Podcasts about Brandwatch

Hey marketing mates! This episode feels like a warm hug in podcast form. Today we're diving into little treats and nostalgia culture… because let's be honest, the world feels like a lot right now. People are actively craving comfort. Online chatter around nostalgia grew by 18% in 2025. That's over 43 million conversations (Brandwatch, 2025)! And while big indulgences might be off the table, "little treat" moments are booming, with more than 40,000 mentions every month.  Over 20% of marketers are now looking at how those small, feel-good moments can show up in their strategies. So grab your coffee (or your little treat of choice) and tune in. We're unpacking why comfort is converting and why looking back might just be the way forward. If we're not already friends on socials, let's connect! Belle LinkedIn  Liz LinkedIn YMM Instagram  YMM LinkedIn  Loving the pod? Don't forget to leave us a review.

Get your tickets here: https://luma.com/83fj2zkcTechish is coming off the timeline and onto the stage.​Join us for a live recording of Techish, the podcast where tech meets culture, money meets meaning, and nothing is off-limits. Hosted by founders and investors Michael Berhane and Abadesi Osunsade, Techish breaks down the biggest stories in tech, business, and culture with insight, humour, and zero corporate fluff.​This isn't a panel.This isn't a keynote.This is a conversation. Live, honest, and interactive.​Expect sharp takes on what's really happening in tech right now, cultural commentary you won't hear on Bloomberg, and the kind of audience energy that turns a podcast into a moment.​What to Expect​A live, unfiltered Techish recordingSmart breakdowns of the biggest tech and culture stories right nowLaughs, hot takes, and side-eyesAudience Q&A and participationAn intimate crowd of people building, investing, and working in tech​Whether you are a founder, operator, investor, creative, or a tech professional or employee looking to better understand the industry you work in, this is your room.The hosts: ​Abadesi Osunsade​CEO of Hustle Crew and an award-winning social entrepreneur and VC scout. A seasoned tech leader, Abadesi previously served as a Global VP and held pivotal roles at Amazon, Product Hunt, and Brandwatch. An author and speaker, she is a leading voice in building inclusive tech ecosystems and mentoring the next generation of founders.​Michael Berhane​Award-winning CEO of POCIT. An MSc Computer Science graduate and founding engineer at Urban Massage, Michael is a former software engineer turned entrepreneur. He is a Venture Scout for Zeal Capital and a Bloomsbury-shortlisted writer currently working on his debut novel.Tickets here: https://luma.com/83fj2zkcSupport the show————————————————————Get tickets to our live show here [Feb 25th London]: https://luma.com/83fj2zkc ———————————————————— Join our Patreon for extra-long episodes and ad-free content: https://www.patreon.com/techish Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techishpod/Advertise on Techish: https://goo.gl/forms/MY0F79gkRG6Jp8dJ2———————————————————— Stay in touch with the hashtag #Techishhttps://www.instagram.com/techishpod/https://www.instagram.com/abadesi/https://www.instagram.com/michaelberhane_/ https://www.instagram.com/hustlecrewlive/https://www.instagram.com/pocintech/Email us at techishpod@gmail.com

In this episode, Jennifer and Corey break down Brandwatch's State of Social Media 2026 insights (based on 910M online mentions) and translate what they mean for healthcare practices navigating trust, reputation, and patient experience in a social-first world.In this episode, you'll learn:Brand-owned accounts only initiate

[Expertpanelen] Avsnitt 153 med David Larsson, chief strategy officer och partner på byrån Trickle, om de viktigaste nyheterna och trenderna inom paid social i början av 2026. Allt från LinkedIns aggressiva produktutveckling med Reserved Ads och Thought Leader Ads till hur Reddit har blivit en allt mer intressant annonskanal. Plus hur AI-agenter börjar ta plats i det dagliga arbetet med annonsering. Du får dessutom höra om: Partnerships läggs till i Thought Leader Ads Boostning av personliga inlägg på LinkedIn LinkedIn-artiklar som källa för AI-modeller AI-agenter som optimerar kampanjer självständigt Hur David strukturerar Meta Ads-konton 2026 Varför long-form text ads fungerar på Reddit Metas "Less Personalized Ads" och Threads Ads Om gästen David Larsson är chief strategy officer och partner på performance marketing-byrån Trickle och en av Sveriges vassaste på LinkedIn Ads. Han är med expertpanelen med fokus på paid social. Utöver sin expertis inom performance marketing och paid social så är David också utbildad journalist samt har jobbat med YouTube och sociala medier på TV4. Han är också föreläsare, kursansvarig och gästföreläsare på bland annat Medieinstitutet och Berghs. Tidsstämplar [00:02:04] LinkedIns tillväxt och nya annonsformat. Allt från releasen av Reserved Ads och utvecklingen av Thought Leader Ads till möjligheten att boosta personliga inlägg. [00:19:06] LinkedIn-artiklar och synlighet i LLMs. Överraskande data från SEMrush visar att LinkedIn-artiklar är en av de största källorna för citeringar i stora språkmodeller. [00:24:39] AI och AI-agenter i paid social. Hur arbetet utvecklas mot agentiska verktyg som kan optimera kampanjer självständigt, med exempel från svenska Epiminds och deras AI-agent Lucy. [00:34:50] Meta Andromeda och kampanjstruktur. Det nya sättet att strukturera Meta-konton där man går från detaljerad målgruppsstyrning till att låta kreativa signaler styra vem som ser annonsen. [00:37:59] Reddit som annonsplattform 2026. Varför Reddit är en "sovande jätte" för annonsörer och vad som fungerar bäst, där long-form text ads ofta slår traditionella bildannonser. [00:49:48] Lightning round om Meta och EU. Snabb genomgång av Metas "Less Personalized Ads", TTPA och den globala utrullningen av Threads Ads. Länkar David Larsson på LinkedInTrickle (webbsida) The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study - Semrush (rapport) Digital Marketing Trends 2026 - Brandwatch (rapport) Claim Your Top Spot in the Feed: LinkedIn Reserved Ads - LinkedIn for Marketing (artikel) How New LinkedIn Features Help You Scale Personalized Creative and Boost Awareness - LinkedIn (artikel) Nimt.ai: AI search platform (verktyg) Fibbler: LinkedIn Ads Attribution & Activation (verktyg) Dreamdata: B2B Activation and Attribution (verktyg) Adam Holmgren: Fibbler (person) The fastest growing startups are betting big on employee-led content right now – Peter Wong (LinkedIn-inlägg) Epiminds: agentic AI for marketing (verktyg) Inside Meta's AI-driven advertising system: How Andromeda and GEM work together - Search Engine Land (artikel) My practical guide to mastering Meta Andromeda - /FacebookAds (Reddit-inlägg) The Indie Author's Guide to Meta Ads in 2026: The Era of Algorithmic Creative – Medium (artikel) The Hidden Gem: Your Guide to Reddit for B2B Marketing - Hubspot (artikel) Meta commits to give EU users choice on personalised ads under Digital Markets Act – European Commission (artikel) Digitalenta (sponsor)Paloma (sponsor)Check (sponsor)Klingit (sponsor)

Jason Cassity and The Broke Agent discuss the 2026 State of Social report by Brandwatch and key social media trends highlighted by Sprout Social before breaking down what worked and didn't work in 2025, and sharing their goals and resolutions for 2026.

Épisode 1390 : Entre fatigue mentale, défiance, publicité invasive, IA anxiogène et chute du temps passé…Les signaux sont nombreux. Et ils convergent tous dans le même sens : le lien se distend.Nous n'aimons plus les réseaux sociaux. Ou plutôt nosu entretenons une relation toxique avec les plateformes.Le rapport State of Social 2026 de Brandwatch vient mettre des chiffres derrière ce ressenti.On traverse une vraie période de désenchantement.Attention ça pique !. . . Le Super Daily est le podcast quotidien sur les réseaux sociaux. Il est fabriqué avec une pluie d'amour par les équipes de Supernatifs. Nous sommes une agence social media basée à Lyon : https://supernatifs.com. Ensemble, nous aidons les entreprises à créer des relations durables et rentables avec leurs audiences. Ensemble, nous inventons, produisons et diffusons des contenus qui engagent vos collaborateurs, vos prospects et vos consommateurs. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

  At a loss for what to post on your business socials? Sarah highlights 5 types of content agents can share on social media – and they're not all insurance related!   Resources: 5 Marketing Podcasts to Follow: https://lnk.to/asg638  Boost Sales and Productivity with Our Medicare Sales Planner: https://ritterim.com/blog/boost-sales-and-productivity-with-our-medicare-sales-planner How to Create a Healthy Balance Between Work and Life: https://lnk.to/asg643 Learning to Delight in the Limelight ft. Linda Ugelow: https://lnk.to/asg644 Marketing Trends for 2025: https://lnk.to/asg639 Setting SMART Goals in 2025: https://lnk.to/asgf20250103 Stay Organized with the Busy ACA Agent's Sales Calendar: https://ritterim.com/blog/stay-organized-with-the-busy-aca-agents-sales-calendar/   References: Pierre, Yasmin. “Social Media Holiday Calendar 2025.” Brandwatch.Com, Brandwatch, 5 Dec. 2024, www.brandwatch.com/blog/social-media-holiday-calendar/. “Your Ultimate Social Media Calendar Guide for 2025.” Theblogsocial.Com, The Blog Social, 7 Nov. 2024, www.theblogsocial.com/social-media-calendar-guide-2025/. Marino, Susie. “The Big List of 500+ Social Media Holidays for Every Month of 2025.” Localiq.Com, Local IQ, 11 Dec. 2024, localiq.com/blog/social-media-holidays/.   Follow Us on Social! Ritter on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/RitterIM Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/ritter.insurance.marketing/ LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/company/ritter-insurance-marketing TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@ritterim X, https://twitter.com/RitterIM and Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/user/RitterInsurance     Sarah on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjrueppel/ Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/thesarahjrueppel/ and Threads, https://www.threads.net/@thesarahjrueppel  Tina on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-lamoreux-6384b7199/   Not affiliated with or endorsed by Medicare or any government agency. Contact the Agent Survival Guide Podcast! Email us ASGPodcast@Ritterim.com or call 1-717-562-7211 and leave a voicemail.

Are you ready to make 2025 the year your brand finally clicks? In this episode, I'm breaking down the hottest marketing trends of the year (straight from Brandwatch insights!) and showing you how to use them *in practical ways* to build a personal brand that's authentic, magnetic, and wildly successful. We're diving into: The unexpected collaborations that can take your brand to the next level. How in-person events are making a BIG comeback and why you need to get in the mix. Building communities that feel like a home for your audience. The balance between AI efficiency and human authenticity (spoiler: it's all about keeping your content heart centered). Why peer-to-peer recommendations are the ultimate secret weapon for solopreneurs. This isn't about following trends just for the sake of it—nope. It's about you leveraging trends that feel *right* for you!   Let's make 2025 the year you stop guessing and start thriving. Tune in, take notes, and get ready to shake things up! Resources Mentioned: Join The Brand is You Mastermind to go deeper into these strategies and build a brand that feels so aligned with who you are. Connect with me on Instagram @robyn_savage for daily tips, insights, and a little behind-the-scenes magic. Let's make magic, Robyn  P.S. Don't forget to screenshot this episode and tag me on IG if it inspired you—I love seeing your takeaways!

Carta. HubSpot. Brandwatch. Rippling. These companies, and many others, offer services (even though VCs don't like it). It's not about creating a services business, it's about using it to acquire, retain and grow customers. Here's what we get into:(00:00) - Introduction (03:08) - Why services aren't attractive (04:54) - And why services are awesome (11:46) - Services as an acquisition channel (12:25) - First example: Carta (16:34) - 2nd: Rippling (21:24) - HubSpot's Onboarding This episode is brought to you by by Everstage - the highest rated Sales Commissions Platform on G2, Gartner Peer Insights, Trustradius with over 2,000+ customer reviews. Some of their customers include leading brands like Diligent, Wiley, Trimble, Postman, Chargebee etc.,You can go to https://www.everstage.com/revenue-formula to check out Everstage and mention Revenue Formula to unlock a personalized Sales Compensation Strategy Session with Everstage's RevOps experts—crafted for enterprise teams to maximize performance.Never miss a new episode, join our newsletter on revenueformula.substack.com

In this episode, Neil Bhuiyan interviews returning guest, Ashley Ormond, Senior Manager for Global Strategic Sound Development at Brandwatch. You'll hear about what makes an outstanding sales development representative (SDR) and the key qualities Ashley looks for in candidates. Ashley highlights the importance of asking thoughtful questions and showing curiosity during interviews. He explains why he prefers hiring candidates without a sales background, noting that they bring fresh perspectives and are more adaptable. Neil and Ashley discuss why it's crucial to understand a company's history and mission when applying for a job and the benefits of connecting with current employees to get a feel for the company culture. They also delve into the value of diversity in building a successful team, the role of resilience in sales, and how to support personal growth in new team members. Additionally, Neil and Ashley share how being parents of children with autism has shaped their perspectives on leadership and empathy, underscoring the importance of emotional intelligence in managing and supporting individuals with diverse abilities.

In this episode, Neil Bhuiyan interviews Ashley Ormond, the Senior Manager of Global Strategic Sales Development at Brandwatch. They discuss Ashley's career journey, starting from door-to-door sales to his current role, as Sr. Manager, Global Strategic Sales Development - Brandwatch Ashley shares his experiences and lessons learned along the way, including the importance of resilience and maintaining a positive mindset. They also touch on the challenges of managing a team and the value of connecting with people. The conversation highlights the significance of perspective and gratitude in both personal and professional life. In this conversation, Ashley Ormond shares his journey in sales and the challenges he faced along the way. He discusses his experience in different sales roles, including recruitment and tech sales. Ashley emphasizes the importance of taking action, learning sales early, and detaching oneself from the outcome. He also highlights the role of a manager in supporting and guiding the team to success.

Welcome back to another episode of The A100 Podcast! In this week's episode, Colleen Gallagher concludes our special three-part series on AI in PR with an insightful solo cast. Today, we explore two critical areas where AI can enhance your PR efforts: crisis management and influencer identification and engagement. These topics are part of the five areas we cover in our newly released AI ebook, "Five Ways to Use AI in Your Association's PR Efforts." Email cgallagher@onwrdupwrd.com to get your copy or download it here: https://onwrdupwrd.com/ebook-5-ways-to-use-ai-in-your-pr-efforts/  Key Highlights: Crisis Management with AI: Early Warning System: Learn how AI-powered tools like Meltwater or Brandwatch can monitor and analyze data to provide real-time sentiment tracking, allowing you to be proactive when a crisis is unfolding. Developing a Crisis Management Strategy: Discover how AI can help draft a preliminary crisis response plan, analyze historical data and suggest effective strategies based on past crises. Combating Disinformation: Explore tools like Truepic or Deepware that can verify the authenticity of images and videos to help counter disinformation and deep fakes. Influencer Identification and Engagement with AI: Identifying the Right Influencers: Understand how AI can analyze content across various platforms to find influencers whose values and audiences align with your organization. Tools like Traackr and Klear can assist in this process. Crafting Targeted Outreach: See how AI can review influencers' past content to help draft personalized outreach messages and suggest the best times and platforms to engage with them. Stay Connected: Subscribe to The Association 100 podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube Podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Follow us on LinkedIn at The Association 100 and OnWrd & UpWrd for the latest in association trends and strategies. Resources: Check out our website at onwrdupwrd.com in the coming weeks for a new toolkit on using AI in PR or to sign up for our upcoming workshops. More to come soon on this! Stay tuned for more episodes packed with insights to help your association become the go-to source in your industry or profession!

