Nick Lynch
Transcript
Danielle (Scrunch) (00:10):
So good. Nick, welcome to the Scrunch Creator Economy Show. It's so nice to have you.
Nick Lynch (00:16):
It's good to be here
Danielle (Scrunch) (00:18):
And yeah, I'm so excited to share your story. You know, we were just talking before we hit the big record button mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and, you know, we, we met in a past life many years ago, but I'm so stoked to have you on the show and catch up about where you, what you've done and what you're up to. So maybe that's a good jumping off point. Let's talk about your current business Kaleidoscope and, and what you do.
Nick Lynch (00:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'm super excited to, to reconnect, to feel like I blinked and it was, you know, four years
Danielle (Scrunch) (00:47):
Here again, what's happened in the last few years. Who knows? Just,
Nick Lynch (00:50):
Just, just a little bit, just
Danielle (Scrunch) (00:52):
A little bit.
Nick Lynch (00:53):
<Laugh>. Yeah, no, so I mean, the, the quick you know about me is, you know, my name's Nick. I'm the co-founder and CEO O of Kaleidoscope. I've spent the last 15, 16 years or so based in LA primarily focused in advertising technology. So building solutions and and technology for brands to better target their audiences on, on digital and social media, which is why I kind of moved into the influencer marketing space around six, seven years ago, is kind of take all of the learnings and knowledge that I know about how agencies and brands are buying programmatic media using data and sort of validating and using analytics and how can we use the influencer data that we're getting from these platforms to kind of leverage influencer marketing in a similar way. Obviously Scrunch does that really an amazing programmatic way, but but back then it was sort of really new and we were trying to build that.
(01:38):
And so that was kind of my foray and influencer marketing in, in advertising in general. But from a personal standpoint, I'm a cancer survivor. I'm a Make-a-Wish kid. Wow. you know, I've been a part of the Make-A-Wish family ever since they sent me to Disneyland when I was three. But for the last eight years I've been really involved with the Make-A-Wish Greater Los Angeles chapter here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I'm on the advisory board and, and do a lot of stuff with them. And at the beginning of Covid right around February, 2020, March, 2020, when everything started to look like it was gonna shut down, no more in-person events, kind of the first thing I thought of was what's not, what's Make-a-wish going to do now that they can't do in-person events? Where are they gonna generate revenue? Not only them, but most nonprofits generate around 85 to 90% of the revenue from in-person events.
(02:22):
So like, what is this sector going to do? And being in advertising and understanding that brands are more and more focused on cause marketing and trying to figure out ways to be more aligned with values and, and cause based organizations. You know, I knew that there was an opportunity to bring them in, but most all marketers, all brands need some level of an and analytics and insights into where their dollars are going and, you know, what's the impact to my brand? Where's the brand roi? Is there any insight into what My Dollars actually did for the cause? Like there was just not a lot of connectivity, you know, tissue. And I also knew that the influencer marketing space at that time was, was still really, you know, you know, it's still really young, but at the two and a half, you know, years ago or whatever, you know, there's a lot of creators that are trying to, they have a platform and they wanna do good and they wanna broadcast good, but they don't necessarily wanna search out the opportunities they would like this, the opportunities brought to them.
(03:16):
And so, yeah, I thought, interesting. If I can bring in brands to do more partnerships with nonprofits by giving them better analytics mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and then also bring in influencers that have value and vision alignment to amplify what those partnerships are doing, then there can be a scalable, repeatable opportunity that brings more attention and more dollars, quite frankly, into the ecosystem. And so that was the genesis of Kaleidoscope. We've built a platform that helps match these three stakeholders where there's value and vision alignment, and then we facilitate the campaigns and measure what we call the double roi return on investment for the marketer. Yeah. Reach, engagement, awareness, those sorts of things. But, and also return on impact for the, for the cause-based organization and really understand like, did that campaign drive new donations, new registrations, new visitors, like all the main KPIs for a cause-based organization.
(04:05):
We look at it like holistically in a big report and then all stakeholders can get the, that analytics and that transparent reporting to really understand how do we scale this for our brand? Or how do we scale this for our organization from a cause-based perspective and figure out new and repeatable ways to do it. And so that's really where Gladys go started. And, and the genesis of it, I mean, two years into it now since we've started, we've become kind of this three pillared what I call mission delivery platform, where we support not only the management and the measurement of social impact, but also logistics and actually helping non-profits and deliver on their mission using data and using partnerships to execute that. So that's long-winded way of saying hi, I guess
Danielle (Scrunch) (04:45):
<Laugh>. I love it so much. That's that's absolutely incredible. And what I'm really interested in is the fact that you bring together three parties. So, so typically we see you know, platforms or agencies bring together the brand and the influencer and they collaborate, you know, on some level of marketing campaign. And so when we talked about social impact, I was expecting you to say that you just brought the cause and the influencer together, but you actually bring a brand as well. Do you have like an example of how that actually works? Like a, an example of a campaign that you've run that kind of illustrates that?
