Creator Monetization

I had the opportunity to speak with Lauren Schnipper.

She’s a VP of Business Development at Jellysmack, where she leads mergers and acquisitions investments and partnerships. For the past several years, she’s focused on critter monetization diversification.

She’s really passionate about figuring out more ways for creators to make money. She’s also the co-host of the podcast Creator Upload alongside Joshua Cohen, who’s the co-founder of Tube Filter.

It’s a really top notch show I personally listen and you’ll definitely want to subscribe.

Laurens an ex-“Facebooker” or “metaverser”–I don’t know how to say that now–, where she oversaw strategic partnerships to our top digital talent there and comedians on Facebook and Instagram. She educates us on the innovations of Jellysmack, how creators can diversify their revenue streams.

Lauren is absolutely on our Women to Watch list.

Jessy:

…And I know our audience is going to really benefit from hearing from you. So sort of before we dive into anything, I just want to hear a little bit about your professional journey. A little bit about Jellysmack and Bird Killer. Yeah, so if you could share a little bit about that, that would be amazing.

Lauren:

Yeah, it’s been a windy road. I actually started my career in Broadway producing. I am a huge Broadway nerd and I absolutely love. Produced a few shows with a very early days company called Harbor Entertainment. We did Night Mother on Broadway, with Edie Falco and Fiddler on the Roof or a couple of things we did. But I was always performing at the same time, as well as I actually doing comedy in my 20s. And I was producing at the same time. So after I left sort of Broadway, I was doing like off off Broadway theater produce, like every level of live theater. Moved out to Los Angeles 15 years ago, to continue that journey, but really focus on comedy. The dream was to like be on SNL and got into the Groundlings, came up with that sort of whole thing. But it was always producing kind of sketch comedy. And then it got into video was early days producing stuff for Funny or Die when you could literally like email Mike Farah who I think is still the head of Funny or Die and just be like, we put my sketch on the front page, which was really big deal. And then basically, I turned a certain age and realize I didn’t like staying up late, which is basically what comedy is. I realized what I’m really good is at producing, which is basically just galvanizing people around a central sort of idea and knowing what you’re good at and knowing what you’re not good at. Because then when you’re not good at something, you can just have a network to hire the people to do the things you’re not good. So it really pivoted to that over 10 years ago. And I found this sort of burgeoning group of talent called YouTubers. And even prior to that, I started doing kind of web series with companies that don’t really exist. This is my life, that was kind of a thing. And then started working with YouTubers and became known as like the person that producer who could kind of like transition creators from kind of what they were doing to either bigger projects online or diversify it to sort of TV because you know, YouTube at the time was sort of thought of as like the incubator for TV so as an example, I produced the Annoying Orange pilot for a Cartoon Network. Dane Bonin Piper is so good friend of mine. He was, you know, a huge YouTuber at the time still gets like 50 million views a month, by the way, over 10 years later. So I was kind of doing that and then ended up like working with a bunch of YouTubers as a producer and a manager, producing pilots and podcasts really early, early days that book deals, movies, docu series. Sold a show the YouTuber to NBC for several YouTuber to do that and all that sort of stuff. So it was really exciting. And then I found myself really kind of burnt out and like transitioning to Facebook and was the first person to ever kind of like look after this cohort of talent for Facebook and Instagram. And so this was August 2014 and was there for four and a half years and it was a really interesting time to be there. Listen, I’m a Broadway nerd that landed at a tech company like nobody was more shocked than me but I’m like you know say what you want about the company was incredible opportunity for me to really learn and understand product and really you know, these platforms that build the you know infrastructure for which craters kind of build their careers. And I was there, it was interesting cuz I was there like when we could do no wrong to like Cambridge analytic. I was there when it was literally set in stone, we will never ever produce original content to the launch of watch. So it was just this incredible pendulum swing works on Facebook and Instagram, my first couple years, then we hired a whole Instagram team, led the entire VidCon partnership. I’ve been going to VidCon for years, saw a lot of holes and what could be better. Later at Facebook, I was like, we got a bunch of money, we’re gonna do things like a really fancy talent lounge. I was the person that kind of ideated and came up with that. And then it became this mainstay, it’s like it concert globally, currently on the VidCon board, a very supportive of the organization. And yeah, and then sort of left Facebook about it’ll be three years in January to really focus on monetization diversification. So I became a little frustrated. I think, for myself where everything at Facebook starts at scale. And so I was really ready to sort of go a little like deeper with fewer. And so landed a startup that was meant to be sort of a fun to invest in credit led businesses. It didn’t kind of work out because there were some sort of financial issues with our backer. But really saw in early 2019, late 2018, that there was this, what we now call the creator economy was not a thing even like then. And it was this burgeoning sort of industry where like, there was a lot of “industry” being built up around. It was really exciting to me and I and I generated so many opportunities, and just a few months there. And so I was like, this is sort of in my obsession in my passion ever since. I started a podcast called Creator Upload with Josh Cohen, who co-founded TubeFilter, we talk about this every week. And so then after that sort of I landed, actually consulting for a year to spend a lot of time at Spring for the Teespring, helping them figure out like sort of their play within creators even more deeply. And then I’ve been a Jellysmack for a year, it’ll be literally a year where we created this role for me that says VP of Creator Business Development, where my job is basically to think about how Jellysmack can expand its offering for creators, whether that be build, buy or invest. So I meet with startups every single day, I think it’s the coolest job. So I know what’s going on. And yeah, that’s kind of what I’m doing now. That’s the story.

