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Alexa Vogue is the SVP of Brand Partnerships at FamFluence Talent Management, an agency managing top-performing creators in the family space across social platforms. She is also the SVP of Brand Partnerships at Brilliant PR & Marketing, a PR and influencer marketing firm. In her roles, Alexa develops creative campaigns to help brands achieve their KPIs. With over 10 years of influencer marketing experience, she has worked with various partners, from small startups to global brands, including Amazon, Walmart, and Disney.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Alexa Vogue shares the catalyst for her career in influencer marketing
• How brands can achieve success utilizing content creators
• The benefits of partnering with macro, micro, and nano-influencers
• What strategies can brands implement to ensure access to a creator’s content?
• Various strategies for influencer compensation
• Alexa discusses her experience as a news anchor and sheds light on the reality of news broadcasting
• How does TikTok’s algorithm work?
• The importance of valuing the mental health of your team and clients

In this episode…

Social media platforms have evolved from promoting digital relationships to functioning as strategic marketing resources. Content creators have become a trusted source for social media users, and brands are capitalizing on their popularity. By partnering with influencers, brands gain exposure and boost their sales while offering consumers organic reviews. How can you ensure a brand deal is mutually beneficial for you and the influencer?

When signing a deal with an influencer, determining your objective and expectations is crucial as these factors dictate the creators you select. As an expert in brand and creator management, Alexa Vogue helps brands leverage partnerships with influencers to maintain a working relationship, fair compensation, and freedom of creativity.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Alexa Vogue, SVP of Brand Partnerships at FamFluence Talent Management and Brilliant PR & Marketing, to discuss how brands can utilize content creators for marketing purposes. Alexa also shares the benefits of partnering with influencers, implementing strategies for optimal results, and negotiating compensation. She also divulges her experience as a news anchor and acknowledges the value of mental health.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Alexa Vogue on LinkedIn
• Alexa Vogue on Instagram
• Alexa Vogue’s email: alexa.vogue@famfluence.com
• FamFluence Talent Management
• Brilliant PR & Marketing

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Eluymnt is a performance driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the show.

William Harris  0:15  

Hey, it's William Harris here. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of this podcast where I feature experts in the DTC industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business profitably. I'm really excited about the guests that I have today I have Alexa Vogue here, Alexa Vogue has a unique dual role working both brand side as the SVP at Brilliant a leading PR and influencer marketing firm and influencer side as the SVP at FamFluence, an influencer Management Agency representing the highest performing creators in the family space across Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube. Alexa also has over a decade of experience in the industry, and has worked with a diverse range of partners from small startups taking their first dive into influencer marketing to global brands such as Amazon, Walmart and Disney. Her expertise on both the brand and influencer sides of the industry have enabled her to develop and implement effective strategies that outperform benchmarks. Alexa, so excited to have you here.

Alexa Vogue  1:11  

So happy to be here, William and have these conversations and yeah, hopefully everyone gets to learn a couple things today.

William Harris  1:18

Let's break down some of the myths of influencer ads, influencer marketing, right? Yes. Before we do that, though, I do want to quickly announce our sponsor, this episode is brought to buy element elements is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800 million. And we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek. That said, let's get into the good stuff here. Alexa, influencer marketing. It's something that I feel is a really exciting thing for e-commerce merchants especially but for all industries. But one of the things that I've been seeing people talk about even on Twitter is that you know, everyone likes to say something said advertising is dead long live influencer marketing. And now people are saying like influencer marketing is, you know, the future of advertising and things like that, like something drew you to this field in the first place. What is it? Why why are you passionate about influencer marketing?

Alexa Vogue  2:21  

Well, as you mentioned in the beginning, you know, having my background in brand side and influencer side I feel like what makes me the most passionate is making it a win win situation for both the influencer and the brand. Because I've seen from my POV, you know, brands get taken advantage of because of influencers way overcharging. Right. And then you also have the influencers or who are being taken advantage of, because the brand isn't paying what they deserve. They're not looking at it from the right, perspective. So my true passion is really making it so that it's a win win situation for both the brands and the influencers. And really, like marrying them together when it's like the right product and the right brand with the right talent. And I've been doing this for so long. And so I feel like I have this unique perspective on what's going to work and what's not. And a lot of brands expect, like, oh, this influencer works for this brand, they're gonna work for mine. That's not always the case. So I think, like the magic of it is picking the right partners, and then making it a fair and just partnership.

William Harris  3:22

Yeah, and I think that there's something to be said about just finding when you find those wins, and that effectiveness, and you realize how good this can be for somebody's business, and therefore their livelihood, and their ability to feed their family and their ability to, to you know, hire employees and things like that. That's probably where it gets exciting to just be a part of making those success stories happen.

Alexa Vogue  3:45

Oh, 100% I mean, and from the influencers, a lot of them, you know, before this, they they weren't in this world at all right? They just happened to have a video go viral, or they just happened to be like a photographer, videographer have this passion in life that really lended itself into influencer marketing. And so it's really special to watch their lives change in this way. But they're also just so hard working, which is also just really special to watch because they care so much like they didn't want the brands to succeed. They want their themselves to succeed. And so yeah, they're the whole industry has changed so dramatically in the last even in the last six months. And so it's also just really fun being like on the forefront of that and watching as things ebb and flow and you know, kind of just tackling each new thing as it comes up.

William Harris  4:32  

Yeah. Now, this didn't come up in your in my introduction for you, but I feel like we got to give a shout out because I remember talking about this just last week, I think you met the CEO of Tiktok. Both what's the like?