Nick Lynch (05:22):
Yeah, absolutely. So early on in 2021, I think we did one of our first ever like streaming campaigns where we actually brought on a couple gaming influencers Twitch influencers, and I think it was like 12 or so influencers that essentially had dedicated one of their streams throughout the week to do a charity stream. So essentially like, you know, they stream for 5, 7, 8, 10 hours sometimes, but they wanted to make sure that they dedicated that particular stream to talking about the charitable cause that we had brought in, that they were aligned with. And then what we also did, because there's so much right eyeballs and impressions to be had during those streams, we brought in a sponsor or, or a corporate partner to not only sort of underwrite the opportunity with, with the cause partner and actually gave product to the influencers one for themselves and one to raffle off.
(06:15):
So there was like an interesting integration Oh, cool. Yeah. And charitable opportunity to really create like authentic and, you know, integration and engagement between, you know, the corporate partner, I think it was a shoe partner a shoe partner, the streamers and, and the nonprofit. So I think the, what we find, and the reason why I think we found success, and I know you know this in, in your bones, having done this for so long, I, authenticity is the only thing that matters. Mm-Hmm. So like, if the cause isn't authentic and not known by the influencers audience and the brand doesn't have any sort of like real authenticity with the cause that they're supporting and the influencer that they're partnering with, none of it works. And so that's why it's like really important to bring in all sides to really make sure that it, it makes sense.
Danielle (Scrunch) (06:58):
I love that. That's awesome. So, and I am really interested because you mentioned Twitch and gaming influencers. I mean, when we hear influencer marketing or creators as we're saying these days, sure. You know, everyone just thinks about Instagram, right? Like everyone just goes product placement on Instagram, and I feel like that's why everyone's a little bit over it. So I love that you actually said, you know, we used to Twitch. So talk to me about, you know, alternative channels, you know, what's going on in, in, you know, Twitch land, TikTok land. Sure. Like, is that, you know, a real opportunity for brands or causes to get involved with?
Nick Lynch (07:35):
Yeah, I mean, here's what's interesting is we have a philosophy that, that anybody is an influencer. Meaning that I may have a hundred, right? Well, cuz I have a hundred followers on Instagram and I might suggest a book to, to my a hundred followers and 10 or 20 of those people may buy that book. I now have influence over those people, right? So everybody can be influential. And we've done campaigns where we have hired, we where we have hired influencers who are really involved in a cause and they've may have 10, 20, 50,000 followers on Instagram and have posted about it and they have actually performed worse than board members who have posted it on LinkedIn.
Danielle (Scrunch) (08:12):
Yes, yes. In
Nick Lynch (08:13):
Terms of driving registration. And that's, they're influencers in their own right too. So we kind of in, in, in cause marketing and social impact, we kind of flip the concept of creator or influencer on its head mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and really just talk about like, everybody has a sphere of influence. Yes. And everybody should use it. And so yeah, that's kind of what we're looking at. And, and it has to align. I mean, you know, there are causes that are a hundred years old that have a demographic that is consistently donating in a certain way. They might be better placed to do influence integrations on Facebook, which is kind of a strange thing to say in influencer marketing, but Facebook might be better compared to something else. So it really just depends on, again, like the community, how authentic we can get people to be influential and understanding that everybody has influence and how do we leverage their influence in the most impactful way.
Danielle (Scrunch) (09:03):
I love that. So what I'm hearing as well is really understanding, you know, the customer and where the, the, the community, you said the word community, so where they are and how you can actually identify influences that reach that correct community rather than Yeah. Like you say, you know, going for the big shiny object, you know, million follower influencers and it may not land and you've spent a lot of money <laugh> versus actually going out and uncovering, you know, where are these people, you know, where are the people that actually support the cause and focusing in the research there first.
