Branding Matters

How to Use Influencers to Grow Your Brand with Aliza Freud

β€’ Branding Badass β€’ Episode 37

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My guest today is Aliza Freud, Founder and CEO of She Speaks; the leading influencer marketing & media platform connecting brands with female consumers. Aliza and her team help brands like Hershey's, Prudential, Kraft, Coca-Cola and others create and amplify authentic influencer content.

Prior to founding SheSpeaks, Aliza worked at American Express leading branding and marketing initiatives globally.

She’s also the host of the podcast π™Žπ™π™šπ™Žπ™₯π™šπ™–π™ π™¨: 𝙃𝙀𝙬 π™Žπ™π™š π˜Ώπ™€π™šπ™¨ 𝙄𝙩  which features female CEOs, actresses, producers, authors and athletes who are shaping our world.

I invited Aliza to be on my show today to talk about influencers and the value of influencer marketing. I wanted to know why more and more businesses are using influencers to promote their brand. I was curious to get her POV on how covid has impacted the industry as a whole.

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About Me
Hey there, I'm Joelly - the Branding Badass. My BADASS superpower is helping you build a brand that matters. From branded merch to keynote speaking, when you work with me, you get results!

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Joelly Goodson :

Hi, I'm Joelly, your Branding Badass and welcome to season two of Branding Matters. My guest today is Aliza Freyd, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks - the leading influencer marketing and media platform connecting brands with female consumers. Aliza and her team helped brands like Hershey's Prudential Kraft, Coca Cola and others create and amplify authentic influencer content. Prior to founding she speaks Aliza worked at American Express, and she led branding and marketing initiatives around the world. Aliza also is the host of a podcast called she speaks how she does it, which features female CEOs, actresses, producers, authors and athletes who are shaping our world. I invited Eliza to be a guest on my show today to talk about influencers and the value of influencer marketing. I wanted to know why more and more businesses are using influencers to promote their brands. And I was curious to get her point of view on how COVID has impacted the industry as a whole. Eliza, I'm so thrilled to have you with us today. Welcome to Branding Matters.

Aliza Freud:

Thank you so much for having me.

Joelly Goodson :

My pleasure to have you join us today. This is super exciting. I want to dive right into it because you have so many amazing things that I want to talk about today. So let's talk about your career. First of all, you were at American Express, you had a pretty important role there. And then you decided to leave and start she speaks in 2008, what inspired you to start it and tell me what's your mission with she speaks

Aliza Freud:

My mission has always been to build a stage for women, and then the microphone. So basically, my job, I feel like our obligation to our community is to amplify women's voices. And that has been our mission since the beginning. We've evolved in terms of how we execute that. But it is the same mission, which I love. So the launching of our company, when we started was it was a research company, we were meant to be building a panel of women, helping brands better understand what was going on the hearts and minds of women. And that was it. But after we launched, we started to see that a lot of the women that were joining on our panels, so to speak on our research panel, were what you now call influencers. These were women who had blogs, they were very early adopters of social media platforms. And we kept saying to them, hey, we want you to be in this study, but you can't write about it on your blog. After doing that a few times you start to think well wait a second, maybe there's an opportunity here to work with these women who are joining our panel and a more of a marketing capacity, not just a research capacity. That's kind of how we evolved. What do you think it is about? SheSpeaks that has made it grown so quickly? And what's your secret sauce? Do you think? I mean, honestly, I think it's just we have lots of opinions about the products that we use what's going on in the world, we have opinions. And I think that a lot of us like to share those opinions. And I would say that is the mo of our member, the thing that is common for with our community is this emotional idea that women are looking to share what's on their minds. And we are a conduit for that. And that's why what I said earlier about building that stage, the women in our community are the ones that are on that stage, we feel very a great deal of responsibility towards our community. And I think that's why the community continues to grow. It's just kind of interesting. There is this idea with or this interest that women have, I think to make things better, we want to help and that's the commonality we have with our members.

Joelly Goodson :

Oh, I agree. Do you think maybe there's a part of it, too, while you're talking to me, and I'm listening to you say this, that women so desperately want to be heard. One of the reasons that you are so successful in your community as exposed is because it's a safe place where they know that they're going to be heard and that you're helping them sort of take their voice out into the marketplace, their opinions matter. Right?

