A Complete Guide To Creators & Influencers For Meta Ads transcript

Should you pay that big sticker price for that celebrity to be an influencer in your brand? Should you go work with somebody who's called a quote unquote creator, to be the talent in your ads? How should you think about influencers for your brand in your ads? Is that celebrities and athletes? Is that creators? Is that something else? Who you get to record the ads that you are making, whether or not they are an influencer or a celebrity or anything like that.

Today on the show, I'm going to talk through a topic that I think I've never seen anybody record a podcast episode about, and that is a clear delineation of different types of on-screen talent for your ads. How to navigate the world of creators, influencers, actors, all kinds of different people. how to think about the value that each one provides. And maybe more importantly, how to think about the value that each one does not provide so that you can get the right kind of person recording your ads and not blow huge amounts of money by hiring the wrong kind of person at some big contract that you expect to have a big impact on your business and just won't.

So, I'm going to tell you exactly how I think about this. I'm going to break it down very clearly in this episode. This is one of those ones where if you can download the transcript and put it into AI, you're going to have a really clear SOP for how to think about this. It's what we're doing at AF Growth with our clients and how we're thinking about it. It's going to be really helpful to you. Let's get into it. All right.

I'm recording today if you are watching this on YouTube or on Spotify. Uh live on tape, live on videotape from uh Chateau Kadoo in uh in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm hanging out with Patrick, my COO, business partner addition to AJF Growth in the agency. We're working on a bunch of different stuff. And this is something we've been talking about together, which is sort of how do we think about building a creator and influencer program in AJF Growth.

And that got me thinking, well, what do I mean? Like what kind of person should I get? It's a common problem that we have with ads, which is, you know, who is it that um I ought to contract to read my ad scripts and who is it that I should get to be the on-screen talent in my ad? People are talking so much right now about whitelisting. Well, who should I whitelist with and what's a good use of my money and what's not?

And brands talk to me about this kind of thing all the time. They get pitched on things from athletes and and you know, celebrities big and small about like, you know, hey, we want to be involved with your brands. So, like, how should you think about that use of money? So, I took the time to actually write out like a full breakdown of four different types of onscreen talent for your ads. And I should say upfront that some of these categories are going to overlap a little bit with one another, and I will try to be clear about when that's the case.

But I think if you can think well about what your ad is, what it's trying to do, and um and where your brand is at, and who it's talking to, you're going to have a much easier time thinking about how best to use your money for actual production of your ads in terms of the talent that you contract, and again, how not to waste it. So, um the I have four categories here, okay? And uh and the first category is um actors, the second one is creators, the third one is authorities, the fourth is celebrities.

Okay? So, I'm going to go through all of those each of those four categories in orders. Actors, creators, authorities, celebrities. Um, and and so I'm going to break it down for you and starting with actors. Okay? And actors is actually a term that I rarely hear used for uh people running a lot of digital ads, social media ads, whether it's meta or any other channels, but actually in some ways is the most common type of person used in these ads.

And so, it's striking to me that people don't talk more about the category of actors. Um, actors are people who are paid to memorize and deliver scripted content. Okay? So, I don't mean by actor necessarily like Hollywood actor, you know, major celebrity Brad Pitt or whatever. Okay? What I mean is somebody whose job it is, think about it more like the people you see in a regular TV commercial all the time who's who you have no idea who they are.

They're not famous actors or anything like that. They're just people who are paid not even really to be like an influencer in the category. It's just like there's a script and somebody needs to be the actor in the script and deliver the lines and be convincing on camera. Um, and that category happens all the time with people running metahadas. You write a script or you have an idea and you say to somebody like, "Hey, go read this script." And a lot of times like a founder in a founder ad is functioning as an actor.

You know, somebody gives them a script and a teleprompter and tells them to go read it. Like the founder may be the actor. In that case though, they are an actor. They are somebody who and it may be true or whatever that they're talking about, but they're walking through a warehouse. So, there's a scene in a setting and they're looking at a teleprompter. So, there's a script and their job is to deliver that script as naturally as possible.

And that is the key thing about an actor. An actor is somebody who delivers a script, a piece of scripted content on camera in a way that is convincing and natural and feels normal. Okay? And I'm going to tell you right now that so much bad meta advertising happens because people are terrible actors because brands contract the wrong kind of person. They contract creators to be actors. I'm going to talk about the creator category in a minute, but the key point here is that um it is a real skill to be able to deliver scripted content naturally and to act normal and to be convincing and normal in an ad.

