151. Influence Redefined - Trust, Authenticity and the Future of Marketing

Influencer is really one of the oldest terms that is out there. Whether that was kings and queens or pharaohs and and popes in the olden days to the content creators that we have today, it's all about trust at the end of the day. It's all about can you with some sort of an audience get that audience to take an action? What are that action might be? And from there, influence comes to fruition. That is Brandon Perlman, founder of Influencer Marketing firm Social Studies. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Cray Tomorrow podcast. I'm your host, Cassandra Nappoli, head of marketing events and culture forecasting at WGSN. Every two weeks I will take you on a journey to examine how brands and consumers are creating tomorrow, whether through product innovations, actions and strategies or online behaviors. In this episode, we'll hear from Brandon and Jennifer Perlman, founder and GM of Influencer Marketing firm Social Studies, who will explore the shifting social media landscape and its impact on the creator economy. We talk about the rise of quiet influence, employees as the ultimate creators for corporations and the growing tension between an AI internet and a human one. Brandon will come to you first. Can you briefly share who you are and what you do and a bit about your career journey so far? So I'm Brandon Perlman. I'm the founder and CEO of Social Studies Inc. One of the original Influencer Marketing agencies. And what we do is we really help brands understand how to work with influencers and content creators with all shapes and sizes, how to strategize and integrate them into their marketing mix, how to get the most out of them, and how to turn influencer marketing into a revenue positive core area of the marketing ecosystem. And we really work with brands that you would expect to lots of brands that you wouldn't. And that's really where I'm very excited to talk about today. The forefront of influencers and what that means, especially to a corporate ecosystem. Fascinating. And Jennifer, what about you? Yeah, I am Jennifer Perlman. I'm the GM here at Social Studies. I've been here for about four years now. Brandon, I are married. So I started at Connie Nass, worked across a variety of titles over there, really focusing on driving subscriptions. My career moved more into digital acquisition. I worked at a variety of brands, SoundCloud, Music, the BBC and Entertainment. And so really focused my career on driving business actions for a variety of brands and in a variety of industries. So cool. I want to start off by kind of going back to basics. What is an influencer? We often go back and forth these days, even internally at WGSN, between the words creator and influencer. Do they have a difference? What is your definition? So influence is trust and not a title anymore. And yes, influencer, creator, we have done a lot of different thought leadership across what equals each. And that used to reside on how big somebody's audience is. And with an algorithmic social web, audience size doesn't really matter anymore. Influencer is really one of the oldest terms that is out there, whether that was kings and queens or pharaohs and and popes in the olden days to the content creators that we have today. It's all about trust at the end of the day. What is our job is to help brands really still down? What actions do they want? What are they trying to get across? Who are the right individuals? Probably with an audience, but maybe just with a great aesthetic or content profile that they can create some sort of assets that drive an audience to action. And that could be anywhere in the funnel from just awareness and getting great brand alignment to creating content that moves the needle with affiliate networks and drive sales, reservations, or bookings, or whatever that might be. But an influencer is really just nothing more than a proxy for somebody who's trusted. Yeah. And I would just add to that, you know, something we talk a lot about at social studies is the idea of having community capital. So, you know, really being able to connect with your audience in a very, you know, I hate this word, but authentic way. You know, obviously, someone is, an influencer is talking about, let's just say skiing, and that is their kind of thing that they're putting out there into the world. And then all of a sudden, you know, they're talking about mascara. There's not really an organic connection between those two things. And so I think, you know, obviously, we all know that consumers are more, you know, discerning that they've been before, and they're picking up on those notes of authenticity. And so, you know, if that influencer is really able to foster a unique and organic connection with their audience and talk about the topics that they're passionate about and drive connection from there, that's where influence is. I want to talk about the state of influencer marketing. All the stats and the data says that it's growing, right? I think in the last couple of years, even at within some of our forecasts at WGSN, we've said that it's no longer a nice to have, right? Influencers within the marketing mix are a must in today's society. All the data says that we trust influencers more than, you know, typical celebrities. Where do you think we're at in terms of the influencer marketing industry, I guess, in terms of it being an imperative in the marketing space? And perhaps more importantly, where do you think it's going as we look into 2026 and 2027? Really, where