Aliza Freud:

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that is a big part of it. And it also then makes sense that a lot of the women who were joining as I said in the early days were now what you call social media influencer, right. That's also the common theme that they have something that's on their mind that they want to share with people they want people to hear about it. They want them to see a part of their lives. They want people to know what's going on with them. It's an a bit more of a public realm. When you look at it through that lens, the women who were signing up early days if she speaks we're now what you would call social media influencer

Joelly Goodson :

That's a greatsegue because I want to talk about influencers. You hear that word a lot. What makes a woman it's because we're talking about women specifically, what makes a woman an influencer? And can anybody become an influencer? Like, what is it that makes them an influencer?

Aliza Freud:

I'll answer the second part of that first, which is I do think anybody can be an influencer. I think it depends on where you want to influence and what you want a definition the way we think about influencers? Is it somebody who has built a following of people who want to listen to what they have to say they want to hear what's on their minds, they want to hear what's going on in their day, they want to hear about products that they're using. So it is a group of people who have built that trust. I mean, there is an inherent trust that an influencer has with their audience with the people who follow them. And great influencers take that responsibility very much to heart, and they recognize that their audience trust them, and it's their responsibility then to be authentic and real in what they share with their audience. Are you talking specifically for social media? Can you be an influencer without being on social media? Because I think a lot of people when you think influencer, you automatically think social media, you think, you know, Instagram or Tick Tock Oh for sure. I mean, you think about it, a professor, let's say who's not on social media is influencing a classroom of students that professors influencing thought, and influencing how people think about things. And with social media influencers, they're just much more in the public realm, and they have a following, that you can count. And that's why this has become an industry in particular one that you associate media dollars with, because if you think about how brands typically spend money, they have media budgets, which is about reaching an audience. And once influencers were able to show that they had scale, and they had audiences that you can actually look at, you can see the audience, you can see how many people were following him, you could see how many people were engaging with their content, which is maybe a little bit of like a viewership number. So you are able to really understand the scale behind the influencer. That's why social media influencers have become the influencers we talk about. But the truth is that influencers have existed for all time. I think almost everybody influences somebody else. Just the question is what's your sphere of influence?

Joelly Goodson :

Let's talk specifically on social media. So is there a specific number that an influencer has to get to to actually be considered an influencer? And then I have a second part to that I've heard I've seen that, you know, if you're an influencer, if you have 10,000 followers, or if you're an influencer of this, but then there's also that whole thing where people can buy followers, how do you know what's a real you talk about authentic and genuine? I want to get to that is a real influencer, versus someone who's on Instagram. And let's say you look at their following, and they have 20,000 followers, but they really haven't done anything other than pay someone to send them a follower. So what's your take on that

Aliza Freud:

There are shenanigans, so to speak, that go on in the space? And that's what you have to really know what you're doing in order to understand is somebody for real or are they not? And you know, this has happened many times in the past where people will go out and as you said, they will buy followers. And what you really need to do then is look at the person look at their content, look at their engagement, and don't just look at how many people engaged or how many engagements they got, look at the actual comments, as an example, see whether people are actually talking with them actually engaging on the content, because that will give you a much better sense for whether the person is for real, or they're just buying their followers, right? So there are lots of things you can do. There are systems that also allow you to do this from because we do so much influencer marketing, we use systems that help you understand what percentage of an audience followership is real. And there is software out there that does that. So what I would say, though, is that the cream always kind of rises to the top, so to speak, you know, ultimately, if someone is authentic and real in terms of their audience, a just by looking and then as I said, there's also software that allows you to really suss out are the bots or other real people.

Joelly Goodson :

Right. And I think what you said earlier, too, it's all about content. Right? If you're getting value if you're actually checking out what an influencer is posting and doing. I think that says a lot about who the Yes. Okay, so let's talk about brands. What I understand is you match brands with influencers. Is that part of what you do?

Aliza Freud:

Yes, yes.

Joelly Goodson :

How do you do that?

Aliza Freud:

So our clients are the brands that hire us. to basically quarterback brightness, right? So we will do everything from figure out who the right influencers are, make sure that the messaging and what we are trying to achieve or the brand is going to work in this medium. And that's super important. So we'll do everything from the upfront we did the research to understand who the right person is, we then find the right influencers, we briefed them appropriately, tell them what to do, quarterback that process, as I said, and then watch the results. Anyone who's listening who might be doing an influencer campaign, I highly recommend, don't just think about the influencer for what they're going to push out organically on their social. Think about how you're going to do paid distribution of that content. Because you're investing in the content, you might as well optimize it, optimize the content. And I will tell you that influencer content is performing we've been testing influencer content now for years against control units from brands and the influencer content nine times out of 10 is outperforming the control content from the brand to the tune of 160 plus percent. Wow. So if you're going to invest in influencer marketing, invest in doing the paid distribution, because it's just going to let you get more bang for your buck.