On this week's episode of Coach2Scale, Host Matt Benelli sat down with senior leader Ollie Quittek, CRO and Founding Member at Viio.io. Ollie emphasizes how the notion of "impossible" is more of a mental barrier than an actual limit. He discusses his personal and professional growth, highlighting the importance of internalizing a mindset where challenges are viewed as opportunities. Matt and Ollie delve into the world of sales, discussing common myths and the realities of achieving goals against perceived limitations. They explore the concept of potential and the power of a united team's belief in overcoming obstacles. Ollie shares anecdotes from his experiences at Brandwatch and Falcon, illustrating how a culture centered around challenging the impossible can lead to extraordinary results.  Takeaways:Mindset and vulnerability are critical elements in leadership for creating a team that believes in its collective potential. Leaders can foster an environment where team members feel safe to share their thoughts, enhancing team coherence and performance.Ollie's move to Viio represents a decision to lead a startup in the burgeoning field of SaaS management and procurement. For leaders considering a similar journey, choose opportunities with significant growth potential that align with your passion and skill set.Ollie's leadership philosophy extends beyond achieving sales targets and numbers. It encompasses the development of a positive, affirming culture where team members are motivated to exceed expectations because they believe in the mission and feel valued. Leaders must remain open to learning and personal development, seeking opportunities for growth through coaching and mentorship. By continuously evolving, they can better guide their teams toward success.Innovation is good, but too much can be harmful. People often need repetition to truly understand and act on information, rather than overwhelming them with excess knowledge. Creating an inclusive environment where individuals feel a sense of belonging, where their humanity is acknowledged beyond their professional roles, and fostering a culture that embraces failure as a part of growth is essential. Quote of the Show:“There is always something else you can get done on top of what you think you can do.” - Ollie QuittekLinks:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-quittek-6b31677/ Website: http://www.viio.io Ways to Tune In:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Yb1wPzUxyrfR0Dx35ym1A Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coach2scale-how-modern-leaders-build-a-coaching-culture/id1699901434 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL2NvYWNoMnNjYWxlLWhvdy1tb2Rlcm4tbGVhZGVycy1idWlsZC1hLWNvYWNoaW5nLWN1bHR1cmU Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/fd188af6-7c17-4b2e-a0b2-196ecd6fdf77 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/coach2scale-how-modern-leaders-5419703 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Coach2Scale CoachEm™ is the first Coaching Execution Platform that integrates deep learning technology to proactively analyze patterns, highlight the "why" behind the data with root causes, and identify the actions that will ultimately improve business results going forward.  These practical coaching recommendations for managers will help their teams drive more deals, bigger deals, faster deals and loyal customers. Built with decades of go-to-market experience, world-renowned data scientists and advanced causal AI/ML technology, CoachEm™ leverages your existing tech stack to increase rep productivity, increase retention, and replicate best practices across your team.Learn more at coachem.io

Professor Werbach is joined by Azeem Azhar, a leading expert in exponential technologies, for a riveting conversation on the trajectory of AI, regulation, and the larger challenges of concentration in the tech sector. They traverse Azeem's professional journey, highlighting the pivotal moments in AI development, such as the rise of deep learning, and discuss the implications for business leaders now at the helm of these potent tools. Drawing parallels with historical tech calamities, they examine the safety challenges inherent in large language models and how companies like Google and OpenAI juggle the race for innovation with the necessity for thorough testing. The conversation then delves into the murky waters of regulation and the tug-of-war between progress and control, with a spotlight on the EU's Digital Markets Act and its impact on global tech firms.  Azeem Azhar is the author of the bestseller "Exponential: How Accelerating Technology is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It", which quickly became an Amazon bestseller in Geopolitics upon its release. As the founder of the data analytics firm PeerIndex, later acquired by Brandwatch, Azeem has a proven track record as an angel investor, with investments in over 30 startups, including early-stage companies in AI, renewable energy, and female healthtech. Some of his most notable interviews include discussions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei, and legendary Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla. These conversations cover a wide range of topics, including the implications of AI on ownership of thoughts, the potential impact of AI on global inequality, and the need to change assumptions about conflict to avoid a second Cold War. His ability to break down complex technological concepts and their societal implications has earned him recognition as a global futurist and exponential thinker, making his contributions invaluable for understanding the rapidly evolving technological landscape.  Exponential View, Azeem's Substack and community Azeem's book The Exponential Age Azeem and Sam Altman's Discussion EU AI Act

This week on The Exit: Before the days of YouTube and TikTok, James Creech was creating videos, little did he know this interest would lead him to one day launch a company focused on content creation. In 2016 when influencer marketing and the creator economy was still finding its feet, James and his partners saw a need for tracking and reporting on the impact of influencer marketing, and the opportunity to turn this into a business. Together with his two partners, James launched Paladin, an influencer marketing platform for brands and agencies to work with, manage and track influencer partnerships. Entirely bootstrapped, the three founders each invested their life's savings to get the business started, including James taking the downpayment he had saved for a house and putting it all into the business. They were first time founders figuring it out as they went, but always focused on revenue, customer count and retention rates. And when it came time to sell the business, these were the same metrics buyers were interested in. After six years the business had grown to 25 people when the world was hit by Covid. For the influencer industry and Paladin, the impact of Covid only meant increased investment from brands who were looking to connect with people while they were stuck at home on their phones. The business hit an inflection point and James and his partners saw their opportunity to exit. They realized they either needed to raise funding to acquire smaller operations in order to grow in what was now a crowded market, or find a strategic partner who could help them grow. They met over 30 potential buyers as they tried to narrow down the list to those who had similar values and shared their vision to take the business to the next level. Buyer were primarily interested in topline revenue, potential for the business, strength of customer contracts, customer retention and how sticky the technology is - everything James was focused on as they built the business. Ultimately Brandwatch was the best fit, Brandwatch believed in the business they had built and what they were trying to achieve. Listen to learn more about what James learnt along the way and his advice for other founders and entrepreneurs. James Creech is a 3x entrepreneur who helps founders sell their business. James offers advisory services for entrepreneurs and operators looking to navigate the M&A process and maximize their outcome. He built and sold his first startup, currently is working on 2 more, and “has had countless failures along the way.” James Founded Creator Economy Jobs in October of 2023, which operates as the premier job board for creator economy companies and candidates. He is also the Co-Founder and Board Member of Measure Studio, which provides AI-powered social media insights for brands, agencies, and publishers. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlcreech/ Website: https://www.measure.studio/ Website: https://creatoreconomyjobs.co/ For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: https://flippa.com/exit -- The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You'll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

Join us for an insightful episode with Phill Agnew, host of Nudge, the UK's #1 marketing podcast. On his show he interviews experts in psychology and behavioral science to try to better understand how humans make decisions. He has spent over a decade in senior marketing roles at Buffer, Hotjar, and Brandwatch, where he helped launch products in social media, website analytics and AI.   Today, we learn about his career journey, decision-making processes, and ability to redefine his journey despite labels that were placed on him as a child. Phill also opens up about his purpose in life and career, which he admits is often hard for him to do as Brit. Tune in for an insightful and inspiring conversation!  Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Phill Agnew Phill Agnew on LinkedIn Nudge Podcast Ashley Menzies Babatunde Ashley Menzies Babatunde on Instagram Hubspot Podcast Network Sign Up for Ashley's Newsletter Ashley's Substack Rate & Review: If you enjoy listening to No Straight Path, please make sure you write a review and rate the show. It helps other listeners find the podcast. You can rate and review the show here. Thank you! 

Gemeinsam mit Philipp Wolf reite ich quer durch die Lebensmittel- und Getränkewelt. Wir besprechen welche Themen uns diesen Monat geprägt haben und geben unsere Meinung dazu Preis. Es erwarten euch lange Episoden mit viel Content für lange Auto- oder Bahnfahrten. Diesen Monat erwarten euch folgende Themen: 00:02:40 "Skimpflation": Weniger Qualität im Supermarktregal. 00:06:00 Ein weiteres Food-Start-up kämpft gegen die Insolvenz. Untersützt OchaOcha! 00:10:06 Wie wird Food "Gamer-friendly"? 00:14:45 Fortschrittsbericht der Start-up Strategie der Bundesregierung 00:18:00 Food Companys erreichen ihre Nachhaltigkeitsziele nicht 00:25:31 Hilcona führt CO2 Score im eigenen Food Service ein 00:27:00 Neues Geschäftsmodell für Bäckereien? 00:30:30 Carre Four kennzeichnet Produkte der Kategorie "Shrimpflation" 00:31:50 Kaufland setzt auf Hydroponik 00:38:00 kakaofreie Schokolade im Supermarkt erhältlich 00:40:00 Samsung Food 00:40:11 Neues aus der Welt der Leguminosen 00:52:00 Milch als Sportdrink 00:54:20 Insekten 00:55:43 Food Trend Report aus Brandwatch 00:59:00 Revo Foods bringt Lachsfilet aus dem 3D Drucker raus (verlinken) 01:02:00 Instacart IPO 01:03:20 Infamily Foods beantragt Zulassung von kultiviertem Fleisch in der EU 01:05:00 Kann kultiviertes Fleisch halal und koscher sein? 01:07:00 Chefkoch studie 01:09:00 Finanzierungen/Insolvenze/Exits (Oater, Tada Rahmen, Bettergy, Spoontainable, KernTec, Kernique, Nucao) 01:22:50 schnelle News (Greenwashing EU weites Verbot?, Formo, Shake Shack, Jokr, Getir)   Video vom 3D Lachs Filet : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3DsDPa5HRs      

Getting Ahead on Generative AI: Ep. 40 of Red Sky Fuel for Thought Podcast What You'll Learn in This Episode:·     How marketers and PR professionals can use generative AI to make our lives easier·     Where we should not use generative AI from a legal or ethical perspective·     How to strike the balance between being better with AI and being better than AI Now that the dust is settling on the AI maelstrom that's raged for the past few months, our September episode looks at what we've learned about generative AI in particular: the good, the bad and the uncertain. Host Lara Graulich examines how artificial intelligence, or AI, has become a buzzword that elicits many emotions: wonder, excitement, confusion and anxiety, among others. As she says, “One thing is certain: This technology is here to stay, and it's important for us to understand it as marketing and public relations professionals.” To help you make out the full picture of generative AI today, we've divided this episode into two parts. First, Umbar Shakir, a partner and client director at Gate One, gives us a whip-smart introduction to generative AI, what it's capable of and what its limitations are. In part two, we dig into the specific implications that generative AI has in the PR and marketing space. For this roundtable, we're chatting with Rachael Sansom, CEO of Havas Red U.K., and Myrna Van Pelt, head of technology and business for Havas Red Australia. The episode begins with Umbar (pronounced “Amber”), who differentiates traditional AI from generative AI. Traditional AI, she says, is the ability of machines to mimic human intelligence to perform tasks and automate workflows. This is AI as we've known it; it's what's been around for decades, and it's something technology consultants have been implementing for clients for a long time. However, when large language models began arriving over the past five years or so, generative AI stole the spotlight. With generative AI, trillions of bits of crowdsourced data can be used to synthesize new data. Does this new capability represent a threat to human creativity or to job security? No, says Umbar: “As marketers, your whole value add to customers is differentiation and personalization. Even though generative AI can generate content for us, you need the human brain to give the differentiation. And then you need the human heart and emotion. In all the marketing campaigns I've been involved in, an emotive response is really important to memorability. That comes from heart, and a lot of our emotional intelligence comes from our values, beliefs and moral judgments. At the moment, you can't mathematically program that in. What we need to remember is that we've built this tool, and we can interact with it; it might be faster than us, and it might be able to process more data than we can at any point in time, but it doesn't replace our humanity.” Instead, AI can create space for those of us in this industry to get back to our craft and to doing some of the things that drew us here in the first place — to creating human connection, for example — rather than the monotony of data analysis or transcription. Plus, with generative AI, we're going to get richer insights much more quickly than we would on our own.   When it comes to humans' job security, Umbar says, “I've got a slightly provocative view on things. When people worry that generative AI will cause people to lose jobs, I say there are some jobs out there that humans should never have been doing. We have taken really tedious work and turned it into careers for people. We've normalized tedium. How do we unshackle ourselves from some of that tedium? How do we then free up capacity to solve for bigger and better problems for society? How do you use this technology to replace what humans have been doing that fundamentally doesn't tap into our humanity or our values or our creativity?” Umbar's segment ends with her answering these questions, before Lara then welcomes Rachael and Myrna to the podcast. She first asks them what excites them most about generative AI and the capabilities it brings to our clients and which tools they've most enjoyed using. “Gen AI cannot create ideas, but what it can do is take great ideas, by humans, and push them faster and further and help iterate them more brilliantly,” says Rachael. In marketing and communications, Myrna says AI also has a distinct role to play in helping us in the area of rapid decision making. “As humans, we have finite ability to scan volumes of information,” she says. “However, AI does this at a fraction of the time. So, for example, when it comes to understanding audience preferences, or demographic nuances, AI can help sort through this massive volume of content, identifying patterns and trends, anticipating future scenarios, and then categorizing the data. We then have an absolute smorgasbord of useful pre-categorized content we can use to inform campaigns, particularly so in industries where a rapid pivot of a campaign might make the difference between success and failure — particularly so in political campaigns.” Among Myrna's go-to AI tools, she highlights Brandwatch, which provides media monitoring and competitor tracking; TLDR, which summarizes high-tech articles; and DeepL Translate, which can accurately translate content in dozens of different languages. Next, they talk about the inherent risks of using AI, including where we should and shouldn't use it from an ethical and legal perspective — e.g., is a press release fair game? Thank you to each of our guests for weighing in on the transformative power of AI. We hope you'll give “Red Sky Fuel for Thought” a listen, and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app. Don't forget to rate and review to help more people find us!Also mentioned on this episode:·     ChatGPT·     Brandwatch·     TLDR·     DeepL Translate Follow Red Havas for a daily dose of comms news:·      Twitter·      Facebook·      Instagram·      LinkedIn Subscribe:Don't forget to subscribe to the show using your favorite podcasting app.·      iTunes·      Spotify What did you love? What would you like to hear about next?Remember to rate and review today's show; we'd love to hear from you!  

