know. You realise how rare that is. Especially when I talk to clients, they're like, oh, we've just had this campaign. Oh um, could you just, could you just find someone And I'm like, what is the topic? What is the, this thing?
[00:33:59] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:34:00] Joyann: What is, what is the thing? I'm not just gonna send you a random Black woman or send you, I need context.
[00:34:06] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:34:06] Joyann: And you do it so naturally.
[00:34:09] Charlotte: Yeah. It just because it makes sense and I think it's, cause I've, I've worked in-house my entire career and then I started an agency so I know what, if we worked with an agency, I would be, cause my brands always had such tight budget and I'm also very tight, frugal, some would say.
[00:34:26] So I did, I never wanna spend money on something I could do myself. So I always wanna ensure that whatever the ROI I desired that would be given to me from the agency. So I want to ensure that when clients come to us, they're getting what they want. And sometimes they don't know how to articulate what they want and they don't really know what they want.
[00:34:44] Um, we have a lot of clients who, they really wanna get into this Gen Zed market and they really wanna do stuff, but they're just so not there. They don't understand the language, they don't understand what they're looking for. And we'll send them people over and they'll be like, Hmm, I'm not sure. And then we'll be like, why aren't you sure?
[00:35:02] And the reasons are always because like, they don't look that professional. They don't this da da da, and it's because they don't understand the TikTok world. You know? They don't understand that the content that's gonna perform is like chaotic. Like basically teenagers running around telling their fun stories in a way that their peers—
[00:35:23] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:24] Charlotte: Are used to hearing. And I think that's really important to note that if you pick an agency, they should know how that works. So we know I'm not a Gen Zed person and I'm really learning from my team, but I have a team that really understands the audience that we're trying to target. And, um, we can feed that back to the client.
[00:35:46] And if they don't, sometimes we get pushback and we're like, okay, talk us through the why on your side and we'll tell you the why on ours. And it's always because they just don't get it.
[00:35:57] Joyann: They don't get it at all. Um, I'm curious to know, so that's the big agencies, is there anything you would give or any advice you would give to a small business owner or a solo marketeer wanting to diversify the influencers they work with?
[00:36:10] Like, cause I've heard some horror stories about how some influencers get approached and just generally, um, even go into some of the stuff that I've seen in the screenshot from the, uh, pay gap report. What tips would you give to small business owners when approaching influencers?
[00:36:28] Charlotte: I think if we take it back to basics, so when I do my, so I do influence marketing training courses and inclusive marketing training courses, but it's specifically around the influencer marketing world.
[00:36:41] Um, I make that really clear because that is what I know outside. Like I know how marketing works, but I've spent my entire career really honing in on this niche. And if it ever goes away, I'm screwed. But, um, I. I think I always hone in on traditional marketing practices of like building your buyer personas and understanding who your target audience are and all of that kind of stuff when building your influencer network or community.
[00:37:07] And I really make people understand that you might have Sophie, Millie and Jennifer as your, you know, uh, buyer personas or customer personas, but Sophie, Millie and Jessica could be three different types of people. They're not one person, as in Sophie might be three. Sophie might be, you know, she'll have a certain income and um, maybe lives in a certain area, go into a certain school, whatever.
[00:37:37] But she could be Black, she could be South Asian, she could be East Asian. She could be like all these different types of people. She could actually be gay. Like there's so many different things that she could be, um, We're thinking about her as one person. Because when we put things together, as much as we're trying to take it from the data that we have, we're also taking it from our, like our biases and our, and our personal experience.
[00:38:00] So when we think about the Sophies that we know, maybe the Sophie that I would know is different to a Sophie that, you know, one of the girls I went to school with, with no, um, and I went to school in Hartfordshire, so I'm using it as an example. Um, it's predominantly white. Um, the area I grew up in was a predominantly white area.
[00:38:18] So, um, I think it's really important just to know that and know that sometimes you might need a little bit of a helping hand. I love a focus group. I love taking people out and having a chat with them, um, and bringing them into the fold. So, okay. A lot of the times you need to diversify your people by finding someone that can help you do that.
[00:38:47] And if you don't have the budget to do that, you need to be really creative in a way that's mutually beneficial. So if you don't have two grand a month to spend on an agency, but you do have 50 pounds that you could take someone out for a coffee and a, you know, a backload of product that you could give them, why don't you say, I wanna do this.
