Influencer Vs Brand

Today our guest hosts are Katie Stoller and Jane Ko.

SHARE

SHARE

[00:00:00] Jane: The amount of online bullying that I’ve seen this year alone I think is terrifying. And I went through like a scare earlier this year when I had a like maybe a week of like online bullying victims and just like people messaging me and telling me I should kill myself in all these like itch, it was awful.

[00:00:29] Jessy: Hey guys, welcome back to the WIIM podcast. I’m Jessi Grossman, the founder of WIIM. And I hope you listened to the last episode, which was the first one of the year, but to recap in case you didn’t get to it yet, we are doing a brand new series for 2025 where we’ve got all these incredible women from the WIIM community who are.

Our guest hosting for you on this show, so I’m excited to hear less of myself and more of them. We’ve got great, great, great people to come on and, you know, do some solo episodes of some really interesting topics, but also some great interviews with people they’ve hand-selected to come on. So this is one of those episodes.

I am super excited for you guys to take a listen. Enjoy this episode. I hope your new year is going well. January is such a strong month. It’s my birthday month too. So besides that, I want you guys to enjoy the start of the year, like started strong. Make sure you’re prioritizing yourself.

Make sure that you’re, you’re you know, diving into the part of influencer marketing that you enjoy the most and outsource the rest. And I want you guys to enjoy this episode. So without further ado, let’s jump in. This show is [00:02:00] sponsored by women in influencer marketing, better known as whim, the best online community for the.

Creator economy, you will meet fellow influencer marketers. You’ll meet brands, you’ll meet talent agencies to talk shop, get hired, and even find a mentor. When you become a member, do not forget to check out all of our incredible resources. For example, we have dozens of masterclasses from the top voices of TikTok, YouTube, award-winning agencies, and women who are paving the way for us all.

So if you want the chance to network with Influencer marketing. Check out what it takes to become a member, make more money, and have fun doing it. Visit iamwiim.com/join. That’s I A M W I I M dot com slash join today. And I so look forward to seeing you more around the community. 

[00:02:57] Katie: Okay. So I’m so excited to have this conversation with Jane today.

Jane and I met just a couple of months ago and instantly I realized she was like the inverse of me, but from a creator perspective. So for those of you who know me, I’ll do a really quick introduction of myself, but I’ve worked with brand side and influencer marketing since 2008, and 2009. I started in traditional PR working at PR agencies like Ogilvy, Golan, and Ketchum for 10 years in the last few years, kind of have pivoted and now I’m completely freelance and work for myself, but I still work mostly with agencies, but I’ve worked with.

Hundreds of companies on probably thousands of campaigns and have closed well over 20 million in deals. So when I met Jane and she’s been working in the industry for so long on the other side as a creator, she’s worked with hundreds and hundreds of brands. I was like, you and I are soul sisters. We’ve got to get on a podcast and talk about the two opposite ends of the spectrum because our [00:04:00] experience is literally.

Black and white, A and B, it’s opposite ends. So I’m excited for everyone to hear kind of the ins and outs from two insiders on opposite ends of this industry. Um, Jane, can you give a little background about it? 

[00:04:16] Jane: I’m so excited to be chatting with you today and who knew this is where it would blossom because I sent you a cold email.

My name is Jane, also known on the internet as Coco. I run A Taste of Coco, Austin’s OG food blogger. I started in 2010 and started working with brands in 2013, and 2014, but I had no idea what that meant. I didn’t come from an advertising background, just like a brand reached out and I was like, okay, I’ll do something for free.

And since then I’ve worked with over 60 brands. 600 brands on influencer and advertising campaigns. And 90 percent of my work is through ad agencies. And I love working with agencies, love agency work, love the structure. And so very excited to chat today. 

[00:04:58] Katie: Awesome. Yeah. So, Okay, let’s just get into it. I want to get deep into like the old days.

So if you’re listening and you were around, this is going to be very reminiscent and nostalgic. But if you’re newer to the scene, I think this might shed some light and kind of like, How this industry literally formalized, like what felt like overnight, like it, from my perspective, I’ll give a little kind of like POV into where I came from.

I was working at Ogilvy in traditional PR, pitching media, doing a lot of like thought leadership and social media. One day my client, I’ve told the story before, so if you’ve heard this, I apologize, but basically one day my client was pushing us to get more press and we had gotten a New York Times cover story.

And I was like, there’s nothing better than this. Like, we’re never going to move beyond this. So I had this idea to reach out to a sorority sister, shout out Nicole Reagan, cedar and Rush blog. And I was like, I loved her content. I sent her a text message, I think. And I was just like, can we, yeah. Send you a bunch of products from one of my clients and would you do a photo shoot in your garage?