Joelly Goodson :

How much do you think the pandemic has had to play in that

Aliza Freud:

The pandemic has absolutely affected influencer marketing, and I will tell you at first effected it very badly in the sense that brands rightly so we're worried about not wanting to seem frivolous, you know. And then in the summer of 2020, enormously important social discussions were happening in the US and around the world. So those things, definitely give brands pause. Because you don't want to step in, if you're a brand. You want to make sure that you're being smart about anything you're doing social once brands kind of moved past the concern of you know, okay, how do we do this? And how do we do it? Well, I think what happened was, you also started to see that brands realize that first of all, social media engagement during the pandemic skyrocketed hugely up. And that means that influencers we're seeing more and more audience right, then more and more followers, engagement rates, were going through the roof at the same time that that was happening, right? engagement rates, skyrocketing on social media, social media usage, skyrocketing, you had other traditional channels in marketing, like out of home, or, you know, some of the other channels that even in store, people were going in stores on mission during COVID, they were going for exactly what they were going at all, if they were going at all, they were going on a mission. And they weren't like meandering maybe through an aisle. So a lot of the more traditional marketing channels that brands were using, were no longer something that they could do. So once that started to happen, brands realizing that okay, social media engagement is up considerably on some of where we normally put money is now not as effective because we're not going to see as many people driving by or a billboard, just for example, right? They started moving that money into digital and then you started to see budgets increasing significantly, an influencer sorbs just reported that in 2019, influencer marketing budgets from brands was about 8 billion. And by 2022, it's expected to be 15 billion. And it's because you're seeing people switch to digital. And now people are much more comfortable. I mean, think about the adaptation of people doing online groceries when they didn't in the past, we've had enormous increases in people buying products online that maybe they weren't doing before. And then the last thing that happened to make influencer marketing increased so much in terms of budget that's being allocated for it, is the fact that influencers have been filling a void a creative void. You can't do those expensive, crazy shoots, and not even because of expense, because during COVID, you weren't flying 30 people out to a shoot, it just wasn't happening the way that it was happening prior to COVID. But you still need content. And if social media usage is up so dramatically, you need even more content. And influencers are really efficient solution for creation of content.

Joelly Goodson :

Wow, that's so interesting. You were talking earlier. And this is another thing that people talk about time is authenticity, especially on social media. I always wondered when you see somebody or you see an influencer on social media, and they're drinking, they're kind of whatever, you know, and they say like, well, this is my favorite Cola, or they have a hair product and like I use this hair product and it's my favorite but you see it everywhere now and part of me wonders will not wonders. I mean, I think I know that they're getting paid to do that. So there's Blurred Lines. between what's authentic and how much of it is really this influencer, a human being on social media sharing about their favorite products versus Well, they're getting paid this much money to do it. So how authentic is it?

Aliza Freud:

Yeah, that's a really great question. I love that because it is incredibly true that you will quickly lose your audience if they sniff out inauthentic content. And I think that is the heart of why people need to recognize that influencers, they know what their audience wants, and what they don't want. And they are highly sensitive to saying something that is going to erode their credibility with their audience, because they want to continue to have that audience, they want to continue to have sponsored opportunities. So when you're working with influencers, I actually think that good influencers, which we try to work with good influencers, they are way more worried about how a piece of content is going to come across to their audience, and that be authentic, versus we might be worried as the ones working with them right on behalf of the brand. So it's important to them because they don't want to lose their influence. So that is that very much the case. And what I would say though, is somebody who's going to post this is the by favorite seltzer ever, I'm just making it up forever. And then a month later, this is my favorite self serving, it's completely different brand that is going to fall flat. What we are finding and I will just give you a kind of a simple example. We do a lot of work with Hershey's and they have a lot of different brands. One brand is Reese's, we found out that an influencer a celebrity influencer, that we wanted to work with this celebrity influencer, who you may not think of that person as somebody who's eating, let's say, kitkats. Because they're healthy, they're very much you know, talk about that though. Why would this person have credibility, and it would come across as inauthentic if they said, you know, kitkats, my favorite chocolate bar ever when you think this person doesn't really chocolate bars. So what we found out though, is that and we wanted to work with this influencer, because we did think that they had the right audience for us. But it wouldn't have come out as authentic. If this person said, This is my favorite candy bar, we found out that the influencers daughter loves kitkats and actually had asked proactively for a KitKat birthday cake completely unrelated. So we were able to lean into that and say, Okay, we're going to have this be about the influencers, child's love for this product with the reason that one of the reasons the influencers are target B was because the influencer had a large mom following and had children that were of the age that might ask their parents, Hey, would you get me kitkats next time you're at the store, so you really want to think about who the person is. And even if you have your heart set on somebody, you have to make sure that it makes sense, what they're going to say, it's on brand, so to speak. Yeah. Because it doesn't make sense for an influencer, who doesn't eat a chocolate bar to say, this is the best chocolate bar ever, because you're paying them, you need to make sure that the messaging makes sense, and that it has an authenticity. All of those things are the boxes are all ticked on that. And ultimately that the creative is inspired. The messaging is inspired.

