32 Things I've learned at the Mediacorp Creators ("Influencer") Network

This article will be a mixture of things people have said to me during the past year - as clients, as marketers, as creators, as colleagues, as bosses, as viewers and as friends/family, with my comment on what they said - there'll be no discrimination or censorship of what was said or learned and everything is in no particular order (as it was taken as notes during different periods of the year and in different notepads/both virtual and physical) - I'll leave it to you to figure out who said what at what times and if it even matters... This is a mixture of said statements, my perspective and the learnings attached to them - the first learning of course is in the title (me having to explain forever that a creator and influencer may not be the same thing).

1 - "Influencers are a fantastic source of innovation in content and in audience appeal" - no they are not - they're a simple way for marketers to reach their KPIs at the end of the day. Most clients are discerning enough to understand that the majority of digital traffic created in the past decade is (let's say) less than "authentic" so having a human representing the traffic drivers is always an easier sell than a bot farm in Indonesia. If you are really looking to create innovative content with an influencer/creator then there needs to be a real relationship between yourself as a content commissioner/marketer and the creator/influencer.

2 - "I want to target millennials!" - or better yet - "I want to target the youth" - no you don't... you want the reach that a creator on YouTube/IG provides you with - you couldn't care less about the audience or their age group. If you wanted to target millennials you'd know that the majority of them don't buy Rolex watches or BMW cars or anything to the like. No? Show me a 20-30 year old that buys anything more than toothpaste or a wallet online that isn't an outlier - or better yet - the amount of traffic and buys/sells that a picture on IG of a half-naked model on top of your car while telling us that it "drove sales".

3 - "All YouTubers do in Singapore is comedy" - sure if you're only looking for those that do then that's all you see. 6 out of the top 10 accounts in Singapore are all based in comedy - mostly because of how the industry was "driven towards a certain audience" in the past half a decade (and the positive feedback loop of growth/market interest) - but that has nothing to do with the content that is made locally - you have a thriving innovative market outside of those top 10 accounts - issue is - those accounts have a significantly smaller subscriber base which to you as a content commissioner (am assuming here - if not a marketer) shouldn't matter as you're looking for innovative content right? ah of course... no reach means no good... let's keep that one open to breathe for a bit...

4 - "All influencers are content creators" - sorry to disappoint but - No! - some influencers are great talents/models for racy pictures, some are great location photographers (even though it can be debated that the majority of them is extremely helped by the quality of the equipment nowadays rather than the art of photography), a few are great all-rounded content creators, very few are great video creators, less still are great influencers/content creators & storytellers. If you want a picture of your brand on a local influencers IG account and their account is full of half-naked pictures of women/men just because you need the reach - bear in mind that 2 times out of 5 - the person taking the pictures is definitely not the model next to your brand - so - act like you'd act with any photography agency that is hiring a model to work with your product - create a relationship with the people that are making the content (all of them) not just the nice looking model. If then you want to work with a content creator that is making content for you as a brand/client - bear in mind that the same working model that works for production houses & ad agencies works for influencers/content creators.

5 - "All content creators are the same" - well are they? Sure in Singapore there seems to be a convergence of types of content creator - get it? "types of" ;) but the majority of content creators locally are all in different stages of production capabilities. If you hire a content creator to make a video for you but then they end up hiring a local production house to lead the creation process - then - sorry to disappoint again - you didn't hire a content creator, you hired a limited capacity producer.

6 - "There's no difference between an influencer, a content creator and a film student that is trying to make it in the industry" - well... duh!!! If you thought that the influencer market appeared all out of the blue then you're a bit delusional - the majority of the influencers and content creators that exist both locally and internationally were the kids that in the 80s, 90s and 00s were lured by the film industry, the broadcasting industry, the advertising industry, the modeling & fashion industry & the entrepreneurship industry - what's the difference? They've stopped caring about the structured corporate world and decided to go about doing it by themselves. While a kid that wanted to be a filmmaker would take about a decade to go through the ranks of production to maybe even one day get to direct their own short-film - nowadays they grab a camera and shoot a short-film on a weekly basis - if not daily. A career that'd take 20 years to achieve in the marketing/advertising industry - nowadays takes 5 years on social media - and in the meantime these creators get to make their own brands, their own companies, their own platforms for audiences that most companies worldwide could only dream of (even the smaller creators).

7 - "The media industry is taking advantage of the influencer market and maximizing its potential" - no it isn't... the majority of people who work with influencers can't even tell you when they post, what they post or where their audiences are the most active. Their assistants might know, or if all of them know what they're doing - maybe they'll at least know the platform where the influencer commonly works on.

8 - "Can you make it go viral?" - oh lord the best question one gets regularly in the SG market. Sure, let's make a video get 30 million views in a country that less than 5million people are actually watching content online - if it means I'm buying 29.5 million views from cheaper CPM'ed countries around SEA then sure, you'll get a viral video on a weekly basis. Think about it - seriously think about it - the biggest YouTube account in Singapore from a "lone creator" has 1.2 million subscribers and gets consistently 1 million views on their videos (very seldom do we see them go past the 2 million view mark) - are you telling me that your brand video on an account with 10k subs has 5 million views because people love the content you've created?! "Sure"... am not shunning the practice of buying views (on the contrary actually) - but don't try to sell me something we know clearly you're not doing.

