Hey Lauren, welcome along to the podcast. Great. Thank you for having me, Jesse. It's great to be here. Yeah. I'm super excited for this episode. So my first question to you is for people just getting started working with well, let's call it U G c, user generated content. Well, first and foremost, like how do we define that in today's world?

Yeah. Influencers are usually people who have very large followings Yeah.

And require more money. They, you know, post to their channels. They essentially kind of go off of their aesthetic and so they take the product but basically put it into their aesthetic,  to in fact, run ads or run, run the content through their channels. Yeah. Whereas content creation and U G C is you're getting a brief from the brand and you're working off of what you need to shoot. So it still, you know, it still has that user-generated quality feel. Same with content creation. 

  So it's more brand focused as opposed to like influencer focused. Yeah. So I think there's, again, everything is paid still, but there's just different ways of how you kind of position those different. Yeah. Creations. Yeah, totally makes sense. So, and I think there is a lot of confusion in our world about this.

So yeah, an influencer, you are really paying for their audience and for them to put to, to influence their audience and, and put your products into their world, right. And show people how they can use them. Whereas when you're paying for U G C or creator content, you're actually. You, you'll probably have a little bit more like say in the creative process as well, but you're not expecting to get an audience from that.

They might not even have an audience. They might just be someone who's really good at creating video. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, definitely . Awesome.  I guess as well where the confusion is as well as like back in the day, user generated content is like purely content from your audience or from your customers.

So I think sometimes brands get stuck when they think that they have to get this content. You know, like organically from their, from their customers. And I would say that's definitely not the case. There's a lot of ways you can get content now as a brand without having to wait till your customers get around to filming a testimonial.

Right. So do you wanna talk to us a little bit about how you are working with creators and like what your process looks like? Yeah, so we've actually been sourcing creators for the last year year and a half actually. And essentially what we've done is I've really looked at people, again, kind of on, I guess like the micro side, so they don't necessarily have a huge following.

Yeah. But in terms of being in front of the camera, they're very natural. They. Talk to their audience, whether it's stories or reels in a very authentic way. Yeah. And so really what we've done is we've kind of searched high and low for the creators we work with, but basically have just kind of worked with them in terms of.

You're really great at talking about different areas of your life, talking about products, talking about things that you're passionate about, but working with them in a sense of we also need this to convert someone to actually purchase an item. So I think like what we've been doing is we've kind of been training them to.

You know, mold them into exactly what we need in order to have paid ads work. Yes. And again, because they're so natural in front of the camera, it's really easy for us to coach them in terms of, okay, well we need this shot, but we need it with, you know, this hook or this, you know, ending or whatever. And basically, this is the B roll we need from you as well.

So having them piece together each part of that content. Will then help us obviously craft the ads. So we, you know, have really kind of worked with a lot of creators and have found creators who work really well with us and who we've been able to kind of train to execute on the creatives that we need for our, for our clients.

Amazing. So what sort of numbers are we talking here? You have like, is it 10 or 20 creators that you're regularly working with for different brands? Yeah. So right now we have 30 creators who we're, we're working with. Yeah. And that's male and female. 

And then really just seeing how they work with the brands, how they work with us, and then if we can get them kind of going on a steady cadence, then, you know, we're able to kind of transition them into, you know, I guess like a full-time role working with us where we can, you know, obviously give them the, the direction and give them the product that we need in order to shoot the products.

Amazing. So having like that smallish group of creators, , does that mean that, you know, as a consumer of ads on, you know, on Meta or TikTok, am I gonna see the same creators across different brands? Or do you think there's enough like di like people don't notice that or. . You know, it's funny, I don't, I'm sure people do notice it because I notice it

You know, I've worked with you know, some, some brands and I tend to see a lot of the same creators coming from. , like a billow or an incense? There's definitely favorites, I feel like, because I've definitely seen the same creators that have come from all of those platforms. 

 But honestly, I mean, I feel like it's kind of the nature of the business now. I mean, no matter where you are, there's so many creators out there. There's so many people shooting content that. It's, it's bound to happen, you know, and I, I think even too within the e-commerce space, the direct to consumer space, people kind of find those people that work really well and who do a really good job at selling a product that they're naturally gonna gravitate towards those people to work with them for content creation.

 I think I agree that it's fine. Like, I think cuz in a way they're sort of in that world of like, so if me as a consumer saw them, you know, Talking about a couple of different products, well, They're kind of like a micro influencer in a way, even though the, the channel they're reaching me through is paid.

So they're someone who, you know, likes this coffee and also likes this supplement. Like as long as the products make sense for the persona that they're putting out and they're not dressing up as like a granny one day and a  like muscle man, the next, it's like, it's probably fine. 