It was for like a garage organization system And when you send us the photos and maybe do a little write-up she was like absolutely sure no contract was in place So scrappy and long story short, the client was like obsessed with the output. She’s like, I don’t know how you did this. You must be like some sort of magician, but like whatever you just did is amazing.

And I got like full-on addicted to this process. I was like finding real-life people to give us the same thing that a magazine or a newspaper spread would give. But Without the hours and hours of pitching and pushing and to have it sort of be more controlled was this like a new world of PR that I didn’t know existed because it didn’t really exist at that time?

So that was kind of my foray into it. And then I got, as I went through agency life, obviously became more formalized and the industry sort of like, became an actual full-fledged thing. But I’m curious, Jane, from your perspective, like. You said a first brand reached out for free stuff. I’m sure a lot of it was just like, will you try this in the beginning?

But like, what was your first deal where like, you’re like, Whoa, like I need a contract and I need a timeline. And like, I might need an accountant or a lawyer or like, when did it sort of hit you that this was like a full-fledged business for yourself? 

[00:07:17] Jane: I remember my first gift, I think it was Godiva, and I didn’t grow up with fancy chocolate.

Like, I would just get, like, your free, like, birthday piece, because I just didn’t grow up eating fancy chocolate. So when Godiva had reached out and was like, can we send you a bunch of chocolate and you write a blog post? Because, right, back then it was still blogging days. And I was like, oh my god, yes, I will do anything.

Like, I thought I hit the jackpot. I think my first paid project was actually relatively big. I want to say the brand might’ve been carnival and it was very interesting because of agency reached out and they’re like, Hey, we need you. We want you. I’m going to call. We also need you to sign NDA in case you don’t want to work with our client.

And they were like, our client’s never done this before. We are being instructed that we want to start looking for the creator. Like they didn’t even say [00:08:00] creator, they said like people online and we want to see what your process is. And. I was so excited. I grew up going to Carnival Cruise Line. My parents would always save to take me in December when it’s on sale because that’s all we could afford.

And so to work with a brand that big was, I could have never imagined. And that was pretty formal. There was a contract. There were terms. It was like, hey, we’re getting exclusivity for one year, which they ended up signing for another year because the client loved that. The content so much they were looking specifically to get in front of millennials and get people cruising because historically cruising is for the older age group and they’re like, Hey, we want to get in front of like millennials.

Like late twenties, early thirties. And we feel like that is your audience and you like to have such an authentic voice. So it was pretty formal. And even thinking about what you were saying, like the early days and like kind of doing something unconventional where you decided to go with the talent for your client, it made me nostalgic.

And I remember. One of my early days was Ikea had this casting call nationwide that was like, Hey, let us like renovate your house. Like, we’ll come in and stage, and we’ll give you a free makeover. And I was like, in my early 20s, loved Ikea, still love Ikea and was like, I’ll buy free makeover, like, I love free furniture.

And I applied. I got it. I was in Austin, Texas. I was one of the markets. I guess they were trying to target and somehow I think I posted about like, Oh my God, I can’t believe I won this makeover and it got up through to their ad agency because it was just a different agency that was managing this makeover.

And they were like, Hey, this is a blogger. Like maybe we should form some sort of story around this aside from just giving them. She likes a room makeover. And so we jumped on a few calls. I had no idea what I was doing. I was just like, I’m just here for free furniture. What do you need to do?

No idea. So what went from like a free makeover, they ended up sending a team down to stay with me for a whole week, completely renovated my downstairs, and brought in a film crew. They ended up. Using it for ad usage in InStyle magazine, like a bunch of print ads. And then even flew me out to LA to film a commercial for the Oprah Winfrey Network studio.

Mind you, I did this all for free because I had no idea. I just was like, free furniture, great, free press. And now I think things would be different, but I had no idea. There was no contract actually for that situation. I just was like, yeah, fly me to LA. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. And I learned media training in this process. 

[00:10:31] Katie: That is so funny because. I ran the Ikea influencer program for most of 2020, which still was like, wait after your, um, but it, I still to this day say it was probably my favorite account I’ve ever worked on. So that’s funny that like you had an early experience with, I was at, was that at Ketchum?

Yeah, I was at Ketchum. And it was like right as the pandemic was starting and we had like all this stuff planned and we had to pivot and [00:11:00] everything we were going to do events and do people come into the stores and shop and do all this stuff. And we ended up having to do everything virtually. They ended up making their own paper, what’s it called? It’s a catalog. They put it online. It was like a whole thing. So that’s funny. And they were awesome to work with. They’re very generous with, uh, creators and outfitting houses and outfitting apartments. It just has to make sense for whatever bigger kind of marketing thing is going on at the moment.