we are right now is moving from influencer marketing as a campaign to a full capability and then infrastructure. And one of the things that, like, talk a lot about right now, because this is very prevalent today with the rise of Chatsubt and AI and different tools to help creators make content at a very high level. But you're right, the stats are what they are. The capability and the need is only growing. More brands are getting into it. Brands that we worked with 10 years ago, well, after about four or five years of working with us or several million dollars spent, they eventually in housed it. That's what's going to naturally happen. When you figure out that something is working for you, you're going to build a team around it, you're going to build infrastructure, you're going to build the piping that connects the paid media side to the growth side to the marketing side, to the content side, and all of it should have influencer and creator at the center of it. But now you're moving towards this capability function where the algorithm are easier to gamify than ever. So you can start an account, you can follow a playbook, and it's not as if you're being blessed with audience overnight the way it might have happened 10 years ago when the 4U page would feature an influencer and they'd grow 100,000 followers overnight. But now with the right strategy with the right content, with less money than ever. So that authenticity that Jen was talking about is slowly decreasing because it's its own version of slop right now. It's just putting a lot of content out there. And we've been watching creators, especially in the travel space, especially in the fashion space, just kind of appearing overnight, growing an audience, and then not really knowing how to sustain that audience. So one of the things that's important for brands to solve for, you need to be very aware of what do you want somebody to say on your behalf, what action do you want them to drive, and for consumers, you're just going to be inundated more than ever with getting pushed content. So it's almost like you have to be more careful what you want to engage with which trains that algorithm on getting more content that you're then going to produce. And what's interesting right now is we're talking about the future here. We're actually seeing a lot of private accounts, growing audience, or having no audience being new trend right now. Now how do you convey influence without an audience? Well, for individuals like entrepreneurs, small business owners, folks that have influence of an untraditional makeup, maybe it's with their pocketbooks, maybe it's with their own success, or a board member of a company, people who can curry favor and have what we'll call quiet influence. These individuals might not have ever had time to create a social audience, but today might have the ability to do it, but still I like the fact that they're carving on a niche for themselves in that needing to perform, but needing to kind of have this soft influence behind the scenes. I love the idea of quiet influence. That's so nice. What do you think that articulate that more? I want to hear more about that. Really, in my opinion, the ultimate influencer is a CEO or a small business owner. And up until about like 2020, there were only like three of them. You had Gary Vaynerchuk, you had Sophia Marosa, you had Tim Ferris, and you had Tyler Haney was really great at this from outdoor voices. These individuals, also I'd say Emily Weiss from Glossier. So you had the idea of like you were a creator of sorts where you created a brand from that. Therefore, one of the reasons that investors were giving you money is you had an audience, but you had these CEOs who kind of knew how to create content. Professor Scott Galloway is another good one where you had a niche. You had people who were listening to you and you had influence without audience. Now, of course, the audience grew and that's why they were CEOs and influencers. But if you think about an entrepreneur or a small business owner or CEO, these are individuals who are influential to their peer group, their own employees, their boards, their viewed as somebody to emulate. So the idea that you can convince people of your success and therefore want to have them emulate you and create content around that. The playbook is pretty simple. You all need the same things if you want to start a business. So why wouldn't I listen to another entrepreneur talk about what CRM they're using? What payments processing system they're using? These to me are ways of getting into the minds of people who are deemed to be successful or ways that I want to learn about. Yeah, and then just one thing I'll add, you know, on the kind of quiet, influence, private influence side, we see a lot that some of the most influential people in our lives and we know this is true for other people as well are not people who have a lot of followers. They may have 500, 700 followers, but behind the scenes when they're participating in, you know, private dinners or private events where there's a very kind of curated and hands-like group of people, these people have a ton of influence in those circles and they do drive purchase power. Now the tricky part about that is how do you measure that, right? Like it's a really difficult thing to measure. It's something that Brandon and I are actually really fascinated in trying to figure out, but so much of the so much influence is garnered in these kind of behind the scenes moments, not necessarily in the public eye on social media. Totally. I want to