Nick Lynch (09:36):
You, you absolutely nailed it. I mean, we use sort of like the art and science approach where we can clearly identify in some sort of automated or programmatic way. Mm-Hmm. A good list of a hundred or 200 or so influencers that sort of meet on paper, some parameters that, that we would wanna look for, maybe have mentioned some keywords, but then we kind of have to put some, some art behind it and really look at those creators, really do an in-depth understanding of, of their community and the content that they talk about and how, how aligned when they talk about the particular cause is it, and how well it's received. And that's sort of our sort of tr you know, our, our proprietary art and science mix of, of how we get the right people to work. And it's really like, you know, whether they're creators, you consider creators or influencers, I think in, in Southeast Asia and some of the markets we work with are KOLs or key opinion leaders mm-hmm. <Affirmative>,
(10:24):
Right? Like, it, it doesn't, you know, what what we call them doesn't necessarily really matter. It's all about how do we, how do we pull to communities together around a cause and, and, and do it in the most efficient way possible. And by efficient, I mean it's, it's really like how can we get the most people to move behind something not necessarily cost efficient. No, that helps. But it's really like, how do we leverage a community so that one in one equals, you know, four or five or six? So that's kind of our methodology in, in terms of selection and integrations.
Danielle (Scrunch) (10:54):
Yeah. And I'm really interested in the, you know, art and science comment as well because I kind of feel like, you know, just thinking back to different interactions I've had with different brands and agencies, you know, and I've heard complaints of people that use some of the like automated campaign platforms where they just put up a brief, a bunch of influencers kind of get returned and they're getting lackluster results versus, you know, you are really sitting down and strategizing where are these communities? Yes, there's a bit of efficiency in terms of, okay, we roughly know the parameters of the influencers or creators we wanna work with, but now we're going to actually apply the art, which is, you know, finding the people that really will resonate with the course. Like, how important do you think that is for a brand to sit down and create a strategy versus, you know, an automated campaign system?
Nick Lynch (11:45):
I, I'm biased, but I mean, I feel like that's the, that's the only way we're, we're going to see real scale in the creator economy moving forward without having some sort of redundancy of like this, you know, I, what I would, what I would, what would, what would be terrible to have happen in the influencer marketing space moving forward is to have it turn into a, an iStock or a, or a, you know, like a sort of like a templated, you know content platform that people are just now just hiring random creators to create content. And that's all you really see. There needs to be a lot more like our process, we feel that this be that we've developed over the last two years could definitely be applied just to straight head influencer marketing. I think like if they brought us in and they were launching a new makeup line or a new clothing line, we'd probably be pretty successful. But I think that our process in understanding communities, how communities communicate to each other Hmm. And, and, and then what needs to be communicated to the creator or the influencer in order to activate that community mean ultimately they understand how to make the best content. But there are some definitely some guidance and some framework that I believe that through our process has allowed us to be more successful than what we would be if we didn't have
Danielle (Scrunch) (12:58):
Them. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's interesting because, you know, that is marketing 1 0 1, right? Like we can, you know, put the word influencer to the side and if we just think about marketing, it's really figuring out where our customer is and determining the right strategy to reach them. So, you know, it makes sense that you have to leverage some level of framework to do the same thing in influencer marketing.
Nick Lynch (13:24):
Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I just had a conversation over the weekend with somebody who is, is much more focused in like the, the programmatic space and is, is buying media and, and display and video. And he was asking me like, well, you know, this influencer marketing stuff, like what's, you know, what's, what's happening there? And I always, I kind of tell them like it's, he's like, well, cuz he was asking me about micro influencers. Like I heard his now all micro influencers and I sort of told them what, or I told him what you kind of just said is that like, mm, you know, if you look at marketing over the last 20 years, take influencer out of it, you know, you would use, this is maybe before streaming happened, but you would use television and radio as sort of your broad reach player or your awareness play top of funnel play, really get as much impressions in as eyeballs as possible.
(14:06):
So you could really build your top of your funnel and then you would maybe layer in some other mid and lower funnel tactics that are more focused on driving people all the way through. Same way with influencer marketing, you may hire a Kim Kardashian because you're gonna get that most, the most reach and the most eyeballs on the top funnel, but then you might pull in different types of influencers and different types of communities to pull people through the middle and the bottom funnel. So that's the way I'm starting to look at influencer marketing in the future is really la layering in different communities and different size of communities to really go through. To your point, it's marketing 1 0 1 looking at your funnel and, and driving people through it.
Danielle (Scrunch) (14:41):
Yeah, I think, you know, you're spot on. I think we, I often see this even when we, you know, get briefs around influencer marketing, it's kind of this afterthought. It's this small budget that's kind kind of tacked onto an overall campaign and I think wow, it's really not considered or integrated. And I love that you actually said cuz a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll pick a stage of the funnel, so they'll go, oh, we're just doing this for brand awareness, but I actually love that you said no. Well you, we can actually identify each stage of the marketing funnel or the purchase decision and align different influencer groups or different communities to each stage depending on the outcome that we want. That's cool. I've never heard anybody actually say that. That's super cool.