Jessy:

So it is the coolest job ever. And it’s also like, they’re very lucky to have you. Right? I mean, like, that’s the perspective that I have. Absolutely, I wanted you to sort of go through your professional journey and your own words to versus me just reading on paper. I think that it you’ve got this huge amount of perspective, coming from like live entertainment that is all on Broadway in New York. And like traditional entertainment, which like, isn’t even TV, it’s like Broadway is even, you know, well before that, and how you’ve ended up where you are today, which is like–

Lauren:

–mind boggling.

Jessy:

It’s mind boggling. But it also makes such sense. I can tell you I see such a through line. The thing that I’m most impressed with is just that you are obviously not somebody who is averse to change. The people who, you know, they’re like, “Well, I’ve had all the success in television for decades. And like, I don’t know what these kids are doing on the internet like,” and they push against it. You are not that person. In fact, it seems like you, like lean so heavily–

Lauren:

I was person having the conversation with those people when I’d be in meetings with a creator talking about how they should you know, make this movie. We were trying to get off the ground or something and they’d be like, “I don’t get it. I don’t get” and I’d be like, “call your kids, ask him if you know, they know what’s going on.” And my kids was like, “can I get an autograph from like, you know”. It’s just… so yes.

Jessy:

Yeah, a thousand percent. And so leaning into it. I’m sure you’ve gleaned lots of things. And you know, it’s scary. I’m sure to be at the forefront of things where it’s a little untested people. There’s no case studies presented, but what it does allow for is an incredible amount of opportunity to really be at the forefront of something and to have a community of people that I’m sure you’ve accumulated along your professional journey of people that you’re like this person, is there my people, like this person, I will partner with. This person like they speak we speak the same language. Yeah. So describe to me a little bit more about like, the most exciting stuff that Jellysmack is doing these days. Because I want to hear a little bit.

Lauren:

And one of the things I just want to touch on before I go there is that like, you know, I’ve been doing this so long. When I started, there was no ambition to be a creator or a YouTuber. It was literally like Hannah Hart got drunk and put a video on the internet, making some food. And all of a sudden, she woke up the next morning was like, Oh, my God, like, this is a thing, I guess I’ll make another one. And like, that’s the cohort that I kind of came up with. Now you got kids, like, their biggest dream is to be a creator. Like that wasn’t a thing. It’s exciting, because there’s perspective, so you can have more, you can have more of a strategic vision around it, there’s a lot more planning that you can do, where these kids are coming up. There was no planning. A lot of them were taking advantage of the time. We don’t have to go down the nCn road. But like we all know those stories, because they were basically just like, you know, fed to the wolves. Because there was nobody there to be their advocate. They didn’t know how to advocate for themselves. So it’s really interesting to see how things have changed. And it’s really it’s exciting to be somebody who can call out the BS and know what’s been done, what has been done, well, what’s been done badly and, and that sort of gets us to Jellysmack, which I think like, I would never call it an MCN. But we’re ready to do that. It would be like if MCNs actually did it right from go. And so what I love about Jellysmack, because it’s incredibly important to me, and I think I have this reputation of being a very straight shooter. very honest, very blunt. I had my counterpart at Facebook, he was on Instagram. We brought him in Justin Anthony, who’s amazing has been there actuallyfor a while now. We always joke we have very different styles. He’s much more subtle in his approach. And I’m like in the room with like Logan Paul being like, I don’t care, do you do it? If you want to do it, I don’t know, whatever, you know what I mean? Like you’re gonna make you’re making your life, you know, like, like that person. But anyway, what Jellysmack is doing? Well, first of all, we started off with our sort of owned and operated kind of big pages that we built up on Facebook. So we have really we have about, I don’t know, half a dozen, maybe more now of things around passion point communities like soccer and beauty. And we built these sort of really, really compelling, very engaged pages. And we started using technology to help build them up like AB testing every single thumbnail and piece of content that goes out there to make sure everything out there is like kind of like perform as best as possible. And so like a few years ago, the founders are like, well, what if we did this with like other creators, not just ours. And now that’s kind of taken like over the business, that’s really the main thing. So what we do, the primary sort of business line is that we take YouTubers with really big libraries of content, and we put them through our algorithm, which is made up of millions and millions upon millions of data points. It gives them a score. The score basically says is your content evergreen enough such that it will do well on other platforms. If that score says yes, then we then go to a next phase of testing, which we actually put real dollars into every test that we do before we partner with somebody where we actually, you know, take some videos recut them using a combination of technology and sort of humans, make a ton of thumbnails, go out there, you know, AB, test it, figure out what ‘syou know. if it does well, we then go to the part of the crater and say, “hey, we’ll partner with you”. And what we will do is basically diversify them on other platforms. And we work a lot of Facebook, snap, we’re and then we’re expanding all the other platforms, working on Instagram, and Tiktok, and everything. And so it’s really exciting. We work with about 300 creators. I always say like, we’re not currently in the business of scaling creators, but we are scaling video. So we process like 10,000 pieces of content every single month. So it’s an incredible amount of content that we’re kind of working with have data around. And it’s really, really exciting. And my job is sort of twofold where it’s one to like find tools and tech that help us do what we do better and faster. And then also to think about other opportunities that we can sort of bring to creators. That’s the tougher of the two because with creators, it tends to be that when you do one thing really well for them, they then come to you and they’re like, do everything for me because they’re very insulated, and they’re very skeptical. And they think that they can only do what they do the best that they you know. They’ve seen success because they’ve done it their own way. So they have a third party come in and sort of do something well for them like oh my gosh, this person could do something well so hey, can you do my merch Hey, can you do my this that that up? So we are having to really ruthlessly prioritize what we should focus on? And that’s it’s hard. That’s the harder part.