Happy Friday our Woman Inc. listeners! Our guests this week are Jo Ann Corkran & Loretta McCarthy, Co-CEOs and Managing Partner of Golden Seeds. Golden Seeds, the leading US angel network backing women-led businesses, evaluates over 1000 entrepreneurs annually with a rigorous due diligence process. Their investments exceed $175 million across 240 companies like Little Passports and Brandwatch. As pioneers in the women funding women movement, they've transformed a landscape where just 5% of angel investors were women and 3% of funded startups were led by women in 2004, to today's 40% female angel investors and 31% women-led angel-funded firms. Accomplished finance executives like Loretta, former Chief Marketing Officer at OppenheimerFunds, and Jo Ann, former Managing Director at Credit Suisse, are actively seeking promising women-led companies and investors who want to join them in this work. Drawing on their experience, they empower women to realize their aspirations of becoming successful leaders. We hope you enjoy this episode, and as always, come go to Instagram to let us know your favorite part!

Justin from the popular true crime podcast called Generation Why joins Tim to talk about America's obsession with true crime and his podcast's role in shaping the growing genre. Justin and his best friend and co-host Aaron launched their podcast in 2012, helping to pioneer the true crime podcasting. This episode was first released on October 18, 2021. https://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/shapingopinion/Encore_-_Justing_from_Generation_Why.mp3 For a lot of people when they think of podcasts, they think of true crime. And for a lot of people, when they think of true crime, they think of podcasts. Aaron (left) and Justin (right) from Generation Why But it's not just podcasts. True crime magazines were a thing for well over 50 years. TV programs like Dateline have made true crime their focus for decades. Streamers have produced a steady stream of documentaries like “Making a Murderer,” and then there are the motion pictures and the streaming dramas, like “Mindhunter.” In the podcasting world, true crime continues to be one of the fastest-growing genres. And as we've already mentioned, the Generation Why podcast has pioneered the form. Generation Why released its first episode in 2012. It's co-hosted by best-friends Aaron Habel and Justin Evans. Each week, they select a specific case, almost always involving a murder or a missing person, to study and analyze, and perhaps most importantly, help the listener come to their own conclusions. About four years into their own podcasting journey, Justin and Aaron saw a boost in listener interest when a podcast called “Serial” hit the scene. Serial is largely credited for helping to blast off podcasting to a new level of popularity and awareness. The Generation Why podcast remains one of the top true crime podcasts today. Please Thank Our Sponsors Please remember to thank our sponsors, without whom the Shaping Opinion podcast would not exist.  If you have the need, please support these organizations that have the same taste in podcasts that you do: BlueHost Premium Web Hosting Dell Outlet Overstock Computer Center Philips Hue Smart Home Lighting Links Generation Why Podcast (website) This American Life Podcast (website) Joe Rogan Experience Podcast (website) WTF  with Marc Maron (Marc Maron podcast) Podcast Audiences: Why are Women Such Big Fans of True Crime Podcasts, BrandWatch (this is the article Tim mentioned in the episode Music Credits for this Episode The following tracks are featured in this episode under the terms of Creative Commons via the Free Music Archive: Deep by Bio Unit Death Note by Audiobinger PointsOfView by Ketsa Agency by Metre Apogee by Metre Sidewinder by Frequency Decree Insomnia by VibesByDRVN

In this week's episode, join Alessandro Bogliari, CEO and Co-Founder of The Influencer Marketing Factory and podcast host, as he engages in an insightful conversation with James Creech, SVP, of Strategy at Brandwatch. Together, they explore a diverse range of topics, from influencer activations that deliver results to social commerce, creator monetization, Linkedin, and much more.

Joe Escobedo's interview with Brandwatch

For this episode of the podcast, we are joined by Nora Matty who is a Product Marketing Manager at Brandwatch. We chat about how she recently made the switch to product marketing, imposter syndrome, the power of mentorship, and navigating those pesky "career crisis" moments.  Thank you to our sponsor Product Marketing Alliance for partnering with us for season 3 of the podcast. You can use the code newtopmm for 10% off PMA's Product Marketing Certified Core course (and all other PMA courses).And thank you to The Compete Network for producing the New to PMM pod. Check out other great Compete Network shows here.Follow Nora. Follow Maggie. 

Who says TikTok and Instagram are just for dancing videos? And more importantly, how do you create an impactful social media strategy to retain your supporters?Hailey Correll, Senior Director of Social Engagement, has helped the American Red Cross go completely viral on TikTok, amassing over 800,000 followers and 14 million likes!And in just 3 years, Trovon Williams, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the NAACP grew their Instagram following from 12,000 to 1.8 million by honing their authentic voice.Both Hailey and Trevon are breaking EVERYTHING down in this episode - from their strategies, to how they create content and hire their teams. This episode was previously recorded when I was moderating a panel at Classy Collaborative. I can't wait for you to tune in!In This Episode:How the Red Cross came up with a unique content strategy for TikTok to attract a Gen-Z audienceTrovon's secret sauce for scaling the NAACP Instagram to 1.8 million followers in 3 yearsThe breakdown of Hailey and Trovon's social media teams Why storytelling is a fundamental attribute of success in a social media roleSocial media is no longer a “nice to have” - it's a necessity, and it's a reputational issueHow the NAACP and the Red Cross are creating digital advocacy and retaining donorsResources & LinksFollow @americanredcross on TikTok and @americanredcross and @naacp on Instagram.Check out the tools Trovon and Hailey recommend for social media and digital strategy: Sprout Social, Rival IQ, Brandwatch, CrowdTangle, and Google Analytics.Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you. Episode Partners:We're so grateful to our partners for this episode: Feathr and Hustle!Feathr is trusted by nonprofits of all shapes and wing-spans — including Hiway 80, who used Feathr to launch new retargeting ads and email campaigns. The result? They reached 36,000 new people and brought in $13,000 in donations, 300% more than their original goal! Don't rely on magic to hit your goals next year. Use Feathr to elevate your digital marketing campaigns and grow impact in 2023. Click here to learn more.Meet Hustle's Conversational Video Platform. Their person-to-person video and text message marketing suite empowers your organization with the tools you need to humanize communication, maximize engagement efforts, and build meaningful relationships with your audiences. Click here to try Hustle today & use code POSITIVEEQUATION to receive free MMS and video messages for your organizatiLet's Connect! Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show! Head to YouTube for helpful digital marketing how-to videos and podcast teasers Want to book Dana as a speaker for your event? Click here!

In de laatste aflevering van 2022 duiken Michaël en Stef samen in de Brand Breakfast studio om branding topics te bespreken die hen recent zijn opgevallen. In een eerste segment vragen ze zich af of size matters, meer bepaald of het ertoe doet of je een klein of groot merk vertegenwoordigt. Uit een recent onderzoek blijkt namelijk dat het vertrouwen in kleine merken groter is en dat ze de perceptie opwekken van nabijer, menselijker en kwalitatiever te zijn. Vervolgens verdiepen ze zich in employee advocacy, ofwel manieren om van je medewerkers echte ambassadeurs te maken van je merk naar de buitenwereld. In tijden van schaarste op de arbeidsmarkt geen overbodige luxe voor merken, want enthousiaste en zichtbare medewerkers zijn een enorme troef voor organisaties. Tenslotte ontdekken ze dat online hate speech de afgelopen drie jaar met liefst 38% is toegenomen volgens een onderzoek van Brandwatch. Ze bespreken de oorzaken en remedies, onder andere aan de hand van het Hier Niet charter dat binnenkort gelanceerd wordt.

In this week's episode, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Brandwatch James Creech talks about creator monetization methods, parasocial relationships, video podcasts, content moderation, blockchain social media, AI applications, and more!Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Find the full show notes at nitajain.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nitajain.substack.com

Our next guest is Rebecca Harrison, a brand designer and creative director at global agency Loveblood Creative. Today, Rebecca is based in The Lakes, where she grew up. It's a small village with close family and a tight-knit community. But quite typically, when someone has enjoyed a quieter life as a child, she wanted to experience a different adventure in a big city. And so she packed her bags in 2004 and moved to London, where she studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. During university, Rebecca admits it was the first time she became aware of her accent and how different she felt compared to others. And deep down, there was this knawing feeling she couldn't shake, which she would later realise was homesickness. In fact, she spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to feel more at home in London, but it wasn't quite cutting it. Her career, meanwhile, had taken a slight detour as creative jobs were hard to come by, and Rebecca instead found a job and "home" working as a funeral director in North London. It was an experience she believes was the most foundational and inspirational of her career. During that time, she began freelancing on the side, working in graphic design and illustration. On the surface, all was well. But home was calling. She was about to return to the North when she met her now-partner James and moved to Brighton in 2010. That's where they stayed for the next eleven years, and it was where Rebecca cut her teeth at Brandwatch, moving from junior designer to Design Director. Then the pandemic hit – a time that forced many of us to reassess our lives. And so Rebecca and James decided to move back to the Lakes, where she grew up. And that's where she's now happily based, working remotely as part of the team at Loveblood Creative. It's where I travelled north to meet Rebecca in a thriving art and community centre on the outskirts of Penrith. In this episode, we talk about leaving home as a working-class woman and moving to London – how it impacts; the positives and downsides. We talk about the journey many of us embark on to find ourselves and what "home" really means. We discuss how we might become lost, forget our identity and try and be something else to "fit in" and get ahead in our careers. But Rebecca rejoices in the recent epiphany that she no longer needs to comply. She explains, "The creative industry, in many ways, told me that I needed to change to succeed. To be in a certain city or live a particular way of life. I realised how ridiculous these predefinitions are and what we are missing out on as an industry due to our own biases." We discover why she's now choosing to challenge the status quo, shake up what it means to be a successful creative director and why she's instead embracing what's right for her, leaning into her culture and being proud of who she is and what she has to offer.

According to The Marketer of 2022 Report by Brandwatch, digital insights and methods of collecting consumer data are at the top of my mind for marketers this year. With that in mind, social listening is looking at what people are talking about online, on forums, social media, underneath news articles, and on websites. Learn what social listening is, and the 5 steps to launch a successful social listening program.  Key Takeaways: Learn the framework for launching a successful program including; the “why”, understanding the benefits, sharing insights, “surprise and delight”, and time.Check out upcoming DigiMarCon Digital Marketing, Media, and Advertising Conferences & Exhibitions Worldwide at https://digimarcon.com/events/

According to The Marketer of 2022 report by Brandwatch, digital insights and methods of collecting consumer data are top of mind for marketers this year. With that in mind, social listening is looking at what people are talking about online, on forums, social media, underneath news articles, and websites. Learn what social listening is, and the 5 steps to launch a successful social listening program.Check out upcoming DigiMarCon Digital Marketing, Media and Advertising Conferences & Exhibitions Worldwide at https://digimarcon.com/events/

In Clear Focus: Making a return visit to Bigeye's podcast, our guest this week is Ksenia Newton of Brandwatch. Ksenia explains how she triangulates different sources of data, including social listening, to derive fresh consumer insights about shopping behaviors in-store and online. Ksenia shares insights from her recent Brandwatch reports and makes some predictions about how inflationary pressures might impact this year's Holiday shopping season, based on what she's seeing in research.    

In der Rubrik “Investments & Exits” begrüßen wir heute Daniel Wild, Gründer und Aufsichtsrat von Mountain Alliance. Daniel hat die Finanzierung von Founderpath und Boulevard analysiert: Founderpath konnte sich 145 Millionen US-Dollar an Fremd- und Eigenkapital sichern. Das 2020 von Nathan Latka gegründete Startup aus Austin ist ein Kreditgeber für Unternehmen, die alternative Finanzierungen neben Bankkrediten, VCs und Business Angels suchen. Im Fokus der Kreditvergabe liegen B2B-SaaS-Startups die sich bootstrappen und mindestens eine MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) von 10.000 US-Dollar haben. Mithilfe einer eigens entwickelten Software kann Founderpath in Minutenschnelle die Konditionen eines Kredits berechnen. Der Unterschied zu herkömmlichen Kreditfinanzierungen sollen die geringeren Zinsen und die längere Laufzeit der Finanzierung sein. Über 90 Prozent der 145 Millionen US-Dollar stammt von der Forbright Bank. Das restliche Kapital wird von Singh Capital Partners und einigen Business Angels wie unter anderem den Gründern von Unternehmen wie ZoomInfo, Brandwatch, Truebill und Par Tech beigesteuert. Das in Los Angeles ansässige Unternehmen Boulevard konnte in einer Series-C-Finanzierungsrunde 70 Millionen US-Dollar einsammeln. Neben der Beteiligung von Toba Capital, Index Ventures, Bonfire Ventures, BoxGroup und VMG Partners wird die Runde von Point72 Private Investments angeführt. Der 2016 von Matthew Danna und Sean Stavropoulos gegründete Software Anbieter Boulevard bietet Unternehmen im Bereich der Selbstfürsorge wie unter anderem Spas und Friseursalons eine Plattform, die Buchungen von Terminen, Kommunikation mit den Kundinnen und Kunden und Abwicklungen von Zahlungen vereinfachen soll. Das frische Kapital soll zur Erweiterung der Serviceleistungen dienen. Laut Unternehmensangaben vertrauen schon mehr als 25.000 Fachkräfte dem Softwareanbieter.

NPS surveys can sometimes work, but what if you asked your customer directly: how happy are you? Colin Burns, Global VP of Professional Services at Brandwatch, spends a ton of his time on customer calls. In a world where we have better customer data than ever, he feels there's little substitution for a customer conversation.

