Inside China's KOL (Influencer) Marketing Community: An Interview with Elijah Whaley, CMO at PARKLU

James Eron: We are here today with Elijah Whaley, CMO at PARKLU, an influencer marketing technology company. Elijah is also the co-founder of Melilim Fu, one of the top beauty influencers in China. Welcome, Elijah.

Elijah Whaley: Great. Thanks for having me.

James Eron: Now, you have a very interesting background. I know you've worked in China for a long time and had a number of different roles, but just to start out, give me a little background about what you've been doing.

Elijah Whaley: Sure, sure. I originally was in video production. I come from the American Midwest, and I came over here originally actually to get away from video production and kind of start a new career in marketing. I was immediately sucked back into video as soon as I got here with doing a production with Tencent and have kind of been in video and online content creation since then, but have also been able to develop my career as a marketer and obviously an opportunity to work with startups in that space and now with PARKLU.

James Eron: Okay. Tell us more about PARKLU.

Elijah Whaley: Sure. PARKLU is a influencer marketing technology platform, so we track 40,000 influencers across 13 social media platforms in China. We provide an analytics tool, which is very similar to Google Analytics with business intelligence wrapped into it via by searchable database, so you can look at and find influencers across these 13 platforms based upon follower size or keywords or brand mentions or location, types of content they create, and then we have an end to end solution for creating campaigns and briefs and then delivering them to either individuals or sending that out into a marketplace where influencers can apply for those campaigns. We then do the communication and content approval, all through technology, escrow payments, and then tracking and reporting for influencer campaigns.

James Eron: Obviously, it's a very comprehensive solution. We have worked with PARKLU before. I have a lot of respect for what you guys are doing. Now, one thing I want to ask though is in China, things change so quickly. How do you see the market changing, and can you give us some examples of what you've seen on the social media side?

Elijah Whaley: Yeah. I think one of the things that brands don't realize when they come over here is that pace of change. We had a really interesting service that we were offering only for about five or six months, which was actually a XiaoHongXu search engine optimization product. It was a little bit of a black hat marketing where we were able to take influencer posts and work a little bit of magic and make sure that they ranked high on any keyword search on the platform. It was really hard for us to sell because a lot of brands didn't understand it. They're just adopting the platform right now even though it's a really high engagement, really powerful platform at the moment for females between 18 and 35.

Elijah Whaley: The really funny thing is I was actually the biggest purchaser of this service that we sold because I understood the importance, I knew that it worked, I understand the importance of creating content that is evergreen especially on these search first type social platforms. Because I use that, I was actually able to take Melilim Fu from zero, we're kind of later stage adopters of the platform, and move her form zero followers to now, she almost has 42,000 followers today. I attribute a good amount of that success to search engine optimization. Unfortunately, XiaoHongXu has now modified their algorithm and changed some things on their platform, so we're not actually even able to offer this service anymore. Because brands didn't adapt to this, didn't move fast enough, they missed a really big opportunity. That's one of the differences between East and West and needing to be very dynamic and able to adopt and move fast.

James Eron: That's very interesting. Now, obviously, there are different types of campaigns and I know we could ask all the time, how should we invest in marketing, what do we need to do, how does social media, et cetera, fall into that. Can you give me an example of which types of campaigns have worked or yielded the best results for your clients?

Elijah Whaley: You know, the reality is the clients that have the best results, it's not so much about these little tactics or doing something proper every time. We say always on is the best way to work, meaning that you're not just running campaigns during the most expensive holidays or seasons or doing some sort of tactic, but it's really about having a holistic approach. It means that you need to have a solid social media presence, you need to have a solid e-commerce store with ratings, you need to have an SEO optimized website, you need to have been creating content. China is a high context culture with relationship building based upon concepts of guanxi. There was a really great report put out by McKenzie a while ago that said Chinese customers require eight touchpoints in their brand purchase journey. That's four more than Western customers.

Elijah Whaley: This means that Chinese customers are highly relationship based. They're highly engaged. They do a lot of research. They need to build trust and affinity with the brand or with the product before they make a decision, and so the best thing that any brand could ever do with influencer marketing has nothing to do with influencer marketing. It has to do with being very well established and ready for that journey to take place with customers, so that when you do something very expensive or you create this wonderful launching point for building a relationship with customers, that you're ready to take them through the rest of the journey.

James Eron: I can see how having a holistic approach definitely makes sense especially in a market like China. Now, on the flip side of that, can you tell me about the campaigns that have crashed or what are the most inefficient campaigns that you've seen?

Elijah Whaley: I think the ones that I dislike the most, less from PARKLU fortunately and more from actually working with Melilim Fu as a creator and as an influencer, are things like blind product seeding. There are a lot of products, to be honest, that show up at Melilim Fu's door on a daily basis that we have no idea who they're coming from. The brand is just working with an agency that has a list of KOLs' addresses and notes they're a beauty or skincare influencer or fashion, and products just show up. If a product shows up and it's not customized or it doesn't have a message or there was no relationship built before, the chances of that brand getting a free post or anything like that is really, really low.

Elijah Whaley: The other problem that I've experienced quite often is working with agencies. I think a lot of agencies' brands don't know how unscrupulous agencies can be, everything from the point of contact with the influencer, essentially bribing them, saying that, "Hey, you need to give me a hongbao of X to be able to accept this campaign," so they're not choosing influencers based upon what's best for the brand but they're selecting on what they can get kickback on. Then, also not following up with the influencer after the campaign is launched, making sure that they're responding to comments or that they're not going to delete the post later or getting the backend data that only the influencer has access to through their personal account.