[00:39:10] Um, I, so let's say it's a, a beauty brand and they really wanna find, you know, the right people to, to speak to. They found one creator that they love and they think, yeah, they'll be really good, um, to then build their kind of community around. Um, take that person out and be like, listen, absolutely love what, what you're doing.
[00:39:31] Either would love to work with you on a freelance basis where you just kind of work with us as a creator, but then also. Um, introduce us to other people so we can build our, our, our network. That's not gonna cost you the same as an agency or I'm really putting us out jobs here. But, or you take them out and you, you know, say I wanna throw an event or I wanna do whatever you pay them for one campaign and say you are in charge.
[00:39:56] Why don't you invite your people to this dinner or to these drinks, or whatever it might be. Let's get you involved. Then you are like building your community and then you've got the backing of that person. And these are just like tiny little things that you could do. Um, some of them will involve money, some of them won't.
[00:40:13] Um, and then also working with agencies that understand you, that different budgets. SevenSix work with a lot of small businesses and we have a small business rate that's different to our, which I think is very common practice that's different to our, um, kind of normal rate. And we don't take on as many small businesses because, um, we just wouldn't be able to afford to, but we do.
[00:40:36] We're, for us, equity is really important, so we do want to help as many people as possible, even if it's, you know, we can't work with you, but here's a downloadable that we've created that you can like, get some information from, um, that we don't with the world. Yeah. Um, but there's so many things you can do.
[00:40:56] Joyann: Um, you mentioned a downloadable, tell me about the pay gap report and
[00:41:02] Charlotte: My baby. So.
[00:41:03] Joyann: Your baby.
[00:41:04] Charlotte: We, in 2021, we launched an influencer pay gap report, which focused around, essentially we work with so many creators that we love and we don't always see the. In the same way from brands. So there's definitely an issue for us between our maybe racially ambiguous creators and our darker skin tone creators, or our, um, kind of lighter skin creators and our darker skin, uh, like mixed race, like visibly Black mixed race creators and, and vice versa, same as South Asian, whatever.
[00:41:38] There's, there's a difference between, with how sometimes they're received by brands.
[00:41:42] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:42] Charlotte: And we were so aware of it. Like everyone in our business, we have email examples of the, the, the ignorance and the, the, the ways that they get around. Not even talking about the fact that they don't wanna work with this person because they look like that.
[00:41:59] Um, and it was really bumming us out because we wanted to like, in the nicest way possible, be like, this is racist. But in our industry we have to be very careful because, you know what could. A call out for one creator could jeopardize something for another.
[00:42:20] Joyann: Yeah.
[00:42:20] Charlotte: So we have to be very, um, specific with how we choose to, to voice our concerns.
[00:42:27] Um, and I was like, right, we need data. That's all we need. So we knew what the data would say, we just needed to get it from people. So we, we sent a survey out to brands, agencies, and influencers. The brand and agencies had one, influencers had another, and it basically talked through the, um, the budgets and what they would normally pay a creator for brand and agencies with no race, um, or ethnicity involved. You didn't mention it once.
[00:42:55] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:56] Charlotte: And then for the, um, for the influencers, we ask them specific questions about, um, how much they charge, do they feel comfortable with, how they charge, what their, um, what their ethnicity is. Uh, I can't remember the exact details that we asked 'em for, but it was all about finding out who they were as well as what they charged, as well as how they felt about the link between the two.
[00:43:20] And the, the numbers were really, um, jarring for a lot of people to read, but we knew that what they would be. And, um, it basically showed that there was a massive gap between Black and Southeast Asian influencers. We didn't actually look into skin tones on this one, and we definitely should have, if we do another, um, race-related report, we, we'll, we'll, we'll look at skin tones.
[00:43:46] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:46] Charlotte: Um, which was amis for us, but we, we know, you know, we know between us, but what's going on, um, and. We, yeah, the numbers really showed that there was a massive difference in pricing at how influences price themselves, but then also with how confident they were with their pricing. So that led to us then being like, okay, cool.
[00:44:09] So if we want to, before we release the report, we were like, right, if we wanna make a difference here, what for me, I'm one about action. So yes, I've got this data and I can share it with the world, but what can I also do to help make a change? So we basically got their pricing that they gave us, and then we made it, um, we like visualised it, analysed it.