Alexa Vogue  4:45

Mr. show to you? Um, honestly, he was absolutely incredible. I was so lucky to meet him. It was at a creator event. One of my creators was one of only eight that was invited to go and meet. And what was really cool is he literally that there and he took two, three hours just go into each individual creator hearing, you know why they love Tiktok? How tiktoks to what we were just talking about change their life, what features of Tiktok they are, you know, most excited about what features do they like, see improvements, and to just watch him genuinely care and listen to each individual creator talk about their story. It was really, I've been doing this for a long time, it was really surprising because usually you get to like a certain level at every, you know, company and to watch, like the actual CEO, sit down with all of them and just have such compassion for what they're doing and genuine gratitude, right. He's happy that they're on his platform, they're happy that they're having a good experience. I think a lot of other platforms could take note of how close he is to the action. Well, I

William Harris  5:56  

think that's important for you know, people who are, let's just say leading a company to be aware of how their top users, their top creators are engaging with it, their needs. And I think that shows just incredible leadership for him to be able to put that together.

Alexa Vogue  6:13  

100% And it wasn't just, you know, the influencers with the most followers, right? It was all businesses, it was indigenous dancer named James, who's amazing. It was just people who are making an impact on the platform. So it it was really special. No, that's really cool.

William Harris  6:29  

Um, when we get into just the idea of influencer marketing, I feel like there's a lot of things that people wrongly believe it is. And I think one of the reasons why people don't find success within their say, Oh, I tried it, and I didn't find success. You and I have talked about this before is they got too much in the weeds. And so they say, Oh, I didn't find success, because, you know, it. I told this person what to do, or whatever. And it's like, that's like, you know, if I hire a painter to my house, I tell them exactly how they're supposed to do their job. It's not going to turn out the way I want it. But you know, go into more details. What are the some of the things that you've seen brands? Do that sabotage their success on? Yeah, with influencers?

Alexa Vogue  7:12

Okay, start with the beginning, which is the partner, right? Who you choose, because there's different partners for different things. And to your original point of this is the future of advertising. There's some brands or that one influencer, who's gonna drive sales, right, that is their whole goal. But then there's other brands who want very, like intense reach, they want it to be like a billboard, they want it, they want brand awareness. The creators for each of those things are oftentimes very different creators. So it's first isolating, like, what is the ultimate goal? Are we trying to drive sales? Or we're trying to drive brand awareness? Are we trying to just get the word out about something that's happening? Is it is it like a very isolated campaign about a product launch or a pop up store, right, there's going to be a very different scenario and group of creators that you work with. The next thing is, let's say you are that brand that wants to drive sales. They're like, Okay, I have, you know, $2,500, I'm going to try influencer marketing, that's not going to work. So in order to have like a truly successful campaign, you need to have like a Strategy behind it, you need to be working with multiple creators, even if you're doing like an affiliate model, and you're not paying them a huge upfront fee, and you're paying them like a smaller upfront fee, you know, plus the affiliate, you still want to have like a good amount of influencers, to rely on one influencer to take away your Strategy or like to build the whole entire campaign is not going to work. So that's what I think that they do wrong. And then once they decide to finally do partner with them, I certainly don't trust them. Right. Like you said, they come with a brief sometimes these briefs are like 2627 20. I've seen a brief where like, it breaks down, you know, literally per like frame of the reel on tick tock, I want you to be talking about this. And within the first three seconds of podcasts to be shown in this way. Obviously, the Creator knows their audience, they've built this audience, they know them well, like they're in the trenches with them. So you have to trust them and like let them be part of the process. The next thing is I've seen a lot of brands, especially like the larger brands are spending a ton of money with some of these creators when they're coming at it from a brand awareness perspective. And yet, they don't hop on a call or make it personal at all. Just as a good practice on on the talent management side, the brands who hop on a call with the Creator, the creator becomes much more invested. Right? I remember I'll give two quick examples, but I want to call with the hydrolate team and they were going through their brief and I was 100% sold on the science and I'm sitting sitting back like I never would have taken from that brief the way that they're explaining it. Same with ag wine or athletic greens. I was on a call and I said to her you know hey, you know before the influence or join you know, it's Is this work like, tell me like, it's expensive, you know. And she was so honest. And she said, what I'm gonna have trouble. But she said, You know, honestly, if you know that like the epitome of health, that this isn't going to change your life, you know, you're already getting all of those really important, like microgreens and nutrients into your system. She goes, however, if you're human piece of garbage, that was me, this product will change your life. So like I bought it, immediately I still buy it, it comes to my house every month, it's like, there's certain things that you get from those, like intimate moments with the people at the brand, that you just can't duplicate in any other way. So I just highly recommend that because you're gonna get get a lot of organic content from the Creator, they're gonna care a lot more. And they're going to be invested in your goal, like, tell them what your goal is, are you trying to drive sales? Are you trying to get a bunch of views? Like what what is your message? And what is your goal,

William Harris  10:50  

and I think that's the key, I actually never really thought about it in that way before. But in advertising, we talk a lot about running campaigns for, you know, top of funnel versus bottom of funnel, we're talking about reach campaigns, you know, video views, campaigns, we're talking about purchase optimized campaigns. And so oftentimes, when I think about influencers, I think a very like, like direct to consumer, like, we're actually going to make them try to buy like direct response, like that's the goal, we actually want them to take action. But to your point, that doesn't always need to be the way that you're going to run influencers or even evaluate them, there are some influencers that are apparently way better at just getting exposure, even if that might not create the immediate response that you want from a purchase standpoint, they just have a real good way of getting in front of a lot of your ideal audience. And then that follow up one, whoever that is, that's going to drive that home.