Jessy:

And so I wanted to dive more into that because I could not agree more. I think that everyone’s been saying it for a while like brand partnerships can’t be an influencer’s own only bread and butter. They you know, like any business owner, you want to diversify your revenue streams as much as humanly possible. Yes. But if you can sort of shortcut the process of seeing what’s going to be successful and what’s not, wouldn’t that be ideal, you know, to have these sort of tech tools at your disposal that are actually going to work for you. That’s huge, because you can bypass so much garbage by being able to have those tools. Yeah, so I don’t know. You know, there are a lot of influencer marketers that tune into the show, but they’re also influencers or managers have influencers that also lived in. I’d love for you to speak to them about even having an awareness of like what revenue streams they could even imagine up for themselves.

Lauren:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is sort of my obsession. This is sort of my passion. I really am focused on sort of the business development of creators and how the different ways that they can make money. And I was, again, on the forefront of kind of figuring out this diversification when I didn’t even have some. I’m not going to pretend that I had some like a zoomed out holistic sort of strategy. When I was doing this, you know, upwards of 10 years ago, it was like opportunity. Let’s try it. Let’s do it like that, you know. So here’s the thing: there’s so much a creator can be doing. And what’s interesting right now, too, is there’s a little bit of a trend I’m seeing where creators are trying to not step away from the platforms completely because the platforms are there. They’re not going anywhere. But I do think there’s this sort of shift going on where they’re not kind of as powerful as they once were because of all this diversification. And you see it with the different kind of tools that they’re adding to their own sort of stack. So you’ll take commerce and example like you can’t, you know, go online without some announcement about a platform doing something with commerce. I was at, you know, Spring I mentioned last year. They have some interesting partnerships with a lot of the platforms around this. So they’re all thinking about that. So creators should be thinking about that. But the other piece of it is, is that like, think about not only what you want to sell, but what your audience wants to buy. And if those things don’t kind of match up, it might not be the move for you, right? Like, you know, a couple years ago, I was thinking about working with his family creators, very big family creators. And we did some surveying around their audience about what they thought they would want to buy and what they wanted to actually sell. It turns out, those things were not the same. In fact, their audience didn’t really buy anything. And those creators even said to us, like, I wouldn’t partner with us based on these things. You know, this is all to say, I think I’m personally currently going through a shift right now where there’s been a lot of talk about creator brand building. And I think that there’s some really interesting brand building going on. This is not one creator, but like phase is a brand, right? That’s huge, right? You know, the Paul brothers say what you want about them have built an incredible sort of brand that they’ve been able to really like, you know, hold up on everybody, when is meant to build a brand, you got to have a partner that knows how to run a business, and you got to really dedicate yourself to it. So figure out what you want to do. But I think there’s a lot of opportunity with merch and commerce in general. And I’m also really excited about kind of the tools with which you can sell stuff. So live shopping is huge. Everybody talks about what’s going on. And like, you know, China has been doing live shopping forever. And we’re starting to see some really interesting startups in the space that are doing live shopping. So there’s a lot of really interesting opportunities there. I think also, with regards to that I’m a big believer in drops, a limited edition drops, whether that’s, you know, around whatever you’re selling, you know, I just think it’s like creating a scarcity and creating like, sort of, you know, demand is really critical. And I think that that creators should just generally be thinking about, you know, drops in general, I think that subscriptions are interesting, I think selling back catalogs, there’s very interesting, there’s a lot going on for years, I’ve been thinking about what that looks like paywalls, around just different pieces of content. I mean, there’s just there’s so many different opportunities out there. But I think that it’s important to be really strategic about it and not over, you know, complicate and spam your audience. But I also think that on the sort of opposite of Nevada, you’ve got to take risks that are greater and not just get super stuck in just like your you know, every day content making machine, you got to think about other opportunity. And what that usually means is bringing on people to help you do that. And that is really tough for a lot of creators. So think that’s incredibly important. You’ve got to be really strategic about who you bring on. But you’ve got to really willing to let go control I had a conversation with Rhett and Link, who are famously obviously a founders of mythical, they’re sort of main woman is Stevie Levine. I don’t know what her title is these days, but she’s been with them forever, we kind of came up together. And they always say that when they talk to creators, that you’ll ask them what a creator needs, I need an editor I need, you know, whatever, I need it post production person, like know what they need as a producer. And then they need to give that producer the power to do their job. And so that was how Stevie started. And then like, by the way, it’s like the gold standard of creator companies. So that’s what I think creators.