9 - "Oh but that's not organic..." - yeah, not talking about tomatoes - will just use a quote from Gary Vee for this one "If it's cheaper to buy views/interactions rather than to have it done organically - then you're stupid for not doing as much".

10 - "Most brands don't know what they're doing on social" - true - but then again, most media outlets don't know what they're doing on social as well so... things tend to balance out.

11 - "I want that video done cheap, fast and great" - OK! I also have 6 unicorns in my office (no really...) but I don't consider myself a magician.

12 - "That influencer has 300k followers - I want to target those 300k Singaporeans" - Ah! Lol - can any IG or YT account in SG please raise their hand if they have more than 40% local audience on their account if it has over 200k total audience?

13 - "I don't buy any followers, my entire growth is organic" - sure it is - but you appearing in a brand/account that is running an ad with your face isn't - that's how you get 20/30% inactive users on your account btw - it's not a mystery. Also, if you started out showing pictures of yourself half-naked and are now a father/mother - don't be surprised that the algos stop serving your content to users who don't interact with your posts - math (as well as human behavior) is a fickle mistress...

14 - "Kids nowadays want everything sponsored and want to get paid for everything" - take a deep breath, look around - did you work for the computer/phone you're using to read this article in? So did these "kids". You might not like what they're doing but they're doing it the best they can - most of the times better than a lot of multi-million dollar companies so - keep that in mind when you talk/negotiate with them.

15 - "Did you see my brand's soft mention in that influencer's/creator's feed? We must really be doing a great job with our marketing" - of course you are - not to mention the other 200 influencers who you sent free merch to in the past couple of months that chose not to mention your stuff or if they did it was a microsecond in one of their 20 insta-stories of that day (as in, a microsecond of the hundreds of thousands of products they mention on a yearly basis). I'm always amazed by the amount of free stuff the majority of SG influencers/creators get - especially bearing in mind that it both doesn't pay their bills and at the same time totally diminishes the value of the brand that is sending the merch for free in the hopes that they get mentioned in a saturated feed. If free lipstick paid for food & lodging, SG would have a lot of multi-millionaires in these creators/influencers.

16 - "I'm sorry, that pricing is too high for a video made by a creator/influencer" - sure it is - please go on ahead and pay 3 times that amount to a production house that'll take 3 times as much time to create that video that will sit on your branded account getting 30 times less views than the one you'd get from the creator/influencer. Certain balances between visibility, production cost, marketing cost, audience "buying" and production optimization should be taken into account. If it costs you 10k to buy a video from a production house and then it'll cost you 20k to advertise for that video - maybe you should consider buying that video from a content creator that produces a similar level of quality video tailored to their audience for a fraction of that price - but that's just my bean-counter brain working overtime.

17 - "The production quality of that video isn't on par with what I see from the bigger creator/influencer accounts" - you're paying 5 times less and want comparable quality? If that isn't taking the market to a race to the bottom I don't know what is...

18 - "Oh I thought you just brought props around for the creators to shoot their videos" - I'm not even going to give this one a second thought as it was directed at me personally - sure - tell a startup entrepreneur, biz dev or any manager that are creating their business from scratch that the basis of their job is to grab the coffee for their programmers - am sure they'll want to answer that statement with the same love I'm going to do right now - "yes - that is precisely my job scope - thank you for noticing!!".

19 - "Can you give me that industry standard, quality created, highly innovative pitch deck for the client next wednesday? Thank you!" - and by all means - don't follow up with us on why that pitch didn't go through cuz it'll just make us even happier to keep creating decks for clients that don't even go past the first page. For a country that pre-plans their budgets years in advance and that very seldom acts on spot-buys quickly - am always amazed by how fast clients want project pitches TODAY!!! that the majority (ok, am being a bit too critical here) ends up "repurposing" with a cheaper provider but using the same concept...

20 - "Yeah let's definitely collaborate and expand on that" - while at the same time you talk to our creators behind our back trying to lowball their pricing. Yeah, no one works with exclusivity contracts in the industry (or almost no one) but not everyone is as calculative as you in destroying a relationship just so you can save 100 dollars. Thank you for the service & consideration but no thank you. Oh btw we do know when you talk to the creators under the network - it doesn't bode well for you as a client that you get their rate card from us first and then talk to them because the creators know exactly how much they're worth.

21- "The content industry in Singapore is both not creative and unbalanced" - I might grant you that SG being a small market is severely unbalanced in the way it commissions the same people to do similar things but dude... if you're judging the entirety of a market's capacity to be creative and innovative on a couple of accounts on YouTube or on Instagram - then sure - create sweeping statements like that and then expect people to treat you with the utmost respect it deserves. Singaporean creators are few but they do pretty well with what they have and there's a lot of room to grow in terms of quality and creativity. That's why their accounts keep growing - and they start to get payed better for services that even big production houses can't provide. Sure it isn't comparable to big markets like the US or Europe/South America - but then again what really is?