This interview features James Creech, SVP Influencer Strategy at Brandwatch and founder of Paladin. We discuss how former GE CEO Jack Welch inspired James to be a number one category leader, using his down payment on a house to start Paladin, his make or break pivot when the creator economy evolved in 2018, working till 3AM over Christmas to sell his company, why James and I are kindred spirits, and the power of recasting your success.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders.James Creech:Thomas and Ole and I all put considerable capital into the project. To put that in perspective, at the time, Thomas was getting married. His fiancé, she was amazing to say, "We believe in this dream, and we want to put that money that we would have saved for a big, nice wedding with our family and friends towards investing in this startup." I had been saving to buy a house, so I took essentially a down payment on what I would do to buy a house and said, "I'm all in on the business." Every penny to my name and probably even some I didn't have like went into Paladin. Then, Ole had recently gone out and bought a Tesla. He ended up driving back to the dealership and returning the Tesla, so he could take all of that money and put it into Paladin. So, every single one of us was all in from day one.Chris Erwin:This week's episode features James Creech, SVP influencer strategy at Brandwatch and founder of Paladin. So, James was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in Bakersfield, California with parents who worked in oil and gas. Early on, James was a creative. In high school, he made sketch comedy videos with his friends and thought film and TV was his future. So, he went to USC Film School and ended up running the college TV station, but soon realized that he really enjoyed and was good at the business side of entertainment. His career started at a video advertising startup, where he helped scale the team to over 40 employees, but then moved on to Bent Pixels, which started as an early YouTube MCN.Chris Erwin:While there, James took a big bet on launching a technology SaaS product for the early creator economy, which he ended up spinning out and leading as CEO, until its recent sale to Brandwatch just a few months ago. Today, James leads influencer strategy at Brandwatch and stays busy on the side, advising over 10 different companies and publishing content on his podcast and blog. Some highlights of our chat include how former GE CEO Jack Welch inspired James to be a number one category leader, when he used his down payment on a house to start Paladin, his make or break pivot when the creator economy evolved in 2018, working till 3:00 AM over Christmas to sell his company, why James and I are kindred spirits, and the power of recasting your success. All right, let's get to it. James, thanks for being on The Come Up podcast.James Creech:Hey, Chris. Thank you, excited to be here.Chris Erwin:This has been a bit of a long time coming. I think I was on your podcast a year or two ago, and I said, "James, I'm going to have to get you on mine someday." And, we're finally making it happen. When we were doing the prep, I just got even more excited, because I realized just how cool and exciting your story is. So, excited to share that with the listeners, and as always, let's rewind a bit. So, we're going to go back. Tell us about where you grew up, what your household and what your parents were like.James Creech:So, I was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up mostly in Bakersfield, California. So, I always tell people, "You could probably guess what my parents did for a living, right?" We worked in oil and gas. So, I spent most of my life, yeah, in Bakersfield, from ages four to 18, essentially. My childhood was great. I have a younger brother and sister. We're a close family. We had the chance to do a lot of traveling when we were younger, which was fun. I remember soccer practice and tennis and Cub Scouts, mock trial. We were involved in a lot of activities, and our parents were very much a part of those activities and the stuff that we enjoyed as kids.Chris Erwin:Quick interjection, how far did you get in Cub Scouts?James Creech:To the end of Cub Scouts. Never made it to boy Scouts.Chris Erwin:Did you achieve the Webelos badge?James Creech:Yeah, I was a Webelos. I think that's about as far as I made it.Chris Erwin:Nice. I did one up you a bit. I got to Eagle Scout with my twin brother.James Creech:Congrats. Wow, that's a huge achievement.Chris Erwin:It's a lot of work. Back to you, so grew up in Bakersfield, had some younger siblings. Early on, what were your passions? What were you into? Was there any glimpse into the career that you have today?James Creech:I think when I was a kid, I used to tell people what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said I wanted to be the governor of California. I don't know where that came from. I don't know that I have any sort of interest or passion in politics. I think as I got older, I would say I lacked the moral flexibility to pursue a career in that field, but was interested in politics and government early on. Somehow, that morphed into maybe being interested in law and going to law school at a certain point. I was pre-law at USC, so that was certainly a passion. I ended up doing the mock trial, as I mentioned, and then interned at a law firm and realized, hey, a lot of love for the legal profession, a lot of great friends who are lawyers, et cetera, but that probably wasn't the path for me.James Creech:In high school, the thing that really captured my intention was making videos with my friends, essentially comedy shorts. It's interesting, the timing, right? I was inspired by SNL and all these other amazing sketch comedy programs. Had I been a generation later, let alone maybe even five years later, the videos I made probably would've ended up on YouTube and now TikTok. But, because of the timing, I just made videos with my friends, and we made DVDs and shared them with our friends and family. But, it wasn't any sort of big distribution.Chris Erwin:It's never too late, James. It's never too late.James Creech:Yeah. There's an archive of a lot of old, embarrassing footage somewhere.Chris Erwin:Yeah, IP libraries are in high demand, high valuation. So, there could be something there.James Creech:So, that's what I was doing and figured, okay, well, I'm interested in media and entertainment. I applied and was accepted into the USC Film School and thought, okay, I'm going to go into film production, right? Fast forward a little bit, and I realized in college, well, I'm way more interested in the business side than I am in say the creative or the technical side. The stuff I liked doing in high school with my friends was making videos, which was really more about the experience of being together, less about the filmmaking process. But, yeah, that was kind of the early days.Chris Erwin:Yeah. So, I have to ask, what was your role in doing these sketch comedy or sketch segments? Were you a director? Were you a writer? Were you an actor? Was it all the above? And, I also want to hear, if you just have an example of one of the things that you guys did, I'd love to hear about it.James Creech:Oh, boy. So, I was an instigator. A ringleader is maybe the right word. We did all sorts of stuff. We were filming on these really small handheld cameras. I would certainly come up with sketch ideas and get my friends involved. We would shoot them. I would edit them. We would share them. There's plenty of stories that I can tell you, many of which are maybe too embarrassing for the podcast. So, we'll save that for a beer sometime, but one that definitely stands out is we kind of faked this kidnapping of our friend. He had a new girlfriend. He was really invested in that relationship, not spending as much time with our buddies. So, I said, "Okay, let's go to his house one afternoon, dressed all in black like ninjas," and his parents knew. We gave everyone a heads up, but we went in and kidnapped him for the day, which was a lot of fun. So, that's probably one that stands out.Chris Erwin:It's funny, hearing you tell these stories. So, I just started listening to This Is Important Podcast from the crew of Workaholics. They started just by making different sketch videos. They were filming wrestling matches in their backyard. Just hearing about some of their stories and how they started, and then they talk about, yeah, and then we sold the show to Viacom. How did this happen in Comedy Central?James Creech:Yeah, I wish that was the journey, was certainly inspired by Derrick Comedy and some of the other early, early YouTube sketch groups. We didn't get that far, right? It was fun to run around in our backyard and make videos, and that's where it ended for us.Chris Erwin:Yeah, cool. All right, so you get into USC Film School in 2012. I believe that you end up with a marketing and poli sci focus. But, tell us about you showed up at school. What was your initial focus? And, then it seems like it pivoted as you started to understand that you realized the appeal of the business side of entertainment, versus the creative side.James Creech:Yeah, so I went to USC, 2008. So, it was right around the housing crisis, financial crisis, which I don't know, as an 18 year old, you're fairly oblivious to. But, I was passionate about filmmaking. I was excited to be in the film program, also in the poli sci school. So, I was kind of running this dual track of, okay, well, I'm earning my political science degree, but I'm also taking these film courses and think that's what I want to do after I graduate. I got involved at the college TV station, called Trojan Vision, which is the largest TV station in the country. We broadcast to over a million homes, and I just kind of fell into it and fell in love with it. So, I was a producer on a show my freshman year, worked hard, got promoted to senior producer, second semester.James Creech:I was like, "Hey, I really like this TV thing. I like being involved at the station, meeting other students," applied for a staff position the next year and became an executive producer of a show. Okay, my first experience running a show, working in live television, it's exciting. It's the adrenaline rush of making something go on the air Monday through Friday. Through that experience, said, "Okay, I like the organization of the show, coming up with new ideas." We were experimenting with new technologies like HD broadcasts and live remotes and stuff at the time. So, I was like, "Okay, I'm excited about this," and people kept saying, "Maybe you should take some business classes." And, I thought to myself as a sophomore, well, hey, no. I'm doing the film path. I've got political science. I don't know what the business thing's about.James Creech:But, luckily USC has a very flexible structure and approach to curriculum. So, you could kind of dabble and take a couple classes. So, I said, "What's the worst that could happen? I'll take a business class or two," found out right away, hey, this is where I should be, and ended up transferring into the business school as a junior. So, I'm taking these intro 101 classes surrounded by freshmen. So, I had a very different mindset, let's say, going to the business school. I'm really excited to be here. There are certain things I want to learn. I'm finding ways to apply this over at the television station. I had been promoted to the general manager, so I was running the whole station at this point, which is a real budget.Chris Erwin:That's a lot of responsibility at a young age. What you said, it's one of the largest college broadcast stations in the US, and you're going ... Is there live programming Monday to Friday? That's a big deal.James Creech:Money through Friday, yeah, hours and hours of content. I was working essentially a full time load, basically 40 hours a week while going to school. But, I loved it. I loved every minute of it, creating television, working with students, and making something out of nothing, and putting it on the air every night, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But, I loved it.Chris Erwin:Okay, so you start taking these business classes, and right away, you're like, "This is a good fit." Then, what are you starting to think about what you want to do when you graduate?James Creech:Between my junior and senior year of college, I got an internship at Blizzard Entertainment. I grew up as a gamer. I wasn't necessarily a desktop gamer. I was more of a console gamer, but loved the opportunity to get exposure to another form of entertainment and work in a bigger company and try to decide what was right for me. So, as I was going through that process, had a great summer internship experience, came back, and had the opportunity to say, "Do I continue as the general manager of the TV station one more year as a senior?" But, kind of realized, maybe it was time to pass on the baton. So, it was hard to say goodbye, but I ended up getting another internship opportunity at this ad tech startup, this company in LA that was helping brands and media agencies promote video content on YouTube.James Creech:This was pre TruView, very early days, helping to make videos go viral. I was just, I guess, really interested in social media, but also, a USC alum was the COO. She was hiring. It was close to campus. It paid. I'm interested in this career path, but also it checks a lot of the boxes as a student that I want to make sure it's a good fit. So, I fell into that internship opportunity and just got hooked right away on the adrenaline rush of working in early stage companies. So, meanwhile, I had been recruiting, trying to figure out what do I want to do after I graduate. I had out law school or becoming a lawyer from my internship opportunity. I realized, okay, I'm more interested in the business side, so I'm gravitating towards that.James Creech:I like this startup company I'm working at, but I had always thought of myself as going into corporate America. So, I did recruitment on campus. I was offered a job to do business consulting and move to New York, which was kind of my dream. I was very excited as an almost 22 year old getting ready to graduate, moved to the Big Apple, and have this, what seemed like a really exciting, glamorous job at the time with travel and everything else. But, long story short, fell into working at Channel Factory, this ad tech startup, loved the team and the mission and the opportunity. They convinced me to stick around, so ended up declining the offer to do consulting and stay on the startup trajectory.Chris Erwin:I think what I'm starting to see here is you're on a unique path where you have both the creative know how and understanding, as well as the business savvy. That's very rare in Hollywood, right? I think of people like Bob Iger at Disney that has both of those sides of the brains, but it's a pretty rare profile, which probably explains a lot of the success that you've had in a very young career to date. Okay, so you go to Channel Factory, and what do you focus on there? Because, it seems like you start at the company when it's pretty early on, and they're on a really high growth trajectory. And, you facilitated some incredible wins there. Tell us about that.James Creech:Yeah, it was ground floor, right? It was in the founder's living room, essentially. We were building a business out of thin air, which was enticing to me and kind of felt similar to live TV production. Okay, there's this excitement. There's this adrenaline rush. You can have a big impact. So, I was basically the fifth employee, came in as an operator, doing a little bit of everything, strategic projects, built out ad operations group, hiring, training, commercial ops. I ended up working quite a bit coaching and supporting and at some points managing some of the sales team.Chris Erwin:This is all in like your young mid-20s, right? Because, you just listed off a lot of different things.James Creech:Yeah. We were all young, for the most part at that time. We were early 20s. It was a young company. It was an exciting opportunity in an early stage of the business. We ended up, of course, bringing in some more senior experienced folks, but there was this meritocracy to an extent, this excitement for youth and passion. So, we were all kind of figuring it out as we went along, and I was this person who didn't know anything going into it, but was just excited about where the company was going and the type of impact that I could have. So, we grew that business to whatever, 40 plus people, and close to or exceeding eight figure revenues. We opened offices in New York and Chicago. It was this wild ride for two and a half years, so learned a lot of lessons, both good and bad.Chris Erwin:Can you elaborate on some of those lessons?James Creech:I learned a lot about how to treat people, right? I didn't always agree with the founder and the leadership at Channel Factory. I had some great people that I learned from and supported me. Then, there were certainly some differences of opinion at times. I would say the other thing is it taught me a lot about the type of leader that I wanted to be and the type of business that I wanted to build one day. It's instructive to learn what not to do sometimes, as it is to learn what to do. But, I got great contacts and relationships. A lot of the people at Channel Factory have also gone on to do some amazing things, many of whom have become very talented entrepreneurs. So, it was this kind of amazing talent pool and this breeding ground for incredible individuals who were passionate about digital video and making an impact on the space, and that's been exciting to be a part of. There were certainly some things that we did really well, and being a young company, made a lot of mistakes, myself included. And, you learn from that and keep going.Chris Erwin:I love what you said. I always repeat this in interviews. It's very important to learn what not to do or what you don't like. In the beginning of my career where I was an investment banker, I worked with some incredible people and developed some incredible skills. But, there was also a lot of experiences and things that I was exposed to that I really did not enjoy, I thought were not good influences to the rest of my career. I consider that very valuable. When I talk to young people that are emerging from the undergrad and entering the workforce, it's this thought of, I have to nail my first few jobs, and that sets up everything for me. The answer, no, I don't recommend that.Chris Erwin:Try new things and experiment, and if it doesn't go well, that's totally okay. And, you're going to learn from that. That was some of the most valuable experiences for me. So, I like what you just said there, James. I think that's spot on. So, after a few years there, you then end up at Bent Pixels, where you also realized some great wins for the company. So, tell us about some of the work that you were doing there and how this set you up for your first big entrepreneurial venture, which is Paladin.James Creech:So, I entered Bent Pixels as an operator. That's what I had done at Channel Factory. The company at the time was a multichannel network in the heyday of MCNs, right? So, there was this time of excitement around Maker Studios and Fullscreen and Awesomeness TV, and Machinima, this early wave of digital disruptors helping YouTube talent grow their audience, monetize their content, figure out the early stages of influencer marketing, and what now we've grown to know as the creator economy. But, this was ground zero, right? You remember. You were there, too. So, this was the very, very early stages of what these future digital businesses were going to look like.Chris Erwin:And, tell us exactly, what did Bent Pixels do specifically? Were they a software platform for the early creator economy?James Creech:They did three things, right? They were a traditional YouTube multichannel network, so they provided services to YouTube channel owners and creators to help them monetize their content. They offered digital rights management services, so they would help IP rights holders monetize and enforce anti-piracy against their content on YouTube. So, they were using the content ID tools and additional manual services to help manage those content libraries. Then, they did audience development, so they were doing channel management and audience growth for brands that wanted help with their YouTube presence, so not unlike Fullscreen, Maker, many others at the time, right? So, when we came in, Bent Pixels was probably a top 30 global MCN. It was probably in the top five for rights management. I don't know, hard to say where it fell in the audience development or channel management services business, just because so many people were trying to get into that space.James Creech:We were doing all of this and facilitating it through technology, right? So, when I came into the business, I mentioned I started as an operator. And, I looked around, and I said, "This business doesn't need operators, right? We have a very capable COO, a general manager." I was looking for ways to do process improvement, cut costs, or optimize systems. There just wasn't much of that to do. The company was profitable and growing, and it had been fairly well managed, right? Well, what the business needs is growth. That's completely new to me.James Creech:I don't really know the space I was coming from, I say is the demand side. I was working with brands and media agencies, and all of a sudden, I kind of end up on the supply side, right? Now, I'm working with talent and content creators. This business doesn't really need all of the skills that I necessarily have historically had. So, we've got to figure this out, right? So, I just reached out to as many people as I could in my network and then through LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I'm curious to learn more about this space. Are you up for getting together for coffee or having a conversation?"Chris Erwin:This is very interesting. What was your primary networking tool? Were you using LinkedIn back in the day for this?James Creech:I was super early to LinkedIn, and I would just reach out to people. I would say, "Hey, I think what you're doing is really interesting. I think this space is early on. There's probably a lot we could learn from each other. Are you open to meeting for coffee or jumping on a call?" And, you'd be surprised, so many people said yes, especially all over the world, right? I was meeting people in Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific. It was this amazing opportunity to meet these other entrepreneurs who were like, "Yeah, everyone's early. We're all trying to figure this out. What are the things that are working for you? What are the challenges?" So, it was a lot of just connecting and sharing and learning from one another. But, obviously LinkedIn has changed a lot, A, over the years, B, post-Microsoft acquisition. But, in those early days, I was a young, snotty nosed kid, very earnestly trying to meet people and be helpful to the extent that I could. And, people were very kind to share their time and experience with me.Chris Erwin:I love that. You and I were actually just talking about this, I think, on LinkedIn. I just started a 30 day LinkedIn challenge. I think LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social networking platforms for professionals, hands down. I've been pretty active on it for the past few years, but our team is definitely ramping up our investment in it in terms of the type of content that we're creating. We've been doing a lot of experimenting, as well as the cadence of content as well.James Creech:Which is amazing. I can't wait to follow your content journey. I did something very similar in 2021, where I wrote every weekday, and it was such a stretch goal. I learned a ton from it, which we can talk about at some point, but I love LinkedIn, very supportive of the platform's evolution into becoming more of a content destination, and like you said, showcasing professional stories and helping people connect. It's getting back to some of those early roots of what it helped me pursue in my career.Chris Erwin:I love that. Well, maybe we'll have to do a mini series of a podcast about LinkedIn best practices. So, you start reaching out to all these different contacts across the world, focused on how do we share mutual learnings, and how do we grow? So, what did you learn? Then, what did you take from your learnings and apply to Bent Pixels?James Creech:So, what I kept hearing was everyone was facing similar challenges, especially as we tried to figure out how to scale. You have to remember at the time, people were focused on initially hundreds of creators. Then, it became thousands of creators. At the highest levels of Maker, Awesomeness, we were managing tens of thousands of creators. Bent Pixels had tens of thousands of YouTube channel partners that they were supporting. This was before YouTube had the infrastructure tools, resources, support to help those creators themselves. So, MCNs were the first line of defense. The demand, the excitement for the space was so dynamic that it was this gold rush mentality, this exciting time of help and enable as many channel creators as possible.James Creech:So, we had been building some software internally at Bent Pixels at the time out of necessity to figure out, okay, how do we find the right creators? How do we manage those relationships, pay them accurately and on time? Eventually, that would become, how do we manage branded content projects with them? Everyone else was doing the same thing. They were trying to build tools in house. They were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. How do we take Salesforce and DocuSign and all these other tools off the shelf, stitch them together into this Franken-suite, and hope for the best? And, it was expensive, and it wasn't working. So, I kept hearing this, and I thought to myself, well, hey, if everyone's facing the same problems, and we're building what to me feels like a pretty good software solution for this, that should be the business, right? I was a big acolyte of Jack Welch back in the days. I would read a lot of his books, this legendary CEO and leader of GE.James Creech:One of the things that stuck out to me is, if you're not one or two in a category, you should cut it, right? So, it just occurred to me at every leadership meeting, I was like, "We have an opportunity. There's this untapped market potential to build software for this new breed of creative companies, and no one's doing it right. So, we should be first to market. We could be a leader there. It's great that we have this profitable growing business, but we're never going to win, right? We're not going to be one or two in the category. We're going to be ... Maybe we move from 30 to 20 or five to three, right?" So, I was advocating for that. Now, the way it was perceived on the other side is, well, wait a minute. We've built this business, at that point I think over five or six years. It is growing. It is profitable.James Creech:All these other companies have raised massive VC investment. They have a lot more resources. We're happy with our business, and we want to keep developing it, but we're not going to bet the house on James's crazy idea, right? They were advocating, hey, let's get into paid media. It's what a lot of other people are doing at the time. There's a big opportunity. I had that background from Channel Factory. So, they kept saying, "No, forget about that. Focus on paid media." I don't know. I was persistent, probably very annoying, young naivete, saying, "I really believe in this idea. Just give me a shot." They shut me down a few times and just said, "No, let's focus on the paid media thing."James Creech:Until, finally one day in some leadership meeting, with the support of our CTO Ole at the time, they said, "You know what?" I think maybe just to shut me up, "Okay, fine, right? You can have two months, 60 days. Give it a shot. Let's see what happens, right? And, if it doesn't work," which they fully expected it wouldn't, "After the field experiment, we'll go back to focusing on paid media." And, I said, "Sounds like a fair deal to me, right? I'll take that bet." So, in those next two months, I signed Maker Studios, Defy Media, Me Too, Networks, and 2btube, which would later go on to become the largest Spanish language creator community in the world. So, all of a sudden, they said, "Wait a minute. This is really interesting. We didn't think you would sign a customer, let alone four of the top players in the space. This is absolutely what we're focusing on, and you should do this full time."Chris Erwin:Did you have to evolve the technology product to service these clients as well as reposition your services to actually close these prospects? So, you had to do both, because you didn't have a technology background before this. You hadn't built tech products. You weren't a project manager, but you had to become this for this new role, correct?James Creech:Yeah. I am passionate about technology, had never been in product, had been adjacent to it, but said, "Yeah, we've got to figure this out." We built a software application that's meant for internal use. We have to figure out access rights, provisioning, white labeling, to make this an externally consumable tool. We need to figure out how to price it. We have to figure out how to sell this to our essentially competitors, right? We were working with these companies that were also in many respects offering the same services or going after the same talent. So, in some conversations, that was a bit awkward, right?James Creech:It said, "Well, how do we know that you're not going to take this data or use this technology to better your business and not ours, right?" So, that was a tricky thing to dance around and navigate. Huge props due to our technical team, Ole our CTO, [inaudible 00:25:56], a lot of our early engineering design product resources who were making this thing happen behind the scenes. I was out there kind of selling the dream, but they were the ones executing on this. A lot of it was just need finding, listening to the market. What do you need? Does the current tool in some form serve that? How do we adapt it to fit what you need? And, what else should we be building in the future so that we can help you get there?Chris Erwin:Hey, listeners, this is Chris Erwin, your host of The Come Up. I have a quick ask for you. If you dig what we're putting down, if you like the show, if you like our guests, it would really mean a lot if you can give us a rating wherever you listen to our show. It helps other people discover our work, and it also really supports what we do here. All right, that's it, everybody. Let's get back to the interview. It's interesting, because just listening to this story, one version would be ... And, James builds this incredible business at Bent Pixels, and he does that for the next 10 years of his career. But, the reality is that actually, you're there for a couple years, and then you found Paladin. So, after this initial two months of success, what actually caused you to say, "Hey, I want to break out and create a different suite of technology tools for the creator economy?"James Creech:So, I think in success, we got even more excited and probably a bit persistent on my idea that, okay, this is really working. We're now signing more and more customers. We're going to put more resources into this. Now, we are the market leader. We're first to market. We're building a name for ourselves in this category. People are rethinking the perception of Bent Pixels as a software company, as a technology vendor, whereas to creators, there's still this brand identity around being an MCN, being a services business, being a media company. But, I'm kind of casting Bent Pixels in this new light and trying to position or change the branding to be this enterprise software tool. Meanwhile, that business segment is growing. Engineers are expensive, so we're adding a lot of headcount to service the need and the customers.James Creech:It got to a certain point where I'm still advocating, hey, let's sell off or shut down the other business units, because look around. A number of other acquisitions had happened. Awesomeness was acquired by Dreamworks. Maker Studios sold to Disney. There was all this M&A activity happening. So, I'm like, "Okay, it's probably a good time to think about what does an exit look like for the media business?" Then, we can focus. We can really double down on this technology play. So, I was advocating for that. The rest of the leadership team said, "It's very clear that you're passionate about this. We don't necessarily all share the same vision or belief in that strategy, but obviously, the way you run a media company and a tech startup, a high growth tech company, require different fundamentals, principles, capital. So, maybe these businesses should live on their own, right?"James Creech:So, that's when the idea was floated that we should spin it out, right? So, it was at the time myself, Ole, our CTO, and I had convinced my good friend and partner in crime, Thomas Kramer, who worked with me back in the Channel Factory days. So, he and I kept in touch. We would catch up and talk about a lot of these challenges. I said, "Would you come over here and lead product for us?" He got excited about that vision and that opportunity, so it was really the three of us advocating for this opportunity. Initially, I was kind of resistant, to be honest. I said, "No, like, I think this is where the business is going. We should focus on this." Ultimately, saw the light that, yes, okay, we should separate these companies.James Creech:For a long time, I wanted the software business to continue to be called Bent Pixels, and that maybe the media company should rebrand as something, Millennial Studios. There were some other ideas that were floated, but after whatever, six months of back and forth and working it out cooperatively as a team, we decided, okay, Thomas and Ole and James will basically buy the software IP and spin out and form a new company, and then will rebrand it, come up with a new name. Bent Pixels will continue as a customer of Paladin, but there will not be any formal relationship between the two businesses. I wanted to be very clear that Paladin is its own company and eliminate that conflict of interest idea. I think Bent Pixels was very happy to say, "Okay, we can offload these expenses from developers and sales people and everything else off our books, focus on our knitting, and get back to the growth of the media business." We worked that all out to happen April of 2016. So, that was when we took the leap and said, "Okay, we're going to set out on our own."Chris Erwin:Did you raise outside capital to give you and your two other founders the ability to purchase the software, purchase the IP, and kickstart what you called Paladin in April, 2016?James Creech:We didn't. We thought about it, but the way we originally structured the deal was Thomas and Ole and I all put considerable capital into the project. Then, some of our partners from Bent Pixels also came in as angel investors. They said, "We like you guys. We believe in what you are doing. We want to support you." So, they were kind enough to give us a little bit of seed capital to help us get through the early days of burn and very kindly help us figure out how to set up our books and transfer the employee leases and all these things that as first time entrepreneurs, you have to figure out. So, they were very helpful and kind and patient with us. But, Thomas and Ole and I were pretty much all in.James Creech:So, to put that in perspective, at the time Thomas was getting married, and he had promised his fiance this amazing wedding. She was amazing to say, "We believe in this dream, and as part of starting our life together, we want to put that money that we would have saved for a big nice wedding with our family and friends towards investing in this startup, right?" So, that was Thomas's contribution. I had been saving to buy a house, so I took essentially a down payment on what I would do to buy a house and said, "I'm all in on the business."James Creech:Every penny to my name and probably even some I didn't have like went into Paladin. Then, Ole has the best story of all, was living in Norway. He's Norwegian and had recently gone out and bought a Tesla, right? Because, he loved the sustainability mission. He loved electric cars, this beautiful new vehicle, right when they had first come out, 2016. He ended up driving back to the dealership and returning the Tesla, so he could take all of that money and put it into Paladin. So, every single one of us was all in from day one.Chris Erwin:Dude, this is wild, because typically, VC backed founders, if the founders have a new business idea, they will mitigate the risk by saying, "Okay, I'm going to contribute a significant amount of my time, right?" It could be a few years in building out this venture, but they're not putting in their own capital. They're going to get capital from third parties, venture funds. Then, that capital is going to be at risk. You are essentially doubly invested with your time and your own savings. But, I think what that means is that you probably had so much belief in what you are building that you wouldn't have done it otherwise.Chris Erwin:I think that belief is clearly very powerful, and for all of you guys to have had that, where you have Thomas contributing his wedding funds, and you have Ole contributing his Tesla funds, and you're even getting from former Bent Pixel employees, angel investment. I think that shows there's really something there. It's almost like with those dynamics, it would've been easy to raise venture capital, because they would've looked at the founders and said, "Oh, my God, their gumption that this is going to happen is so powerful, we want to be in." But, probably better for you guys, because I know you will tell the story of how you sold the company. You guys owned the majority of the equity. I had never knew that story, James. I never knew those dynamics around your business. That's incredible.James Creech:Thinking back to the time, imagining how I felt, I remember being 25. Your goals and your priorities at 25 and whatever, early 30s, are very different. But, something inside me just said, "We have to do this, right? We have the right team. It's the right time. It's the right opportunity." You look at the data. Most successful entrepreneurs are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, right? They've had-Chris Erwin:The average entrepreneur is older than 40.James Creech:Right, and they've had time to build a network. They've had experiences, failures along the way. I had not thought of myself as an entrepreneur up until this point, but something just tugged at me where I was like, "I can't imagine doing anything else." Although I had historically been very risk averse, I was just like, "We can't miss this, right? We have to do it, and we have to do it now. And, if it means going all in, if that's what it takes, then yeah, let's do it. There's no better time to do it than when we're young." So, having that conviction, which I think again is a lot of ... We didn't know any better, right? We were just hoping for the best.Chris Erwin:Which, actually I think is a good thing, to be delusional. You have to be delusional as an entrepreneur. The odds are stacked against you.James Creech:Big time.Chris Erwin:And, you are delusional, but it worked in your favor.James Creech:Yeah, exactly.Chris Erwin:So, you start the company. All right, you all contribute your capital. Paladin is now a thing. So, what are the first steps? Do you rent an office together? Is it, okay, we've got five new hires that we've got to make? What did that first year look like for you?James Creech:Yeah, terrifying, right? You've just jumped off the cliff, and you have to figure out how to build the airplane. Everyone was excited. I don't know if other people were nervous, but we had engineers. We had sales people. We had product folks who were working with us.Chris Erwin:What was the total team size from the beginning?James Creech:It was small. I want to say it was eight to 10, right? We had three founders and then the engineering team and then some of the business folks in LA. We had an office. So, we continued to rent the office. Basically, everything that was in Los Angeles became Paladin, and Bent Pixels had historically been based out of Las Vegas, so they just kept their operations. But, yeah, we had the office lease. We had all these salaries and payroll we had to be responsible for. So, all of a sudden, it's a lot of responsibility overnight to take eight plus people's livelihoods into account. We were losing money every month, right? We're looking at the burn. We knew we had to sell like crazy to just get out of the hole. Our reserves were not very high. We're talking about, we started this business with a few hundred thousand dollars, not any sort of big investment and no VC capital. So, it was all our money and very quickly needed to figure out, okay, how do we make this thing work?Chris Erwin:What were some of the early proof points where it was, okay, this thing is going to exist for more than just six months? What were some of those early wins? And, did you ever think about raising venture capital?James Creech:So, we sold like crazy in order to get to the break even point, and that was 100% of my time and energy in those early days. I think one of the biggest turning points was closing Awesomeness TV. So, I was working with a lot of your former friends and colleagues, Matt Levin, Parker Jones, Kelly Day, also worked a lot with Jen Robinson, the CTO. This was the first six figure deal that we closed as Paladin. I'm trying to remember if that's true. Maker Studios, I think also ended up being a six figure deal, but I think the original commitment was smaller. So, when I closed the Awesomeness deal, it was the biggest customer we'd ever signed. It was like, wow, we're a real business all of a sudden, that this huge venture backed company is going to make a bet on this small startup and offload a lot of its cost. Awesomeness was spending significant sums of money and engineering headcount on these processes at the time.Chris Erwin:Awesomeness spent a lot of money back in the day.James Creech:And, look, they were managing probably the largest network in the world at a certain point, 90,000 creators. We said, "We want to come in and make that easier for you." I think in many respects, we could. Jen Robinson and others saw the opportunity and believed in us and worked really closely with us to make that happen. But, that was absolutely a turning point of, okay, we're signing, as customers, some of the biggest players in the world. They're making this bet on us, and these are real contracts with real budget behind them. That was certainly a turning point.Chris Erwin:This is great to hear, considering the current macro-economy that we're going into, right? So, we are recording this podcast in the middle of May. We have faced, over the last quarter, the 1.4% decline in GDP in the US. I think there's a lot of signals of the global macro-economy slowing. Out of China, there's supply chain issues, rising interest rates, inflation. You name it. I say all of this, because companies are going to need to start thinking about ... I think access to venture capital is going to become a lot more challenging.Chris Erwin:So, what's the best form of capital? It's revenue, and it's having a business that works. So, you guys, that was your approach in 2016, which is, if we're going to finance this business, we're going to create a product that meets the market need, and we're going to sell it successfully. Then, so you closed some big deals like Awesomeness. So, that early validation must have been very rallying the team, and we got something here, right? So, it seems like that success continues for a bit. But, then there's a point in your business where you were telling me a pivot had to happen, right? So, kind of tell that journey from that founding. You have some initial success like the deal you just mentioned, and then what is happening until you realize something's got to change here?James Creech:So, first of all, I love putting it in context, because at the time, people would ask us, "Oh, are you venture backed, right?" As if that were a sign of stability, right? We would do info-sec evaluations through Disney, through Viacom for Awesomeness. People wanted to make sure we weren't going to go out of business tomorrow. I remember thinking to myself, yeah, I would tell people kind of jokingly, "Yeah, we raise money from our customers, and we call it revenue. We have this different model. We're bootstrapped. It's very unusual," and people got a kick out of that. But, to me, it was, okay, we got over the hump. Now, we're break even, profitable. We're reinvesting everything back into the business. So, we closed the deal. We hire another engineer. We hire a new salesperson. But, you had asked, did you ever entertain the idea of raising capital?James Creech:We did. Probably the most serious thought we had around it was we looked at potentially acquiring Epoxy. I don't know if you remember those guys back in the day. They had raised a significant sum. They were great entrepreneurs with a good idea that was probably just a few years ahead of their time, backed by some of the biggest VCs here in LA. I think they raised something like $8 million and just were having a tough time figuring out the business model. This was before people thought, well, can we get creators to pay for anything? And, I really liked Juan and Jason, and they introduced us to Mark Suster at Upfront. We spent a lot of time together, saying, "Does it make sense for Paladin to get an additional capital infusion and then acquire the Epoxy asset and turn it into an enterprise product?"James Creech:We figured we have relationships. We know how to sell this. For a variety of reasons, we decided not to proceed, and it's a shame. They ended up selling the business to someone else, but that was the most serious discussion we had around it. The business certainly changed significantly over the years, right? So, in those early days, we were primarily focused on helping multichannel networks and other digital businesses, so talent management companies and agencies, figure out how to manage digital talent. First, it was YouTube. Very quickly, it became a multi-platform world. So, it was Vine for a little bit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. Then, you have things like Twitch come on the scene, and obviously later in our history, TikTok. So, the business was becoming much more multi-platform. The YouTube MCN business evolved significantly, right?James Creech:There were phases or stages to that business, but it became very clear that the 1.0 model of mass aggregation and monetizing off of the passive AdSense revenue was a bit of a dinosaur, and the new business model was focused on branded content and paid media and other incremental ways to build a business around the creative portfolios that these talent were were producing. So, we knew our business needed to change to keep up. The biggest signal was influencer marketing, right? If you looked at, well, how are creators making money, sure, they make millions of dollars a year in YouTube AdSense revenue, but there's this enormous opportunity from brands in branded content.James Creech:Then, of course later on, we'd see e-commerce, but at the time, we said, "Okay, we need to build tools to help our customers and ideal future customers support this activity. So, let's build better influencer identification and discovery tools. Let's build a much more robust CRM for not just agencies, but for brands. Let's think about creating sales materials, because people are spending so much time generating pitch decks, right?" I remember running influencer campaigns, and it was, okay, go ask the influencer for screenshots and put that into a PowerPoint presentation. Email it over to the client, and then they're going to ask for revisions.James Creech:You go back and forth, right? Why don't we just tap into the social APIs, pull all that data on demand, and create this robust real time reporting around the campaign, so that, A, you deliver better results, and B, you can actually monitor and optimize campaign performance in real time. So, that was really the direction that we started to go, was saying, "Okay, as much as we still want to support these customers and this opportunity, we're slightly modifying our strategy, and we're adjusting course to go pursue this influencer marketing opportunity, because it's brands and agencies figuring out how to work with creative talent in the digital economy."Chris Erwin:Got it. That was a big pivot that happened around what time, James?James Creech:Around 2018, 2019.Chris Erwin:And, so did that cause some real friction at your company? Did you have to rethink, hey, do we have the right team? Do we have the right sales strategy? Do we have the right relationships? Do we have to rethink how we're doing coverage? Do we need to build new products and services? And, do we have the right director of engineering to do that? So, what were some of those big key decisions that you had to work through as you pivoted the business?James Creech:Well, certainly, changing the identity and the branding of the business a bit, also the product offering, right? So, again, going back to need finding, what do the customers want? How do we build that out? It's easy to build something for one customer, but how do we build something for hundreds or thousands of customers? And, what is the right team composition that will help us to get there, right? It's classic innovator's dilemma of, well, we're still very dependent on these existing customers and their business needs. And, we want to continue to support that. But, at the same time, we need to be investing in this new direction. And, there were some hard conversations and hard decisions that came about from that, right? Some people on the team were very excited, made the transition easily. Other people said, "Maybe this is my stop on the train, and I'm going to get off and pursue other opportunities."James Creech:Other people were excited about the direction and couldn't make it work, or performance started to slip as we shifted strategy. So, you have to make some tough calls, but the team worked really hard through that time period to help us change course. It's not the most dramatic pivot in the world, but it certainly felt like a big shift at the time. It didn't happen overnight. We've got this North Star. We're going to move towards it over the course of 12, 24 months. And, I remember we got our entire team together in Poland. We've historically had a big operations center for engineering in Kraków. We brought the whole team in to Poland and said, "This is our vision. This is what we're going to build together." I think that was really energizing, to harness the energy of everyone and say, "We have this shared mission and objective. Here's why we believe it's going to drive business value, better opportunity." And, it wasn't easy, but certainly was the right choice to start to move in that direction.Chris Erwin:I like that a lot. We had a team reflection last week, and we're realizing that just having run an advisory business for five years that has gone through a rebranding and a transformation in the last couple years, as we're entering this new macro-economy and just also thinking about who are the clients we work with when we provide certain services? What feels great and is right in our wheelhouse, versus what feels like we're stretched or doing something different? And, there was a big kumbaya moment where we came together. To better service our clients in the industry, we need to really rethink things. It was some tough conversations, but when you just face it head on, and then you empower your team and be like, "You guys are all here for a reason. What are your ideas for how to fix this? And, how do we all rally behind that?"Chris Erwin:And, it was a very powerful moment. I'm saying that, because it feels like when you had this conversation with your engineering team in Poland, you have to face this stuff head on. There's certain people, like you said, this is their stop on the train, and they're going to get off. But, for those that it's the right fit, keep going forward. That's best for everybody. I particularly feel very reinvigorated after this conversation, and I see this incredible potential for success going forward. I have a much smaller business than what you have. Did you feel coming out of that, you're invigorated, you're excited? And, did you have that same feeling when you first founded Paladin of, we got this, we're going to crush this? There's no doubt in the world. Were you feeling that?James Creech:I wish I could say yes, but I don't think so. Founding a business and running a business is an emotional journey. I'm so privileged to have two amazing co-founders, because sometimes you have a bad day, or you lose sight of what you're building towards. They can help lift you up, and vice versa. But, there were some tough times around 2018, 2019, where we were making this change, because the environment, the business conditions around us had changed. We realized we needed to do something to continue to grow and to survive. Again, I started the business with youthful idealism and ambition. Sometimes, we set really high goals for ourselves, and we don't always live up to them. I'm still very proud of what we built and how we had done it, but it's easy to move the goal post on yourself.James Creech:So, looking at that time in our journey, I remember we were committed to figuring it out and moving forward. But, I have to tell you honestly, there were some very tough times in those years of ... Are we doing the right thing? Are we making the right choice? And, are we going to get through it? Because, it was really challenging. Once it started to work, absolutely, it felt amazing, right? Things really started to click in 2020, and I had more passion and enthusiasm for the business than I had back in 2016. It re-lit this fire in us of, okay, we got through the hard work, the two years of making this change. We see where it's going. We're rebuilding in this new direction, and it's fun. We're hitting our stride. Everything's growing really quickly. We're bringing on new customers, new team members. We're winning, and that's the exciting part. But, in the slog of making that transition, it wasn't always fun. That's for sure.Chris Erwin:I hear that, but I think you're right. There's just something as an entrepreneur and a founder and a CEO. You have to trust your gut. Are we having fun? Does this feel right? You can have all the KPI dashboards in the world and follow all the numbers, but there's just some intuition that's really important. As I reflect in my career, there's moments where I can specifically say I felt differently about a business decision, and I didn't listen to my gut, and it was a major miss. So, as a business owner, now I'm listening to my gut more. I want to be a database decision maker, but I think instincts are very, very valuable when you have to pivot and move quickly and also really energize your team. I hear that.James Creech:You need both.Chris Erwin:You end up selling the company to Brandwatch, which I think was just announced over the past month. So, I'm curious to hear the story to exit right after this success, the 2019 pivot to now. How did you end up selling to Brandwatch?James Creech:We were evaluating, what is the next step for us in 2021? As I mentioned, the business started to really hit its stride in 2020. We were looking around at the overall market landscape, and look, influencer marketing is a crowded, competitive space. It's great. It keeps us sharp, but we realized if we want to continue to grow and compete in this space, then we need to either raise money and start to double down on sales and marketing or execute on a broader roll up strategy. Or, we can find someone who shares our vision and our passion for this category, but has more resources and can help accelerate our growth, right? So, the calculus for us at the time was ... You look at our well known, well funded competitors. Do we go out and raise money? It's certainly a path. That's an option.James Creech:Paladin had customers in over 35 countries, across five or six continents. So, we were competing against different people in Germany, than we were in Singapore, than we were in Dubai. So, it was different by market, but we recognized that, okay, we need to raise capital to help accelerate, or we need to find an exit. So, thinking about the fundraising process, as I mentioned, we're bootstrapped. A lot of us had good, favorable positions on the cap table. If we raise money, you dilute the ownership, and you kick out the goal post, I don't know, two plus years, let's say. And, the other thing I was cognizant of is, well, it seems to be this interesting moment in time where things are happening at such a rate, people want to get into this space. It's probably the right time for us to find a partner. We had had a lot of inbound interest, so we said, "Let's test the waters and see what the reception is. If we don't find anyone we like, we can always fall back on our current plan of just keep growing, or we can look at the fundraising alternative."Chris Erwin:So, you were getting inbounds from companies that were interested in kicking the tires around you potentially in an acquisition?James Creech:Yeah. We have throughout the history of the business, but it became especially acute interest in, let's say Q1, Q2 of 2021. So, I reached out to my banker friend, Jason Rapp at Whisper and said, "It seems like there's some interest here. We should probably run a process. How should we handle these conversations?" So, he came on to help us with that, very quickly had some phenomenal conversations with great people that I think saw what we were building and wanted to help add fuel to the fire. But, I was fortunate to meet Giles Palmer, the original founder of Brandwatch, who now works at Cision, the parent company. We just hit it off. He said, "Can you spend some time with our product team?" We met the product and engineering team. It was like magic from the first call.James Creech:They loved the product. They saw what we were doing. It fit very neatly into their thesis and what Brandwatch has been building in and around consumer intelligence and being a leader in social listening. They have been merging with Falcon.io, which is an amazing social media management tool. Influencer marketing was very clearly just the third leg of the stool. So, we got excited about that. They said, "Hey, can we talk tomorrow? Can we talk Monday after that?" And, very quickly, it escalated where they made an offer, and it was the right offer and the right time. We said, "Yeah, let's go into diligence." So, we ran diligence over the holidays. So, I was at Christmas with my family, Christmas 2021, hanging out with family during the day, and then working until about 3:00 AM every night, because A, I had a lot of work to do.James Creech:And, B, I had these colleagues in Europe who were also burning the midnight oil on their holidays. So, going through all of DD, and then we kind of finished that in early to mid-February. At the same time, we were running a parallel path on the purchase agreement documents with legal, reached an agreement on that in end of February. Then, we had to do a 30 day hold for DOJ approvals, announced in March, and then finally closed the acquisition at end of March. So, long process, but a lot of learnings and an exhilarating outcome. So, it's been amazing to see it all the way through.Chris Erwin:Wow.James Creech:It is such a process, right? It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done. People tell at the end, "Oh, congratulations. We're so excited for you." And, that's amazing, right? You experience all the emotions of joy, excitement, elation, but at the same time, strangely, at least I also experienced this feeling of loss, which I think is natural. It's kind of closing of one chapter and beginning of another, where you're saying goodbye to this thing that you've built and you've poured so much of your energy and time and money and everything else into. It's like a kid maybe growing up and going to college.James Creech:It's exciting. It's the next evolution, but it's also saying goodbye to the thing that I knew in its past form. Then, honestly, there's this just overwhelming sense of relief, because a lot of it feels like deliverables and juggling so many plates and keeping everyone happy. Every different constituency has something else they want from this outcome. So, if you're able to get to a point where everyone's satisfied, or as much as you can, you just get it done. It's this amazing feeling of, whew, right? We did it, and that relief is also very comforting and satisfying, I suppose.Chris Erwin:One last quick question before we get into rapid fire is, what's next for James? You're going to stay on at Brandwatch for a while. Are you going to go start your next company? What are you thinking?James Creech:So, I have come on to Brandwatch as the SVP of influencer strategy. So, I get to work with the global leadership team to help think through how do we inject influencer and creator economy strategy into the entire business, which is so exciting, right? I've spent too much time and energy on this to walk away for now, so I'm very excited to be in this new phase of the business, doubling down on what we've built, adding more resources, combining that with the amazing product suite that Brandwatch has. So, I'm still all in, excited about what we're doing. As you mentioned earlier, I'm still involved in a lot of advisory engagements, and it's fun for me to get to give back and support other early stage entrepreneurs. So, still a big passion for me and something I make time for, but in terms of my day to day focus, yeah, it's 100% all in on Brandwatch.Chris Erwin:Before rapid fire, James, I just want to give you some kudos. I have known you for a while in the industry. I think our LinkedIn posts have crossed paths for at least over five to seven years. I think our relationship, we've gotten to know one another better, I think over the past couple. I was on your podcast. Now, you're on mine. I think there could be a fun future ahead where we collaborate on different things. That's a separate convo, but I just want to say, as I've gotten to know you, learning about just how thoughtful that you've been in building your business, how thoughtful, how you are in building for the creator economy, I think one of the things that got me excited when I entered the whole YouTube MCN space back in 2012 was this positive sum mindset.Chris Erwin:We can all grow together. There's incredible opportunity. I think that you embody that feeling incredibly well. You just put out a lot of positive, good juju into the world. You're very supportive of so many people. I think it has a really big impact, and I think it's a great inspiration for so many others. So, massive kudos, and I hear you on this notion of loss, loss and relief. You had this baby. You took a huge bet on it. It's worked out incredibly well for you and your team and your co-founders, but James, you're a young guy with a very bright future ahead. You have many, many more exciting wins that lie ahead in your future. Just have faith and the trust that we are lucky that you have the time to go and do that work.James Creech:Well, thank you. Thank you for all of that. It's very kind. I'm flattered, and I've felt for a long time that you and I are maybe kindred spirits in a sense, right? Oh, I've got to spend more time with this Chris guy, because you're very obviously very intelligent, well connected, thoughtful in the content that you share, the communities that you curate through your events and dinner series, and things like that. Also, I just think we have a lot of personal interests, like your real estate investing and everything else. So, any chance, any excuse I have to get more Chris Erwin in my life, I will take it. So, just putting that out there, because very much excited about that. And, one other note, maybe just to kind of close things out is, as I mentioned, started the business in my mid-20s. I'm now in my early 30s.James Creech:As you go through this process, I think the most impactful thing that I've learned is recasting what defines success. For a lot of peop