Cause we got a ton of inbound, but that’s awesome. That’s great. So we’ve kind of had two great experiences with the same brand from the opposite end. One thing that you talked about that stood out to me is I feel like I always say that. For creators, when people ask me, like, how do I become a creator or even how do I like work with brands from the brand side, from the marketing perspective for a career, I say it’s like such a mixture of luck and also like effort.

Like, you don’t just randomly become a successful SVP in an agency because of luck. That doesn’t make any sense the same way that you don’t become Mr. Beast just because you’re lucky. And it sounds like from what you’ve described and just what I know about you. You’re a hard worker.

You’re very business-minded. So you’ve got that going for you, but also, you know, you’ve sort of been in the right place at the right time. I think you say, I think that’s maybe one of the things we talked about a while ago, when we first met that you were like, it was the heyday I was in Austin. Restaurants were popping up all over the place.

The city was becoming more vibrant and the food community was growing. I happen to, like, get into the scene then. So can you talk a little bit more about that, about the whole, like, luck versus hard work, and, like, what do you attribute to kind of, like, your success? Is it that combination? 

[00:12:38] Jane: Yeah, so, I got a joke where it’s, like, I was down here at the bottom and then got here, like, the song, but I didn’t seek out to be a content creator or influencer.

The truth was I could not get hired. I have a degree in nutrition. I was working part-time jobs throughout college. And even after college, I was still hustling, like doing a bunch of freelance things and brands were asking me to come in to speak to their teams about how to run a social media strategy.

Brands as big as UT Austin, and Whole Foods, but everyone was like, we hire you as a consultant, but we don’t want to hire you full-time. And I went through the hiring process on Facebook four times, and they just would not hire me. And I just, like, I couldn’t get anyone to hire me. But brands kept reaching out for consulting and then started getting these brand deals and I was in the, I felt like I was in the right place in the right time in 2014, 2015 when Austin was kind of on the rise as the Facebook indeed dropbox, we’re all starting to open offices here and brands are like, Oh, let’s start advertising in Texas.

But specifically Austin. And there’s, there were at that time there was like, Three of us, there was like another talent that like was really big. So I think she was like very expensive. Right. And then there was like maybe one other person and there was me who was like 10, 000 followers doing stuff for free.

So a lot of brands are like free is great. But as I started getting more partnerships, ad agencies were offering different budgets and I just had no idea what I was doing. And I’m actually sitting in my car right now. And this is very nostalgic. My early days, because I got so much inbound. I was getting like 20 different agencies reaching out every single day.

And I just would have my laptop in the car. I would pull off on the side of the road, like very safe. Would answer emails, be like, yes, would love to do this. And they’re like, okay, can you sign a contract right now? I’m like, yes. Send it over. I think this was even before the talkie sign existed, but I would be signing, pulling off the side of the road, and signing contracts.

And that’s just like how I went through like a hundred brand partnerships within the first year. And. I was also like, I think I need a manager because I think I probably get paid more if Agencies are signing contracts with me within 10 minutes. I was like, I think I’m probably undervaluing myself. And back then it was a lot of travel work.

So I was traveling like five times a month, spending more time in hotel rooms than I was at home. But I think it was a combination of being in the right place at the right time, but also having. A really strong work ethic and then just like, I don’t know. I think the timeliness, which I’m curious to hear what you would say from the agency side.

It’s like, I just was like very quick to respond. And I give kudos to the last full-time job I had. I was working at the startup, hired for social media, but as a startup, you wear many hats. And one of my hats was running customer service and the CEO was a stickler for. 10-minute response time for every single customer inquiry.

And I’ve just carried that with me ever since I’m on my email. Like every 10 minutes, I respond to agencies, whatever they need, you need to edit. I am probably getting it back to you in five minutes because that is just how I’m conditioned to be. And it’s a problem, but it’s just how I operate. But I’m curious to hear what you would say from the agency side.

[00:15:43] Katie: See, this is why you and I hit it off. Cause I am equally as probably obsessive-compulsive, like probably clinic to a clinical level as you are with this stuff. But I will say, and I will say like, there is a whole argument for like, your time is yours and you can’t let people think that you’re going to respond to everything in five minutes.

Like, especially when you work. Corporate agency world, you can’t set that precedent that you’re going to be that person who responds in five seconds because you will literally like drown. But on the flip side of that, being someone quick to respond and being someone that’s reliable, is like the number 1 word I tell people that I mentor. It’s just that fact that like if push comes to shove and S H I T hits the fan, you will be someone that senior people can rely on is so undervalued. Like, I don’t think people realize the utter impact of that and I’m the same way. I have never been a procrastinator in high school.