Alexa Vogue  11:45  

Yes, exactly. And I mean, this within the industry, like it's called, like a heartbeat, or a pulse or a wave. But really, in an ideal campaigns, you're gonna set it up correctly, you want to have, you know, one, two depends on how large of a brand it is to five influencers that are elite, or that are, you know, macro creators, and then you have some mid tier summarizing, and then you have a ton of micro and nano influencers, and they're doing a lot of that like sales driving, but they've already seen it, right. They've already seen it from the elite influencer or the macro influencer. And if they haven't already seen it, you know, we always say it's five to seven touch points, a senior product, which they could see all five or seven from your ads, right, that you're writing in your hands. So the fact that you could do it that way too. But when you actually have that huge brand awareness, and then you have the smaller influencers were like, here's my discount code, you know, purchase it today, there, they had the tap to shop right there in their Instagram story or in their LinkedIn bio on tick tock. That's really where all of the debate conversion happens is because you do have you you are attacking from top to bottom.

William Harris  12:49  

Well, yeah, and I think that that makes sense when you explain it that way. Because there's it's a pyramid of sorts where you've got, you know, this big, big influencer, that's going to umbrella cover a lot of things and then the smaller the ones that come in and say in their own unique voice and way. And I think that's one of the things that I love about you brought up like the different tiers. And I think the tiers that you told me before, elite macro rising mid tier micro nano, like there's a lot of tears, and maybe we can unpack that a little bit. But the idea here is we've we've used we've seen how there was some influencers that one brand that we were working with where they had a I think it was like a blackhead remover and I wasn't directly the one on this account. So I might I might miscommunicate exactly what happened. But we saw an influencer and I think it was a micro or nano influencer in this case, called it a face spatula. Well, that was not on our radar at our that wasn't on the radar for the company that was selling the product. And so all of a sudden, we're like, Wait, is that a thing? And we find out that is a thing that's like what a lot of other people are calling it. So now we add that as a key word into their Google Ads campaigns. And now this becomes something that they're, you know, we're much more effective in dominating on a completely different thing that we even knew that that was because to going back to the earlier part we got out of the way let them speak in their language.

Alexa Vogue  14:04  

Yeah. And even there's interesting especially on Tik Tok, we've, that was always like the way that to do it right, the big influencers and then you have a ton of smaller ones. However, now you'll have a brand who because it's really cost effective to run ads on tick tock and other areas more so than like paying a huge grader, right? So we've also seen brands will where they'll run ads for an extended period of time. Now you're not getting the credibility or the trust, right? You just seen an ad. You don't know anything about this brand. You never seen them before. But because you're seen it so many times. Then you see an influencer talk about the product. And now you're using that influencer to validate did they actually does it actually work? Will they actually arrived? Because, you know, sure, when when tic tock first took off, you'd order cars, you'd never see them or they would come and they would be damaged. So there was like a lack of trust and now everyone's on tick tock. There's so Much more trust on the platform in terms of advertising. But if you're seeing a bunch of ads, you still need that final influencer, who's like, this actually does work. And I've seen it work great. And I for some reason, I've seen it work to their detriment where the ad looks so cool. And then you have those influencers who are organically coming on and saying, I got it, I bought it. So you don't have to it doesn't work, right. So you have to be really careful and clever about like how you position your brand. And make sure that like those first people who are purchasing your product are getting like an accurate product that they're getting sent to them on time, you want to just really make sure that your brand is putting the best foot forward if they're going to start off with ads without doing influencers first.

William Harris  15:40  

Well, yeah. And I'd say if you're going from ground zero, right, like zero sales, no, no product market fit that's been proven yet. I really prefer brands, even as an advertising agency, I prefer brands who have started with influencer, because that just gives you some of that feedback, and also gives us content that we can use in the ads. And so I think that that's the way and I'd say another thing that I really liked about influencers in this space is just to what you kind of pointed out, if we're running ads, there is an inevitability for a lot of people that they're going to want to go in look and see, well, what have other people actually said about this product. And so we look at it as this is, you know, third party social proof as well. And you want those influencers, not just to use them for their content, but to also use them as disability to be a sounding board when they go and they see oh, there's like 50 people here who are all saying really great things about this. I can maybe feel like I could trust this a little bit more

Alexa Vogue  16:37  

100% Exactly. And it you see it all the time to like right after like a bunch of influencers have gone live and the ads have gone live you're gonna see this like natural search for the product. People want to enter you know, they're looking for they're looking for people who have like 30 likes, they're looking for someone who has like no views. It's a super honest testimonial. Sure, which goes back to community community building, so is equally, it sounds probably stressful and overwhelming for a lot of people who are just getting started. But you have to have everything right, you need a solid digital agency, you need to have a strong influencer campaign, you need to have a great community building team, who has people who are out there talking about the brand, organically, that are genuine fans, because those those end up being some of the most trusted tools that you have to actually confirm that that bias.