Jessy:

Yeah, I mean, look, a lot of that in my experience with influencers, if I were to pare back what I’ve heard, a lot of it is “I don’t know who to trust”, “I’ve been burned”, or, you know, “I’ve been taken advantage of in one way shape or another”. I mean, you talk about MCN. I mean, they’re giants. MCNs were like the epitome of making it if you were a YouTuber, and yet hindsight shows us a lot of questionable things about that business model.

Lauren:

Yes. And that’s the sort of eco–that sort of the atmosphere that this ecosystem is. So I always tell people that we’re trying to learn about this and you have to understand there’s this sort of just aura of mistrust that is out there because of how bad most of these MCNs kind of treated creaters whether or not it was over promising and under delivering or just literally doing really egregious things like tying up their channel and not giving it back to them. All this sort of stuff. So that is out there. But I will say that if you’re on the other side, and you’re somebody who’s trying to work with creators and you’re trying to figure “how do I break in?” How do I gain their trust? Add value not work?”. And then once you’ve added that value, maybe you can add a little bit of work. And so that’s something that I think Jellysmack does incredibly well. Because the majority of our offering doesn’t require the creator to do anything. And now they’re coming to us being like, “but I want to do more!”, which requires them doing work because we’ve been able to add such a tremendous amount of value. So when you think about I have a great slide and some deck were a friend of mine, who’s a manager of a really big creator, and I was like, “do me a favor.” I was like trying to make this point about how creators are so busy and they’re so hard to trust people. “Send me a screenshot of this week, right? What does it take to make one video?” And I you know, blocked out all of his, you know, identifying kind of, you know, things nobody knew who it was. And people were shocked like, it’s like I used to have do this presentation in Facebook all the time. Or like one minute of video does not take one minute to make it doesn’t even take one hour to make it can take days. I mean, you talk about like NAS Daily, I think he’s like, used to do his, you know, one minute a day videos or whatever it was, and it’d be 14 hours to make one minute now that includes travels. So that’s pretty much that’s on the high end, but it’s not, you know, cut that in half, seven hours to make one minute video. I mean, it’s a tremendous amount of work to do what they do. So if you’re going to try to work with creators, add value not work.

Jessy:

Yes. Thousand percent to that. And just like leading with that and managing expectations. That’s one thing I heard you say as well about, like, perhaps maybe where MCNs went a little wrong. Look, we can learn from the past, right? Like, there are a lot of things that were not so great, not so wonderful, but we can learn from it now. It’s not hard to like prove yourself writing somebody else’s wrong, right? It’s difficult to do, but I firmly believe that good people surround themselves with good people. So the second you do find that producer or that advocate, or whomever that is, get introduced to people that they surround themselves with, too.

Lauren:

Yes, I’m currently trying to help some creators. I now try to find their producer, SEO person or whatever, because they know the creator’s reputation and all that sort of stuff. And so I’m like reaching out to my network, trying to help them so. Maybe that company or that person can’t do it, but like, get into their network and figure out who they trust.

Jessy:

One-thousand percent. So I want to talk a little bit about your experience at like Facebook. You led Facebook’s creative partnerships for like four and a half years, I believe. You oversaw strategic partnerships for top digital talent comedians, I didn’t know that about you, by the way that you were in the comedy space. I want to like ask you to tell jokes. You’re like, “I’m so funny.” But I want to learn what’s your biggest takeaway from that experience, work for the platform’s themselves?