talk about actually the fact that the space is becoming incredibly saturated, right? So we've been talking about what's been dubbed the middle class of creators for a while now. So the idea that not everyone can be that bona fide star, not everyone can become Alex Earl, but there can be many, you know, mid-tier influencers who can scratch out a living on the internet and that be their sort of core, their core, you know, career almost, if you will. So I guess I'm curious, do you think we're reaching a point of oversaturation with influencers and where do you think we go from here? Is the middle class of creators going to become, you know, more of a populous space that people really scratch out a living on or is it becoming too difficult in the sense that it's crowded and these platforms are becoming over and ended with people creating content. TikTok, for example. The next wave is really niche. The way that social is working is it's going to empower thousands of, you know, what would mean, you know, credible locals or experts who can collectively shape culture in a unique way that's more sustainable over time. That's more community-led. That's more focused on their own individual environment, geography or niche. Jan, I know you have a lot of thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, I do think, you know, we mentioned the word bubble. I don't think that, you know, everybody will end up surviving as an influencer or creator over time. I think that like, there are people who are kind of dabbling, who may go in a different direction. But to the point about kind of the hyper-local, you know, kind of smaller influencers, I think that they're really important in the sense that, you know, ultimately I think everybody wants to be able to see themselves in the people that they follow. And so, you know, only following the kind of top tier creme de la creme people, like, is not always, you know, doesn't always make you feel good. There's a lot of negativity associated with that. And I think seeing yourself in these people, like, I'll give you an example, I grew up in Boston. And I follow a lot of local Boston influencers. And what I love about that is that they're creating content around places that I know really well and love. And I don't, being out here in LA, I can't go and just stop by and see, you know, what's happening there. And I can't go to the restaurants and whatever. And so, I actually have, the algorithm has totally moved in a direction for me where I have this, like, ground swell of regional Boston content. And it could be people making fun of the accent. It could be about a new restaurant that's opened up there. It could be just, you know, skits around, like, old Boston lore. But for me, to be able to access that kind of portal is so fun. And I engage with that content constantly. So, I think that's really important. And I think people really want that, especially where there's such a lack of now kind of local news or, you know, that's kind of moving away from that as a society. But people still really need that kind of local, small town, you know, connection. And they're not going to get that from huge influencers. So, I think it's really critical, actually. In the trend world, we call that Nisha's the new norm. And we forecasted that like five years ago. And now it's, it's fine for 2025. And it's funny that what you're describing is exactly that. It's finally hit. So, it's nice to see confirmation. I did want to go back to the idea. There's basically an avenue for anyone who wants to become a creator and you can create content. And I think what I've seen in recent years that feels a little different is that there are so many, whether you call them, you know, I don't know if they're faceless influencers, but even like people on YouTube teaching you how to like change a tire. Like there is such a wide array of types of content creators on the internet. I think that we're in this sort of era where it's like the side hustle as a content creator is for everyone. And even doctors or lawyers or people that are teaching you mechanics teaching you how to change a tire or something like that. Do you think that we're moving into a world where like that's the reality where everybody will be a content creator in some regard? I mean, I'm technically a content creator. I have a podcast, right? Like is everybody going to kind of have that title of creator in the future? I personally don't think so. I think one of the things that is naturally going to happen is, well, first off, we have our friends, the large language models, which are trained on the collective knowledge of the entire human race constantly. So I would say that the second that enough content is created about how to change a tire, you're not going to need anybody with personality teaching you how to change a tire, especially if you're in a pivotal moment where you need to execute against that. I would say that the knowledge is there and it's going to be and the AI is going to figure out how to distribute that knowledge, how you need it when you need it as succinctly as possible. I think it was in Hamlet that brevity is the soul of wit. But so quick information quickly delivered succinctly and that is built on all of that. Isn't that kind of a sad reality? It's like there will be a sort of like personalityless internet of the future. Sure. I mean, well, you know, the other side of that is the dead internet theory, which who knows? We might be in the middle of that. But I believe though that so that's for utility driven content. So you know, you could