William Harris  17:27

Well, in, I liked that you said that people are going to look at the ones with 30 views. And that's something that a lot of people don't talk about. And that's one of the benefits to still using macro voices, and micro and nano influencers. And I'll say that we saw this firsthand. On the on the macro side, there was a golf brand that came to us boy years ago at let's say 2018 or something. And I can remember him saying that he had gone through like nine or 10, other agencies, big names, all people that are really great. And nobody could figure out why his ads weren't working anymore. And they had made all kinds of wonderful changes to their ads. And he he said basically, you know, he's almost given up to this point, he was spending good money, let's say 500,000 a month, something like that, right? Like, like a decent decent size brand. But it just stopped. And it had been almost a year. And I can remember that what we did was we started looking around at some of the other things people were saying about them off outside of the platform, right? Because it's so easy to get kind of laser focused in myopic and what you're doing. And when we look at what's outside the platform, there were a couple of really big YouTube videos that were not speaking very favorably about his product. And those went live on the day that his that his his ads all of a sudden stopped working. And so we were able to work with them to try to figure out alright, how can you you know, regain some of this by working with them working with others. And it made a big difference and it was nothing to do with the ads but to your point. People are going and they're going to look at you know what these influencers are saying about you?

Alexa Vogue  18:57  

Yeah, without question. And that's and because they trust influencer so much I feel like that leads into like, the biggest thing that's happened in the last few years, which is just the power of Allah Allah Steen, which was formerly whitelisting. However, we are not saying once anymore, there's a micro aggression we don't need to touch. So allow listing is is really like how you in my, in my opinion, how you hedge your bet, right? If you're going to work with influencer, who has a solid following, who has name and likeness who has this great face and how to create this great content, you really want to be able to, to promote it to boost it. And that's where we see the majority of sales coming from. So if you're gonna work with a bigger influencer, they can still be more than brand away or they can still go all the way down that funnel, if you're going to push their content out where like you have the call to action. That's right there.

William Harris  19:45

Right. And I think that's the key. And we really appreciate whitelisting loud listing as well from from an influencer standpoint, and, you know, but not that doesn't always happen, right? So like, what are the steps that you need to take when you're working with influencers to make sure that you're able to you Use their content in that way.

Alexa Vogue  20:04  

So one of the best strategies that I've seen anyone implement, we do this for every single contract on our end is where in the beginning, when you're negotiating with the influencer, have it as an option, right, there's a good chance of that content maybe isn't great or doesn't perform to the like standard that you're expecting it to. And so you don't want to buy it upfront, you don't want to like have that in the contract or something that you're already paying for. And then you're sitting there and you almost feel forced to use it, because like, oh, we paid for this usage. So I would say to have in the contract, you know, if we choose to exercise usage on this content, it will be X number of dollars that we're willing to pay you for 30 days, that we're using that content. And actually the same goes for like the whole contract, I've seen a lot of brands enter into these like multi year brand deals. But what happens if the first post goes live and their audience just does not is not receptive at all, to this concept to the brand, there's hesitation that you've, you know, you're locked into this very long contract. So I also will see, you know, we have the option to do four posts throughout the year, we have the option to add on the allow listing, or even just giving it to someone like yourself and just running ads with it as it as well. The only difference between allowances and just making an ad with it on our end is that their handle gives you so much more credibility than anyone can imagine. So we're seeing at very minimum, like a three times difference between like our sales numbers, when it's like allow listed versus just going out from the brands page. What I love about the brand page versus allow listing, though, is the like a lot more ad testing tools, like you're able to take a bunch of content and put it in there. So what I've seen happen often is that we'll first start there, we'll take all of the content we just got maybe we're 50 influencers, we'll put it out from the brands page with a minimal spend, you're still gonna get sales, it's not going to be the level of the alias seen. And then you're able to say, Okay, this was the content that performed best. Now we're going to allow with that content. So you go back to the Creator, and you get that usage. Right.

William Harris  22:09  

Yeah. And and I think one of the things that I think a lot of people miss about a lot of listening is getting that in the contract, which is what you just call it out that it's like, you can't just run this without permission, you need to, you know, get their permission, and you have to get paid permission as well. You have to get permission, add this into the contract from the get go, because you don't know if this is going to work yet or not. But from from the start, but do you have it in there, then that's at least an option? Under present? Yeah. Something else that I was thinking about?

Alexa Vogue  22:36  

Run Ads ever? Anyone who's listening, please don't run them. Yeah, right.

William Harris  22:40  

But that doesn't make for very good relationships for the future. Right?

Alexa Vogue  22:46

Yeah. So a lot of invoices out and please pay those invoices. So that legal doesn't have to get involved. But yes,

William Harris  22:53

yeah, yeah. So let's say that somebody wanted to dip their toes into influencer marketing. And I know that that's, you know, for for someone like you that's like, oh, man, like, there's not much you can do. But let's say that they've had a budget of $2,500. They're not at a point where they can hire you, but they want to at least just start and they want to test it as thoughtfully as they can. What would they do? What tool would they use? How would they go about it? What would you recommend?

Alexa Vogue  23:20

Honestly, like our like, bare bare minimum test, or I don't consider this a campaign but like tests that we that we will do just to prove concept is little work with three graders, we usually like to have one instead of going elite, right? We'll go like to someone who's like more mid tier, we have a relationship with I will tell them like what's happening, hey, we're doing this test. If it goes, well, we're going to continue to work with you, but like, work with us, and then a couple smaller creators, and then we'll have all of them go live organically. And then we will allow us on that content. And we'll at minimum be spending $5,000 on that test. And you're able to usually prove out because from $5,000, we're seeing usually, and I would say more like ultimately get the ad minimum side, that $5,000 turned into 5000 link clicks of those 5000 link clicks you should have like around a 10% conversion. So I always tell people to you know, if you don't if you can't justify that cost of $8,000, including the creators fees, and there are whitelisting fees, if you can't justify if 500 sales is not equal greater than $1,000 on your end, taking into account obviously, all of your margins, then maybe this isn't even that great of a Strategy because it takes a while to scale that to a place where you're seeing a better conversion than that. So that's kind of like our true test and for clients that see like huge success with just that then it's really quickly and really easily able to scale from that point.