Lauren:

It’s a great question. There’s there’s a lot of takeaways, but I kind of put it in two different buckets with regards to sort of creators in general. I think there’s the creator point of view, right? If I’m talking to a creator, and they’re like, “how do I work with a platform?” Playing whatever playground is important to them. So I’m going to give you a wild guess. But guess what’s important to meta right now. Okay, formerly Facebook. It’s the metaverse. And so this might not be fair, it might not be right. But the fact of the matter is, all those people working at that platform have goals. And those goals are tied to their bonuses. And so if Mark Zuckerberg and then the leaders of those companies say, “this is what we’re focused on. I will promise you that all the resources are going towards that.” So then all those people working there, like I have to be proving that I what I’m doing is laddering up to this greater goal. So all the creator kind of leads and everything, and companies right now we’re like trying to figure out how they can contribute to this greater sort of goal. So if you’ve got a creater on your roster that’s doing something really interesting in like the metaverse, I don’t know what that means, by the way, but I’m just saying, you will be able to get in more with them, and they will give you opportunities and invite you into their betas and give you their monetization things, like that. That’s how you work with them. Conversely, on the platform side, something that I mentioned this earlier, that was always frustrating to me, but really kind of in the end was that they always think about scale first, like even if an idea starts maybe like not with scale, like you can make the argument that it can be scaled. I had a very difficult time getting traction around those ideas. And I would say like, that’s a real big miss for those platforms. Because you can get sometimes even better scale, if you think small initially, and then like how this thing about the trickle down effect. I would always ask a lot of people would come obviously from YouTube and vice versa, going back and forth on these platforms, former YouTubers, like “what’s the big difference between the platforms?” And pretty much 100% of the time, the people that would come from YouTube would say it takes a really long time for them to launch a new product. And I would say, “you can see that, right?” But when they do their launches are pretty buttoned up or Facebook is kind of throwing stuff against the wall every day. Good things about that, too, right doesn’t get stuck and you can actually see it. But also like bad things too, because you’re not maybe better than the idea. So it’s no secret that I in its first iteration, had a lot of issues with Facebook Watch and that they required every single person is going to watch to create a new page called a show page. Now, this is a good idea for like NBC, right, because NBC has got 120 sort of properties. And so you know, that’s fine. Each one of them should have a show page, if I’m a creator, I’ve got this huge page, I don’t want to create another page. I don’t have a huge army of people to do this. So that was communicated, but certainly by myself and by many other people and by creators, that this was not a great path forward for this product. And it was not listened to and the product was launched. And they of course, ended up deprecating that feature of it, and it’s much more successful now. And so, I think that a little bit more time spent thinking about the consequences of how these features and stuff can affect, you know, creators, good or bad. I think, is really critical. At the end of the day, the creators of the initial use case for all this stuff, right? You were the creators, you get the fans. You get the fans, you get the advertisers. You get the advertisers, you get the money. And they’re certainly much more seems creator friendly, since I’ve even left you know, then they know it, you know, sometimes I want to bang my head against the wall when I hear the higher ups of these companies being like, “we’ve always been creator-focus on them”. Like, have you, really? But I’m glad that we’re there. So that’s exciting. It’s great.

Jessy:

It’s interesting, this concept, even of scalability in the first place. I think it’s a major pain point for influencer marketers in general. I think that’s why a lot of things sort of go awry, because the assumption is that everything should be done at scale. And that’s the only way to make the most amount of money and impact and test them and get the most amount of data points, etc. That’s just a very specific way of doing this scale. People throw that term around as if it’s normalized. But it’s actually not at all.

Lauren:

It’s not necessarily the greatest thing. Like if you think about, there’s so much talk about micro craters these days, and how like you’re talking creators, 10,000 followers, maybe less, and how brands are seeing major success with those kind of creators. Because those are really high intent engaged audiences. And how exciting is that? And that’s not quote unquote—I don’t know what that is–, but it’s not scale. Right? So that was one of the frustrating things for me and sort of the end. It’s an incredible background, like have that in my head and the skill set to think big, because I’m at a company right now. It’s no secret we got a big investment from Softbank, we’re in hyper growth mode. So there’s a lot of conversations going on about how we scale this business. But what I like a lot is how certainly from that, we say no to so many creators. Because if you don’t sort of score well on this current system that we have set up, we go to that monetarily, you know. in every way, you know, with human capital and actual capital, you know, you know, and so we want to do it, well, we want to, you know, have major success. And so if that’s not gonna work out, we’re not going to work with you based on our current model right now. So it’s helpful to have those thoughts for sure. But it’s not the only way to think.

Jessy:

Yeah, And like the ultimate desire could be to get to the point where we’re scaling, but it’s sort of like started. I’m like, “that can’t be the first goal.” The first goal needs to be to have a solid product, right?

Lauren:

That’s the thing. That’s the thing, I always used to be like, build a good product, and they will come, you know, and I think that’s sometimes lost.

Jessy:

Yeah, but look, I mean, you know, the reality is, like, the Instagram and the Facebook’s of the world, have the ability, just from their stance, like an edge, just like their positioning, to throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall. And to see what sticks, right? I think it’s interesting that YouTube sort of does approach it a little bit differently. We actually have an event coming up with all about YouTube Shorts in November of 2021. The month that we’re recording this. And you know, that’s a year after they launched it. And just sort of like, see how people can can utilize that and to promote what people have been doing for over a decade now, creating YouTube video, and to just get additional reach beyond that. So I think it’s also just a bigger concept about, like cross promoting, you know, and not being platform agnostic.