James Eron: Well, that sort of brings up the next question in that, what is missing? What information should the typical marketing professional be looking at that they aren't?

Elijah Whaley: Well, one of the things we started looking at at PARKLU that has been very significant, and it's actually led to us selling data to hedge funds and some of the biggest investment firms in the world is correlation data. That means looking at Baidu, looking at Baidu search data, looking at WeChat index search data, and then really looking at your own brand's e-commerce data, and correlating that to influencer mentions or influencer campaigns or even when you're not running the campaign. We know now through correlations and statistical data that when influencers talk about a brand or talk about a product, we absolutely will see increases across all metrics, especially in e-commerce. It's so significant. That's why investment firms are buying this because they're making trading decisions based upon what influencers are mentioning because we know that that is driving commerce. If you as a brand are not looking at influencer data and correlating that to your own e-commerce and trying to understand the effects, and the value of those effects, you're missing out on a huge aspect of understanding what is working and what isn't working.

James Eron: You brought up KOLs. I'm curious. Which KOLs do you admire in the industry, either companies or persons?

Elijah Whaley: Well, I love companies and people that are innovating. I believe that this year, we're going to see a rise in longer form content even though short form content's really popular right now. I think vlogging is going to be really big. There's a guy here in Beijing, runs a company and runs some apps. His name is Flypig. He's a vlogger, and he's one of the people that are pioneering vlogging. I also think Mr. Bags is a really big name in the space, but he's just really done a great job appealing to Western brands. He's done these capsule collections with a lot of purse companies, which would sell out within minutes every time he does something like that. He's made himself really accessible, and he's doing a really nice thing in the space. Then, obviously, I am a huge champion of Melilim Fu. I think that she's so creative.

Elijah Whaley: I've really gotten to see what influencers are doing behind the scenes. These are some of the hardest working people in the world. They are always on. There is no nine to five. This is their life. This is what they live, sleep, and breathe. They realize too to some degree that there's a timeframe on potentially what they're doing, and so they're really cranking up the work. I have a deep appreciation for all influencers and creatives because I know how difficult this business is.

James Eron: I myself am originally an engineer, so I have strong appreciation for people who have the abilities with the other side of the brain to make it look beautiful and to create things. I think that's wonderful. Tell me about your future initiatives. What do you see coming down the road?

Elijah Whaley: I think the big one for us is we are going to be diving into AI, which is really exciting, natural language processing stuff, and so that's going to make transparency of data and organizing that data. The selection of KOLs is going to become easier. We finally have enough data, and also proprietary data that comes from the influencers themselves, and from running thousands of campaigns, that were going to be able to look at a brand and be able to say, "Hey, this is the list of KOLs you should work with," and it will take away a lot of that manual guessing process. That's the one that I'm super excited about being something that is going to take us some time but it's coming, and so it'll be really interesting there’s no one in the industry that's actually really doing it properly.

James Eron: All right, great. Elijah, how can people reach out and contact you?

Elijah Whaley: The first thing any brand or marketers should do is create a free 14-day trial account on parklu.com, and then if they want to get in touch with me directly, they can always reach out at [email protected] or on WeChat with all lowercase, elijahwhaley. I'm always free to chat.

James Eron:  All right, sounds good. Elijah, really interesting talking to you. There's so much going on in the KOL and influencer space. I appreciate your time today.

Elijah Whaley: Thanks, James. I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity and want to give a big thanks to Kung Fu Data.

About Elijah Whaley

Elijah Whaley is a content producer, marketer, and leading voice for influencer marketing innovation in China. He is the Chief Marketing Officer of PARKLU and the Cofounder of the top ranking Chinese beauty influencer Melilim Fu. 

About PARKLU

PARKLU is China’s premier influencer marketing platform. With 40K plus influencers across 13 social media platforms, PARKLU’s database offers a combined reach of more than 600 million Chinese customers. PARKLU influencers specialize in fashion, beauty, food & beverage, travel, kids & parents, health & fitness, home & design, and more. Over 1,000 brands and agencies around the world trust PARKLU to manage and monitor their influencer exposure in China. 

About James Eron

James Eron has over 20 years of consulting and industry experience in China, Japan, and the US. As a Partner at Kung Fu Data, James is a China market entry expert bringing quality brands into China and executing strategic turnarounds for brands struggling in the world's most competitive eCommerce market. His work makes extensive use of China eCommerce data to identify and capture market opportunities. Clients include a wide range of B2C brands from apparel, cosmetics, and luxury to pet food and consumables.

James is a frequent writer on China eCommerce topics and is regularly invited to speak at events surrounding China’s e-commerce sector. He is also global ambassador for the Global Retail Insights Network (GRIN), a community of creative, inspired retail minds helping shape the future of global commerce.

About Kung Fu Data

With offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and San Francisco, Kung Fu Data is an independent data firm and market maker possessing a rare combination of authentic understanding of the West and China in-depth local know-how. Since 2010, we have used proprietary data and optimization technology to help foreign brands enter and thrive in China’s largest e-marketplaces. Our sole mission is to bring brand owners a level of strategy and data transparency they never thought possible.

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