[00:44:34] Um, we analysed the data and we basically pulled, um, pricing brackets from what people were charging, um, along. Um, insights from how much we pay our creators. Um, and we made pricing brackets for Instagram specifically. So if you have one to 5,000 followers, you'll get this much, five to 10,000 followers.
[00:44:53] You'll get this much, um, based on good engagement. Um, and we noted that good engagement at the time was between two to 4%. Um, and it did so well. Like it, it's used now. That same report is used across the board. I have had people from some of the biggest companies in the world stop me at events and be like, oh, I actually sent your report to our internal comms team this, this week.
[00:45:18] Cause they had problems with pricing. Um, and we wanted to, you know, make sure that we're pricing fairly. I've got creators that have completely changed their lives, um, because they've been pricing incorrectly and they now know what they should be using. We've had people send the report as, um, a response to.
[00:45:37] Poorly paid campaigns and say, you know, this is what, what this is. Um, we worked really hard to, to get that out, so I'm, I'm really proud of that one. But then we had so many people ask us for another report with more insights. So they wanted, um, data on TikTok and YouTube and an update on Instagram if, if there was one.
[00:45:58] So we sent out another report this year, another survey, sorry, this year that, um, asked about pricing how much people price themselves for, for those three platforms, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Instagram was fine. Um, not much had changed apart from nano influencers. They're paid more, but that's because of the rise of UGC content creation and, and people paying smaller creators to just to make content for their, for their social media platforms.
[00:46:23] Um, TikTok was so alarming, I felt physically sick. Um, we had so many creators send through the numbers that they were charging, and they were so low because TikTok is a wild, wild.
[00:46:36] Joyann: Low in relation to creators of colour and white creators, what?
[00:46:41] Charlotte: Just across the board, it was bizarre. And we actually, we have the data, but we haven't analysed the kind of creators of colour versus white creator data at all.
[00:46:53] Um, because I'm not that interested in that anymore. I've moved beyond that and I, I know it sounds crazy. We did a report last year in collaboration with MSL Group, which talks through the influence of pay gap again, and understanding if there's been a change and things like that and, and that it's still bad.
[00:47:15] You know, there's still a massive gap between creators of colour and white creators. And it jumps when it's a, a Black creator compared to a white creator and a South Asian creator compared to a white creator. There's also issues with diversity in terms of age and um, ability, and there's massive pay gaps there.
[00:47:34] Um, the, the data exists. I've done it. I I just, I can't keep regurgitating the same narrative.
[00:47:43] Joyann: You, oh, my heart just sank then, because I hear you, cause you, you are in it and sometimes when you're in it, it feels like it's, it's known. It's just everyone should know.
[00:47:53] Charlotte: I know, I know. But we only released that report last year, so I'm like, there, there's gonna be no change.
[00:47:58] There was no change between 2021 and 2022. I'm not gonna do another report in 2023. Um, we'll do one in, in like three years time to see if there's been a change. But that, that's, it's not long enough to, to see a difference. But what is important is giving tools to, to create change.
[00:48:13] Joyann: Okay.
[00:48:13] Charlotte: So this report, um, we gave people tools to price themselves correctly, no matter
[00:48:20] what you looked like, how old you were, if you, you know, fall fell into whatever diversity pillar category. These are the tool, this is the tool that you need to set your minimum pricing for a campaign with a brand. And we talked through, it was a very specific report. We talked through the pricing bracket, what engagement looks like, how to, how to measure it.
[00:48:44] We gave insights on what people looked for in TikTok. So it's not about followers, it's about likes and views. Um, it's about consistency in those likes as well. Um, and, and those views. And that's how you can charge. We talked through contracts and you know, this is your base rate, but then if they wanna have you exclusively as a creator, um, for a month or two weeks, whatever it is, you have to charge them more if they want extra deliverables.
[00:49:09] Post on TikTok and Instagram or post a video and a story, you charge more. Um, we talked through how to price yourself as a creator. We gave all the information. So if you in 2023 don't know how to price yourself as a creator, it's cause you haven't seen the report. And we're now trying to create a strategy to push this report out to, to as many people.
[00:49:29] But in the first three days of it going live, it had a thousand downloads and 70% of those downloads came from creators and the rest were from, um, brands and agencies. So people are using the report.
[00:49:41] Joyann: I, I think I know what my, my thing is, and this is my bias. You are focused on giving tools to the creators.