Um it is also important at the level of demographics like if you are speaking to a certain kind of customer imagine you're selling skincare and you're thinking about you know how do I reach my customer I don't know is let's say 65year-old women and so you think about like okay well I need a 65y old woman or maybe because you're trying to be aspirational a 55y old woman in the ad to be in the script and so that actor category is is actually like really really significant and and because you can actually match demographic preference very easily with with who the person is but that's the key thing the key thing is a a full word forword script where where you actually are getting somebody to read the script and to deliver the line uh deliver lines in a way that is convincing.

And this covers a huge amount of people that you're going to use in your ads. And what I'm going to say about this is in general, this ought to be something that you do not pay that much money for uh for most social media ads. Most social media ads are less than a minute long. You probably need the actor to use their own phone to record it. So maybe there's a little bit of more of an ask there to do the assets, but you do not need whitelisting help in this case from an actor, right?

You're not asking them to like give you page access, run the ad through your page because the actor doesn't matter. They are not the point. Even if it is like a faux UGC ad, it is still an actor and therefore the actor um you know, you don't you don't necessarily need uh you know, some amazing whitelisting thing or whatever. You're just you're just just creating simple content like this. Um, there are uh services I know there's a service called Backstage that connects you to working actors that can allow you to do this.

I'll just tell you honestly I don't have uh a real recommendation here for you. This is something we're still developing in AGF growth is sort of a pathway to connect to these people and to to think about it. But in general um actors like this are people who you you ought not be thinking about paying lots of money for because you're asking for very short content. You're not asking for people who win Academy Awards so they don't need to be the greatest actors in the world.

You are asking people who look and seem natural on camera and look good and all those things and look sort of fit your brand demographics and profile and there's probably a lot of those people and there's probably a lot of uh supply of people who want to do that who are building resumes etc and you know however much demand and so you should be thinking about price staying relatively low for this sort of thing and not charging an arm and a leg.

I've seen this be a few hundred for a set of videos a lot of times. Um you know that that can work really well. So um so finance people I'm not asking you to underpay anybody. I'm just saying you shouldn't be thinking about this there and the ask there is much lower than others. They have no platform or influence so you're not paying for that. So that's what the actor category is. The key thing is people who can deliver ads naturally on camera and that is uh that is really important.

Okay. So actors are number one. Number two let's talk about creators. Okay. Creators are not actors. And in fact, sometimes in common parliament, creator is just another word for actor, but like for bad actor, because people use creators as actors all the time. And this is a mistake people make. You shouldn't be thinking about this with creators. If you've ever heard creators um publicly talk about, they get so frustrated when brands they work with give them these really careful scripts that tell them everything that they need to do exactly word for word. and they're annoyed by that because they want to be actually creative.

You have now put your finger on the distinction between a creator and an actor. Okay? If you're working with an actor, you do want to give them an actual full complete script and and you want to tell them exactly what you want. A creator, the thing that distinguishes a creator is that they are people who are skilled at making engaging and critically algorithm optimized content. That is the thing that makes a creator a creator, whether they're good at it or bad at it.

Okay? There's going to be a range here. And there's a range of the val validation of of their skill level. Okay. But the idea of a creator is somebody who's really good at knowing how to put together fully delivered content. This is another key with an actor. An actor is going to send you raw assets, not edited videos. A creator is going to send you fully finalized edited videos. And you may they may also send you B-roll to use and other stuff.

But an actor is just going to send you just going to send you the the raw assets. You're going to put it together yourself. And because you've got the script and you've got the editors, a creator is delivering you a finished ad. and they're finishing the ad because they know how to make content that is optimized for algorithmic engagement. And what you have to do is take that skill set of algorithm optimized creator and direct their efforts towards your products and offers.

Okay? So that means that um they do not need to be good actors per se. They need to be good creators. They they come across naturally. They do not need to be reading full scripts. They should be having um briefs with value propositions for the product. any key talking points, that's certainly reasonable. Any key offers that you want them to promote, but they should be doing um but they should not be doing full scripts.

And um and further um this the way to um judge whether or not a creator is good or not is their ability is essentially their savviness with algorithms and their their engagement numbers. And of course, one thing to watch out for here, there's a trap where somebody could have a really large follower count but very low engagement. There's a couple reasons for that. one of which I'll get into in a little bit. But uh but the basic notion here is that you want somebody who is algorithmically savvy, which means they need to be qualified based on their engagement numbers.

Somebody who's earlier in that journey but good at it um will cost you less and there may be an arbitrage opportunity there. Somebody who has built a large following and does this really well is going to cost you a whole bunch of money. Okay. Um and so low-level creators are who you want to use. people who have some indication of this, seem to be decent, but um but but who don't necessarily have like really clear demonstration of algorithmic ability.