argue that you know, the ingredients at a diner are the same as a Michelin star restaurant. It's just how it's presented in the narrative, how their package, that's where the personality really lives. You know, Jen was playing with Chet GVT yesterday for her skincare routine. And I was going to bring that up actually. Yeah, you want to you want to share that? Yeah. So I, you know, definitely follow a lot of beauty influencers, skincare influencers, all of that. And I, you know, I love seeing what people's routines are. And despite that, yesterday I was having an issue with my skin. And I used Chet GVT to help me figure out kind of where my routine should go right now. And I had never done this before in the beauty space. Like I feel like every couple weeks I'm using Chet GVT for something new and it's opening up my world to another way to to use it. But, you know, all of a sudden, I'm in my bathroom taking photos of all of my products. And it's giving me this just incredible routine that I've been wanting for years. And even, you know, I go to an amazing facialist. And even there, I'm not able to really understand the order of the products. And then where my skin, you need something different on a different day. And the fact that I now have this crystallization of exactly what to do. And it's a screenshot. I now have access to my phone. Like, gave me so much joy. And so that, to me, was like a thousand times better than going on Instagram and trying to sort through all the creators I follow who talk about, you know, routines. Like, it's sad actually. I don't like that either. But it's, it's like sad. It's really satisfying. I've done the same thing. I'm a bit of a skin care guru as well. And I will try a new product. And it will, I have very sensitive skin, and it will freak my skin out. And so I use chat GPT. I take pictures of my skin and say what's happening. And it tells me exactly what's happening, whether it's fully believable or not. I don't know. But it does help when it provides a, you know, a list of what to do. Moving on from just, you know, chat GPT, what about the accounts that are driven by AI? What about the fact that we're digitizing actual humans and moving them into an AI space as H&M has done? Or even just virtual accounts. I think if you roll back to like 2016, Little Michaela was the first to kind of come onto the scene. You look at her now. She's obviously fake, right? Like it's, it's an animation. But at the time, people were sort of like confused and they didn't really know what was happening. And the Uncanny Valley was like finally emerging on the internet. And now, I guess almost 10 years on, we have people on the internet that look incredibly real, right? It's hard to decipher reality from fiction. What do you think that means to the future of the greater economy? I personally don't like it. I don't, I don't engage with it. It doesn't resonate with me, but I believe it does resonate with other people. I think it's also, I think culturally in the US, I think people are less apt to want to consume content from an AI influencer. But I think in other cultures, maybe in Asian cultures, it's a little bit more, it fits in better with the kind of cultural norms they already have. You know, I think where to me, it becomes dangerous. I think there's a lot of things about it that are dangerous. But one of the things that stands out to me is, you know, when you think about like young women, for example, living up to a, a beauty standard, an impossible beauty standard. And there are a lot of these AI girls out there on Instagram who have, you know, perfect proportions, perfect skin. And I think to be up to, for younger women to be seeing that at a young age and being, and then comparing themselves to that, which is, is literally an impossible standard. You know, now you're moving out of even the celebrity space and you're into like, you know, not a real human. That creates a very dangerous relationship, I think, for us as a society. And so, I believe it will become the norm, honestly. I think over time it will be normalized. I don't think AI is going anywhere and it's just become part of the conversation. And they'll, it'll just be a subset of the creator space. And I think some people will really gravitate towards it and others won't. But it, I think it's here to stay. We don't have a lot of exposure to, to gen alpha personally. But when we have gotten the chance to meet some individuals for between the ages of 12 and 16, one of the things that we hear from them is that they know who their peers are, who grew up on screens. And they know who their peers are, who didn't. And that there's this really interesting divide, you know, in middle schools and high schools right now and how they're, they're taught and the impact that COVID had. And through growing up on those devices, and then realizing the toxicity of social media. And what it can do, if you pull on that thread a little bit, you start to get to this world where they want the real, they want physical experiences. They might, you know, we're hearing that they're rejecting social media in different ways. So the rise of artificial personalities and creators kind of bucks that trend. And there will always be a niche for those who want that. And from a business perspective, to not have to pay a real person to just be able to artificially generate a creator and then use the algorithm to build audience, that can be a good business. But it diminishes where I think the trend of social is going, which is more human, more FaceTime, more one-on-one, more personal