[00:49:51] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:49:52] Joyann: I guess my gut is having a moment of my lack of faith in humanity, of like, even if they have the pricing and they go into these agencies and brands and so forth. But that is not, you don't have to do the whole thing. I'm taking a step back in what I'm, I'm not like reassessing.
[00:50:10] Charlotte: I'm totally aware of that.
[00:50:11] And we are doing some work. So we've, we've, um, we're working quite closely with MSL Group and, um, some other people to really talk through pricing and, and educate brands and other agencies. And what's, what's important, the only issue I have with our industry, the advertising industry in general, is they don't care.
[00:50:31] And this is really sad, um, but when we posted the report, um, out to press. It didn't get picked up this time because it's not about race. And that is the trending topic right now. And it really blew my mind. And we were like, and the same has happened in the past when, unless it's got that hot angle
[00:50:53] Joyann: Yeah.
[00:50:53] Charlotte: On like racism, you know? And I'm like, no, no, no. This is what we need to end the issue. Not end it, but like to help the issue. Like, I don't wanna talk about data anymore. That's showing that there's a, a massive contrast between what people are being paid. I wanna give people the ability to be paid properly no matter what, who they are.
[00:51:16] And then we have a, a, a kind of standardisation in the industry, but it will never be standard because of all the, the things that go into a campaign. A campaign is never, and I, we say that in the report, it's never just post this. There's always, you know, extra usage or whatever it might be that exchanges the price, but, It really blew my mind when we pitched it out to press that no one cared because it wasn't about racism.
[00:51:39] Joyann: So you are this, I, this sounds weird, but going back to some of the very early conversations you and I ever had.
[00:51:47] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:51:47] Joyann: This means that you're on the right path. Cause in three years time they will pick up that report. Cause it's the same thing with inclusive marketing. When we both first started.
[00:51:55] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:51:56] Joyann: Everyone was just like, what is this term? What is going on? We were the crazy ones. Still are, you've gone to the other level of not crazy, but, you know, thinking in a new way.
[00:52:05] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:52:06] Joyann: Like the fact that I'm, I, the issue I'm having now is that people wanna talk about inclusive boxing and they're still trying to fit it into their, their for good budget or you know, they're doing a specific campaign and I'm like, no, I wanna do.
[00:52:22] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:52:22] Joyann: I wanna do intersectional in what you're doing now.
[00:52:24] I don't wanna do Black history month. I don't wanna do, but that's where they still are.
[00:52:28] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:52:28] Joyann: And it's, so every time we talk, I'm always just like, I see the, the comparisons. Like where you are hitting is where I'm hitting now, where they're still stuck there and we're trying to move forward.
[00:52:38] Charlotte: It really annoys me cause I'm always just like, bet on me.
[00:52:41] Bet on me. Because I created the, I was one of, in this space, so inclusive marketing is a, is a weird little space that there aren't many people doing it. It was like in your space, you were a pioneer because you were one of the few people that actually like created a company around it. In the, in influencer space, there isn't an inclusive marketing I think.
[00:53:00] No, there's, there's like one that I knew of, um, when we launched, but it's a complete, it's not, it's nothing like what we do. But yeah, there, there was like one inclusive influencer marketing agency that focused on changing the narrative in the influencer space. Um, but they're so different to what we do and the clients that we have are completely different.
[00:53:19] We are very much kind of mainstream, um, like global brands, whereas they're a bit more niche.
[00:53:26] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:26] Charlotte: Um, and. Just the fact that I built a business when no one was talking about this. I got all the doors shut in my face in 2019, and then 2020, everyone came back. Bet on me that in 23, what I'm saying is gonna be the future.
[00:53:42] So just take what I'm saying and it blows my mind because you can't give me all of these awards, put me in all of your publications, tell me I'm, I'm a pioneer and I'm this, I'm that. And then ignore the fact that I'm telling you something very clearly and you're not ready to hear it. Just, just, just jump in.
[00:53:57] Now. It's just quicker. Just jump in, like, get in my car. Beep. Beep. I'm here.
[00:54:01] Joyann: So I'm laughing because I feel you are paid, but I was, I'm laughing because it's so, I had this whole thing of you get to spotlight, um, saturation, normalisation.
[00:54:13] Charlotte: Okay.