And what about like the legal side of things? How are you guys, are these creators giving you the right to the to the content and perpetuity for a year, two years? How do you work on that side of it? Yeah, so some of our creators we do have Contracts with them where we have a certain amount of time that we can actually run ads with them.

Mm-hmm. . And then some of our creators basically like it's in perpetuity, so they, we can give them once the assets are ours, they're ours. Yeah. I think it just, it kind of depends on the level of experience too. I've worked with a lot of creators who, More experience in creating content that they, you know, they've learned a lot along the way and will eventually just, you know, start asking you for more.

You know, payment terms you know, whitelisting access, all that kind of stuff where it is, obviously your paying a little bit more, but you know the type of content that you're gonna get. Whereas some of the smaller influencers who, or creators who aren't, you know, as big, they don't necessarily have all those guidelines intact yet, but yet they're still learning.

They're still wanting to work with new brands and grow.  I think probably two years would be enough for a typical ad, but it is would be nice to just be able to know that you can run the ad forever.

Right. , but yeah. But it's unlikely that you're gonna, it's still gonna be useful to you in two years time. And what sort of, I'm fascinated what sort of people these are, are they, like, do they tend to be people who are aspiring to make this a full-time thing? Or is it often something where they are studying or they are pursuing some kind of other passion?

Like what, Ty, what's the typical kind of profile of these people? Yeah, a lot of the people that we work with currently are mostly aspiring to do this full-time, so yeah,  they're trying to build up their clients, and so really like working with us, you know, we, because we work with so many different brands and agencies, that it's good for them to essentially put that into the portfolio.

you know, here's so many diverse products that I can work off of. Amazing. And would they have come from like an acting background typically, or would they have come from like, it's just a, a mix of people?

It's honestly a mix of people. , we have some who have done acting and some who have literally never gotten in front of a camera to shoot content like this. Yeah. It's mostly just been them shooting their own reels and stories and again, they just have really natural abilities to speak in front of a camera.

And so that has really just helped them honestly to, to flourish. Yeah. So what would you say are the key skills you're looking for? 

 Camera ability, speaking ability, aesthetic wise. So how they actually. You know, how their videos are actually being shot. You know, there are different ways aesthetically of what looks nice on camera in terms of reels and stories and ads. And so if they are shooting, you know, in obviously very dark places that they're not understanding where their lighting is coming from, that's a huge part of it too.

 Interesting. And what about like, so you would, would you typically work with, would the creator be the person that edits the whole piece of content or would they give you kind of rough cuts and you guys would, or you or the brand would tighten it up?

Yeah. So we take all of the content and we cut it for ourselves. So they give us all the raw footage and then we will edit all of the, the footage to cut them into ads. Right. That's interesting. 

Okay. Awesome. So you guys are, as part of your service, you are sort of coming up with the storyboard or the kind of outline and you are giving them the shot list basically and getting them to pull that together. Is that exactly generally how you work? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. We'll give them a full brief with shots that we need and copy or voiceovers that they need to supply to us so that we can edit the content for the ads that we need to create.

Awesome. Cool. That makes sense. So you guys are basically the, the creative. , you tend to be the creative powerhouse behind like what is the, what is the hook, what is the angle? What are we trying to get across here? What is the message exactly? And then these, these, these guys are filming and executing on that brief also.

Right? Yeah. Have you, and I guess you've got to the point of doing it that way for a reason. Have you ever like, cuz I know in sometimes brands will try and get the creator to just kind of come up with the whole thing. Have you found that that doesn't really work very well? Yes and no. I think depending on, kind of, depending on who you're, you're working with, if they've been shooting content for brands for a while, I think more the more experienced creators understand an ad and how it should look and what, you know, how the ad should be portrayed.

Whereas the people who are still kind of learning definitely need more help with it. I mean, they don't necessarily understand. The paid side of things and how, you know, performance, creative works. Yeah. So while they're really great at getting us the shots, they're just not really good at piecing that story together.

Yeah. Interesting. Cool. So how important is it to build kind of like a relationship with these creators, like versus just, you know, getting new creators to work with all the time? So I think the biggest thing for us is that we, we really do try to work with our creators, you know, long term and work with them on a consistent basis.

Because again, I think the biggest thing is that. The more that we work with them, the better they like, the better they're starting to progress in terms of their creatives. And it's easy to to just know, okay, this person does a really great job at skincare, let's say. I know I can give them all of our skincare brands and they're gonna execute it.

you know, perfectly, and there's not gonna be too many edits or revisions. And so it's like you, as you kind of start to build up that library of creators, then it's easy to just kind of give them the content, have them shoot it, and then, you know, kind of cycle through. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. . Yeah, that's good to know.