William Harris  24:53  

You You talked a little bit about how you're paying the influencers here. And you know, I know that there's a couple of different ways there's, you know, we've talked about You know, affiliate where it says upfront versus pay for performance versus earned? And it's just a gift or like, what's the best way? Or what are some of the pros and cons? Or what do you recommend there.

Alexa Vogue  25:12  

So I would say the most common especially for like a larger creator is going to be like a flat fee up front. However, there there are open to doing an affiliate model where you have both an upfront fee plus affiliate, and I always like to say, you know, I've seen brands be like, hey, we'll give you $500 Plus affiliate, like, if their rate is usually you know, $20,000 Plus, like, that's not gonna work. But if you came to the table, say, hey, we have $10,000, we're gonna give you $10,000 of pride, plus, we're gonna give you you know, 30% commission on every sale that you drive, that's interesting, that's enticing, let's, let's do that. Because what's gonna happen is that influencer, if you would have just paid full rate, they're gonna do that one post, they might talk about you again in the future, if they really loved you. But if it's an affiliate, and they do that first post, and they make a bunch of sales, they're gonna continue to talk about you organically. So I think that that's really like the best Strategy for the future is a mix, it's just really hard. Brands have it in their head of like, Oh, I'm doing affiliate, I'm not paying at all. Well, you're missing out on like all the best creators because no creator that really good at their job, and works with brands every month is going to accept that. So what you're doing and by the way, if they are like congratulations and keep reviewing them, but you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot because you're like an alienating part of your, your best performing influencers. But I would say that that mix of affiliate plus a base rate is what we see to be the most successful.

William Harris  26:37

I think that makes a lot of sense, that's true for a lot of things is there's a mix, that's going to end up being the best thing. And so some some influencers prefer one method, some prefer a different method. And the way to get the best of all of those is to be able to work with them. And you know, whatever is, is the method that they prefer.

Alexa Vogue  26:53  

So how long is one able to mention your clothing changes? I'm

William Harris  26:57

just impressed that it's taken this long.

Alexa Vogue  27:00

I noticed that the whole time. And I'm like, am I supposed to say something like I love my two I mentioned,

William Harris  27:06

whatever you want, this is just fine. For those who are only listening, you have to check out the YouTube video I have put on a sport coat, a bow tie and a hat all while we're sitting here talking. So

Alexa Vogue  27:17

it's very impressive. Honestly haven't missed a beat. Yeah, I

William Harris  27:20  

struggled a little bit. I'm impressed that you haven't missed a beat though. Like you kept going the whole time was like She's good. She knows how to keep a conversation despite whatever else I'm doing on this other side of the camera. My

Alexa Vogue  27:33  

past life as a news anchor. I'm nothing can distract.

William Harris  27:38

Okay, so that's a good segue because I wanted to talk about that. Like one of the things that I like asking people about is, why are why are you the way that you are like what has enabled you to be successful doing what you're doing? And you talked about like you are, were a news anchor, like, tell me more about that? Yeah,

Alexa Vogue  27:57

it was, you know, as a little girl in journalism school, they said, you know, it's our job to tell the truth and to go out and to tell both sides of the story and let the audience make their own decisions. And I loved that. And I loved doing that job. However, unfortunately, that is not the way that the real world works. In terms of news, you're not going to tell both sides of the story and the audience decisions sometimes handed down to you from network. And literally, you've seen Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon, like I forget, I think it's Jimmy Kimmel, that he even has a segment where he just shows all of the the local news segments doing like the exact same script as you had to. And so I got really jaded from my time in news and I, I knew there was like a happier way to still work in storytelling still help people. And so yeah, working with influencers and changing their lives, and we're still being able to tell stories with them. And through them. It was a really nice transition. And I will say, I grew up a lot working in it. So now, do you

William Harris  29:07  

have any horror stories that you're allowed to talk about?

Alexa Vogue  29:11  

I mean, I could tell 1000 But I won't because I'm sure they're too inappropriate for even this segment. But I will say that it's crazy the gall that these people have when they're like the president of this tiny County, and you're just like, yeah, how do you have so much confidence? But yeah, it was it was there's you know, there's movies about it, bombshell, I thought that one was actually like, not even bad enough. It was like 10 times worse. So yeah, there was that was one thing, but I have been, that was something that I dealt with, like a lot of women, which is not okay, but I dealt with it for my whole life. So that part was not as bad as having the veil uncovered that like news is not 100% true, and that that part made me

William Harris  29:59

want and I Let's

Alexa Vogue  30:01

talk because people are telling the truth on tick tock, I hope it never goes away because you're actually getting the truth from tick tock and you're not getting that from anywhere else.

William Harris  30:10

I want to apologize to you because, you know, when I was talking about like, you know, wild and crazy stories or bad bad stories, whatever from the news, like my mind was going towards it's like these horrible you know, blunders or mishaps or whatever and something entertaining and but to your right that it's like, you know, your idea of of what these bad situations are is completely different than mine. And so I apologize for even just miss assuming that.