Those those people you're going to have um you want to use for cheaper, more simple basic content like, you know, again, fake UGC, that kind of stuff. Uh that's where you're going to want to use those. Highlevel creators are going to be expensive. They're going to be really expensive and they're worth the spend if their performance is strong. And this is where you actually start to get into something like whitelisting relationships because creators are going to have a bunch of reach and they're going to have um you know really active pages.

And so you may want to work with them and say okay I want x number of pieces of creative every month. I want those pieces of creative uh to be run through your page so I need whitelisting access and I need to create a deal structure with you that makes this work for me. Okay. Um and and and then you're going to send them your brief. You're going to send them your talking points and your products and your offer and all those kinds of things and they are going to deliver you fully delivered pieces of content within the framework of the brief that you have given them.

Uh, and now here's the thing. Creators at some point um may evolve into something we would call an influencer. And I want to hold off on that term and maybe even think about the word authority in a little bit. But influencer is a tricky word here because the key idea with an influencer is that an influencer has influence. Right? What I mean is it's not just that their content is good. It's just that some it's that something about them is either relatable or trustworthy in the mind of the viewer of that.

And so plenty of times, you know, good creators turn into to influencers. I think that's like a a real thing. Um and uh uh and so that at that point the more influence they have the more expensive they are going to get and uh and this is where you just go up market more and more and more as your brand grows and you have more money to spend on production costs. the kind of risk that I would take. Once you get a when you you move in the early days, you should be working with low-level creators making a bunch of content that is really inexpensive.

And you maybe want to have that stable of people for forever, but over time, your brand can move more towards bigger serious influencers who generate a bunch more um who generate really good content. They're really good on in terms of algorithmic content creation or algorithmic optimization. And then they also have increasing levels of influence. And the more they go on that side of the scale, the more expensive they're going to be.

And so that that's the basic that's the basic picture. These are not necessarily the same as authorities or celebrities, which I'm going to get to in a little bit as well. Um there is still a difference here, which is that they can be a great creator, but not be a great not be a real authority in the space or in that respect, the notion of an influencer is tricky. Um they can be a great creator, but they really haven't cracked into what you think of in the traditional category of celebrity.

And again, a really important distinction, but that key idea for creators is they are very good at making the kind of content that moves products on the internet. And you want to have whitelisting relationships. As far as pricing, I really like something I heard Zack Stuck say on his excellent scalability school podcast um with Andrew Foxwell and Brad Pac. Um, you know, Zach said at Hollow Socks, he has built relationships where his expectation is that it is a good creator relationship and a good whitelisting relationship where uh the spend uh or where the cost of the relationship is 5% of the spend they get, right?

So, if you want to spend $100,000 um or so if you if you want if if the influencer costs the creator costs, excuse me, $5,000 for a bucket of ads for the month, whatever. Okay? A bucket of ads and whitelisting access. if that's what they cost, then they need to be reasonably able to spend $100,000 on those ads for it to make sense. Now, those economics may change depending on things if you know and you may have some hard decisions if you know they cost five grand and they can spend 50.

Um, you know, there's there's some there's some challenges there sort of on the margins, but as a basic heruristic, as a starting point for this, you also, by the way, may be willing to pay more if your customers are extremely valuable to you. Like if you are in like a high LTV subscription supplement business, something like that, you know, you there's going to be a high demand for creators in that space. uh they may cost a whole bunch more money, but if your c if your customers are also worth a lot more money, then it's probably worth paying.

So, but yeah, there's that heristic that I really really like. Um, and I think it's it's key. You should join Workspace 6. If you are an operator of an e-commerce brand and you want help thinking through how to handle all kinds of things like this exact issue in your brand, uh, you should join Workspace 6. Workspace 6, uh, which you can go to at workspace 6.io, IO is a uh closed community that is centered on Slack for e-commerce operators and high-level executives in their businesses to connect with one another, get help from one another and basically just leverage the reality of how much knowledge exists in the DTC ecosystem in a clear place for people to connect, share that knowledge and help peel help each other succeed.

I I think about this episode that I'm doing right now. Like just imagine somebody reaches out to you and says, "Hey, we want to um work with you. my client wants to work with you, an agent that does that, you know, should I go work with this celebrity? What do you think? And you could kick it to other brands, how much should you be charging for your creators, um, where are you finding great actors for your ads? All these are the kinds of questions that other people in DTOC have the answer to.