Épisode 790 : C'est lundi et comme tous les lundis on vous balance les news social media. Ce matin on parle de TikTok, d'Instagram et de Snapchat ! On vient de passer les 2 millions d'écoutes, et on fête ça le 16 juin à 18h à l'occasion de notre 800e épisode !Si tu veux venir c'est par ici : https://bit.ly/LeSuperDaily_Episode800Programmation TikTokC'est la bonne nouvelle pour tous les CM de France TikTok étend son partenariat avec des outils tiers.Il devrait maintenant être possible de programmer des vidéos qui sortent sur TikTok à partir d'applications tierces.On retrouve huit gestionnaire des médias sociaux comme Brandwatch, Dash Hudson, Emplifi, Hootsuite, Khoros , Later, Sprinklr et Sprout Social.TikTok explique vouloir continuer à développer la qualité de ses contenus et ses partenariats dans son TikTok Marketing Partner Program.Vous le comprenez bien, ce développement avec des applications tierces devrait servir à installer plus les marques sur la plate-forme.TikTok ouvre donc son API.Qu'est-ce qu'il sera possible de faire ?Planifier des vidéos, les programmer et mieux organiser son calendrier éditorial.Avoir des retours statistiques, donc pouvoir créer des rapports de stats plus facilement afin d'optimiser la stratégie globale.Et puis bien sûr gérer toutes les interactions directement sur son application tierce ce qui permet beaucoup de choses au niveau du conversationnel.SourceInstagram va bientôt proposer des reels de 90 secondesIl va bientôt falloir que l'on redéfinisse ce qu'est un Reel. Une vidéo verticale, ok, mais bientôt ce ne sera plus tout à fait une vidéo courteRappelons qu'au départ, ils avaient une limite de temps de 15 secondes. On parlait alors d'un format à la Vine… Sauf qu'entre temps il ya eu de l'inflation. Les Reels sont passé à 30 secondes, puis à 60 secondes actuellement. 1 minute c'est bien non ? Et ben pas tout à fait puisqu'Instagram teste actuellement la possibilité d'uploader des Reels de 90 secondes. Certains utilisateurs peuvent d'ores et déjà tester la création de Reel d'1 min 30 secondes.Du côté de TikTok, la plateforme propose déjà des vidéos de 60 secondes à 3 minutes depuis juillet 2021. Une nouvelle génération sur TikTokTikTok c'est vraiment une plate-forme de vieux !Si la plate-forme sociale a longtemps été taxé de réseau social pour les enfants, ça a vraiment changé depuis deux ans.Avec pas moins de 175 millions de téléchargements sur le premier trimestre 2022 on peut dire que la plate-forme s'élargit beaucoup.Et on retrouve du coup des utilisateurs bien plus âgés qu'il y a deux ans.Des chercheurs se sont justement penchés sur ce phénomène pour le Guardian. Ce sont des chercheurs de l'université de Yale.Et cette étude a portée sur un échantillon de 1382 vidéos postées sur TikTok par des utilisateurs de plus de 60 ans.Certains comptes ont même jusqu'à 5,3 millions de Followers.Et ces contenus venant de comptes influents ont été visionné 3,5 milliards de fois.La grosse tendance chez ces personnes âgées est de créer des vidéos pour s'éloigner justement d'une image d'une personne âgée triste et déprimé.Le message est donc « j'ai peut-être 86 ans mais je peux toujours Twerker mieux que vous ».C'est assez drôle et c'est un bel indicateur de la maturité de la plateforme TikTok.SourceInstagram propose désormais une nouvelle police de caractère : Instagram SansEn douce comme ça, Instagram a procédé à une refonte de sa marqueInstagram a déployé une nouvelle police de caractères, appelée “Instagram Sans”.Alors ça ressemble à quoi ? C'est un peu vintage, il y a des arabesques… C'est très différent de ce que proposait jusqu'à récemment Instagram. Cette nouvelle police on pourra évidemment tous l'utiliser. Dans les stories notamment et ça va vraiment donner un style Instagram très reconnaissable.A noter que pour designer cette police, Instagram s'est associé à des experts linguistiques du monde entier pour adapter la police de caractères aux différents alphabets, notamment l'arabe, le thaï et le japonais.De nouvelles couleursLe dégradé Instagram (l'arrière-plan du logo) a été “réimaginé avec des couleurs vives pour le rendre illuminé et vivant”. Le nouveau format signale également des «moments de découverte».sourceContrôle parental sur SnapchatIl y aurait enfin une fonctionnalité de contrôle parental qui devrait arriver sur la plate-forme Snapchat.Elle s'appellerait Family Center. Et ça devrait permettre aux parents de suivre l'activité de leurs enfants sur l'application.Ça permet de voir avec qui l'enfant est ami sur l'application, avec qui il a échangé des messages au cours des 7 derniers jours.C'est fou parce que Snapchat est une des dernières applications à enfin répondre à ce besoin d'outils parental, alors que Snapchat est composé à plus de 75 % par les 13-34 ans.C'est vraiment un réseau social très jeune.Si les parents auront accès aux personnes à qui leurs enfants ont parlé pendant les septs derniers jours, ils n'auront pas accès aux contenus des conversations. Mais si nécessaire, à eux de demander à leurs enfants de leur montrer le contenu des messages.Le but est du coup de respecter la vie privée des jeunes, tout en pouvant donner un contrôle aux parents.On a quand même hâte que ce soit en place.Source. . .Le Super Daily est le podcast quotidien sur les réseaux sociaux. Il est fabriqué avec une pluie d'amour par les équipes de Supernatifs.Nous sommes une agence social media basée à Lyon : https://supernatifs.com/. Nous aidons les entreprises à créer des relations durables et rentables avec leurs audiences. Ensemble, nous inventons, produisons et diffusons des contenus qui engagent vos collaborateurs, vos prospects et vos consommateurs.