rather than personalized. We call, there's a term we use in the trend world where I can't think of what it is right now. Oh, suspicious optimism. It's an emotion that people feel towards AI. And some people are very suspicious towards it, regionally, mostly a lot of Western young people are very suspicious towards it. Other markets are very optimistic. India is a huge market that's really, really leaning into AI and is very optimistic towards it and feels very optimistic towards it rather. If more young people are going offline, naturally they won't be engaging with creators. What's your take on that? Do you think that this is a sort of fleeting moment? Do you think that this is a wider sort of macro trend where more people are going to want to touch grass, want to interact in real life, go back to retail stores, etc. And what does that do to the creator economy as a result? TV was rotting our brains in the '80s and video games were preventing us from going outside in the '90s. And then dial up internet was dessocializing us. There's always been this moral outcry throughout history for one thing or another. The original social network was your friend group. So, you know, if individuals are kind of moving offline, well, that means half the population isn't going to move offline. There was always going to be a place and a space for individuals who are like minded to find a way to meet up in the real world or the virtual world in one way or another. So, my belief is, especially kind of from the brand side, it's really starting to lean into what what future you want to create now and finding the right voices who are going to help you do that, whether they're internal, your own your own employees or designers, or whether they're external and you're wanting other people to talk about their habits, which normalize a concept. You said something in the beginning, Jen, community capital. I don't know if that's kind of what we're talking about here, but I like that term. It feels like a trend buzzword. I think it is. I think that we've come full circle on it. Yeah, amazing. Like always, I like to ask all of my guests, who is somebody that they admire, who's creating a new version of tomorrow, or perhaps an inspiring version of tomorrow that is really interesting and worth sharing. So, Brandon will come to you first. Do you have a pick? There is an incredible female entrepreneur here in Los Angeles. Her name is Brittany Stewart. She is the CEO and founder of a oral care brand called Burst. Talking to the idea that you're not necessarily employees, but you can find an impassioned audience. For her, it just happens to be tens of thousands of dental hygienists across the country that she has been able to empower to not just love and leverage her products, but to be able to cultivate an economic engine for themselves by leaning into some top products, some incredible design, and bring that to dental hygienists across the nation, where you're leaning into that, not as employees, but as somebody who can create a real connection with. She's just done something that is absolutely incredible, and has built this very quiet, but powerful, not just following, but believers. And something that is just so important to, you know, what do you brush your teeth with? And, you know, how do you stay healthy? And I just love everything that she's been able to do. Nice. And Jen, Jen, who's your pick? This is someone that I've, we've admired for a long time, and he was Michael Ventura. And he is a former agency owner in New York who has built his written books. And one of the concepts that he's come up with is called Applied Empathy, that was kind of his first pillar. And this was years ago, like before the idea of kind of empathy entered the workplace. And it was basically the idea that, you know, you have to, like, empathy is kind of the lens through which you need to look at, like, how you lead and how you manage people. And he's built that into from a book to, you know, he speaks all over the world to global organizations. But just someone who like, you know, everything he does is like 10 years ahead. So he'll do something. And I'm like, kind of like, oh, interesting. I've never seen anybody talk about that or do that before. And then all of a sudden, you know, five, 10 years later, like everyone's doing it. And so his most recent kind of creation is around purpose and the idea that, you know, rather than having a north star of what your purpose is as a human, it's a constellation. And so he's constantly, you know, kind of breaking down these ideas that are very sort of esoteric or flipping them on their heads to kind of see them through a different lens. And I love people like that. I think, you know, people who kind of create something out of nothing and are very much, you know, bucking trends and saying something that's maybe a little controversial or a little bit difficult to understand because it's so far ahead. And then all of a sudden it becomes a norm. Like, I really admire people who are able to do that. And so I would say him. Thank you to my guests, Brandon Perlman and Jennifer Perlman, founder and GM of influencer marketing firms, social studies. If you're a WGSN subscriber, look out for more trends at WGSN.com. If you're not a subscriber, please come and discover our services. We'll be back with our next episode soon. In the meantime, you can catch the CEO of WGSN, Carla Buzashi, next week on our other podcast, Lies of Tomorrow. I'm your host, Cassandra Napoli. Be sure to follow and subscribe to this podcast and see you next time.