And a community like Workspace 6 pays for itself a bajillion times over if you just get in, get involved, get conversant, and leverage the knowledge of the community. Uh, and also the friendship of the community. It's just a warm and positive kind of environment. and wonderfully Workspace 6 does not let people like me in the community. It's one of the great values of it. I wish I could tell you that I've personally spent a lot of time in Workspace 6 and uh and seeing all the value for myself.

I can't tell you that. And the reason why is because they don't let agency people in. That way you could talk really honestly like my own clients are in Workspace 6 now. They could all message each other about how good or bad of a service I am providing them and I can't see it. And it's really important. I'm actually glad that's the case. It's really important that operators have spaces like that to work in. Uh, it's also really really reasonably priced.

Workspace 6 is only a dollar for your first month. There's no like long-term commitment. Um, and and just just really reasonably priced. You you have to uh really work hard to not get a lot of value out of Workspace 6 once you're a member, especially because you can cancel anytime. So, go check it out today. Workspace 6.io. Connect with other founders in your space. Connect with other operators in your space. Talking seven, eight, nine figure founders.

High seven, eight, nine figure founders who are going to get in there, chop it up, give you their knowledge. You can give yours. It's a win for everybody. I love the guys who run it. They're just great people in our space. Go check it out today. There's a lot of places that these creative relationships can go wrong. One of them is that pricing and contracting issue, though I like that heristic quite a bit as a starting point.

Another one is like well ststructured briefs with clear asks, but also some creative freedom. It's actually hard to tow that line a little bit. One of the things that we're doing at AJF Growth is building into our AI co-writing tool um for for script writing like a sort of like brief process into the tool to where we can brief creators um so that we take angles that we want to pursue and say like okay give me a full script for this kind of ad but also how about um a brief that hits that line of like here's what the product is, here's what the talking points are, here's where you have creative freedom, here's what the offer is um for creators and make that all part of one sort of um uh script writing task. asked or you were working on a product and you get different kinds of outputs including full scripts for actors and then briefs for creators like this and really try to get good at at towing that line because briefing is really hard and it takes some time.

Um so we're trying to really build serious process around that because relationships go wrong here all the time. Uh but again clarity to the ask but also creative freedom striking that balance while also giving clear uh product information and clear offer information that that's all the really important stuff. I think there's a few action steps here for brands to take. That includes um to start by just categorizing the existing creative creator relationships that you already have.

Most brands have some as they've played in this a little bit and start thinking about is this a highle creator or a low-level creator? Is this somebody I should be going deeper with or less with? Is this like how should I consider this? You know, are do they have a bunch of demand on their time because they're killers on the algorithm? Like fantastic. I'm going to go pay them a whole bunch more money and try and keep this relationship.

If it's somebody lower level, then you maybe work out a deal that's smaller, but just sort of understand, start with getting the lay of the land on who you currently have as creators or who you're using to fill that role, somebody you brief and makes content. Um, that might be an employee. And I've seen lots of brands do this with employees where they they say that all the time. And I would encourage you to pay your employees extra for doing that kind of work if it's not part of their job description.

Some people of course are bringing this in-house with like organic social creators who do this all the time for organic social. The whole goal of an organic social creator is to create content that is optim optimized for algorithmic engagement. And when they create that kind of content, they then um turn around and use that stuff for ads as well. Like that's a really solid way to do it if if organic social is a big part of your plan.

But start to think about who you actually already have and then go and start to look for new creator partners where you can go find these people. I haven't used it yet, but Meta has built a creator marketplace that they're touting and trying to push people towards. Uh maybe maybe some opportunities there to connect with creators and go sort through things. I think sorting through your social media following is a really good idea.

Finding ways I know there's tools to do this. Finding ways and you can also probably scrape this with AI. Finding ways to go look into your social media following and say like okay um who is it that I have right now that I have access to who I haven't actually tapped yet but who follows me and seems to being familiar with my content. Um I really think by the way that creators who know your brand and like your brand authentically do a better job than people who don't.

Uh they just get it. they understand what you're trying to do. They it comes across in the enthusiasm of the pitch in an ad. And I think that's really important. But I'd avoid sort of like mass UGC tools like Billow unless you really just need B-roll of people talking like where you really don't care about the performance at all because I've just never seen that stuff really seriously work. At least in my experience.

If you've had a different experience than that, I would love for you to comment on this video and tell me like, "Oh, actually I've had ads crush from those tools." Fantastic. I that'd be great if I was wrong about that because they're easy to use. Um, so you need to differentiate high and low quality creators and price accordingly. You need to build standardized contracts that will make your life a lot easier over time.