Alexa Vogue  30:35

No, no, no, your

William Harris  30:40

Twitter, tick tock, getting news from you know, tick tock and things like that. Like, I do appreciate what you're saying about the idea of one of my first places that I go to check out what's going on is to Twitter even when it's like, like, if I see if I hear like something going on, it's like, oh, there's like this big boom, or the siren going off. You know, I'm looking fine. Like what's going on? Like, what, like, here? Does anybody else talking about this on Twitter or wherever that might be to see if anybody's even mentioning it? Because I feel like, it's oftentimes to your point, almost more accurate news than watching sometimes. Big broadcast. Yeah.

Alexa Vogue  31:13  

I mean, there was a bunch of tiktoks talking about it were in Paris, and they had all of like, the there was like riots happening and they were like protesting. If you typed in Paris on Tik Tok, all these videos, just unrest came up. If you typed in Paris, on any other social platform, or even into like your search bar on Google, you're getting very different results that aren't telling the full story that you're seeing on Tik Tok. And so I think that's really important. And it's, that's my biggest fear. When the there's these conversations about tick tock, something happening. I just feel like that would take away a whole truth to life, which was sure.

William Harris  31:54  

And I think it's important, I think it's important that we have that ability, I, I'm a big fan of free speech and people's ability to be able to go on and post those things and not saying like, this is what the narrative of the time is. And this is regardless of whatever side somebody might be on where it's like, sure, you might support one side now. But you know, when the other side's in power, you know, who controls the media and in the narrative of the time, and I think that's a dangerous, dangerous slope. And, you know, the, there's downsides to free speech too. And I don't know how far we want to go down that rabbit hole, either. But there's dangerous sides to that, where you've got a lot of, you know, absolutely horrible things that people now are able to do or say, or, you know, post on social media. And it's a delicate balance, for sure. But I think that it's, it's still better than, you know, let's just say government controlled media.

Alexa Vogue  32:47  

Yeah. And I feel like the algorithm does a good job. I mean, even during the like the hearing you like the videos of the airplane up as bad examples were like, small video that never went anywhere, like the way that the algorithm works. And like, you can listen to him explaining Himself, but is like, if this person likes a, b, and c video, and this person likes A, B, F, and G, and then the other person likes a, b, z, A and B are clearly liked by all different types of people who have all different viewpoints. So like, those are videos that are gonna go viral. This video might go viral in this community, because everyone in this community cares about that. Right? And that's how that algorithm is so accurate. But you have you need a lot of weigh in and and you're nodding yes, in order for that video to take off. And so I do feel like you're getting really accurate information. Because if everyone is saying like, Yes, this is something that we should feel strongly about, then you're gonna see that content.

William Harris  33:42  

Yeah, it rises to the top. Something else pivoting away from this a little bit for fun. I like to get into like, who is Alexa Vogue as well. And you mentioned to me that you allowed to talk about that Alexa Vogue your

Alexa Vogue  34:02  

last name Yes, exactly is like my thing I'm gonna carry for the rest of my life from my like, traumatic news. But yes, my last name is my I guess my maiden last name is voc. Tritter, very German, pronounced Socrata. And my very first news director before I even was on TV, even a single day, he pulled me into his office and I still remember him. Good memories of him. And he was like, Listen, I don't know how the app to say this last name, like, you know, like, do you want to be Alexa, Brianne, my middle name, or do you want to be Alexa Vogue? And I was like, Well, you know, brands aren't even a name so I guess I'll be Alexa Vogue. And then when I got married I my husband's last name is sweet like II which is just amazing to me, but funny and somewhat inappropriate. So my current boss is like, Listen, I'm gonna stick with Vogue lashes out So, I will probably be Alexa Vogue forever. And that is that is my special work name and it does allow me to keep some of my family life private as well.

William Harris  35:09

Well and I love it. It's it's a great name it there's even a idea that it elicits you know, when you hear Vogue, it elicits like this like status and this reputation and things like that. And if I remember correctly, a lot of other really great people have changed their names a little bit to have that. Dale Carnegie if I remember correctly, I don't remember what that but the guy who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People, Carnegie wasn't his last name originally. And he I think I remember he did that to more properly aligned with like Andrew Carnegie. And then Jamie Foxx I just saw yesterday, I didn't even realize this. His real name's Eric Marlon Bishop. That's not even close. Right. Aubrey? Yeah, well, and I think you do you know why he chose Jamie Foxx or at least what I saw him say why he chose Jamie Foxx for his screening. It was something along the lines where he said he saw like, all of the girls were getting like called up and he was like, I'm just gonna pick like this really neutral name. Jamie can be a guy can be a girl they don't know. And then he's like, you know, he gets called Jamie Foxx and then he shows up. They're like, Oh, no, we're looking for Jamie. He was like, Yeah, bro. That's me. Like, I'm Jamie. Right? And so it's like, oh, man just really thinking through he's like, how do I game the system here a little bit. And there's some brilliance though that name changes

Alexa Vogue  36:18  

is funny on the other end, too, because Taylor Swift her parents named her Taylor so that if she handed out her business card, you wouldn't know the girl because they will have very like business background, and they're setting her up for success in the business world. But yes, I've even considered changing the name to Alex for that reason, like you don't know is it as Alex a girl or guy but I'll accept the rest and, and vote Twitter. I will say the only person that that upset was probably like my grandfather, who got to who will see me on TV for the first time. And like, There goes his last name just like chucked out the window and it was vogue to move chairs. But it's fun.