Nick Lynch (15:20):
That might, I might have just built some of our secret sauce, but I, but that's like, literally that's how we look at how we drive results for, for social impact is you have like literally like celebrity level influencers. Were deeply passionate about the planet or animals or family matters, adoption, whatever the case may be. You'll wanna use them as your top of funnel awareness people. Now they may drive donations and registrations and the things that you like to see in terms of like the bottom funnel, but really they're, they're your mouthpiece. And then as you go down, you can work with more niche communities who are much more engaged around the particular issue or more, you know, the mechanics of it and can articulate, you know, why things happen or how things happen within a particular cause to drive people through the funnel. So yeah, that's how we look at, at, at, at really driving results for, for organizations around social impact.
Danielle (Scrunch) (16:08):
Yeah. No, that's so cool. And what are you, what are your thoughts on optimization? So I'm, one of the things that we talk about is I don't, you know, it's difficult with influencer marketing to get it right the first time. And I think that when you've got a, a framework that works, you know, you can get pretty close, but if a brand has never done influencer marketing before, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to know what type of influencer, what size of influencer, what content's gonna convert. So there's a little bit bit of testing and optimization that sh I think should, you know, go with it. What are your thoughts on, you know, long-term campaigns when you can actually optimize versus more like one-offs or what are your kind of thoughts there?
Nick Lynch (16:48):
Yeah, so these, these are what we call like our awareness months. So like, you know, there are causes that will leverage whatever the awareness month is and do a month long campaign that actually allows us to do real almost near realtime optimization in terms of the platforms we use, the messaging that we use, the, in, you know, the creators that we use, the, in the entire piece. And so what we'll typically do is we'll front load, you know, the first week and a half, first 10 days of that awareness month mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with about 80% of our budget and 80% of our influencers. And what we typically will find is what platforms resonate. Usually we'll test Instagram and TikTok kit most of the time. Those are our, our key platforms. We'll, so we'll test those two platforms. And, and we'll, we'll test those platforms.
(17:33):
We'll test different creatives, we'll definitely test different communities and we'll really see at the end of those 10 days, which creators actually are driving the outcomes that we want. And the types of, and the platforms and the, and the types of creative and messaging that that we want. And then we'll take maybe the remaining 20% of the budget and apply it either to creators that maybe just did an most, the most amazing job and sort of close out the month or find creators that sort of have a similar community messaging aesthetic to the, to the winners, and then apply it to the middle to the back half of the month. That's typically what we have done in the past. I mean, a good example is this is we did it again for the second year, but we worked with a a, a health nonprofit to, to launch their first sort of like streaming event at the end of, or at the middle of 2021 mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.
(18:22):
and we thought that that several of the influencers that we <laugh> that we brought on were actually gonna drive a majority of the results. And then what we found out is that it was like one in particular creator influencer on one particular platform, and that when he posted content about it was a sport, it was an athlete, like particularly used content around him playing the game as opposed to the, the mission that he was supporting. It got like 30 x you know, engagement and results. And so we just doubled and tripled down on him and we said, Hey, can you post every day for two for the next three weeks? Wow. with this type of content on your platform, and it just repeat every week. It was like more page views, more clicks, more registrate all over the KPIs that we wanted. Yeah. But we saw that in real time and we would've never known had we not just tracked, you know, his his performance and, and, and made sure that we're focusing on the right things. I mean, we saved them a ton of money ultimately also, but which is, which ends up being a byproduct of what we do is, is measuring this. So,
Danielle (Scrunch) (19:21):
Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think that that's a byproduct of optimization, right? Like it's, you know, I think yeah, people try and lock in all of their influences, all of their creators at the start and kind of map it all out, almost like it's a content strategy. Sure. And yeah, I think it's, it is, it's that ability to actually analyze, reflect, and do more of the things that are working and kind of revisit what's going on in a campaign that does help save people money. You know, we use the term wastage a lot in advertising, but I feel like we don't wanna use it as much in influencer marketing. Yeah. It's a similar concept, you know, if you kind of, if you know something's not working, scrap it, you know? Yeah. Do something, do something different, but you only get there by analyzing the results, right? Yeah.
Nick Lynch (20:05):
Yep. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. I mean the, that particular nonprofit that we worked with, I mean, they said in the 114 years we've been around, we've never measured a campaign like this. And so I was like, wow, stop
Danielle (Scrunch) (20:15):
It. <Laugh>
Nick Lynch (20:15):
Fantastic. It's fantastic. I'm glad we did it and I'm glad we saved money. So,
Danielle (Scrunch) (20:19):
Yeah. And look, it's awesome when you can come in and create that level of impact, right?