[00:54:13] Joyann: I feel like spotlight is what happened in 2020. There was a spotlight on Black Lives.
[00:54:19] Then we had the whole 2021 of saturation. Saturation. You wanna get everyone to the normalisation stage. They wanna go back to spotlight. You want 'em to be like, oh, it's normal now. No, they, everyone's still stuck in spotlight. And as someone who's gone through that cycle a couple of times, I also did it with International Women's Day where people were reaching out to me only in March to talk about stuff and da da da.
[00:54:42] I'm like, no, let's do it all year round. They're like, no, no, no. And then they come back around in March again. I'm like, I am. Yeah. The, my hope is the industry is moving. I don't think it is yet. I think we've probably got another, we've got two years. One of two things will happen. Technology will force us to change our thinking.
[00:55:02] Charlotte: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:03] Joyann: And I think it's doing that with copywriters right now. They're probably having the A ho a huge time. Um, but also in your space, I think if they continue to create influencers who look like Black and Brown individuals, disabled individuals, LGBT people, and make them in AI fictional models. But white men are making them.
[00:55:26] There is going that, that is a controversy waiting to happen.
[00:55:30] Charlotte: Yeah. We are prepping for this at the moment. It's one of our side projects that we haven't fully stepped our toe in, but I'm ready to take the leap as soon as we finished our rebrand and we've, we're, we're hiring at the moment. So once I've got everything out, all the admin out of the way in my life, the metaverse and AI conversations are really important to me.
[00:55:53] Um, and it's something that I've been for the last year, um, dipping my toe in and out of, but I'm, I'm almost ready to like, take it seriously, but it's a car crash waiting to happen.
[00:56:06] Joyann: Is it waiting to happen?
[00:56:07] Charlotte: I'll be there to, to clean it up. I'm fine, but if we could prevent it, that would be great. So I need to, yeah. Get myself, get myself ready.
[00:56:15] Joyann: I don't think prevent. I will, I'm curious to know how you felt with the whole 2020 situation where I had a little bit of uncomfortableness that it took the murder of a Black man for people to start content contacting me and valuing what I'm doing.
[00:56:31] Charlotte: Yeah. 2020 to 21, 21 was a really tough time.
[00:56:36] Um, we as a business over just after the death of, or the murder of George Floyd, we actually had to take some time off. So I think as a business, we took one to two weeks off collectively, um, where we were getting all these people like come to us and we were just like, no, we can't. Because we were in essentially a space of mourning.
[00:56:58] Um, because we were totally aware of what had happened. Um, we actually had someone leave in 2021 because they just found the job so overwhelming because of that reason.
[00:57:09] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[00:57:09] Charlotte: Um, we were doing so well and they were so great. Um, to this day, one of the brightest kind of marketers I've ever, I've ever met, and I was, when you start to see them leave, but I completely understood. Um, we, it was just so hard and I actually burnt out in 2021 and had to take some time off, which I don't openly talk about.
[00:57:33] Um, I took four months out between December and April, um, 2022, um, which is why I did so many ads in December 2021 because I needed to pay for myself to not be working, um, for a few months. But I, um, it finally caught up. We were able, I think a lot of us were able to ignore what was going on just to get the job done.
[00:57:58] Joyann: Yeah.
[00:57:58] Charlotte: And then all of a sudden you just sit back and you're like, wow.
[00:58:03] Joyann: That equation of things. But I, I, I mentioned that as well because I feel like, and I hope this is not the case, as things are starting to settle a little bit, now I'm feeling it anyways. I think another crisis is on the thing where they'll, uh, and it's, it's inevitable in our industry cause within advertising, within marketing you have PR, public relations, but you have crisis coms.
[00:58:25] You have all these things.
[00:58:26] Charlotte: Yeah.
[00:58:27] Joyann: And you would think that as marketers we're aware that we need to plan, but we're just so reactive. And I feel like in that whole, um, AI created influencer space, they're not gonna, they're not, it's not gonna not happen. It's gonna blow up.
[00:58:44] Charlotte: Oh gosh. I'm so ready for it. I, so I was on, um, uh, I hosted a stage at a conference that was very much around the metaverse with my stage was around the metaverse last year.
