“Giving everyday people the ability to monetize social assets.”
What does that mean to you?
To me that means access. That means a support system, that means community and influence. I think it’s a pretty fancy way of saying, “Giving everyday people the ability to level the playing field.”
This is what my friend Vinod Varma and his business partner Laura Wensley intend to do with their company Shop and Shout.
We all know that marketing is archaic and outdated and we understand that the data has nothing to do with actual facts. To me “old” marketing is nothing more than twisted sentiments about what the world and it’s people want and about how people act, react and feel validated.
Traditional marketing is on it’s way out.
It has to be, because it doesn't work in the western world anymore. Granted there are so very many people who still have cable and watch commercials, and there are still an incredible amount of people that drive and see billboards, who buy magazines and see ads. But knowing that as individuals and Nations we also know that we are in the biggest financial crisis the world has ever seen. So something somewhere has gone totally wrong. Marketing is everywhere all the time and we get that. But we know the TRADITIONAL thoughts and sentiments don’t work with the upcoming generation.
We are a generation that is tired of being sold to.
That doesn’t mean that marketing itself is out. Actually the complete opposite. The big companies have all the capital in the world to jump on trends earlier than anyone else, but there is an overwhelming response to influencer marketing, and I am interested in not only how it works but also the impact that it could possibly have.
Influencer marketing started with celebrities. Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber were getting paid into the $10,000 range per tweet for the various companies that they were working with. It’s chump change for a company to pay that kind of money for one tweet when it get’s in front of a huge audience, like the aforementioned have. But again, we are cutting out almost all other businesses that don’t have that kind of money and that really do matter.
The other problem with using celebrity for influencer marketing is that we know these people are getting paid to advertise. We know that Kim Kardashian doesn’t eat at fast food restaurants, unless it’s at 3 am, or that Justin Bieber doesn’t slam back pepsi’s without rum. It’s all just another sham, another way of being inauthentic and non-transparent.
The worst part about it is that we are spurring on this society of gluttony and greed and people spending money that they don’t have on shit they don’t need and lives aren’t just getting worse, they’re getting ruined.
Wanting to have cool things, or eat great food isn’t the problem. We have desires and we always will, especially when the world is filled with geniuses that come up with the coolest inventions and “things” that of course we want, and want to try.
What traditional and celebrity influencer marketing has done, is corrupted free thinking, critical thinking. It’s essentially lying about a product, and again, we don’t like being lied to.
The closest thing that you can get to influencer marketing as a small business used to be through agencies, that would act as a consultancy agency and charge still huge amounts that is inaccessible to any small businesses.
That’s changing now. Now we have access to influencer marketing at an accessible rate. My friends company Shop and Shout, is one of the first influencer marketing companies that I have ever seen that is all about community and access and giving back. The fundamentals of the company are all about The Triple Bottom Line: Profitability, Social Responsibility, and Giving back.
They have an access point to companies and the influencers are everyday people like yourselves. People want to hear what people think, and we trust the people that we know. Not the people that are getting paid to lie about what they like. The influencer gets to pick to try products that they might actually like, and build a relationship and a following for a company that they believe in.
This is how companies need to be and these are the companies that we need to start supporting.
How do we change the world? We start making conscious choices about how we spend our money and where we spend our money.
Let’s start thinking about how we want the world to be and who we WANT to have influence in this world.
Much Love,
Kat Karpoff
Ps. I am not getting paid to talk about this company. It is my job to seek out ethical companies, and it’s my passion to start having ethical companies and entrepreneurs find success so we can start having massive impact on this world. If you are interested in working with shop and shout or want to find out more you can click here. #shopandshout
Shop and Shout’s social give back policy is 1:1 for every company they work with and for every 5000 influencers, they supply a classroom in a country less fortunate with the supplies they need. Influencer marketing is found to increase your ROI by 11 times the amount that traditional marketing does. If you’re a business this is something worth looking into.