Like if I got assigned to paper, I did it that night because I didn’t want to worry about it. And it does make a difference. I mean, from an agency perspective when I work with creators, it’s sort of just Yeah. The standard is that they take 24 hours to respond to anything. I mean, most, I always say like most, maybe not most, but like 40 percent of my job is a little bit of babysitting.

As I like to refer to it, it’s literally like, Hey, the timeline, can you review the timeline? Cause you’re off track. Hey, you owed me an edit yesterday when it’s like the managers help out a little bit with that. But a lot does fall back on the marketing team, which like our job isn’t to do that. Our job is to make sure the strategy is moving.

The output for the client is good. It’s not to check in on you following a timeline. So it’s a little frustrating, but it’s sort of the standard because so many creators are new to the business world. They’re young. They haven’t worked in a full-time job before. So there was a lot of hand-holding.

But I will say the creators that I work with are quick, that are professional, understand edits on the first go, ask thoughtful questions, and dig a little deeper, if I give them a piece of feedback even if I think it maybe it’s a little Not straightforward if they come back and they’re like, this makes sense, but like, can you just answer why the client wants this versus like, that shows me that you’re thinking about it, that you care that you’re putting effort into the next edit or whatever.

And these honestly are the people that I remember that I want to work with again. I know talent managers are always like, you always say that it’s like a thing that we say, like, we’ll work with you again if it’s a good experience, but it’s true. It’s like I can list 10 names right now. of creators that just killed it or managers that were just so on top of it that I would work with them again in a heartbeat.

And I can list probably 400 people that I would rather not work with again, just mostly due to them missing timelines, which is sad. So if there’s anything you take out of this conversation to the listeners, it’s that speed, but also that level of thoughtfulness. And just being a person that your team or the brands you’re working with, the people that are paying you for the output can rely on it.

It just is so important. I think it’s not something that maybe naturally comes up as being as important as like how good the content is or, you know, the views or the follower count. Like, honestly, being reliable in some cases trumps all of that. So I’m glad we’re on the same page there. I want to go into kind of like the current day if that’s okay.

Yeah. You are such an inspiration. I feel like too many up-and-coming creators and it’s a different ballgame, I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, but let me just say my little spiel. I think today there are more brands and more budgets. So that’s gone up more brands doing influencer and their budgets are deeper than in 2014.

But millions and millions of more people are considered influencers. And I don’t know, and maybe this is me being skeptical, I’m curious to hear your side. I don’t know that it’s possible to do what you did anymore. I truly believe that, like when people come to me and they’re like, I want to be an influencer or I’ve got 10, 000 followers, how do I get to that hundred?

My response is usually like, I don’t know, like good luck, like do a lot of work, be consistent, all that normal stuff. But I, I truly in my like bones don’t think it’s possible to, as you said, travel five times a month. In your first year, get a hundred brand deals. I just don’t think that world exists anymore.

What are your thoughts on that? Cause I don’t want to be too pessimistic. 

[00:20:13] Jane: I try to limit the amount of, like, mentor calls, as I’m sure you call them too because I feel like I’m the barrier of bad news. And I hate, it because if they don’t feel good, then I don’t feel good, and I’m just like, man, I wish I didn’t have this call.

So I try not to have mentor calls, if I can, when people ask for advice, because they see the result now, and I’m like, yeah, but there were 10 years before this, and also, like, If you actually sat with me all day and saw the number of things I do, you would just be like, this is, you’re an insane person. Like you’re just insane.

And I’m like, yep. That’s probably why I have a close friend circle of five people. No one wants to be friends with someone who just works all the time. And I just, the reality is like, I love my work and yeah, I would say everything I did in before 2020, like before the pandemic was very different from now.

Those were the early days when. I think PR shifted right from earned media to then paid media. And then what does that exactly look like? And managing expectations. Like I used to get so much inbound, like 20, 30 increase a day from agencies. Like, just like work with us. Like, we’ll send the contract. Like, what do you need?

Like, we’d like to fly to Miami, like all expenses paid, like no budget. Like that would never exist now. Like I remember one of my early projects was sending to Miami. Book the most expensive, it was with the travel ban, they were like, book the most expensive hotel, no expenses, no cap.

Like, spend as much money as you want that weekend. Like, that would never happen. That would never fly nowadays. You’re lucky if you even get reimbursed nowadays, and you have to be careful of expenses, so. I always tell early creators, like, things are different now. Like, I don’t think I could replicate and grow my audience as I have done now.

But you also don’t even need that if you’re looking to work with brands. For someone who has less than 150,000 followers are getting more projects than someone who has a million because the conversion is. Your engagement rate is much higher, and brands see through that, audiences see through that, and I think times have shifted now where brands are working with smaller creators, and I think that’s also kept me agile, it’s like I didn’t grow my account.