Um, operationalize your whitelisting setup and offboarding. One of the things that I found to be a surprising benefit that we have provided to uh to brands is that now that we've done whitelisting a few times, um, it's really confusing about like trading a bajillion emails with a creator to get whitelisting access and and page access and blah blah blah. And like we've now got this process dialed at AF Growth to where like we just sort of take the management of this from our brands and and it's sort of a surprising benefit of an agency partner where we have process built around this thing.

You know, it's not the kind of thing that I set out to ever go build, but we've just had to figure it out over time. And now we're really good. We use a tool called Leadzy. We get it all built out really fast and it it works really really well. And I think Meta is going to make this easier and easier all the time as they push on partner relationships. And it is worth noting here that Meta has been very public including at the performance summit about how important they think partnership relationships are.

I think there's some chatter about them changing the way that works exactly in meta, but they're definitely pushing in on like having good creator partners in the relationships. Um, another part of this is asset management. Creators are going to send you good quality assets. Finding a good way to integrate those to be reused by um your ad teams over time really really matters. Um, and uh and then building a long-term library of who are the creators we work with at different times is also really important.

All right, so that's creators. You get the idea. That distinction alone between creator and actor I think um is is really critical and a lot of brands get that wrong. If you're still using Gorgeous, if you're still using Zenesk for your customer service help desk software, what are you doing? It is time to switch to Rich Panel. And I can give you one very clear reason right now, which is that you are guaranteed to save at least 30% on your bill from switching over from either of those companies.

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Influencer is just such a broad term that I hesitate to use it. Um, but authorities is a word that I want to use because I think this gets at something really specific and a lot of brands get this very wrong because they are not thinking enough about this particular situation. Um, authorities are could be creators uh uh and they don't necessarily have to be but they could be creators but there's but they're people who are distinguished specifically.

They could be celebrities too by the way. They're distinguished specifically though by one trait which is that people trust them. They are trusted endorsers whose credibility validates product claims. So an authority is is on-screen talent you use when you need to validate a claim because a customer cannot go and look into the scientific makeup of your product but they need to understand whether or not it works. And so what do they do?

They shortcut the process of research by listening to somebody they trust. An example I've given uh a lot of times to this is um is is in the uh supplement space and in the health and wellness space almost everybody whether it's Huberman or Chris Creser my client right or or Peter Tia or um the woman who started um Whole 30 whose name escapes me right now Melissa something um you know different people who you trust as a source of authority on like what is going to make you healthier and people have these in small scale and large scale and everything in between.

But there are folks that you go and you listen to and neutralize and you say, "I just believe this person when they talk." That's what I'm talking about here. Because for lots of brands, there are claims that they are making about uh the way their products are effective or not that that it just they can't reasonably be asked to like go you can't reasonably ask a customer to go and research all these claims yourself. So, you need the authority to do it.

So, let me give you a few examples because the obvious one is health and wellness, but there's actually other ones as well. Okay. Um almost any product where there is a performance element to it is it fits this bill. Okay. So for example uh doctors for supplements is a really obvious one or maybe veterinarians for health for for pet health uh different things. Okay. Pediatricians for car seats right is like a thing that happens.

Um, if there's a fitness product then like coaches a lot of times I think of like a uh in you know I worked with Driveline Baseball for a long time um and still friends with those folks like Driveline Baseball is a good example of something where it is a performance training protocol in-person thing. There's training tools like there's just people who are trusted in that space. I I do CrossFit like there's been longtime CrossFit influencers where um you know I don't really need them to create engaging content algorithmically for me to trust them.

So, they're not creators per se and they're not actors per se, but you know, if Kelly Starat, who's a longtime, you know, coach in the functional uh uh fitness space, or Ben Berseron, these CrossFit coaches say Julie Fuchcher, they say, um, this is what we use to train and here's why. I am just inclined to listen to them because I know who they are in the space. Now technically they also these people also um almost cross the line into like celebrity for some of them because you know somebody like Julie Fuchchet if you know her she's a she was an actual CrossFit games athlete and so she sort of functions at a different sort of space but um but again I'll talk more about that in a second but I just trust her and so if she says this is going to be what works she's also a medical doctor and I it's not about her engagement numbers it's not about how good she is on camera it's just about the fact that I trust her to tell me the truth about these kinds of things and so I can believe in her because her she lends credibility of the brand.

But there's other spaces here too that are a little more surprising like makeup artists for beauty brands is a is a really interesting one where like you know people are looking for recommendations from people they trust. And so you know you think about Jones Road coming from Bobby Brown um and you know famous makeup artists where it's like okay I trust that I talked to a woman once who didn't know about that I work with you know in DDC and have some friendship with Cody Plaer and Jones Road or whatever but she was just talking about oh Jones Beauty I get their ads all the time.