Like I think either a brand needs to have, like someone like you supporting them and, and doing that and building that relationship, or they need to build those relationships themselves. And I guess it depends on the size of the brand. Right? Right. What are the pros and cons as far as you see of like using an expert like yourself versus like a brand trying to execute this themselves in-house?

I think again, there need, if you have, if you're gonna execute this in-house, I would say you definitely need to have a person, a creative strategist who understands how to create the brief for the creators, how to gather the content, how to basically put the ads together in terms of, Visually what they're thinking and how they're gonna explain that to the editor.

So yeah, I think a lot of times brands will just, you know, they're, you know, they'll kind of look at it as, oh, well I have a video editor, or I have, you know, someone who does social. They're gonna be, they're gonna understand how to make these creatives for paid performance, where. They potentially could know how to do it, prefer paid performance.

Working with us, I mean, again, we do this every day. We work with a lot of different brands.

 And so it's easy for us to, you know, it come to us and say, Hey, this is what we wanna portray. This is what we want to talk about. You can, you know, storyboard it, cut the ad, and then you're good to go.  It kind of takes out. Guesswork of is this going to work? Is this not going to work?

Like, how much coaching do I need to do? You know, there's just a lot of less back and forth and more just this is what you're essentially gonna get. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, so we've talked a lot about like the nitty gritty of like making this happen and yeah, the, the kind of, the technicalities of working with creators.

What, let's change tack a little bit and talk about like what is working right now in, in kind of U G C creative or creative generated creative. What kind of formats or creative angles and hooks are working well on both TikTok and meta and, and also what's the difference between those two platforms?

What we've seen work on the platforms is a lot of things that are trending on TikTok will translate to Facebook. So, Kind of the, you know, three reasons why what I ordered versus what I got. You know, things like a green screen, things like that. A lot of that is already trending on TikTok that is working obviously really well on Facebook.

So I think the trends that we've been seeing is anything that looks native to the platform in terms of U G C. Not an ad is always gonna work better than things that are very scripted, looks like it's been, you know, looks like an ad essentially. And that's, you know, that's hard to do, like you're trying to sell a product so it has to still look like an ad.

But then at the same time, like you don't want it to look like an ad. You, you want it to look as organic as possible. I think it's just, How we've been kind of positioning in it is just making sure that we're just trying to make it as authentic as possible with drawing you in with a hook

yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So what's, do you, as a, like, when you're working with a brand, do you have kind of like a whole lot of go-to hooks that you kind of have up your sleeve? Or are you kind of starting fresh with each brand and coming up with a new creative idea? Like, I mean, I'm someone who. As a little too addicted to TikTok, I'm always trying to like get away

I mean, I should not look at it yesterday, for instance. If I go a day without looking at it, then that's a good day.  like, it definitely does fire up ideas for me like when I'm, when I'm in there like, and I love seeing what brands are doing. So yeah. What does your creative process look like for coming up with those ideas?

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of things do stick really well. Three reasons why, five reasons why that always does really well. Same thing, green screen always does really well. What I ordered versus what I got. Those kind of tend to be the starting point of what we kind of go off of in terms of U G C because those concepts always work.

The TikTok question bubble again, those are really good ones to kind of. Go off of because again, it, it introduces the product instantly and then it's, it's a quick cut onto this is the problem, this is the solution. Mm-hmm. . We can see where the audience kind of goes from there. And then we can basically pivot to start testing new concepts, new hooks, really trying to engage people more in terms of entertainment value, especially on TikTok. I mean, that's kind of, TikTok is is an entertainment platform. So yeah, making sure that we're trying to find those hooks that are obviously gonna entertain and engage.

I see a lot more humor coming in, even to Facebook ads since TikTok has been around, I think like, yeah, I was, I've been looking at Dr. Quas ads over the last couple of days and they're so funny, like they're just silly, but it's kind of like a little bit like those old Spice ads, but for the, for the TikTok generation, like, yeah,  and the way they apply that, basically you use this like little bit of this little hunk of soap and then girls are gonna, I wanna sleep with you.

Yeah, . We know that's not true, but it somehow kind of works cuz it's funny. Yeah. But some of their hooks are crazy. Like they've got one hook that is. You know, like your balls smell bad. . Yeah, . I'm just like, wow. That's a, that's definitely the three second hook being utilized to full advantage there. Yeah.

Yeah, I find it fun to break them down. Okay. And what are you, what are you, what do you see coming, like in the next kind of, I, I don't even wanna talk about six months cause it's moving so fast. Right. But what do you think are the trends coming up in the next couple of months? Like TikTok meta in terms of creative and like what's kind of hot right now?