Aggressively, like I’m only at like over a little bit over 200 and I think that’s also what has kept me in front of brands where I’ve been in that speed spot where I’m like big enough and not too big and we’ve kept my rates like reasonable and I’m quick to respond so I think there’s a lot of factors into that and the time thing is like when I was in my 20s like before I was like I would say seriously dating or now married is I worked and I still do but I worked 80, 90 hours.

A week, like get up at eight, and I would do all my things during the day, shoot stuff, and then get back home at ten, and then my ten to like three was like my favorite time of the day, where it’s just me, there’s no inbox clutter, I edit all my content, write my blog post, but no one does that, and I don’t even know if I have the energy to do that now.

So, I mean, times have changed, and I think the other thing I tell early creators is, like, online bullying didn’t exist back then. At least for me. And I finally got a taste of that this year, and I’m like, oh no. 20-year-old I would not have survived. Online bullying, like no, like 30-year-old me is barely surviving online bullying right now and it’s very toxic and it’s very scary.

The kind of content that we see going viral on TikTok, like even just creators and brands, like having this fight over like gifted product. I don’t know if you saw that was recently trending, but it’s just shocking. And so long story long, no, I could not replicate what I’d done 10 years before what I have now.

[00:23:50] Jessy: Quick question for you guys. How much do you love redlining agreements? Yeah, me too. Let me tell you about our latest sponsor [00:24:00] called Caveat. So Caveat, with a K, is an AI-powered contracting platform that simplifies and automates your contracts. It’ll hugely improve the way that you review partnership agreements.

So if you’re a media company an entertainment company or a management firm, it’s a must-have tool. Look, sometimes you do need to hire a lawyer, an expensive lawyer, nonetheless, to work on an agreement because it’s over a certain threshold and a good lawyer can be invaluable. But what about all those other partnerships, those other contracts that are for 5, 000 or even like 1, 000?

That’s where Kavya comes in to support you.

It’s game-changing tech and it’s founded by three brilliant women, so you know why I’m out here supporting it. Get time back in your day because caveat will help you with the part of your business that may be your least. Favorite, so head to our website. It’s I am wim.com/caveat for a completely free trial. That’s I-A-M-W-I-I m.com/k A-V-E-A-T. I hope you guys love it as much as I do. 

[00:25:27] Katie: It’s so funny too, that 2014 I feel like was like the heart. And the center of hustle culture. It was like boss, babe, hustle. It was like, I, and I’ve listened to so many podcasts about this, but it’s like, I’m in my like later thirties.

And I feel like the elder millennials, as I like to refer to us, grew up with the city, which was like Samantha Jones culture. I, she was my idol. She was in PR living in a big city in New York, hobnobbing around town. And that’s like literally who I wanted to be as like a PR person. And that life was about always working and all, even your lunch dates with your girls.

We’re talking about work. Everything was worth working with the world and everything else sort of like fit into that. So I feel like our people in their 30s are We’re programmed to that and it wasn’t until Gen Z sort of like woke us up in a way and was like, wait a second, this like waking up at 6 am and working until 3 am editing content is like not how like human beings are supposed to live.

And now there’s this whole new trend about your time your net worth and. Flexibility. I mean, I’ve drunk and drunk that Kool-Aid since 2020, the beginning of 2023. When I went freelance, I turned down so much work because I wanted to work 20 to 30 hours a week. I have two little kids. I’m in the thick of parenting right now.

And I don’t want to work full-time. I want to make the amount of money I want to make. Which I could make more, some months if I want, I can make less if I want more time. Similar to content creation where you sort of can pick and choose what you do. But I feel richer than anyone I know because I can make my schedule.

I mean, that is huge. So I, I think the entire like. The world has sort of changed since that hustle world. But it’s funny that as you were getting up at 6 a.m. and editing content until 3 in the morning, I was working at an agency where I would get called at 2 a.m. because the new business pitch had switched and they needed a junior to come in and like edit the entire deck at 3 a.m. So like, it’s funny, like you think of creators as these hustlers, but on the agency side, there’s, there was at least, I don’t know if the culture is still like that, but there was the same thing happening from like the marketing brand side of late nights. Happy hours would start at like 7 on Friday and it was just a ploy to get us to stay and work late on a Friday night when everyone else’s jobs let out early.

So it’s, I think it’s moved in a great direction, but it’s hard for people like us who sort of were raised in that hustle culture and who was kind of just naturally those types of people to like to adjust to like, Taking things a little bit slower 

[00:28:07] Jane: and I’m curious, especially for these influencer campaigns where it seems like everything I call it, like, I call my work as a creator nowadays is like jumping off the cliff.