William Harris  36:56  

Grandpa still like to?

Alexa Vogue  36:59  

Yeah, he still wants is his credit.

William Harris  37:02

Yeah. Um, what about any quirks? Like if I, if we were working in an office together? I would find this out about you. Right? Where it's like, you know, you're like, Oh, I can't touch food or something like that, you know, any quirks.

Alexa Vogue  37:19

The biggest one is probably that and to be fair zoom has like transformed my life in the business setting. Because I listen, 100% on Zoom, I can see the person across for me, I can hear them that you know, we've been remote since inception. So 10 years ago, we were still using Zoom. My boss always says, you know, like, should have invested in it back then. But we were using it without video. And I can get easily distracted. I get lost in my emails, I get lost in Slack. But when I'm on Zoom video, I'm fully paying attention to whoever I'm talking to. And so it's really been transformative for me i that anyone's not using video. That's why I love it. I see people you know, on Tik Tok complaining, you know, I don't want to put my makeup on or do that. I feel like at this point, no one cares if you're wearing makeup or what you're wearing. It's just our makeup. Camera. Yeah. And then I will say I have the very best team because they are all mind reader's. And I think they have to be at this point. And so before I can even go to them and say, Hey, I need this or like, Hey, I figured you needed this based on the email that I read. And it's incredible and transforming for me. Because, yeah, there's days where it's like 5pm. And I'm finally getting to look at some of my slack. So I've missed earlier in the day, so not proud of that one. But I am really happy with my team.

William Harris  38:35  

Well, and that's a reality, and you have to be able to rely on your team to be able to handle those things. And I think that that is maybe even just a sign of good leadership and saying that it's like I trust you. I've found that when I was a new manager, I can remember thinking that I needed to answer every question. And when I was in the office at the time, maybe 2014 Or so it felt like there was lots of questions. And then I would every once in awhile, take a day where I would just work from a coffee shop. And it was amazing how few questions there were. Because people were able to answer their own questions. And I, at first I thought, you know, in my ignorance, I thought it was just because I'm not there. So they they can't answer the question there. They figured out how to answer their own question. I in my, my aging here. I've learned that I was like, I think really, it's because I enabled them to be able to answer that question. They already had the ability to answer them. I was the one who was oftentimes getting in the way demanding this or needing to see this or whatever that might be. And they were like, hey, they actually didn't want to guess ask the question. They wanted to answer it themselves. To me getting out of the way allowed them to

Alexa Vogue  39:35

I 100% agree with you. It's funny, isn't it? I'll watch like in Slack a question come in and I simply just didn't have time to answer it. And then I watched their answer come in, like, Does it seem right all right, it seems right. I'm gonna send it and so I watched the whole it's amazing to watch like the whole transition of like them realizing, Hey, this is okay, fine. You're still so busy, like I was gonna send it and they're always right. Always. So yeah.

William Harris  40:00

That's great. That's really encouraging. We implemented EOS recently entrepreneur operating system from traction. And I think the one thing that I've really appreciated the most about that is, it's easy to, it's easy to think that maybe like mission vision values are are good to have. But they're not necessarily it's a distraction from let's just say, like the actual production work or whatever that might be. But once we had that laid out very clearly, for the team, it was easy for everybody to row the boat in the same direction, they knew how to answer the questions in the way that was aligned with what we were doing. And so I, I'm a huge fan of, of exactly what you're saying. It's like people get to answer questions much more intelligently, if you as a leader are willing to just kind of outline the overall vision of what you're trying to accomplish.

Alexa Vogue  40:48  

100%, which actually goes into the most important thing to me, which is mental health of my team, and my influences, actually. And so a lot of times, especially out there, and answering that, I would say that they got that answer from just the import drilling down the importance of mental health for creators is, hey, you know, this brand is pushing back, they're asking for, you know, a really tight turn on this, you know, should I like push the Creator? Or should I push back on the brand? And the answer is that you push back on the brand, because that is we exclusively manage families. These are moms, they have sometimes five 611 kids, they have an entire you know, life that's going on, and to ask them to drop whatever they're doing, and quickly go film in the next two hours, this edit for this brand. That's not something that I would ever support, I would always say, you know, ask the brand, what is like a realistic timeline that they can get that turned in? And a lot of that experience comes from, you know, we would we would have influencers? We're like, no, it's fine, I'll do it. Well, and then the brand sits on it for a couple days. It's on they even go live that day. And so it's it's a lot of experience of knowing like, Okay, what is the most important thing, but at the end of the day, I'm sure you would agree this is social media, like we are not doctors, like we are not saving lives. We are not like frontline heroes. We are, this is an Instagram post, or a serial like, no, nothing bad is going to happen if this doesn't go live. And I will Kudo the brands where it is important to them, right. Because even some of our strategies that we implement, we have to have all the influencers go live in a two week window because it's like a very, a blitz is what we call it. But those are set up 60 days in advance. So like there should be no rush, like the content should have been approved, three days prior. So if you're pushing out onto the crater, it means that there was like things that have failed in the process between the brand and the agency before the gods the Creator. And it's not worth it, it's it's not worth it to push them on that. It's just,