[00:58:57] And then I've sat on so many panels and, and watch so many panels that we talk about the metaverse and AI and AR and how everything's about to change. And diversity comes up every single time. And there's always someone singing from that, that hymn sheet that's saying, you know, it's gonna be great. You know, it is gonna be so, um, you know, empowering for diverse people using that, the terms that they like to say, you know, you, you can have, you know, disability and be able to walk in the metaverse if you're in a wheelchair and like all of this crazy shit.
[00:59:35] And I've had, I've been on a panel and I am, Sophie Morgan said it really nicely on a panel that was on last year, um, for a meta event, and she said she's finding the whole concept to be quite scary because there are certain people that want to. Escape their disability. But a lot of people with disabilities don't want to escape their disability.
[01:00:02] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:00:02] Charlotte: Cause that is who they are and that is their identity. And they're worried about what that could, you know, what that could lead to on the internet or not on web three. And then there's the idea of people being able to just become whoever they want to be.
[01:00:19] Joyann: Yep. They already cosplay Blackness now without technology.
[01:00:23] Charlotte: Yeah. It's freaking me out the fact that, you know, there are these AI creators that exist and a lot of them are created by men and they're young women and it, there's just so much wrong with it. There's so much wrong. So I feel like AI is ex, I actually saw a meme yesterday on Instagram. I dunno if I saved it, but it was copywriter and ai and it was like a cartoon and it was like.
[01:00:51] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:00:52] Charlotte: On one side, it was like, I love AI. No AI, no, it was AI can do my job. And it's a guy looking out the window and it's all sunny and smiley on the, on the other side it's AI can do my job. And it's the same guy and it's like raining and like, he's like full-on depressed. And, um, it looks really sad. And it's like that realisation of like, wow, it's wonderful to, wow.
[01:01:12] Actually it's not what I thought it was gonna be. And I no longer exist.
[01:01:19] Joyann: Charlotte, I don't know if this will come with any, I don't know, but based on everything I've researched, the way AI is currently going, we will still be employed for a very long time.
[01:01:30] Charlotte: Yeah.
[01:01:31] Joyann: It is not going to, unfortunately, because a lot of our work is helping other agencies and other individuals correct their biases.
[01:01:42] The AI is just gonna, it's, it's increase in that tenfold.
[01:01:46] Charlotte: Yeah. Because the problem with AI is that, The biases are already in the AI. Because it's taking from, you know, the internet and everything that we've consumed in life. And that's, there's a lot wrong there. So, um, the job continues because, yeah, it's just the same people just regurgitating, regurgitating the content onto the internet and it being pulled into our exciting, wonderful 32nd blog posts that we've been able to generate.
[01:02:16] But it's come from a place where it's just not good content. I dunno. It's, yeah. There's, we do, we digress.
[01:02:25] Joyann: But I ask every guest, and I would love to know what your example is of a campaign that has been either really inclusive or really bad. Either one. Inclusively bad is my new kind of phrasing that they tried, but it. It was just not great.
[01:02:42] Charlotte: I'm gonna go on a positive simply Cause I didn't have time to fully research. And I asked the team in a rush and everyone was like, Charlotte, go and do your own job. So I was like, right. Okay. So I, I'm gonna go on a positive because as a company, we love Pinterest. It's one of our favourite platforms simply because it's, it's not, it's, I don't see it as a competitor to Instagram or TikTok.
[01:03:04] It's, it's its own thing. It's evergreen content. It's a happy place. It, it's, it's lovely. Um, Black History Month since 2020 has been a big thing for Pinterest in the UK. Um, because they, um, employed an employee who happened to be black and has a real. Go get her attitude. So she asks a lot of questions and then was like, oh, are we doing a Black History month campaign for the UK?
[01:03:35] They were like, oh no. And then she built one so consistently now since then, um, was that 2020 or 2021 I think, yeah, I think it must have been 2020. But consistently since then, she's um, she's been fighting and her team, I didn't say fighting cause it's not a fight over there. Pinterest seem to be quite great at like, adopting, adopting things, but her team are quite diverse and the allies are allying, like I'm really into them.
[01:04:05] So they, this year, or sorry, 2022 for Black History Month in October, they decided to slightly change up how they did a campaign in that it wasn't obvious.
[01:04:17] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:04:17] Charlotte: So, uh, I can't go, I dunno how much I'm actually able to share cause I know the, the backend stuff and, um, I haven't asked permission, so I'm not gonna go too deep into it.