1. Post To TikTok From Your Favorite Social Media Management Tools - TikTok's Marketing Partners Program has expanded to include a new set of social media management tools that will allow you to organize, schedule, and, yes, publish content to TikTok from your preferred platform. Per TikTok:“Today, we are excited to introduce the TikTok Marketing Partners Program's inaugural group of badged partners in the Content Marketing specialty. These eight industry leaders - Brandwatch, Dash Hudson, Emplifi, Hootsuite, Khoros, Later, Sprinklr, and Sprout Social - have built innovative solutions that make it easier for brands to publish, manage, and track their content on TikTok, all within the content management tools that brands already use and love. We are excited to connect brands with these trusted partners who can help them lean into and level up their TikTok-first content strategies.”This will make planning and posting TikTok updates much easier, as well as streamlining the repurposing process so you can re-share your video assets across platforms.2. TikTok Introduces Livestream Subscription Service - You can now subscribe to your favorite LIVE TikTok creators with a monthly membership to LIVE Subscription.Currently, LIVE Subscription is only available to invited TikTok creators, and it will be available to everyone in the following months. This functionality contributes to TikTok's efforts to give creators more ways to earn money on the platform.The current subscriber benefits are fairly similar to those found on Twitch and YouTube. Subscribers will receive badges that will be displayed next to their names, as well as personalized emotes to use in chat and access to a subscriber-only chat.Source: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/live-subscription-invite-only 3. Ads In YouTube Shorts - With Shorts now driving more than 30 billion daily views, Google will be a fool not to monetize it without Ads. Now Google revealed at its Marketing Live event this week that it will begin to gradually roll out ads in YouTube Shorts around the world. The company has been experimenting with ads in YouTube Shorts since last year. Video action marketing and app campaigns will automatically scale to YouTube Shorts starting this week. Advertisers will be able to connect their product feed to their video campaigns later this year, making their video advertising on YouTube Shorts more shoppable. FYI: TikTok already has shoppable video ads, allowing users to view things without having to switch to a browser.Source: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/resilience-results-reinvention-google-marketing-live/ 4. Google Marketing Live ‘22 Event Announcements - Google's Discover feeds are getting additional additional video options.“Discover is where people scroll through their favorite personalized content for ideas and inspiration. We're exploring ways to help you bring short video assets to Google's feeds so you can offer more compelling and engaging ad experiences.”Although Discover is a less-used personalization feature within the Google app, the new video ad possibilities may assist to engage with users who are interested in specific themes and trends.A/B testing, support for store sales targets to optimize for in-store sales, new insights and explanations, including attribution, audience and auction data, and optimization score and suggestions, are all part of Google's Performance Max updates. Performance Max campaigns enable advertisers to effectively extend their Search ad efforts, by enabling Google's system to showcase your promotions across more surfaces.In order to increase contextual understanding and targeting, Google is now adding fresh search data to its ad insights page.“Based on the billions of searches we see every day and the millions of signals we analyze for every ad auction, we're introducing three new reports that will roll out worldwide over the coming months.”The three new reports are: Attribution insights - show how your ads work together across Google surfaces — like Search, Display and YouTube — to drive conversions. Budget insights - find new opportunities for budget optimization and show how your spend is pacing against your budget goals. Audience insights - for first-party data show how your customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, are driving campaign performance. Google is also introducing automatically generated assets for responsive search advertising, which will generate assets for your campaigns based on material from your landing pages and existing ads.“The system will then display the best-performing combination of automatically created assets, and the assets you provide, to make your ads more relevant.”Check out the sessions from Google Marketing Live here.5. How Does LinkedIn Feed Algorithm Work? - LinkedIn is facing the same issues as other platforms: re-posts from other platforms, spam, vaguely topical polls, and various other low-interest posting actions, designed specifically to generate shallow engagement. So, LinkedIn's VP of Engineering Sabry Tozin shared what types of content LinkedIn seeks to amplify in-stream:a.) In “What kind of conversations are welcomed on LinkedIn?” Tozin emphasized the importance of constructive and respectful conversations. Conversations that people care about and talk about. b.) In “What does it mean to be professional when it comes to content on LinkedIn? Tozin, share advice on what it means to be "professional" on LinkedIn. Be authentic and talk about what's important to you.Things you ought to know about: LinkedIn considers a user's 'dwell time' when ranking content, which is the amount of time someone spend looking at an update or link as a measure of relative interest. LinkedIn posts containing double-spaced text, which are intended to entice clicks by requiring the user to tap on the post to see the entire message, are now penalized with lower reach. Posts that ask or encourage users to interact with them through likes or reactions will have a lower reach. LinkedIn is now actively limiting the number of polls that viewers see in-stream. So, if you want to get the most out of your LinkedIn content, stay away from these elements and concentrate on writing useful, engaging pieces that are relevant to your target audience.Source: https://blog.linkedin.com/2022/may/23/mythbusting-the-feed-helping-our-members 6. Google Ads Prohibiting Skin Lightening Products - Starting in June 2022, Google Ads will ban any skin whitening product Ads that implies one skin tone is superior to another. Google has already published this new policy, which can be seen here "In June, Google will update the Dangerous and Derogatory policy under the Inappropriate Content section to enforce against the promotion of skin lightening products that imply the superiority of one skin tone over another. These products will be prohibited under enforcement guidance."Advertisers who promote such products are being warned by Google to delete their advertising before June 30, 2022, or Google will do so for them.Through this policy update, Google is telling the world they “value diversity and respect for others, and we strive to avoid offending users, so we don't allow ads or destinations that display shocking content or promote hatred, intolerance, discrimination, or violence”7. Google Ads Display Campaign Changes - Google announced that, to simplify campaign creation and management, Smart Display campaign features are now available within all Display campaigns. What do you need to do? Nothing. Any Smart Display campaigns in your account (on Aug 1, 22) will automatically migrate (keeping your settings intact.) without any action needed on your end. Per Google, the migration will not cause any fluctuations with your campaign's performance and Optimized targeting is now set as the default targeting method when you create new Display campaigns.Display campaigns will be the only Display campaign type. Your migrated Smart Display campaigns will become Display campaigns.To replicate Smart Display campaigns you can use the recommended defaults for a new campaign. This will include using the Smart Bidding strategy that works best for your needs, using optimized targeting, and using responsive display ads.FYI: Optimized targeting looks beyond manually-selected audience segments in your campaign to find audience segments that you may have missed to improve the campaign's performance. Optimized targeting works best for advertisers in any of the following situations: You want your campaign to serve to audience segments most likely to convert.  You want to acquire new customers beyond your existing segments and still meet your goals.  You want to identify new people who perform well for your campaign.  You want to increase conversions without increasing bids or the cost per customer. 8. Google Announces May 2022 Broad Core (SEO) Update - Google announced "Several times per year, we make substantial improvements to our overall ranking processes, which we refer to as core updates. Core updates are designed to increase the overall relevancy of our search results and make them more helpful and useful for everyone. Today, we're releasing our May 2022 core update. It will take about 1-2 weeks to fully roll out."Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form: Name: Google May 2022 Broad Core Update Launched: May 25, 2022 at around 11:30pm ET Rollout: It will take about one to two weeks to roll out Targets: It looks at all types of content Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages. Impact: Google did not share what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update. Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more. Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's advice below. Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates. If you are impacted by this update, check out the Google core update advice story for more.