Lauren:

What I think is also really interesting about YouTube Shorts. I’ve talked to some people internally about YouTube. I don’t know if you’ve heard this as well. It’s not internally right now, as I understand it, they’re not looking at it as like a means to get you know, more YouTube views on your main video. Like they want to create their own sort of ecosystem on Shorts, figure out how to monetize that and make that its own thing, which I think also speaks to like or maybe it’s just what it is. But you don’t necessarily see people with huge Shorts numbers getting huge numbers on their main videos, because it’s not really like pushing towards that and I understand it. So anyway, just interesting. I’ll have to tune in and see your event because I’m very interested in Shorts. Josh, my co-host on Creator Upload is bullish about YouTube.

Jessy:

Well, I want to check out his YouTube Shorts. I look I want to learn all about it, too. I think that’s you know, it’s an interesting thing. It’s like video content has been a huge focus for us. 100 People now it’s just like being like publicly stated. That’s the only distinction. So between reels and TikTok videos and even like in feed, you know, Instagram consolidated IG TV now, it’s just Instagram video management.

Lauren:

Which it should have been. That’s also another thing that should have been from day one Instagram. You know, one of the best things about Instagram is how simple it was. And then all of a sudden, you had five surfaces on it, you know. I love that they finally not only the consolidate, you know, got rid of sort of IGTV its own thing, but I actually think it’s a little thing and seems like getting rid of the swipe up, I actually think is a really smart move. Because it’s just like another thing we have to do. And it’s just sort of like incongruous with like how everything else, like it sort of works. And so it’s like, yeah, just make it a link.

Jessy:

The user experience is so pivotal to these tools having longevity. I don’t know anybody, when Instagram TV first came out, that thought it was going to be successful.

Lauren:

I can tell you, internally at Facebook, because we had already launched Watch. And you know that one thing that Instagram gets the benefit of is sort of seeing what goes good or bad at Facebook. And the launch of Watch was I mean, it’s doing really well now, but it was not a very successful launch. And I think partly, you know, that show pages example, which was basically creating another surface, it was like, well, IG TV is going to create this other surface, like that turned out to be like a terrible idea. And I can remember personally having some conversations like that don’t do that. And they were like, No, we’re gonna do it. I’m like, cool.

Jessy:

And I’d be curious what they’re really–what were their reasons behind that.

Lauren:

I think it was hubris. I think it was that Instagram right now like musically was like a thing then. And then of course, that was became sort of TikTok. And, you know, SnapChat had been this big, kind of, like threat to Instagram. That was like, a really big, everybody was like nervous about that. Then we came up with stories, and we kind of like as some went away and stuff doing incredibly well, but it sort of made it like, alright, we’re good. Like, we were “Snap’s not gonna make us go away.” And we were kind of the king of the castle at that time. And I do think that there was this element of, “they will just come”. And that is not true. And I said that. Yes, in many people, it’s incredibly difficult. But it shows also how hard it is to create a like a new platform. I mean, it’s incredibly, like the biggest platform in the world. Couldn’t effectively create a new platform, right? So like, it’s really, really tough to do, which also leads into sort of what we were talking about earlier with diversification with creators is like, it’s really tough to convert audience to do anything, if you’re anyone or a platform. Like the average conversion for audience for creators, something like 1% of your followers. So it’s not a lot. It’s very difficult.

Jessy:

I’m curious. I mean, you’ve been exposed to probably hundreds, if not thousands, of creators, over time. I’m curious. Your perception. Those who do tend to convert a higher percentage of people, what is their point of distinction?

Lauren:

It’s a really good question. I can say from a numbers perspective, because we did a lot of this sort of analysis. When I was at Spring last year, was we generally saw when there was a 4x or greater views, two subs ratio, you would see really good conversion. So what does that look like? You’ve got a million subscribers, but you’re getting like 4 million views a video, you’re going to get do really well. So like very highly engaged audiences. I said, I’m starting to hate that word, engage audiences, because what does that mean, you know, gauging around a piece of content, basically, you can decide what that means. But generally speaking, that was like a metric that we saw, because we were just like, how can we just put some sort of logic behind this and figure out who’s successful. And that was something that we sort of came up with, but I think other than that is a genuine–also word that I kind of hate along with authentic–connection to the audience. And a sort of buy in from that audience around their world, whatever that is. If it’s a lifestyle world, if it’s a gaming world, right? Like, you see incredible conversion in the gaming world, right? Because it’s like, those are really, really engaged fans. So that’s what I have seen to be very successful. How do you get that? I don’t know. I have ideas. But, you know, it’s not it’s not as easy as it sounds, make good content.

Jessy:

Right. But I think it sort of goes back to what you were saying, sort of at the beginning of this conversation, which was sure maybe you have goals as a creator right? Of like merch that I want to make. But your more successful creators at converting are less in touch with what they want and all about what their audience wants.