[01:04:26] But, um, One of the things I did like about the campaign that they did was how they subtly normalised black creators on the platform. So when you, during the month of October, specifically when you landed on a page and you'd like search, you know, glitter, eyeshadow or whatever.
[01:04:55] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:04:56] Charlotte: Something specific, it would be very much focused around Black creators or Black, um, art or pins on the app.
[01:05:04] Um, and the homepage was, so it was so subtle. You, it's like very hard to even notice because it, it was so normal.
[01:05:13] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:05:13] Charlotte: They didn't make a point of it. It wasn't like, check out all these black creators.
[01:05:18] Joyann: Yeah.
[01:05:18] Charlotte: Black hands, Black, whatever. It just so happens that if it was home, the home accounts that they were pushing were Black creators.
[01:05:26] If it was beauty, it was Black creators. If there was a nail, um, nail up on, on your homepage, it was a Black hand of different, uh, skin tones and shades. And they did it in such a subtle way that people didn't even notice. And that for me is amazing because it was normal.
[01:05:44] Joyann: That's the normal. Yeah. That's the normalisation, but that's normalisation.
[01:05:48] I really like it. My gut, and this is this thing. I'm trying to combat it. Like, if they could just turn it on during Black history month, why not turn it on?
[01:05:59] Charlotte: So I think that something they are working on really heavily, and I know that from the back end is trying to get more creators on step, cause we work with them quite closely on that from different backgrounds.
[01:06:09] So we onboard, um, so last year I think we onboarded like 16 new creators, um, onto the PS app and they created content. Um, and or may maybe a little bit more. But yeah, we really, and we are just one agency that they work with, so they're really focused on that. Um, so they are doing a good job. I guess it's, it's to make it happen all the time.
[01:06:33] There's a lot that go. It's, it's techy so far. It is a lot. Yeah. So, yeah. So ensure it's always inclusive. I don't imagine it's as easy as choosing this specific content that goes on because the, the, the platform isn't about specific content, it's about being shown content through an algorithm.
[01:06:50] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:50] Charlotte: Um, whereas I think for that campaign it was very much focusing on specific creators.
[01:06:55] So I don't, I don't believe it's as easy as that cause they are. A machine. They've been around forever, so, but I know that they are tackling it. Um, I don't work for Pinterest, so I'm not gonna, you know.
[01:07:08] Joyann: You're not gonna caveat. No, but I do enjoy the nonchalantness of the campaigns that are coming out around Black history right now.
[01:07:15] It is very much. Oh, everyone just happens to be Black. It's not as hard. And I've, I've got some in our vault of various campaigns that were just terrible. There was one that was by Uber Eats, um, Black History Month, get five pound off chicken and there's a Black woman eating chicken. And it was just, oh yeah, why, why, why, why?
[01:07:36] No one, no one thought that.
[01:07:37] Charlotte: I remember my husband, my husband's white. And he was like, is this racism? And I was like, baby, I think it is. And he was like, I, I just feel like this isn't right. And I was like, thanks for spotting that. Um, but I was like, I feel like it was well intended, like the intent was there, but it just was a bit.
[01:07:57] Joyann: It just was a bit, but no, I, I, I like the subtlety of just doing something and just keep it pushing. Um, I'm excited to see what happens this year because, I don't know, International Women's Month this year wasn't as.
[01:08:14] Charlotte: I think everything's just not as pizazzy as it once was. I think people are just, I think people are tired.
[01:08:20] I think people are like, oh, okay. There's this, like, we didn't do anything for International Women's Month as of yet. We still got half, we're halfway through the month, but we didn't do it anything big this year. Um, but as a business we are in, uh, We're just very busy trying to just push our creators all year round.
[01:08:40] So we're like, oh, um, the influencer space is made up. It's predominantly of women. 70 per 77% of the input spaces are, are women, um, according to, to statistics. So, you know, this is an all-year-round problem for us, so we're like really push pushing that, and our audience is, you know, predominantly women. But, um, yeah, last year, Black History Month was very disappointing across the board.
[01:09:04] I, I was actually borderline offended by the lack of interest I saw from the world and only offended because don't come in 2020 and 2021 with all this chat, and then neither
[01:09:19] Joyann: All this hype for this thing and then disappear.
[01:09:21] Charlotte: There's something I am seeing and I don't know. I don't talk about it too much cause I, I'm, I'm waiting to see more, but I'm seeing a, a real rise in interest in the South Asian community in—
[01:09:34] Joyann: Yeah.