Oh that came from Bobby Brown. That was the first thing she said about the brand. You know she knew exactly who Bobby Brown was. She knew exactly her influence in the makeup space. And for her, the fact that Bobby was associated with brand, now that was at the level of like founder even. And of course, this is by the way part of the reason founder brands work a lot of times is that they take this influence thing and they really ratchet it up to where the influencers actually on the cap table or as the founder of the brand or whatever fully associated with it.

Um, but they do that. Gordon Ramsey with Hexcloud is actually another example of this. Uh, to use sort of some commonly known examples. You know, Hexcloud is a performance product. It's about making you a better cook. uh people who are who are into cooking want to know that they are going to do a great job cooking food uh that is delicious and there's a performance element to that and they see this weird hex shape on the pan and they might go I don't know I don't want to use that I I should stick with my cast iron I should stick with my what you know what and but okay but if Gordon Ramsey comes and says hey actually all my chefs use this not only not only do I use it but my chefs use it in my restaurants and also on my shows they're using it all the time and there's this deep integration of of uh the authority there that can work really really well.

Um there's a few different um there's a so any any brands that in some way have to overcome an efficacy trust gap in their marketing can use these people really well and should in fact be seeking them out uh because it's just a really important part of it. So um so that's that's critical. Um there's a few different sources of credibility for people. Um one of them is pure credentials and that's often the cheapest. Like imagine just like like I've seen ads for uh pet supplement brands that feature veterinarians.

These are veterinarians who nobody's ever heard of. They have no social media following. So they have zero status outside of that, but what they have is a lab coat and they have a they have a credentialed title. Uh you know they they are they are doctors of veterinary science or veterinary medicine or whatever. And so because of that they can put that on screen as they promote the product and say you can trust me. I'm a veterinarian.

Okay. Um, and that person should be the cheapest overall for you to work with in your brand. The more public that person's accomplishments, the more expensive they're going to be. So, you could imagine a um a uh a person who has done really remarkable things in medicine. And uh and and you know, I don't know, I'm thinking about like um well, let's take an athlete or something. Julie Fouch is a great example. I just use the CrossFit Games.

Julie Fuchet was second place in the CrossFit games at one point and she was uh a great uh and she has um credentials. She is a doctor. She's a functional health doctor through Cleveland Clinic. Uh okay, if I have that right. Right. So, Julie has accomplished a whole bunch, had built a large online following as a publicly known athlete and has credentials. So, you put all that together and her trust level goes up, which means her price goes up.

Okay. Um the now if you take that and you ratch it up even more some people are not only that but they also have really broad social reach and they're really good with making engaging content. You know here think of Andrew Huberman. Huberman has credentials. Okay. Uh and and on top of that he has built a massive online following. And because of those things he would be extremely expensive to work with for your brand.

And I you know I don't know that's the health and wellness space. Some of that stuff I know very well, but uh uh or I know much better than some other spaces. I could do the same thing in baseball. You don't need me to go down that list. Just think of your space. Think of the trust claims that you're making and think about that same scale. You could do really well with lower priced people who are just credentialed alone.

You're going to do better as you invest more deeply with people who have broader sets of credentials, etc. Sometimes, by the way, the execution of these is more briefed. Sometimes this is more scripted. Again, this probably depends on how good your um authority is on camera. It depends on how much how comfortable they are, etc. Uh but uh but you you may brief and you may treat them more like a creator, you may treat them more like an actor, but uh but that's going to depend on again some of those factors of how good they are on camera.

Um and um here I would pretty much as a best practice always be whitelisting because even if the person has no social following, it may just feel natural to have an ad come from again a veterinarian's page or something. You know, the person the customer doesn't have to know who the veterinarian is. They just need to see that there's a page from a veterinarian and the veterinarian becomes the person uh who um and and something about that delivery mechanism is is going to lend credence to the claims of the of the veterinarian.

So you should be pursuing whitelisting here um because it adds trust and trust is the whole currency of this interaction. Okay. Um and part of this is just that brands um might need to know when they need authorities. Like think about an apparel brand for a second. You could imagine like true performance apparel. Think about like um uh let's think about like sportspecific shoes, okay? Something like that where it's like, you know, you really need you really need a a really particular kind of shoe where the shoe is like a tool in the sport.