Lauren:

Yes, another good example like there’s a tough you know, category to figure out as a kids right because it’s like they’re not watching it’s their parents and they can’t really engage as much. But you know, I’ve done a lot of investigating around sort of kids content and how do you decide you know, cuz everybody when YouTube kind of did their whole thing with ads around kids into us all the sudden seeing the Cocomelons and all these other kind of channels started getting the licensing deals and all that sort of stuff because their monetization was decreasing. So how do you decide, you know, who should be doing that? And who shouldn’t be? Because it’s, again, it’s very difficult to sort of do it when you start doing research. And this is a little bit anecdotal, but you see the fans making the art and the fans making their own merch. Like you see the birthday parties-themed Cocomelon, or Chattin V or whatever it is, and like, they don’t sell any of that products. They’re literally going to the bakery, like can you make something from it that looks like that. That’s the type of stuff that you’re like, there’s, there’s something here, there’s, there’s a need for this, there’s a want for it, there’s a demand for it. And I think those little sort of easing indicators are really critical.

Jessy:

It’s true. And they’re indicators. It’s like, you don’t have followers anymore. You have advocates. There are people who—

Lauren:

Spreading your gospel.

Jessy:

Yes. one-thousand percent. So, speaking of the gospel, so you co host this incredible podcast. Yes, I am genuinely, really big fan of the show. I can’t remember how I found it. But I believe it was some sort of word of mouth. Somebody posted about it and found it. I started listening to it. And I love it. And it’s not a solo podcast. You’re with Joshua Cohen, who’s the co founder of Tube Filter. I want to know, I’m just curious are like one podcaster to another, like, what’s your most popular episode? What was the topic? What it is? What were you talking about? Like, why do you think that was?

Lauren:

This is an easy question to answer with NAS daily. I mean, that was the most popular podcast we just had him on. Not like a month ago. So funny. So he’s based between Singapore and Dubai. And he’s just the greatest guy love him. And he was like going to be and I was like, I love the podcast. He’s like, great, like, I’ll come, I’m gonna be in LA, like, can I come record in your office. I’m like, if by that you mean my like, dining room, great! And then it’s so funny, because we’re set up to record remotely. And so I tried to set up in the same room, but it doesn’t work because they like the feedback and all that because, you know, Josh isn’t on the East Coast. I’m on the west coast. So I literally had to go in like my bedroom. Like my, you know, dining room. Recording was hilarious. But beyond that, you know, and beyond his popularity, what’s really exciting about him is he is a creator-entrepreneur. And he is he’s just started a company called NAS Academy, which is sort of you could argue like a masterclass competitor, but it’s helping creators become educators. And he’s closed some funding, you know, full disclosure, the founders of Jellysmack, kind of, you know, contributed to that. And I’m just a big believer in him as like a human and as entrepreneur. And I think, you know, he’s just a really compelling guest because of that. And, and, you know, he’s incredibly smart. I mean, this is a guy who went to Harvard and you know, worked, I have platform himself and all that stuff. And like, you know, decided to get into this because of wanting to just spread sort of goodness in the world, but he himself will sort of talk about how he is more of an entrepreneur than even a creator. Although those things are coincided live together with him. But yeah, so it’s a really, it’s a great episode. And yeah, that was our most popular.

Jessy:

I love it. I’ve mixed I haven’t listened to that one. I want to ask you. I want to know a little bit about your influencer marketing predictions, whether it’s, you know… I will leave that broad.

Lauren:

I’m in a couple things. What I’m seeing a lot of, you know, because as I mentioned, I talk to startups every day in the space. And, you know, I start to see trends, all of a sudden. I’m getting a ton of everybody’s a LinkedIn bio company, right? And so I literally have a spreadsheet of all these Linkedin bio company. Then there’s like–I call it like, it’s a terrible–it’s like easy website building. There’s this trend right now, where there’s a lot of companies and founders hate when I do this because they give me their whole fancy pitch. And I’m like, so essentially, you’re just like, an easy website builder. And they’re like, Yeah. You know, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m just like, can we just get the bells and whistles and just like understand this, you know, whatever. But I am seeing a lot of going a little back to building your own-owned and operated is starting to become a thing again. I don’t know what it how it’s gonna net out. But and I also think it’s interesting from an influencer marketing perspective, because if that kind of builds up to being a thing, then I think it’s a better opportunity for influencer marketers. Because I think that obviously, you don’t have the constraints of the platform and you’re getting, you know, what audience are getting and all that sort of stuff. So I think we’re gonna see more of that. And we’re gonna see certain people really certain creators really able to sort of build out their own and operate it. And then also, what I’m seeing and I’m really liking is like sort of the gamification of influencer marketing. So I met with a company called pear pop the other day, which I think is really interesting how they’re gamifying it and creating these challenges around influencer marketing and I was like, why is nobody done this? Like, this is so smart. I just think drops in general are I don’t know if they’re in the future because they’re really here right now. I just think there’s so much noise on the internet and I don’t know a better way in which to like create buzz around something and so I think that we’re gonna see probably more of that like influencer marketing kind of going in that direction.