Nick Lynch (20:24):
Yeah. 100. So cool. And that's what been, has been the most fun, I think is, is is saving wastage increasing impact. Yeah. And getting, getting this space a little bit more advanced than it ever was. I mean, you could talk to every nonprofit that you know, and they'll probably tell you that they're 15, 20 years behind in marketing now. Un you know, unfortunately, or fortunately, COVID made them have to rethink everything. Yes. so, you know, this, this, this opportunity to really bring opportunities and solutions and, and visibility and accessibility into a, into a media or a medium that I believe is going to be the, the future really again, biased, but if we can get there, then I think we can help a lot of people do
Danielle (Scrunch) (21:05):
It. Yeah, no, that is so amazing. So where, where have you seen the landscape change? So I know, you know, kaleidoscope's been around for a couple of years, I know you were looking at influencer marketing well before that. What do you think's changed in the landscape? You know, we've said it on this call, like, you know, the change in language at bare minimum from influencers to creators, you know, what are you seeing going on in, in the influencer or create a landscape?
Nick Lynch (21:31):
Yeah, I mean, I think that the, the, the three things that I, I see across the board for-profit, nonprofit, ev, everything is that mm-hmm. Metrics are, and, and <laugh> and, and measurement are still like a, like nobody really knows them yet. Some people measure 'em one way, simple measurement, like some people don't measure anything. So I think that measurement is still like an ongoing fluid conversation in, in influencer marketing, which is sort of shocking to me because that's like, I feel like that should have been table stakes. Like, we're going to invest in this. Like, let's put a framework together. I think a a lot of the, there's a lot of association, like marketing associations that are, have put together like blueprints and have everybody, but ultimately, like it's not followed by everybody. And there's still a lot of different, so I think measurement is something that always changes.
(22:16):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. The, the other thing that is interesting is that influencer marketing, I think still is moving departments. I mean, you had mentioned that people use it as a content strategy, and maybe a lot of the times it lives in a con in the content team for of a marketing team. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe it should, I don't, I don't, I, again, I don't really know. It depends on the organization, but mm-hmm. It, it has a different home in every brand or every agent. Yeah, that's so true. <Laugh>. And so, and so, like, and I think that also has the, that also brings the challenge of measurement because the content team may manage and man manage and measure something different than Yeah. Than maybe traditional marketing would too. So I, I'm definitely seeing the, maybe there's, I'm seeing some consolidation in some uniformity, but it's still everywhere.
(23:00):
But I am seeing some change there. And I think the third thing is, is people are starting to look at influencer marketing like chess instead of checkers. Meaning that, like it used to be, oh, I'm gonna give an influencer or creator my product, they'll promote it. That's either gonna be a winner or a loss, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's kinda pretty, pretty two dimensional, pretty straightforward. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> now people are thinking, okay, I can use a creator to create content about my product, then I'm gonna use in another channels win number one, win Number two, I'm going to now use them to promote my product. And then win number three is I'm actually gonna also use them to do some type of live shopping experience or some type of live on a platform and then then reuse that content in other places. So like people are really starting to think of like, how can I peel the influencer onion in multiple areas so that I can maximize what's working and what's not. Yeah. And become more efficient in how I produce creative, how I use creative, and how I, you know distribute creative. So I, I, I'm seeing a lot more of that happen across the board. And, and I think that's a lot of the reason why like these mic, you know, the micro influencer conversation is happening because I just think there's a lot of authentic content that can be created by smaller influencers who are passionate about a product or a cost.
Danielle (Scrunch) (24:15):
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know, I guess the, the cost of a micro influencer can't be ignored as well, especially as you want more deliverables. You know, the thing that I find is, yeah, if brands are getting savvyer and going, yes, I want x number of pieces of content, I want you to come on our own platforms, I would love this, I would love this. You know, that's obviously many things that the influencer has to do. So, you know, I'd be working with someone with a million followers. You're getting, you know, you're really potentially spending your whole budget on one person versus getting a lot of deliverables about out of a few influencers. So, yeah. I, I think that it's, it's interesting the balance that may perhaps needs to be struck between, you know, deliverables and price points and sizes of influencers and something that brands really need to sit down and, and map out and understand the value of what an influencer provides.
Nick Lynch (25:04):
Yeah. 100%. I agree. So cool. I'm excited to see where it goes. You
Danielle (Scrunch) (25:08):
Know, I'm too. Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us today on the Scrunch Creator Economy Show. Your insights and wisdom have been absolutely phenomenal. So could not thank you more for your time.
Nick Lynch (25:22):
Amazing. Thank you so much for having me.