[01:09:34] Charlotte: The last couple of months. And I'm very excited about that because I always say, um, to like, to the world and that's why we're an inclusive influence marketing agency and not a Black creator-focused agency because, well, I'm a bit biased cause my family, um, through marriage, we have a lot of, um, different types of people and we're very multicultural as a family.
[01:09:58] And my nieces are mixed Caribbean and, and Indian. So, um, and white, there's, you know, a mixture. They're so, um, um, whatever I do, I'm always like, what will, what will they see? You know, will they see their Black side? Will they see their Indian side? Will they, so for us working with South Asian creators is really important specifically to me.
[01:10:19] Um, and, and my sister who works, who works with, with me, but um, I think I'm seeing more and more interest in working with South Asian creators outside of Dalli and, and Ramadan and Eid.
[01:10:35] Joyann: That's, I've seen a lot of Ramadan content popping up a lot more bold it, like, cuz it's been doing it for a while. I remember, I think it was 2018, I saw Facebook campaign.
[01:10:46] I was like, okay, Facebook, you know?
[01:10:48] Charlotte: Yeah.
[01:10:48] Joyann: But now it's at like a forefront. But I'm.
[01:10:52] Charlotte: Yeah.
[01:10:54] Joyann: It's good. I wanna speak to individuals cause I'm, I'm curious to know if it's gonna take the same trend of pride where it becomes too saturated.
[01:11:06] Charlotte: Yeah. But the, but very early days, Ramadan and Eid is like something that's missed is such a good economically, financially is such a good place to sit as marketers like.
[01:11:20] Joyann: Yep.
[01:11:22] Charlotte: It blows my mind how much people do not know about the Muslim community and their spending habits. Um, and I'm always just like, this is how they're gonna spend the money. This is Christmas. Like, you know how you celebrate Christmas and you push all the ads for that? This is that again, you've got it twice.
[01:11:42] Joyann: I love, it's like the, the inner capitalist jumping out. Like do you see the other time?
[01:11:46] Charlotte: Yeah. I'm like, do you see the potential Cause they're spending so you spend with them.
[01:11:50] Joyann: Mm-hmm.
[01:11:51] Charlotte: And yeah, and that happens twice a year, you know? So, and then, you know, you've got Christmas and if you wanna add all, you know, all the other ones, you can put Passover, Diwali, whatever.
[01:12:01] But Ramadan and Eid is a re, is a really good marketing space like place to, to put marketing efforts. And it just blows my mind up people that people don't think about it. It, we have to push brands that we work with to, to even think about it because they clearly just don't have that diversity in their
[01:12:20] team, they're staffing, so they, it is just not something that they've ever thought about.
[01:12:24] Joyann: They're missing it altogether. I think there's a whole lot of conversation we can have. Probably would love to have you back on the podcast around the whole money in diversity and inclusion and marketing and, and.
[01:12:33] Charlotte: Oh yeah.
[01:12:35] Joyann: I sometimes I say things quite crass for people because they always think it's like, oh no, no, no. I'm like, no, I wanna be on a yacht. I can see inclusive marketing affording me a yacht. And they're like, what? I'm like, yeah. Why? Why is that so far checked? They're, they're so surprised. They're like, oh, you must be a not-for-profit organisation.
[01:12:52] Like, no, there's, this is marketing. We are still trying to influence people.
[01:12:57] Charlotte: I need to take your mindset because I'm in a very different space right now where I'm just like, I'm just trying to keep it together.
[01:13:04] Joyann: We will catch up, but let the people know where they can find you. If they wanna get in touch, find out more.
[01:13:10] What's the channels to reach you on?
[01:13:13] Charlotte: Yes. So you can find us across the board at Seven Six Agency Instagram, TikTok, which just trying to make you work over there. Uh, LinkedIn, all, all those fun places. Um, me personally, I'm Charlotte Seven Six, so the letters, not the numbers. S e v e n six. Um, and then if you wanna get in touch, email us.
[01:13:34] hello@sevensixagency.com. And yeah, we can help you specifically with your influence marketing needs. Um, we do all things influencer marketing. It just so happens to be inclusive when you work with us.
[01:13:47]Joyann: Love it. Thank you so much for joining me, Charlotte, and thank you for tuning in to the podcast. See y