Jessy:

I love that. We’re actually scheduled to have them record on the show. Yeah. So and I’ve heard equally like really great things. So I reached them. And I was like, can you guys come on? So… No, those are great, great predictions. And then look, I am just so impressed with you as like a woman in the industry, who has just been like, spearheading the way and paving the way for so many other women to come up behind you. I’m sure so many women are listening to this on our show. And, you know, being like, how do I follow in her footsteps? And you know, as you described, it was not a linear journey for you–

Lauren:

Remotely. On the circle of I don’t even know.

Jessy:

And maybe you’re still on. I mean, you’re probably still on your we’re all on. However, I would love to hear from you to give a little advice to the women who are listening to this right now. Like, what do you wish someone had told you, your younger self that would have given you a professional or a personal advantage today?

Lauren:

I don’t even know if somebody didn’t tell me this. I think I didn’t listen to it. But I don’t know if it was told quite in this way. Let me just say it. I think my biggest advice would be to figure out what you’re good at and lean into that. And what that also means is perhaps not following your dreams as you think that they are. And so I read there was a writer that kind of had some version of that quote, but honestly, one of my biggest inspirations in life is Steve Martin. I am a huge fan. I have read his biography many, many times called Born standing up. And one of the things that he said in that people don’t know Steve Martin was a the world’s biggest stand up comedian in like the 80s, early 80s. He started off as a writer, and he was an actor in LA, and one day, he’s in an audition, and he sees all these other guys kind of in there, and he just looks around the room, he’s like I am, this is never going to be the way I’m gonna make it. Like I am not as good looking, I am not as talent, or maybe he is as talented. But he’s like, it’s never gonna be my thing. And he literally like got in his car and left Los Angeles. And then within like, 18 months was the biggest stand up in the world, because he’s like, I’ve got to pave my own way. And for me, when I was trying to do comedy, and I realized I really didn’t like staying up late, I was like, this is never going to be the thing that I’m going to like succeed at because I’m like, never gonna be the last one at the club. I am literally I was that person that like at parties in college was like, you know, what are they call Irish goodbye. And like going home and secretly going to bed like I’m always like an early riser. And so what I’m really good at, and I really look back on my life I’ve always been good at is producing, I still consider myself a producer. And once I really leaned into that, all my other dreams kind of came true. Like I really like I was like, I’m able to work in entertainment, I carved out my own kind of path in it, I’m able to work with really incredibly smart people, talented people, and be creative and have used my business sense. And just like, you know, galvanize people, which again, is something I’ve always done, which is effectively what a producer does. And so for me, it took a while to get there. And I’m not saying that’s easy, because it allows you to figure out what you are good at. But I look back on my life, I was always this, this was always what I was, I was like the Bossy tall one, like telling all the kids in the sleepover to like do this or do that, like I was always that. So it’s like, it doesn’t mean that you’re foregoing your dreams. So it’s not as you know, black and white as that may have sort of said it, but it just means it will actually probably open more dreams up for you if you lean into what you’re really good at. And I think that is so critical. And don’t shy away from it.

Jessy:

Oh my gosh, that is such such good advice. I have a feeling that a lot of people listening are going to want to get in touch to connect with you is like part of the WIIM community? Or what is the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Lauren:

Oh, I like a LinkedIn message. You know, find me on LinkedIn. Lauren Schnipper. Ping me as a result of this, please mention that you heard me on this podcast, and I’m happy to you know, chat and help out in any way that I can. I might maybe that’s shocking. But I enjoy LinkedIn message.

Jessy:

No, I love LinkedIn. Shocking. LinkedIn is fantastic.

Lauren:

I think it’s spammy. I actually prefer it to a cold email. I don’t know I like because it’s a little bit more contextual. Because I can then look and see who you are. And like be like, Okay, this is like, not a crazy person. And like they’re in this industry, even if you’re not in this industry, you’re young, it’s fine. But I’m just saying like, I can see your context. And it just it helps me kind of frame it and frame the conversation. So I like a LinkedIn message.

Jessy:

I can totally one thousand percent appreciate that. No one’s quite explained it like that. But it makes perfect. So we will link all of that in the description box for everyone to see and have. And thank you so so much for coming on.

Lauren:

Thank you for having me. This was great. I’m excited. And you are gonna come on our podcast soon. And I’m very excited about that. Then I get to go back in my more comfortable interviewing, interviewing.

Jessy:

More often you are fantastic. I’m excited to come on your show though, too. So it was such a pleasure to have you on today. And I’m so excited to meet you. So thank you again. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, we got to have you back. Check out our website for more ways to get involved including all the information you need about joining our elective. You can check out all the information at I am wim.com As I am Wim wiim.com And if you enjoy this episode, leave us a review or rating but the most important thing that we can ask you to do is to share this podcast. See you next week. Tune in next week.