La evolución de las plataformas de redes sociales #conversacionesdecrm #solvis #cx2advisory La evolución de las redes sociales ha tenido un profundo impacto en la forma en que las empresas interactúan con los clientes. En el pasado, las empresas recurrían a canales tradicionales como las llamadas telefónicas y las interacciones cara a cara para relacionarse con los clientes. Sin embargo, a medida que las redes sociales se hicieron más populares, las empresas tuvieron que adaptar sus estrategias y procesos para satisfacer las necesidades de los clientes, que utilizan cada vez más estas plataformas para comunicarse. Uno de los mayores retos a los que se enfrentan las empresas cuando utilizan las redes sociales es garantizar que todas estas las plataformas hagan parte de su Ecosistema Omnicanal de Customer Engagement. Esto significa que los clientes deben poder obtener el mismo nivel de servicio y asistencia independientemente de la plataforma que utilicen para interactuar. Además, las empresas deben ser capaces de responder rápidamente a las consultas y quejas de los clientes, así cómo habilitar estos canales para acelerar el proceso de Venta y apoyar sus campañas de Marketing. Y resulta que hoy en día tenemos nuevos jugadores en el mercado de plataformas que administran las redes sociales. Y otros jugadores que ya no existen. ¿Que ha pasado en la industria con todas estas plataformas de redes sociales como Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Meltwater, Salesforce Social Studio y Sprout Social, entre otras más? En Conversaciones de CRM, vamos a hablar de todos estos cambios con Adriana Olarte, Business Analyst en CRM, Social Media y Marketing Automation y José Corona, Managing Director en Solvis para hablar sobre la Evolución de las redes sociales. #EvoluciondeRedesSociales #FacebookLive #LinkedinLive #YoutubeLive #TwitterLive #PodcastdeCRM