I’m like, okay, how high, how, because I do all these rounds of edits and everything is like, I don’t hear from the agency for like, and I know it’s not always the agency, it’s the

on Specifically this year, a lot of times the delay is through legal, where I’ve had to change the verbiage on certain things because legal stepped in, they’re like, no, you can’t have the talent say this. And I’m like, there was a 30-page brief that there were CTAs. I was instructed to copy and paste and voiceover.

I was already approved to say, and then legal went through four layers of revisions and they’re like, no, she can’t say low sugar-free. I forgot what the last thing about the sugar was, but it was like something about sugar. And I’m like, just tell me what you want me to say, but I imagine like Gen Z is not going to put up with that.

I can’t imagine from an agency standpoint, the nontimeliness or like, there are some projects this year where I’ve gone through 17 rounds of revisions and I’m just like, I throw a little pity party at my laptop and I’m like, okay, let’s do it again. But you know, like sometimes I’m even being stretched to my limits, but I can’t imagine Gen Z being able to put up with that.

Right. Where they’re just like, Nope, I’m not gonna do it. Don’t even care. Don’t want to get paid. Right. And then for you, the account manager, you’re like, no, now my life, my job is on the line. Right. Cause it’s, you’re already been approved. All these things are in motion. Like just give us the content. 

[00:29:36] Katie: Yeah.

There’s so much there. I think the first thing about legal, this is my, again, my opinion, but what I’ve seen as working with lawyers. At multiple agencies for multiple brands, I think lawyers like my husband’s a lawyer so I can say funny things about lawyers, but lawyers take a while to catch up to things.

It’s like an old-school profession. Like, I mean, it’s like how like accountants are now getting in tax professionals are now getting into like managing creators taxes. And we’ve been doing this for 10 years. People like, where have you been? Same with lawyers. I feel like when I used to set contracts with lawyers.

They would respond back and be like, is this for an IT person? Like they didn’t even realize it wasn’t like for an employee at the agency. It took years for them to finally understand why we were hiring these people they’re not vendors with the agency and the costs have to be passed through costs because we can’t get taxed on them because it’s not income to the agency.

Like it took so long. For us to say these things over and over for finally now, I think there’s a lot of lawyers out there and also younger people are graduating law school and now there are lawyers that are amazing and that understand what we’re doing here and what they need to know to review these contracts, but I think there was a bit of catch up time and the reason you might be seeing more blockades with lawyers is just because they’re more understanding of what we’re doing now.

So there’s more questions that they’re asking and they’re being more cautious. I think Ten years ago when I had sent a contract to a lawyer, they were literally like, are we going to get sued? And I was like, probably not. And they’re like, okay, sounds good to go. So I think that’s part of it with the legal and then the Gen D stuff, especially regarding rounds of editing.

I think everyone’s getting more sophisticated from the brand side too, so I’m actually going through a similar thing that you’re going through with the No Sugar right now. I’m doing a UGC-only program. So it’s like basically an ad read, which is very awkward for creators because they’re not actors and they want it to be authentic, but it’s not going on their channels.

It doesn’t matter. So we did a brief. It was like four or five pages. Most of the influencers followed it pretty much to a T and my client is having them edit 900 pieces of it. And I’m like, but it’s in the brief and they’re frustrated it’s in their brief. But now that it’s running through the paid team and the legal team, they’re catching things that we would have never preemptively known to put in the brief.

And that’s sort of just one of those things that sort of has always been annoying to the best of your ability, but things come up and I haven’t run into Gen Z pushing back. I did a really big campaign with like pretty macro Gen Z creators for alcohol brands over the summer. And I didn’t work with a lot of them directly.

So maybe that was why. And maybe their managers have just sort of figured out how to message things back to them. It was really pleasant. It was a very pleasant experience. It was a lot of positive, grateful energy. I did a LinkedIn post about how I was nervous to work with a bunch of 20-year-olds.

I was like, this is going to be interesting because like we’re totally different generations at this point, but it was really refreshing. I was very happy with how it went. There was not a lot of complaining. The one guy that we had to have reshoot a bunch of stuff because he truly didn’t follow the brief, but like didn’t seem mad about it.

He seemed like he took it as a learning like, okay, now I see what you meant by this. And I went sort of off the rails and I won’t do that next time. So I do kind of feel like. It was this like mutual positive experience for them too, even though there were kind of, you know, nitty gritty edits, but I don’t know, I think I’m optimistic because I think for them, unlike you, where you were like, where is this industry going?

I don’t know, like, can I turn this into a full-time job? Can I become a millionaire from this? Like, there was so much unknown. I’m sure for you because you were like, what’s happening? It’s been built as I do it. Whereas for them, they see Mr. Beast. They see these. Influencers creating brands and creating podcasts and going on to do all these other stuff need to take it seriously if they want to linger and they want to have longevity in their career.