Joelly Goodson :

I find this so interesting, because I think it's very topical. So when an influencer is doing a post, whether it's a video or just a static picture, whatever, how much do you dictate the messaging and how they position their branding, what they wear? And how much do you just let them run free and be again, their authentic self? And what role do you play in what role does brand play in the voice of what the influencer is doing?

Aliza Freud:

I'm glad you said that word voice. If you're doing it correctly, you're not at all meddling in the voice because the influencers voices, their voice, how they speak to their audiences, how they speak to their audience. If it's going to work, it's going to have to be in their voice. And it's going to have to make sense for the messaging has to make sense for their audience. So the way we do it is there are obviously required elements which product has to be in the shot, what things that maybe we want them to hit on in terms of the messaging but the words and how they say it has to be in the hands of the influencer we might look at draft copy because you know it's never exists on a screen necessarily like that reading from a script right that says wondering, there's no script there's typically a storyboard with a loose script when you're talking about working with some of the bigger influencers. There's typically that but there's not an expectation that they're going to read it word for word, the way that it is maybe on paper, it's meant to be a guide, there may be certain words that you don't want them to use. So you say, Hey, stay away from these words and think more about words that are kind of like this if you're going to describe the product, but at the end of the day, the influencer has to say it in their voice, and it has to ring true for their audience, because otherwise it's going to backfire. There are too many examples of influencers coming across it authentically. And then it backfires. it backfires on the influencer and backfires on the brand.

Joelly Goodson :

Do you think that influencers are more in touch with their audience and the consumer then than the actual brands they represent?

Aliza Freud:

In terms of their audience? Yes, influencers engage with their audience on a very regular basis, they see what people react to, they see the comments, they know what their audience thinks and cares about. And if you decide if you're brand new, and you decide, okay, this person, demographically has my audience, right? I can see that the age of their audiences this and that the sex of their audiences that and that they live in these geographic locations. So you've ticked the boxes of what you have on a demographic profile. But at the end of the day, what that influencer understands that maybe the brand doesn't, is the psychographic component, what drives these people, what resonates with them, what do they care about, because if you're creating content all the time, and you're seeing how people react to it, you're going to get a very quick read on what people care about. And what's going to work. One of the most important things in influencer marketing when you're running a campaign, trust your influencers. Now, of course, they have to be with certain guidelines, but trust them, because they understand their audience in a way that is so incredibly important and special for actually connecting with that audience for your product,

Joelly Goodson :

Would you say so graphics are more important than demographics? You know, there's a reason that for all these years as marketers, we've used demographics, but with digital, and with social media, you find that there are psychographics sometimes that are really what's bringing people together, and an audience together that you may not really get at by just looking at the demographics. And because of the engagement, there's more and more engagement that we've never gotten more feedback than we have today. Because in traditional advertising for some marketing, whether it was TV or radio, or billboards or any other traditional advertising, it was just you sort of speaking out to your audience. Now, there's polls, you know, you see all the time on stories where you're asking for people's opinions, and you're asking for help, and you're asking for their input. So you're learning more and more about the individual. And you're getting more of those psychographics, right?