22 - "We want to work long term with your creators - but are only looking to commission a single video from them and then 1 month of pushing that video on their socials" - great marketing strategy. First long-term seems to be 1 month, second pushing a video without follow-up videos as a content strategy makes no sense and third just call what you're doing what it really is - a spot buy and you're balancing your budget sheet. You know it, we know it, the creators know it, so let's just go about creating that "much needed" advert for you so you can get your very important 100k views in a campaign that'll technically last less than a week in real social media terms.

23 - "But I made the video with the creator and it isn't getting any of the views or comments I thought it was going to get" - humm.... if it looks like an ad, it sounds like an ad, it smells like an ad, it's delivered like an ad and it gets you the same results as an ad on any other given platform, why are you surprised that it didn't work? A creator/influencer tailors their content to their audience, the moment you speak through them instead of with them - it is a blatant ad - the audience isn't stupid. Some creators/influencers are desperate for some cash so they can pay the rent and will accept any type of commissioning project but, at a certain point, yourself as a commissioner and client need to figure out when that creator is just doing it for the money rather than the relationship/audience.

24 - "She only has 80k followers I need to get someone with a much bigger reach for my product" - Yes, she might only have 80k followers but she is the no.1 channel in her genre/vertical - by all means please then commission someone that knows nothing about the content and product you're advertising just so you can get that extra 10k views or 30k reach.

25 - "Oh they have 500k followers they're exactly the type of content creators we want to work with" - just take number 24 and reverse it.

26 - "Your idea seems to be a bit too generic, I'd prefer if I could talk to the creator instead to see their perspective over their audience" - Hi, my name is Diogo Martins (or @Karen Chu our brand marketing manager at Bloomr.Sg) - I work at the Mediacorp Creators Network and talk to, mentor, monetize, market and help our creators on a daily basis (majority of the time even nightly and "dawnly" basis). Thank you for the vote of confidence in our ability to communicate with them, if you'd like to explain to them a complex funneled marketing strategy yourself - by all means - please do. Am sure the idea they gave us to transmit to you (that we then "bettered" for your digestion) will be much better repeated 3 times, without translation and in a 19 year old's language. Especially when after you leave the creators convo then have to talk to us again about how clueless you might seem to be about social media or their audience/content or how fast they speak.

27 - " I thought she'd be taller" - I love this one - and it applies to any type of comment regarding the creators/influencers (fat, thin, beautiful, smart, creative, strong, younger, older, whatever). What you see on social media is usually a persona - a cleverly crafted one - some of those personas are closer to the creator's personalities some are way off - like with any talent, their "on-camera" behavior is usually different from their real lives. Don't be surprised or condescending when you talk to them in person - creators/influencers are just like you or me - an insult/compliment goes a long way.

28 - "Oh you shouldn't do that, I don't like it so the audience will also not like it" - mr. and mrs. keyboard warrior - please check your biases at the door - sometimes if a creator/influencer has a perspective for your own brand that doesn't align with your thinking - don't lump everyone into your own perspective but rather try to be open to a different POV. You might be surprised by the content that might get out of that conversation.

29 - "Why am I paying more for this content compared to just hiring one of your DJs or Artistes?" - think I covered this one briefly before but in a clearer simpler statement - Content Creator/Influencer & Talent - not the same. If it's talent you want, you might be having a conversation with the wrong crowd - if not then the project needs to appeal to the creators above all else.

30 - "That growth rate isn't strong enough we need it to be higher" - this one comes from all sides - please explain to me how a growth rate between 4-7% a month is bad compared to your brand's -2% in the past 2 years? Oh am being defensive? You do know that a growth rate of 7% a month almost doubles your audience in the end of a year right? Math, yeah... that's a tough one to explain...

31 - "Influencers/Creators are just a fad" - keep thinking that way. They'll surely be glad you aren't looking in the right direction when they take the fighting mat right from under you.

32 - "Why are you working on your day off? Come back to bed" - sure, I've read all the studies, all the great entrepreneurship books, all the worklife balance diatribes on how "work will be there in the morning" (see how easy it was to create a bullshit perspective of how "informed I am"... why would you then believe those writers as well?!), but try telling social media to go on a holiday once or twice a year - you can try to fake like you'll be informed by the time you're back - but - a lot of trending & business decisions are made on the fly and with very limited information so if you can get the slightest edge because you slept 30 mins less, I'm sorry but... I'm going to try and take that edge. BTW - on those amazing entrepreneurship books that everyone loves to comment on, regurgitate or advertise freely for - am always amazed how people that have become billionaires always have "amazing insights on how everyone else should act to emulate their success while paying for the very books that will make themselves the writers even more successful". It's called Survivorship Bias - I'll try my own ideas for success and maybe some of yours, but don't expect me to follow your biased path.

It all may seem a bit dark and moody but then again one person's recollection of events is always debatable so, likewise I've always been a fan of learning from other people's mistakes and my dark perspective on things (only because it can get better!). I'd like to think that a dark perspective only gives you room to grow in the light (informed path)... Let's then see where the next year takes this adventure and maybe it wont be as grim for the 33 Things I've Learned!