Neil Waller may be a self-confessed college dropout, but don’t mistake it for a lack of initiative.
After co-founding nine different businesses, including those in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) space, Waller gained a lot of first-hand experience about what it takes to build a brand in creative ways. Now, as the co-founder of Whalar, he’s helping other brands tap into the power of influencer marketing in partnership with some of social media’s top creators.
“We were marketers within our own brands, but without knowing we were marketers,” Waller told Brand Innovators, reflecting on his career journey with co-founder James Street. “But we had no knowledge of the marketing ecosystems.”
Today, Whalar is helping define a growing segment of that ecosystem, attracting ad industry and tech veterans Sir John Hegarty, Bob Greenberg, Roxanne Taylor, Andrea Wong, Brad Smallwood and Steven Wolfe Pereira to its board. Whalar is also fueling the conversation about the ways creators and brands can make a deeper social impact.
Just over a year ago, for example, Whalar launched The Change Collective, an ensemble of purpose-driven creators with audiences of the same mindset to pursue influencer marketing that aligns with values around health, sustainability and equity.
The Change Collective was in response to trends that Whalar was already seeing. Waller tells the story of a creator who was partnering with a pet food brand, who wound up turning the work down when the product arrived in packaging that was clearly bad for the environment. In response, the company changed the packaging to include renewable materials.
“This isn’t just a moral imperative, it’s a business opportunity,” he said. “The brands that authentically do the right things through the lens of protecting the future, diverse representation, and other core value sharing are going to be the brands that win.”
To that end, Whalar launched “The Crib Around The Corner,” the first TikTok house in Los Angeles for Black creators, securing AT&T TV as their overall brand partner. Adweek recently named it Creator House Of The Year.
Waller said Whalar recently conducted an audit revealing that 47% of the creative voices it has worked with on campaigns have been BIPOC over the last two years.
“You can’t say that a wide array of talent is hard to find,” he said. “They’re discoverable; they’ve put their voices online.”
Waller offers marketers the following thoughts on understanding the landscape and opportunity around influencer marketing:
Creators Can Do More Than Develop Aspirational Content
Waller is well aware of the headlines that circulated after the pandemic broke out that influencer marketing was going to die off because people didn’t find influencers “relatable” anymore. His experience has been decidedly different.
“If you’re creating content that’s unrealistic, or just not thinking of the context of what’s going on in society, where you’re so far disconnected but you also just take money to do any collaboration — then yes, I bloody hope that dies,” he said. “When you really look at what’s happened during the pandemic, many creators have been quick to step up.”
Waller points to the creators who offered ideas to assist parents with home-based education, fitness influencers who crafted workouts to do while sheltering-in-place, and those who shared their skills from gardening to ceramics.
Influencer Marketing Doesn’t Have to Feel Like Uncharted Territory
While there are a wide range of companies and services that promise to assist brands in partnering with creators, Waller quotes Hagerty with the notion that “the practices may change” in marketing, “but the principles remain.”
“The reason we’re successful with brand clients is that the way we work with them is reflective of how they’re used to working with agency partners,” he said. “We help them with content, with social strategy, and with measuring the results of the campaign. Those things stay the same. What’s changed is that the work is coming directly from the creator community.”
Reach And Engagement Were Just The Beginning
Brands may once have been happy to see the content they collaborated on with creators to get a lot of likes, comments or reshares on social media. Now, though, Waller said Whalars’ work has gone beyond that.
He said some clients are more focused on driving consumers directly to a retailer’s e-commerce site, while a shopper marketing campaign might be aimed at driving people to a big box store.
“Another way to measure is after a campaign, doing a standard media measurement study of (customers’) brand awareness relative to other competitors. What’s their purchase intent? Have they understood key messages?” he said.
One client, a dating brand, wanted to get a sense of how to best serve the LGTBQIA community through apps. The insights gained through Whalar’s creators represented some of the best research they’ve ever had, and even affected their product roadmap, according to Waller.
Finally, Waller said brands can not only benefit from content that creators share through their own influential channels – marketers can also repurpose the content on their own owned channels, either organic or paid.
“This is a new creative production model,” he said, “One that doesn’t require going to a set.”