I don't know. Think of rock climbing. I don't I think rock climbers wear special shoes. I don't do any rock climbing. I don't remember. But when you know, you get the idea, right? Something that's true performance apparel, not just like Nike. Okay, for that person, uh you may actually need this kind of level of authority for for somebody to really trust you because if you can say the best athletes in your space are using this, then great.

Um you know it whereas like a more fashionoriented performance apparel, uh Nick, uh Nike, uh Viori, something like that, you may still have influencers involved, but it's not about bridging a trust gap. It's not about how moisture wicking the shirt is, okay? You don't need to prove that anywhere. uh you you just need somebody to validate that it's cool. Um and you know, you can take another step towards fashion apparel.

Now, in this case, fashion actually kind of works this way where if you get really cool people to uh to be in your fashion brand, right, and to be influencers in your in your fashion brand, the cooler the people are, the more that like regular folks can trust, right? There's a trust gap here that the that the uh top or or jeans or whatever that you're buying are actually cool. uh you know and so if if a if a if a cooler person a person with social cache uh is wearing your clothes then your clothes are cool and therefore uh you sort of bridge that trust gap and that's the way influence works in that space so it sort of fits a little bit in between and you can see what's important but what you don't want in that case is like like I mean think about this you know I think it was Levis or G whoever somebody did Sydney Sweeney jeans I'm I can't believe I don't remember who this was but anyway big Sydney Sweeney jeans thing that caught a bunch of attention what you don't see there is Sydney Sweeney talking about um how how good the zipper is on the jeans.

You know, it's not a features and benefits claim in the same way that it would be with some other products and that's one of the differences with authority and influence as well. Okay, so creator, actor, authority, authority kind of bridges that line a little bit. Um the the key thing on authorities I think is you got to know if you need them or not and if you do then you got to press into them. Let's talk about the last category which is celebrities.

Okay, by celebrity I mean something different than creator, different than authority. Though there is again potential overlap here. Okay, a celebrity is a famous person. Uh just a famous person and what I mean is somebody who has notoriety in culture based on something they have done that has nothing to do with their algorithmic content creation. So this is actors, athletes, mi musicians, um reality TV stars would fit into this, right?

Uh somebody who became famous that way. I mean, I remember when I started marketing, so much of brand's playbook was to go like get the people from the most recent season of The Bachelor, pay them to post and uh and that was a way you would make a bunch of money, right? Okay, fine. That's that's not they didn't gain those people didn't gain big followings because of, you know, um their ability to generate algorithmic content.

They gained big followings because they went on the Bachelor and um you know, uh humiliated themselves on television. Okay, that's that's the way they gained a big following. and um you know embarrass their parents on television. Uh so they that's what they did. They their fame is unrelated to their content creation skill. And you of course know who a celebrity is, but it's really important to distinguish these people because celebrities are extremely expensive to work with.

The more expensive somebody is, the more famous or the more famous somebody is, the more expensive they are. And yet it's very possible that their content at the level of paid social ads performs terribly. I was talking to a brand recently, an apparel brand that has a few like uh former professional athletes on their uh cap table and who have been involved in their brand and when they run whitelisted ads through those former professional athletes pages with the professional athlete pitching the product in sort of performance apparel, it doesn't work at all.

Like the regular customer doesn't care that some former basketball player or or football player or baseball player or whatever is wearing these shorts because it's not a function claim. And so it doesn't matter that like a a good athlete wore these. Uh that's that's not the way that people are making the decision. Um and so the celebrity in that case lends something to the brand, maybe some level of credibility or coolness, but that's not what direct response advertising is.

Direct response advertising is something different. And this means that brands, if you're thinking about the ROI of celebrities in your brand, you should not think about it at the level of algorithmic content or ROI for direct response advertising. Instead, you should think about it at the level of brand equity, brand building, right? Awareness kind of general sorts of plays if you have larger distribution. And this is why in most cases, most smaller brands ought to avoid signing larger deals with larger celebrities because they don't convert.

And if you need to convert, if you need to turn if you need to turn your ad dollars into profit sooner than later, this is a bad deal. Instead, it's a much longer term, larger term play builds brand equity into the brand. Okay. Uh so uh there is an exception here which is licensed deals um or very long-term very authentic integration. So the the the exception here where I think this can actually perform really well is when you take a celebrity relationship and you build a licensed co-branded product with the celebrity that now actually allows the customer to tap into the celebrity that they love and you can go find that person with whitelisting access.

By the way, if you do a licensing deal, you absolutely should build whitelisting and and social ads into um into that licensing deal. um into creating co-branded licensed product with that person. That is actually a really good play in a direct response environment because you're tapping into people's existing love for that celebrity. Now, watch out. It's often the case those customers are also um lower LTV than other customers because they like the celebrity more than they like your brand.