So maybe there’s a little bit more like high stakes, I guess, just because they can see sort of what could potentially come. Alright, awesome. I think we, like, got to most of what I wanted to talk to. The last kind of question I wanted to bring up was just, there were, like, some studies that have come out that have shown that like, school-aged children, the number, like, I think it was, like, number two for boys and number three for girls or something, was, like, YouTuber or, like, influencer.

And I’m curious, like, For a kid, or a niece, or a nephew, or whoever in your life, if they said, I’m gonna start, like, this as a serious thing, like, what would your advice be? Would it be, like, don’t do it? Like, we kind of talked about, or would it be, like, start small, like, kind of, what would you say to someone in your life?

[00:34:20] Jane: I probably would be, like, don’t do it. Josh and I are thinking about having kids in the next year or so, and I’m already, like, they better not be doing what I’m doing, because the internet is such a scary place. Luckily, I don’t get a lot of weird DMs, like, I keep my account very professional, no, like, sexy images, like, no swimsuit photos, any of that, but I know, I see other creators are, and I can’t imagine the kind of DMs that they get, and I’d be like, absolutely not, if our kids are getting that, absolutely not.

So, my recommendation would be like, don’t do it, just because The amount of, like, online bullying that I’ve seen this year alone, I think is terrifying. And I went through, like, a scare earlier this year when I had a, like, maybe a week of, like, online bullying victim. And just, like, people messaging me and telling me I should kill myself and all these things.

Like, it’s, it was awful. And having to remember, like, hey, if I was sitting in a room with 300 people, right, I have 200, 000, so that would never happen. But, like Likely no one is ever going to come up to me, in my person, and say something awful. Tell me I should kill myself. Right. But in an online situation, it’s very easy for someone to say that and it’s very hurtful.

And so I would say don’t do it too. If you are just remember your why, like, are you here to educate? Are you here to inspire? Is it, do you love sharing stories and just be careful and be careful when people message you mean things, or even like, I think as females? Like, for example, like when Josh and I broke ground on our house that we’re building in Austin, I had so many people message me like, can you show me your address?

Like, where are you? Where are y’all moving? Where are you moving? Where’s your address? And I’m just like, for me, I was like, this is a violation of privacy. Why would I give a stranger, our address? And it’s just kind of scary. But I imagine if you’re like a 15-year-old right on the, online and the stranger’s like, Hey, like what’s your address?

Like, I wanna send you a gift in the mail. It’s so scary. Like, that is so terrifying and even for me, like when I do get gifting responses and I can tell it’s not from an agency, like, especially if it’s like a random person, right, who’s like, Oh, I have like a thing at home, like, can I send you like this bag I made?

I usually say like, no, thank you. Like, I just don’t want to share our address and I could get a PO box, but I think the internet is a scary place. So I think going back to your question is like, what is your why? Also just be careful because the internet is a scary place and you just don’t know who’s watching you.

[00:36:50] Katie: That’s such a good reminder. And it’s a good reminder for people on the brand side or like marketers like me that like, I don’t have a following. I’m very tuned into the world of social media. And strategy and what’s going on in the world. But like, I don’t have an inbox directly related to me that has hundreds of thousands of people that have access to it.

Like I have my very small and I love LinkedIn following, but like I don’t know that world and it’s, as a mom, I have two little kids. That’s a really good reminder that what I see as like, it’s my career and it’s very professional. And I’ve seen people be so successful and I love what I do and I love the storytelling aspect, but like, I don’t see sort of the ugly dark side that you got exposed to. So that’s just such a great reminder. 

[00:37:38] Jane: It’s scary. I mean, I’ll share the story quickly before we jump off, but a few months ago I met this social media manager of a big retail brand and she was like Jane, like I was the social media of this retail brand and I don’t think she’s there anymore, but she’s like, it was pride month.

So we changed our logo to reflect that. And it pissed me off. The wrong people and she was like there’s one specific person that just would not let it go And he found out who was running the social account found her address came to their office they had to get cops involved because he likes threatened like physical harm and like She just was like, it was such a scary scene, she’s like, I can’t imagine what you guys go through on the internet if you just happen to like if someone just becomes obsessed with you because of the content you create, but she was like, I was just a social media manager, like, no name, like, I run this account, we changed our logo for Pride Month, it pissed off the wrong person, he’s now in jail, and she was like, it was so scary, and I was just like, yeah, luckily I haven’t had that severity, but, I couldn’t do it if that had happened.

Like, I’d be like, nope, I’m out. Like, I’m absolutely out. But, I’m mad, like, your question is specifically for younger people who are thinking about this and you have kids. I, I would be terrified. 