*Debate breaks audience record Major network monitoring tools like Brandwatch revealed higher interest than in 2016. * They capture a bull shark and a dolphin in Laguna Nichupté in Cancún (PHOTOS) The photographer Andrés García shared the photographs to raise awareness of the preservation of nature and take a stand against the Nichupté Vehicular Bridge *Inflation and pandemic “vanish” the payment of utilities The economic ravages and rising prices make it difficult for microentrepreneurs to pay profits before the deadline. *Mayan Train: Environmental impact study lacks validity, due to extemporaneous, says speleologist The speleologist assures that the environmental impact study of the Mayan Train is no longer valid, since it began after Section 5 was deforested --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cjr-news/support

Matt Gielen is the Co-Founder & CEO of Electric Monster, a portfolio company of digital content properties in the general entertainment and kids and family space. Matt started his career in production and audience development at Driver Digital, then served as VP of Programming & Audience Development at Frederator. In 2016, he founded Little Monster Media Co., an agency that helps brands and publishers build out their YouTube audience, which was later acquired by his latest venture Electric Monster. In this episode, Matt and I talk about the growth of creator-driven business and the recent flurry of digital media acquisitions. From consolidation among digital publishers (Vox and Group Nine, Vice and Refinery29) to creator-first media companies (Mythical Entertainment and Smosh, Moonbug and Cocomelon), M&A activity has reached record heights over the last 12 months. Matt offers some insight into Electric Monster's acquisition of React Media (formerly Fine Bros. Entertainment) and their future ambitions. Finally, we talk about the growth of YouTube Shorts, increasing the level of transparency from social platforms, and why creator funds don't pay very well. Host: James Creech LISTENER SUPPORT If you'd like to make a small monthly donation to help support future episodes, please visit https://anchor.fm/allthingsvideopodcast/support ABOUT THE SHOW All Things Video is a podcast dedicated to uncovering the past and charting the future of the online video ecosystem. Listen to interviews with founders, executives, and thought leaders from the world's leading media companies and engage in thought-provoking debates about the issues shaping the next generation of entertainment. From the short-form content revolution to the fragmentation of video viewership in an always-on world, All Things Video reveals the key trends and insights from the world of digital media. Follow All Things Video on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for new episodes and updates! ABOUT THE HOST James Creech is an entrepreneur focused on technology, online video, and digital media. He currently serves as SVP, Influencer Strategy at Brandwatch, the world's leading digital consumer intelligence company.

Each year, brands pay exorbitant amounts for the cost of exposure during America's greatest sporting event – the Super Bowl. It's the one time of year brands are almost guaranteed a captive audience. This year's big game was no different – including an epic halftime performance.  Brands shelled out upwards of $6.5 million for a 30-second ad spot marking the most expensive Super Bowl ad price in NFL history. But were any of them worth the price? And, which brand won the day? Austin, Hattie, and Thomas discuss which ads nailed it, and others that just fell flat. Then, the podcast closes by discussing the iconic halftime show dubbed as #DreDay. Sponsored by Pepsi, Dr. Dre, Mary J Blige, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, and a surprise appearance by 50 Cent brought 90s nostalgia and a party atmosphere to SoFi Stadium. It could be said that this year's performance was one of the top-five shows ever presented.  Let us know what you thought of the Super Bowl and which brands flexed their marketing and communications strength the best. Music Credit: Smoke (with Lostboycrow) – Feather KEY LINKS FOR THE WEEK 

Networking can often inspire dread. We associate it with warm wine in plastic cups and awkward conversations. Thankfully, this week's guest Abadesi Osunsade, founder of Hustle Crew and VP of Belonging at Brandwatch, joins Rebecca to offer a fresh perspective and explains how mutual appreciation can lead to meaningful connections, online and offline. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Gavin is joined by Giles Palmer to discuss the story behind Brandwatch's recent $450M sale to Cision.  Giles talks about:How he celebrated the dealWhy he decided to sell the company after 14 yearsHow the team reacted to the newsHis most challenging period as CEOWhy he loves competitionThe operating system he used to scale Brandwatch to 550 employeesPlus, Giles shares how he used an unscalable approach to maintain a strong company culture.--Giles is the founder and former CEO of Brandwatch, a leading social media listening tool. He built Brandwatch from nothing to a team of over 500 employees with 2000 customers and over $100m in ARR. After launching the company almost 14 years ago, Brandwatch was recently acquired by Cision for $450 million.Connect with Giles on Linkedin and Twitter.--The playbook that Giles used to scale Brandwatch's operations: The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.unscalable.me

Hear from women in product & design at Brandwatch, they will tell us about how they've build their careers on their own terms, so you can keep rising while being authentically you

Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) and Rich Gall (@richggall) talk with Abadesi Osunsade, the founder and CEO of Hustle Crew, VP of Global Community and Belonging at Brandwatch, and co-host of the podcast Techish, among many other things. Abadesi explains how she found her way into the industry and explains how her experiences led her to fopund HustleCrew, an organization designed to help organizations improve diversity and equality in their workforce and empower people from marginalized communities to find their way in tech. She also discusses the work Hustle Crew does, and talks in detail about why measuring the success of diversity and belonging initiatives isn't actually as hard as we might sometimes think it is. We also discuss how we can all assume responsibility for the struggle for equality and justice, the importance of sitting with our discomfort when having difficult conversations, and how to 'zoom out' gain a sense of perspective when our doubts about our ability to effect change are starting to flag.Follow Abadesi on Twitter: @AbadesiLearn more about Hustle Crew: hustlecrew.coListen to Techish podcast: techishpod.com

On today's episode, I talk to Abadesi about inclusion and reality of being a black woman in tech.  We delve into why its okay to not always make your parents proud as well as learning to say NO and overcoming a scarcity mindset.  She shares how a negative experience with a former boss helped to birth Hustle Crew and so much more. About Abadesi Osunsade Abadesi Osunsade is the VP Global Community & Belonging at Brandwatch, Founder & CEO of Hustle Crew, Co-Host of Techish podcast and author of Dream Big. Hustle Hard: The Millennial Woman's Guide to Success in Tech. She was recently included in the Financial Times list of Top 100 Influential Leaders in Tech and Tech Nation's 50 most prominent and influential voices in Tech. Social Networkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/abadesi/ www.instagram.com/abadesi www.twitter.com/abadesi Hustle Crewwww.hustlecrew.co www.instagram.com/hustlecrewlive www.twitter.com/hustlecrewlive  Podcast Techish podcast with Michael Berhane If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends / write a review - it goes a long way! :) Subscribe using your favorite podcast app via Apple Podcasts Spotify Deezer Stitcher SPREAD THE WORD. LEAVE A RATING, REVIEW, AND FEEDBACKYou can do this on Apple podcast or on Sticher  Your ratings and reviews help us place the podcast in front of new leaders and listeners.  I am always keen to get feedback so if you have any thoughts once you've listened to this interview just drop me an email at hello@mindsetshift.co.uk I appreciate you and your support

On today's episode, I talk to Abadesi about inclusion and reality of being a black woman in tech. We delve into why its okay to not always make your parents proud as well as learning to say NO and overcoming a scarcity mindset. She shares how a negative experience with a former boss helped to birth Hustle Crew and so much more. About Abadesi Osunsade Abadesi Osunsade is the VP Global Community & Belonging at Brandwatch, Founder & CEO of Hustle Crew, Co-Host of Techish podcast and author of Dream Big. Hustle Hard: The Millennial Womans Guide to Success in Tech. She was recently included in the Financial Times list of Top 100 Influential Leaders in Tech and Tech Nations 50 most prominent and influential voices in Tech. Social Networkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/abadesi/ www.instagram.com/abadesi www.twitter.com/abadesi Hustle Crewwww.hustlecrew.co www.instagram.com/hustlecrewlive www.twitter.com/hustlecrewlive Podcast Techish podcast with Michael Berhane If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends / write a review - it goes a long way! :) Subscribe using your favorite podcast app via Apple Podcasts Spotify Deezer Stitcher SPREAD THE WORD. LEAVE A RATING, REVIEW, AND FEEDBACKYou can do this on Apple podcast or on Sticher Your ratings and reviews help us place the podcast in front of new leaders and listeners. I am always keen to get feedback so if you have any thoughts once youve listened to this interview just drop me an email at hello@mindsetshift.co.uk I appreciate you and your support

Abadesi Osunsade is a VP at BrandWatch. She previously worked at big names in the London tech scene, including Amazon and Groupon. She's the host of the weekly podcast Techish - which is all about the intersection of tech, culture and life. Abadesi self-published a book about starting out in tech, called 'Dream Big, Hustle Hard - The Millennial Women's Guide to Success in Tech' and was named on the Financial Times list of top 100 influential leaders in tech.Abadesi shared stories of her early years starting out in tech, and the challenges she overcame. She has loads of advice for shaping your own career and avoiding living on auto-pilot. We also talk about the community she founded and how she published her own book.I hope you enjoy!

This week we're joined by Abadesi Osunsade, VP Global Community & Belonging at Brandwatch. Hear what she's most proud of and how she's driving change in her industry. Learn more about Hustle Crew, a career advancement community for the underrepresented in tech founded by Abadesi, at https://www.hustlecrew.co/.

How does the Alien cinematic universe fit together (and do fans care... about Predator)? How important is Ripley to the series? Is feminism an important part of the series? All this and more as Jaime of [Perfect Organism](https://www.perfectorganism.com/), an Alien Podcast, helps us to better understand the fandom around the Alien films! ## Episode Outline ### Fandom Facts **History and Origins:** > Alien is a science-fiction horror media franchise centered on the film series depicting Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) and her battles with an extraterrestrial lifeform, commonly referred to as "the Alien". > > Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the series began with Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott. It was followed by three sequels, Aliens (1986), Alien³ (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997), directed by James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, respectively. Scott also directed a prequel series, composed of Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). > > The series has led to numerous books, comics, and video game spin-offs. The Alien vs. Predator franchise combines the continuities of the Alien franchise with the Predator franchise, and consists of two films as well as varying series of comics, books and video games. A video game called Alien: Isolation was released in 2014 to generally positive reviews. > — [Wikipedia - Alien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise)) **Search Data:** Interest in the Alien franchise is down a little bit since 2004, [but is relatively stable and oddly periodic](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F095d5f). There have been outsized spikes in search volume starting August 2004 (_Alien vs. Predator_), December 2007 (_Alien vs. Predator: Requiem_), February 2010, February 2013 (_Aliens: Colonial Marines_), October 2014 (_Alien: Isolation_), and May 2017 (_Alien: Covenant_). The top ten countries, by search volume, are as follows: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Paraguay, Germany, Ecuador (Canada is 31st, United States is 34th). **Fan Demographics:** [One source, BrandWatch, has some data specifically around online audiences interested in _Alien: Covenant_](https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/audience-insights-alien-covenant/). - _Gender_: 80% male (49% more likely to be male than the general twitter audience), compared to 20% female (57% _less_ than the general twitter audience) - _Interests_: 25% Interested in movies (553% more likely than general audience), 21% interested in books (150% more likely than general audience), 19% interested in games (134% more likely than general audience) **Fanac Fast Facts:** - Archive Of Our Own has [over 1000 fan works related to the Alien series](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Alien%20Series/works): - Top 3 Categories: F/M (35%), Gen (31%), M/M (25%) - Top 3 Characters: David 8 (34%), Ellen Ripley (19%), Walter (Alien: Covenant) (13%) - Top 3 Relationships: David 8/Walter (Alien: Covenant) (8%), Daniels/Walter (Alien Movies) (7%), Daniels (Alien: Covenant)/Walter (Alien: Covenant) (6%) - ...Most of which are only involved with the existing Alien properties ### [Last Episode's](https://fanthropological.com/pinball) Famous Last Words What did we have to say before doing the preparation for this week's episode? **T:** What do fans think about Prometheus? Which do they dislike more, _Alien: Resurrection_ or _Prometheus_? [// Literally asked on reddit. After listening to your episode on fandom toxicity, I don't really want to bring it up (Also, forgot about / haven't seen Alien: Covenant)]: # **G:** Alien Quadrilogy... What's the deal with that? Is there a sense of which is more beloved, Alien or Aliens? **Z:** Within the fandom ... is there an enduring love of Metroid? **Jessica:** If Jonesy had his own spin-off movie what would it be about? ### Main Discussion

  Carles Ferrer is a General Partner at Nauta Capital – a European enterprise software VC fund - and he's invested in companies like BeMyEye, Brandwatch and ChannelSight.  Carles discusses:  Nauta's philosophy of investing in capital efficient disruptors   How Nauta's regional hub focus within Europe, combined with their sector focus, differentiates them from other VC funds When expanding from Europe to The States – how to get the timing & the talent right! Future themes Nauta are prioritising including the massive disruption of the Retail sector both online and offline For more insights into Nauta's investments in capital efficient disruptors check out https://www.nautacapital.com & for advice on hiring world class talent for start-ups and scale-ups head over to http://alpinasearch.com  

Daniel and Ciaran discuss where social listening fits into your Digital Marketing Strategy. Social Media listening can help you to understand your market and how existing and potential customers are talking about your brand and products. Set up correctly a good social listening programme can provide excellent insight into how you can help and respond to customers and be a more efficient organisation. Are you using it to best effect to monitor your results and customers reactions to your online activity? Do you have it set up to help you avoid and manage any social media crisis management? We started out looking for some free tools for social media listening and found the offerings available rather slim. However Undeterred we have put together a round up of listening tools from the top flight industry go tos right down to more reasonably priced offerings from multiple tool vendors. Are your social media tools isolated in a team silo or are the insights being used by teams across your organisation? We walk you through some of the tools we have recently reviewed and the features they offer to help you understand what is on offer by each of these great tools. We also explore Sentiment Analysis in Social listening tools and some of the shortcomings of machine understanding of context. Social Mention http://www.socialmention.com/ Radian 6 ( Now Salesforce Social Studio) https://www.marketingcloud.com/products/social-media-marketing/radian6/ Hootsuite https://hootsuite.com/ Brandwatch https://www.brandwatch.com/ Klear https://klear.com/ brand24 https://brand24.com/ Media toolkit. https://www.mediatoolkit.com/ answerthepublic.com https://answerthepublic.com/ Mention https://mention.com/en/ Google Alerts https://www.google.co.uk/alerts