I mean, again, I think, I think it's only going to get more. Interesting with hooks. I think like hooks are just, people are, are always trying to outdo each other on the hook side of things. So I think those are just gonna continue to get stronger and that's something that even I've noticed in terms of.

you know, what's, what's been happening on our accounts is that we've, we're always trying to outbeat our hook and always trying to outbeat ourselves in terms of how we're gonna make it better. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see that kind of coming down on the horizon. 

I do think also though, that, you know, People are starting to realize again that statics are super important. I've, you know, been seeing a huge uptick again in statics. Hmm. So I think something like that again is, you know, statics are always gonna be a winner, but I've definitely been seeing those trending really well right now too.

Yeah. So how do you. How does statics and U G C play together? Would it be images created by creators or are we just talking about brand, you know, lifestyle images, that kind of thing? For static? I think it's both, honestly. We've been seeing a really good return in terms of statics with U G C creators.

So we've been doing a lot of carousel U G C carousels that have just been static carousels. And those have actually been performing really well. So branded and U G C has actually been doing really well. So I think it's a mixture of both, honestly. Interesting. 

O obviously that still has a place, but I can see how the mashup is really effective because it, it kind of, it like puts everything into one ad. Yeah. It has best chance of performing. Yeah. That's interesting. And what else can we ask here?

Do you wanna, do you wanna like these questions about enhancing your product brand with creative strategy? Should I ask something about that? Or do you think we've talked about that mostly? Yeah, I think we've talked about that mostly. I mean, you basically have to have that within the brand, so I, I don't necessarily know if we have to go into that.

Oh yeah. Let's talk about the difference between organic and paid creative. Cool. So, and you also help brands with getting creative for their organic channels. What do you think is the difference between organic, creative and paid creative? Like, would you use the same creative in both places, or would you create different creative depending on where it's being used?

Yeah, so the creative that we use with our organic clients is, again, we're still trying to sell a product or trying to sell a service, but we talk about it obviously in a different way. It's coming from the brand side. It's not coming from a crater or testimonial or a consumer facing side. It's coming from the brand.

So essentially how we differentiate that is that. , you know. It's the brand talking to you in a very authentic, organic way of, you know, why you should purchase this, how it benefits your life. You know, why people are using their product, why people love them in terms of paid, where it's, you know, you want to talk to the consumer again on, not necessarily all from the brand side, but you know, coming from consumer testimonials.

Creators who are talking about the product, why they love it. So I think it's just a different side of how you're approaching it. I mean, again, at the end of the day, you're still trying to sell your product, but it's just the tone of voice and how you're talking about it, I think is how you can think about paid and organic.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And so if it's organic, If a brand is talk is, I mean, a brand could still potentially use creators to create content for their organic channels, like to talk about, say it's apparel, to talk about the hoodie or whatever. Right. But is it more like sort of behind the scenes or kind of on behalf of the brand is what you're saying versus more from the customer point of view?

 Yeah. So we do use a lot of our creators to shoot content, but again, the storyline is different. It's talking about all of the pros of the brand, why this is a good You know, basically just making it, again from brand tone of voice, not necessarily from like my tone of voice. So, yeah, it's, it's different in, in that sense. So, again, mm-hmm. , the, the creative is still effective in that it's coming from a, a person who's. You know, where like sharing the content, but it's not, it, I don't think it comes across as salesy as maybe like a direct response ad could come across.

Yeah, that's right. And final question for you. Where are you sourcing these creators? Like, where are they hanging out? Are you, there's obviously lots of different platforms that you can kind of hire a creator fairly cheap, but do you think that's an effective way to reach them or are you finding them hanging out somewhere else?

I mean, I've found a lot of my creators actually from like word of mouth. Twitter has been huge. I found a lot of creators on Twitter. Actually I would say Twitter is probably the biggest one. There's so many creators on the platform and I mean, truthfully, you can kind of just drop a post and you know, people will, will see it.

So I have seen a lot of creators through Twitter. And then really just again, kind of people who I followed, kind of following them through. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it's not easy, right? That's definitely, yeah. You have to put in the hard yards to find the right creators for the brand and, and that you can trust and rely on and that they're gonna like fulfill the brief and not let you down. And I can imagine it's a little bit like herding cats at times.

Yes.  definitely . Yeah. And I guess that's why often brands kind of shy away from it or wonder how to, how to approach it cuz it is so time consuming. Right. Yeah, definitely. Cool. And where can people find you? Follow, you keep up with what you're doing? Yeah, so my website is theloft325.com. And then obviously I'm on Twitter @loft325 and Instagram at @theloft325 perfect. Awesome. Well, we'll make sure we link those in the show notes and make sure everyone can find you.

And thank you so much for coming along. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.