Aliza Freud:

Yes,exactly. And that's the beauty of it, you think about what is valuable about what you can get in social media, you are having a dialogue, the traditional ways that we used to mark it is not a dialogue, it was just the brand speaking at the consumer, you can have a dialogue in order to have a relationship, there has to be some way to have a dialogue when I started working and talking to people about building community and what social media gives you the opportunity to do, which is build community I would say if I told you go off and build a relationship with that person over there, that standing over there, but only you can talk to them, they can't speak back to you, you can engage each other in a conversation, you would tell me it's not gonna be that easy to build a relationship with them if I'm just talking at them. But that's how marketing has been for so long. A one way communication and that's one of the things I love about what social media and digital has allowed us to do is create a dialogue right?

Joelly Goodson :

So if someone's out there who's listening and they either think they're influencers or they want to be an influencer, they'll reach out to me they want to be on my podcast let's say and I'm like well I'm an influencer and I think it'd be really good for your podcast because of it. So what advice would you give someone who either aspiring influencer because now I guess that would be considered a career is that fair to say? Sure. You make a lot of money right?

Aliza Freud:

There are a lot of kids making a whole lot of money and there's a lot of people of all ages. To your point about is it a career now it is I was talking with one of our influencers the other day and she's hugely successful she has a fabric line at Michaels she's product lines at Michaels she's very successful and she told me that both of her children are now influencers that's what they do. And she said it can you believe that this is a job, it's a career and I said, Well, you're a living example of how a career so why is it surprising that your children are pursuing this as well and they're, you know, just kind of starting out. So yes, it is absolutely something that people now think of as a career and was certainly not an option when I was younger

Joelly Goodson :

No kidding. So do you have any advice that you would give an aspiring influencer to how to get going and how to become successful because ideally, I think if you can sign on with few brands, and that's where you start making big money, what would be some tips that you would offer?

Aliza Freud:

I would just say focus on your content, focus on being authentic and genuine and creating good content on an ongoing basis to build your audience. That's what does it to build a legitimate, authentic following. You have to be consistent, you have to be authentic, you have to know how to create good content. And there's more nuance there. What works on Tick Tock is different than what works on Instagram, which is different than what might work on Pinterest, the platforms are different. But if you are somebody who aspires to be an influencer, pick a platform that you feel comfortable on. And make it your mission, make it your job to create content on an ongoing basis, trying to make that content as high quality as you can and as authentic and real to who you are as you possibly can.

Joelly Goodson :

That's great advice. So where do you see the future of influencer marketing? I'm curious. I mean, it's been on this trajectory. And obviously, the pandemic has had a huge influence on it. So post pandemic, how do you see it changing? Or do you see it changing

Aliza Freud:

Who is hot is going to always change, right? there are seasons for people, that people tend to kind of have their seasons, and there are definitely some who stay very relevant for a very long time. But I think you're always going to see that like, who is popular, who's not kind of shifting, there's always going to be new people coming up. And that is one of the one of the most, I think one of the most interesting parts of what we get to do is find that talent as they're coming up. And if you have a, you know, if you have a sense for what good content good talent is, if you catch people out on their way up, it can be a great way to build a relationship right within, within influencers. So I do think that who is popular and who is influential in different categories is always going to be an evolving thing. What I think will remain the same, is I think people are starting to recognize that influencers are kind of like media channels. And and that's the way we've thought about it for a very long time. Because people will say, why is it that this person is, you know, getting paid so much for doing this? Well, a lot of influencers have audiences that rival cable TV shows, I mean, the audience is on a popular primetime show. So you're reaching, it's the same idea. Why do people run it television spots, they run them because they want to get access to that audience that's watching during a show. And this is different, it's not like people are, if they're watching live, let's say they might be getting up and going doing something else. During the commercial break. When I worked at American Express, we used to say, we know that we are wasting 50% of our budget or ad budget, if only we knew which, right? You don't know, your job is to reach your audience with your message and do the best job you can in reaching your audience with your message. And, and connecting with your audience. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And it's what influencers can help you do. And in my opinion, as I said before, if you think about the value of an influencer, they're helping you create great content, right? So they're actually doing the creative and helping with creative, they're helping you with the audience reach with the awareness. They're also driving direct sales, you can put links to drive an actual direct attributable sale to that influencer. Yes, there's a lot a lot of discussion about where the industry is going to go. But I think when you have those core elements, and as somebody who grew up as a brand marketer, I think to myself, when I allocated my budget I thought about where is my target customer and how do I most effectively reach that target customer with my message influencers are able to do so many parts of that the creative the awareness, a direct sale, they're able to do so many parts of it, I don't see it going away.