Your brand moves into second place in that relationship. So, I've seen that go badly and I've also seen it go really well. But watch out for that possibility. Uh the um the longer term authentic integration can work really well. So, let's go back to Gordon Ramsey and H Hexcloud for a minute. Okay. Um, again, I said Ramsay doesn't just like show up. He's in tons of their ads all the time. He's in their Super Bowl ad. He's also on paid social.

Um, he's also uh cook his his chefs on I think it's Health's Kitchen is his show, right? Uh are are cooking with Hexclad Pans on the show all the time. So there's this really deep integration of the product and Gordon and his reach and his channels in a bunch of different places for a very big brand that's building across a lot of different channels. They're selling in Costco. They're selling um you know all on in in other uh big box stores as far as I know.

Um and so it's a it's a much deeper kind of build and not just true onetoone ad performance. I've seen a lot of these go wrong where brands pay a whole bunch of money to celebrities to do ads and the ads do nothing and it's because they have the wrong relationship with the wrong kind of um influencer or the wrong kind of talent in the ad. Um AJF Growth like at at at our agency we generally um would encourage our clients to avoid contracting with celebrities.

Um and and that's the main way that we would interact with that is to say like in general it's not going to give you what you want unless you're thinking about it really at this larger brand kind of level. So it's sort of a stayaway for me uh because the cost is definitely in excess of the value in the specific channel of direct response advertising. The time to do it is when we're thinking at the level of brand equity and often by the way this is the reason why um this is this is the reason why brands do equity deals not just um pay paytoplay deals right uh because you actually want a deeper and thicker in in engagement in it.

If you think about Gordon Ramsey and Hexclad I don't know what exactly how Ramsey sits on the cap table there but he has equity in it. He is incredibly expensive for Dashcloud, assuming they sell the business at some point down the line because he is an equity holder and so he's going to make many millions of dollars presumably. Again, I don't know the cap table uh from that deal. They did not pay him 50 grand or five grand or whatever to do something.

They bar they're going to pay him millions and millions of dollars over time. Now, it's worth it to them. He's worth that money to them for a bunch of reasons. But this is the thing. The people are really really expensive here. So, okay, that's it. Um all four of them. Let's just recap really, really fast. Actors are people you're paying for scripts. should be low cost. Uh creators are people you're paying for delivered ads.

You should be briefing, not scripting them. Number three, uh was authorities, people who who are trading on their trust. Uh and who can be in your ads there. And number four be celebrity. Okay? Uh and celebrity generally is a stay away unless you're thinking about it really carefully at the brand level. Those are uh those are the four different kinds. There's probably others and these definitely have some crossover in each of the categories, but that's the way we're thinking about advising our brands about it.

If you have other ones that I missed, please drop them in the comments. I'd love to hear about uh any of those that you that you're thinking of as well and anything that I missed. But that's the breakdown. Know which ones you need and then go get them and add them to your brand and watch your ad performance improve. Thanks so much for watching or listening. I really appreciate it. I have an incredible episode coming soon, so you should subscribe right now.

I recorded it with my friend Richie Masho. I've talked about it a few times recently, but it's really awesome. He's running a brand that was millions of dollars in debt. He's telling you exactly how much in debt they were, how much money they're making, what he's doing to get the brand out of debt. He was not the one who plunished it into debt. He's been tasked with getting it out of debt. Talking like millions of dollars of debt, and he cannot run Facebook ads to generate revenue.

And so, he has to generate revenue to pay down debt. Just a crazy story. It's really awesome. It's a great episode. It's coming very soon. So, definitely subscribe so you don't miss that. Thanks so much to my sponsors, Workspace 6, who you can go reach out to at workspace 6.io and Rich Panel. go to richpanel.com to get working with them. Both awesome sponsors who I love, great people, great products. So, go check those out.

And of course, if you want to work with AF Growth, I would love to help you sort through these kinds of things in your brand. Go to afgrowth.com, fill out the intake form uh over there, and I would love to uh to get started, get a conversation going about whether or not we might be the right fit for you. Generally, brands need to be spending at least 100 grand a month on ads to work with us. If you're not there yet, might not be the time.

Um, but there you go. Um, thanks so much. Like, you can also email me podcastfgrowth.com. Follow me on X at Andrewj Ferris. Love to hear any thoughts you have about this episode or any others. Try to answer your questions in a future episode, so send those my way. Thanks so much for watching or listening. I will see you next time. [Music]