[00:38:52] Katie: Yeah, that is wild. I mean, I see crazy comments when we have access to like sprout social to our brands for community management purposes.

I don’t do community management, but like every once in a while, we’ll browse and see it. It’ll be like, we hate your brand, your brand stinks, your brand’s the worst, your brand tried to kill me, or whatever. And like, we just laugh because the comments on ads are just like, half of it’s probably bots and that’s all.

Just like deranged and insane, but we’re hiding behind a big brand persona. It’s not my first name, my first and last name where people can find me. So I give so much credit to the creators out there. The keyboard warriors of the world just keep harassing these people that they don’t know.

It’s that creepy parasocial relationship that people think they have with people. And yeah, I just, I, it should not be this way. And hopefully, I don’t know if it’s a pendulum thing and people have just gotten too comfortable and it’ll swing the other way, or if there’s going to be legislation presented to protect people online, but like, I do think something has to change because. I mean, it’s insane what goes on and like, I mean, if you’re, if you’re at 200, 000 followers and you’re getting death threats and you’re like a fun lifestyle or you’re not talking about anything crazy, imagine what these people with the millions that maybe even do say something a little bit more political or whatever are getting.

Like I can’t even imagine what those DMs look like. So I don’t know. I’m glad that we took a little segue into that because I think it’s really important. All right. Well, that’s all I wanted to talk about. I’m so glad we finally got to kind of have a meeting of the minds between both sides. If anyone wants to learn more about working at an agency or on the brand side, reach out to me on LinkedIn.

I’m very active on LinkedIn. I just searched my name, Katie Stoller. And then Jane, where can everyone find you and follow you? 

[00:40:42] Jane: I wanted to say, I love your LinkedIn posters. Once you shared yesterday where you, I think you were responding to somebody about like, here’s what happens. Like you were like influencer marketing is like, A little piece of the bigger pie.

I remember that post and you were like, here are all the things that happened before the creator even gets the [00:41:00] campaign brief, which is why I have so much empathy for account managers. And those of you that work at agencies where I’m like, yep, I’ll make that revision because I know there’s so much. And I’m just like.

I’ll make this revision. I might, like, be upset about it because it’s, like, number 17, but I’ll just do it because I know there’s so much behind the scenes. So, yes, you can find me on the internet, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and all the social media at atasteofkoko, which is K O K O. And if anyone has questions about, I guess, being a content creator influencer, feel free to also reach out to me as well.

Awesome. 

[00:41:32] Katie: Well, thank you so much. We’re so happy that everyone tuned in. I think, I hope this was helpful and a little nostalgic back to the early days of how this all got started, but thank you so much. And thanks for listening. 

[00:41:44] Jessy: If you enjoyed this episode, we’ve got to have you back. Check out our website for more ways to get involved, including all the information you need about joining our collective. You can check out all the information at iamwiim.com. Leave us a review, a rating, but the most important thing that we can ask you to do is to share this podcast. Thanks for listening. Tune in next week. 

Katie Stoller

Founder, KATIE STOLLER

Katie Stoller, our guest host, is an influencer marketing veteran. She began her career in Los Angeles working in fashion PR, dressing A list celebrities and working celebrity gifting suites. That was the precursor to what is now influencer marketing. After LA, Katie moved to Chicago where she completed her MA in PR and advertising and went on to have a long career working at global PR agencies (Ogilvy, Ketchum and Golin). She then lead the influencer marketing team at Fiat Growth, a fintech growth consultancy for a year and a half. In 2023, Katie transitioned to being an independent consultant primarily for large PR and Ad agencies She also launched her education company called Influencer Insider Guide where she puts out valuable resources for those in the influencer marketing industry.

Jane Ko

The creator behind A Taste of Koko

I’m Jane (commonly known as Koko) – the blogger/content creator/influencer behind A Taste of Koko, Austin’s top food and travel blog featuring the hottest restaurants and weekend getaways. A Taste of Koko has been voted best local Austin blogger by the Austin Chronicle in 2018 and 2019, and Disruptor of 2020 by Austin Woman Magazine. Ko has been featured in O Magazine, InStyle Magazine, OWN TV Network, and The New York Times. Longhorn 100 and Austin 40 Under 40 Finalist.

I launched my blog in 2010 when I was at UT Austin and have been doing it full-time since 2015 and worked with over 600 brands on influencer campaigns like Target, IKEA, Whole Foods, Best Buy, Visit Germany, and more. Authored Koko’s Guide To Austin, a pocket-sized guidebook to Austin, and Koko’s Guide To Fredericksburg. Angel investor in CPG, fintech, restaurants, and hospitality.

Book Your Session