Joelly Goodson :

I don't either I see like exploding more and more so I asked you earlier about Can anybody be an influencer? And you said yes. Should all brands be using influencers? Or do you think there's any brands that should maybe stay away from using influencer?

Aliza Freud:

If you have a lousy product, don't use them. I say that very earnestly. I don't I know it sounded flippant. I didn't mean it that way. If you have a product so I will tell you I'll give you an example. years ago we were approached by a cigarette brand and they wanted to use influencers. I said absolutely not. We will not work on this. We will not do this and well Other people or other people do it. First of all, you don't believe in the product. So maybe that was a personal thing too. But if you went to an influencer and had an influencer, try to talk earnestly about the fact that they're smoking, it's going to backfire on you, it's going in some way to backfire on you. So I think if you are a brand that has a product that is inherently not safe, or you, you know, you've had an issue you've had recalls or don't be in the space, if it's if it's even, let's say it's a temporary thing, be quiet for a while, let things kind of settle, make sure that you've dealt with whatever the issue is. And then you can kind of use influencers and go back to it. But that is our rule of thumb is we look at what your product is, how it's perceived. And what's going on for you at any given moment. Are you having a crisis because you've had to recall product or whatever. And that's when we would advise that you not run out into the space right now.

Joelly Goodson :

Well, interesting. What about canceled culture? I mean, you have an influencer out there, you have a brand out there, they decide they're going to work together and then either the brand or the influencer because you know, it could be one or the other does or says something and all of a sudden now one of them is cancelled. Have you ever come across that? And how would you deal with that? Because everybody's getting canceled? Right? I mean, we're living in this cancel culture, which is another topic.

Aliza Freud:

I know, it's an excellent point. So we tend to work with large brands that are a little bit more on the conservative side in terms of who they want to work with. So we are very cautious about that element, we will look at people to understand what is their history? What's their tone? Have they had issues, what's going on with them, we tend to not jump into a space where an influencer is sort of on the fence that we have very sort of strict guidelines for who we will work with. Now, that doesn't mean that something can't happen. Like you know, you know, you never know. But I will say that if you are smart about who you are willing to work with, what their history has been, how they speak to their audience, what their politics are, if somebody is posting every other post about politics, maybe you don't want to necessarily engage with them, or your product or service. And then that way, I don't mean just posting about politics. I mean, posting very like, whether it's one extreme or another, depending on where you stand. If that is what someone does. I think if you're a brand like the kinds of brands we work with would probably steer clear of.

Joelly Goodson :

Is that to avoi any sort of controversy?

Aliza Freud:

I mean, there's so much that's not the business they're in. And I'm a big believer, I want to say that too. I'm a big believer that if you're a brand jumping into a conversation, just because it's true, it's a trending conversation is not the best approach. And that doesn't mean that people don't want to know from a corporate standpoint, what where you stand. But from a brand standpoint, a brand tweeting a bit like you have to be thoughtful about what space are you in? What lane Do you reside in and be smart about what conversation you're going to engage in? If it is something that you just think is, hey, it's trending? Should we jump into it? If your brand is not a brand that is known for that, then why do it?

Joelly Goodson :

I totally agree with you. That's a really good point. What about the idea of there's a lot more demand out there now for brands to have a purpose and to stand up for something to stand up for what you believe in? For example, I think of like Patagonia. I don't know if you lost your recent campaign that they did, right? They're very vocal about their you talking about politics, about their political views? I mean, do you think it's encouraged ever? Do you think brands should stand up for what they believe and vocalize it? And same thing with the influencer that what they want to partner with? Or is that something that you don't recommend?

Aliza Freud:

So I assure you that Patagonia did a whole bunch of research before they decided to launch any campaign that they did, right? If they know that their psychographic of their customer going to embrace what they're stand for. I think that other brands have to be super careful about if they are not if that's not what they're about, if they haven't built their brand around that you have to be careful about whether you're going to jump into a topic that is political, that is polarizing, because if you have no business, being in the conversation, don't be there because it's a conversation everyone's having. It's not the way to go. I think you have to be really thoughtful about where you are going to jump into a conversation. What your place in that conversation is now I'm not talking about the people who work for the company. I'm talking about the brand. The brand is not a person. Now, yes, we personify brands. But what I'm talking about now is brands being smart about who they are in terms of what the brand stands for, and what their audience thinks of them and how the audience thinks about their brand before they go jumping into a conversation. Right?