William Harris  42:58  

it's just the mental health is huge. It is it's something that I think every every buddy in every situation, one of our going back to like the mission, vision values are one of our core values we talked about, in effect, I had it right here, but we talked about be innovative, be accountable, and be human. And the big part about the be human there that we talked about, as you know, we all have good days and bad days, we all have personalized and things that are going on somebody's grandma may have just died and they're trying to figure things out or their dog or whatever is going on. And if there's a I think it's Richard something, I'm drawing a blank on his last name, artist who has a painting called anger transference. And it shows this idea of this boss yelling at this this guy, and then it shows him in the next, you know, a little piece yelling at his wife. And then it shows the mom yelling at her son, and it shows the son yelling at the cat. And I think that we do we transfer that so much. And in a lot of this is out of like incorrect communication or bad communication or whatever. And so we we didn't communicate clearly. And so now there's a rush because we're at the deadline. And if he communicated in the first place, the way that we needed to, that wouldn't be a problem. But now he's transferred this anger. And I think that that, you know, doesn't usually I would say almost never creates better performance. It's going to create worse performance, and it's going to create people who don't want to continue working with you. So I think that you're spot on. I appreciate that you do that.

Alexa Vogue  44:25  

Yeah. And and to be fair, like, whether it's like $100,000 Deal. $500,000 Deal. $10,000 Deal. I've never seen like anger or angst or sassy responses. When in this industry. I mean, as as women, they teach us like from a young age like oh, you know, like don't use exclamation points or don't use smiley faces. And I do this for a long time. I'm the senior vice president to companies and I use exclamation points all the time. I absolutely love it. I feel passionate. And I also want people to know that like I'm here As a teammate, like, I might not be able to make that rate work, but I'm going to tell you nicely, I'm going to try and figure out other alternatives. And I'm going to send you other talent that will make it work. And so there's this industry, there's a lot of people who are just very sassy and pointed, and I've just never seen it work. I've never seen that win. At the end of the day, I've seen it lose a lot. I've seen people get no put on, like, Do not contact lists. I've seen people get, you know, shaded from different brands, agencies. I've never seen it work. And I even tell my influencers to if a brand does does us wrong, right? I've seen creators go on and they're talking about it and their vocal, I don't do that. That's that brands karma, that they'll deal with that their own way. Like we're going to be nice, and we're going to smile, and we're going to move on to the next campaign. And we're going to get much more from that versus having any sort of bad attitude.

William Harris  45:53  

Well, it's like you're reading my mind here because I also use lots of exclamation marks and smiley faces and Winky faces and gifts, and I'm absolutely all for just contractions and communicating normally. One of my buddies Sujan Patel, he actually for a bit of time, changed his email signature to say hugs and kisses, which I thought was hilarious. Every business email went out with hugs and kisses. But it's like, just have some fun. And yeah, don't let that i i, the same way. I like being the person who's just like, let's just be positive and happy. And let's not be grumpy and mean. Yeah, but

Alexa Vogue  46:29  

something interesting to say, you know, no pressure responding, like right away like I my deadline for this is actually on this state, very bottom, where it's just, it's nice to when you're in the flood of urgency, right? Like to have someone who's like, hey, you know, this, just respond when you can, because this is

William Harris  46:47

what I'm speaking. Speaking of reading minds, I told you that I have like a silly game or something that I like to play every once in a while on on the show here. And so you're gonna be the first one of this one called, marketers can read minds. Oh, so you're gonna read my mind here in just a minute. And I think you're, you're gonna be pretty good at this because you do this a lot. So first, we have to establish our connection, our neural link here, right? So we're establishing our neural link, do you feel like you've connected now to my brain?

Alexa Vogue  47:16  

I love the hat is just keeping me in there, too. I'm right underneath it.

William Harris  47:22  

Okay, good. All right. So we're there. I want you you're going to tell me to pick a number. Okay. And what number do you want me to pick between what and what? One and 10? Yeah, let's make it bigger. Let's make this a challenge. How do you pick the number? No, bigger, bigger. Oh, 1000. Something like that. How about a million? Okay, one and a million. So I'm going to pick a number between one and a million. And you're gonna guess what number I've picked here.

I can write on it. Okay. What number what number did I guess? A million. What between one and a million and I guess 1 million? Yeah.

You're you're absolutely you're absolutely right. That's exactly what I guess. Apparently, marketers can read minds. And right here

Alexa Vogue  48:25  

as marketers like, we're always going to like the biggest thing right? Like, I want the most amount of sales for my clients. I want the most amount of deals I'm so true. Thinking

William Harris  48:35

I love it. Alexa, thinking big. If people want to think big follow you connect with you work with you. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Alexa Vogue  48:44  

Oh, we can provide my email or connect with me on LinkedIn. I feel like Alexa Vogue, there you go. It's never gonna change on LinkedIn. I did make my handle recently. Alexa managed me like a command or like I thought I thought was super clever. Although everyone's been saying like Alexa managed me like they think it's management and I left out the NC but I'm leaving it.

William Harris  49:07  

This is intentional. I like it. This is good. It's like a hey do it. Alexa manage me to manage me yeah, check her out on on LinkedIn then and really appreciate you coming out. Talking to us. Alexa helping us to understand a little bit more about influencer marketing best practices and

Alexa Vogue  49:25  

clothing change because that was beyond impressive.

William Harris  49:28  

Congratulations to you ever get through it. I

Alexa Vogue  49:36

injustice for me I saw it from the very first jacket that you put on but it is my job to not distract you

William Harris  49:44  

news anchor things burning around you and you kept it straight. Everybody thank you so much for coming out. Listen to us. Go check out Alexa, follow her connect with her and have a great day.

Alexa Vogue  49:57

Thanks William

Outro  49:59

they For listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris we'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes

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