Joelly Goodson :

So then what about the influencer though, that they partner with? Is there a certain mandate where Okay, if we're gonna partner with you, and you, we're gonna have you be our influencer and promote our brand all over social media, we don't want you talking about x, y, and z,

Unknown:

You can dictate what they talk about in the posts that you're paying them before, but you can't dictate what else they're going to talk about, right? You build some sort of relationship, and maybe they will agree to certain things. But that process of picking the influencer is such an important critical step in the process, because you have to know that you're getting into a relationship with the right person. Or if you're going to do a post with them, it's a one off post, then I think it's still really important to know who you're dealing with and choosing that person correctly. But it's it can become a reflection on the brand. That's the point right? brands want to they want to build their brand based on who they associate with. So you always have to keep that in mind.

Joelly Goodson :

Before we go. I want to talk about your podcast. So you have a podcast that's also called SheSpeaks can you ell us about the podcast and hat it's about?

Aliza Freud:

Yes, well, the podcast is a passion project. We launched during the pandemic, we launched late 2020, we were finding that our community of creators and influencers were telling us they were feeling stuck. They were feeling uninspired. On the one hand, there was all this stuff with our health that we didn't know how sick people were going, that the numbers were just rising. I mean, it's not surprising that people were so incredibly stressed out and feeling stuff. So we felt like okay, well, what can we do? We want to help people not feel so stuck. We want them to feel better. And we thought, well, we are a company that's all about raising voices of women. What if we got some of our amazing women that we've worked with in the past influencers in the world of media, or fashion, or publishing or entertainment, we got those women to come onto our show, and we shared their stories, we had them share their stories of what's gone great in their life, and what are some of the hiccups that have happened along the way. So that's really what it was. It really wasn't a business supporting type of thing. It was something that our team just felt so passionately we wanted to bring to our community we launched it was really for our community. We've gone beyond our community, which is so cool that you know we have these people who maybe have no idea what she's big is as a business, but they know about the podcast every week we feature another amazing woman and her story and her struggles to do what she does and that's what it is great.

Joelly Goodson :

You know when you and I talked originally and you told me about your podcast and you shared that with me what I really found interesting and what was appealing is you talked about people sharing and celebrities you have quite a few celebrities on which is pretty amazing. They share their story but they share about their struggles and how they overcame it because when you see a lot of again influencers celebrities, whatever you want to call them, you put them on this pedestal and you see them in a certain light and I love the way you humanize them and or they humanize themselves and they share their vulnerabilities and their challenges and I'm so in awe and I admire women and all people who have really overcome challenges and come out on top so I think that's what makes it a little bit different than some other podcasts that might be out there

Unknown:

That's why I wanted to make sure I explained where it came from I wanted these women to understand that some of the most successful amazing women out there have fallen flat on their faces and how did they move past that that's one of the things we spend time talking about and you know just lots of things about how do you go about building whatever it is that you dream to build and it's not all roses and ice cream?

Joelly Goodson :

Keep going and don't let the naysayers stop you from falling your drink. Wow that's so inspirational. Well thank you so much I really appreciate like I said I've enjoyed talking to you so at least if people want to learn more about you and about she speaks I assume you're on social media what's the best way for them to find you or reach out

Unknown:

The best way to re ch me personally is I'm pr tty active on LinkedIn. Th t's probably the social pl tform I'm the most active on ju t Elisa Freud on LinkedIn. Yo can find me there Elisa un erscore Freud on Instagram. An then of course if you want to follow she speaks if you're a wo an over the age of 18 years, sh speaks calm and then you can al o follow us on at she speaks up on Instagram and on the other pl tform.

Joelly Goodson :

Wonderful. Well congratulations on your incredible success and the growth of she speaks and the podcast as well. And it's such It's a pleasure talking to you and meeting you. And I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Aliza Freud:

Yes. Sounds great. Thank you for having me.

Joelly Goodson :

All right. And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe learned a few things to help you with your branding. But most of all, I hope you had some fun. This show is a work in progress. So please remember to rate and review on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. And if you want to learn more about me and what I do to help my clients with their branding, feel free to reach out to me on any of the social channels under you guessed it, branding, bad branding matters was produced, edited and hosted by Joelly. Goodson, alos me. So thanks again and until next time, here's to all you badasses out there!

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