The Strategy Behind MGM’s Influencer Empire with Jessica Dove

If you're enjoying the Creator Economy Live podcast, then you need to join us at New York City on July 29th at the ultimate influencer marketing event for brands. If you want to meet and learn from hundreds of brands, including Magnum Ice Cream, L'Oreal, D'Aonghi, Geico, Karen Finch, American Express, and so many more, then there's only one place you need to be this July. Trust us, you're going to want to be in the room with them. Grab your ticket today at CreatorEconomyLive.com and use code CELPOD20 at checkout. Welcome to Creator Economy Live. You're one stop shop for all things in influencer marketing and the Creator Economy. We are your hosts Keith and Brendan and we've gotten amazing episodes in store for you today. Also shout out to our sponsors at Linkia and honestly the amazing production team and just the whole team at CreatorEconomyLive. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for making this episode and all the episodes a reality. I cannot believe this is episode 83. I think we've got a really good show today Keith. I'm like all those others. This one, this one's going to be good. The other one's not so much. This one, this one's going to be pretty solid. Who do we have in store for us today? Yeah, we're going to have a good episode today. We have a lot to cover and we're going to talk about the Super Bowl. We're going to talk about Moltbuck, Upscroald, all the craziness going on in the social world today. We're going to have Jeff Dove joining us. Jeff Dove is the director of social media influencer marketing at MGM Resorts. She's been with the brand for over a decade. A ton of insight in how their influencer strategy has evolved. They do some really interesting work. I don't think a lot of people understand the properties they own either. They own Aria, Belagio, Cosmopolitan, which is my personal favorite. Natalie Bay, Luxur. Really cool gig. Very interesting influencer work they've done over the years. We're going to get some really, really fascinated conversations. But before we bring Jess in, Brendan, I know we're a little bit out from the Super Bowl once this air is butt. We haven't caught up since then. Super Bowl was creator-mania to some extent. I saw some people talking about. There weren't that many creators in the official Super Bowl ads. Others talking about creators were everywhere because it's not just about the official ads. But one, how was your Super Bowl week? And two, what you think of the creator presence? Super Bowl week. We're saying we're calling it a week. If you were in San Francisco, it was a week. The party started Tuesday or Wednesday and went through Sunday night. So I definitely had a week out of it. But I guess if you weren't in SF. I got to be honest, the last 20 years, probably the only time I've actually set down watching the entire Super Bowl was when I was working on it. And so this year I was not. And so I only watched bits and pieces. You're not exactly the biggest football fan though, right? I didn't meet last night. I'm going to put you in touch with that. I had a marketing of the National Surf League or whatever it's called. And I'm like, that you would watch. The WSL. See that how you captured it. I don't know if it's the Super Bowl. You're a football. We had a there was a dinner in the city last night, a big marketing dinner. And we were chatting. But see, see, this is my point though. Look how excited you are. See if this the Super Bowl. I don't know if it's representative of the Super Bowl or just you're not a big football. Oh, you know sports ball. I'm all in. I'm not a big pro sports guy. I mean, like, yeah, like I just I don't have the patience. I can't sit there and watch it. And like I got to be honest to you. I don't even understand the rules of football. Like I'm so far out of it. But like, all right. So anyways, go into the creator of it all. I mean, it just seems like every year there's more and more creators. I don't know. Like also they continuously gone from like 15 years ago, little cameo here and there to now they are like the hero. Like I think a great example of that is Salesforce. It was like last year. I think it was last year. It was like Matthew, Conne, hey was the hero of the Salesforce had this year. It was Mr. Beast and it's sort of like I think that's like a microcosm of like the macro kind of shifts and also like last year was like corporate bro was I think he might have had an appearance like a little cameo and the actual Super Bowl spot. But I think it was more of like he played a role in like the the ancillary support and content with Matthew McConaughey, which I think everybody sort of like historically has been like. Yeah, we'll put a little cameo in and that's our creator strategy, which is cool, but it's also not unique new or different necessarily. So I actually talked to the influencer lead at the NFL yesterday. We were catching up. So I got I got it all the break down and the interesting takes. I think there's a difference between a commercial and an all the activity and kind of the long tail of viewership. So number one, they're saying that they hosted more than 160 creators at the Super Bowl this year, which is an insane number. So just forget about the ads, like just getting creators there, getting content produced. It's the biggest it's ever been and they said it's going to be even bigger next year. And I heard that 30% this is crazy 30% of NFL related views in 2025 occurred during the leagues off season. So we're actually about to enter a huge part where the creators play a massive role because there are no games to watch. There are no huge celebrities and that are people following too much right now off the field. So creators are going to play a massive role, you know, come now for the next six months. And so I think that the impact that creators have on this sport and all sports is bigger than a commercial. Now if you go to the commercials, there was a decent amount of activity you talked about Mr. Beast with the Salesforce, I'm burning with with ramp. You talk about page to Sorba with Kinder Keith Lee and the Helmens commercial, I show speed and met as Oakley commercial. There was a lot there, but you have to cross over from creator to creator celebrity, right? I mean, you're spending upwards of $10 million on a Super Bowl ad. You need the person you feature to have as much notoriety across as many generations as humanly possible. And the Mr. Beast have crossed over obviously the eyes your speeds have crossed over the Keith Lee's have crossed over most creators have not crossed to that level. So I understand why you're not going to put a macro, mid-tier micro influencer to commercial makes no sense for spending all that money. That's not the point of the commercial. But if you think about the lead up to the commercials, the after commercials, the on site parties, I mean in San Francisco all week long everyone was trying to get to like where are the creators, where the cool people hanging. So I think they dictate culture. They just don't have the notoriety at least most of them don't to appear in an eight to $10 million Super Bowl ad. But I had fun at the game. I will say that although I will make one comment the half time show is designed for people at home. I couldn't see shit. Those trees like everything going on you can't see anything. I'm like I'm happy I'm here. It's fun to be here. But I'm watching the jumbo trial the same way you're watching your TV set. So NFL's really designed the Super Bowl for for ad hope you as my opinion. I mean that makes sense. It's like what how many people are in the stadium 20,000 or something and there's like 20 million. You really have no idea how to tell games work. I'd say it's like 70 80. Oh really wow. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. 20,000 Jesus. That would be so. I don't know. There's a lot of people in the stands. I but like I got to give a shout out. Alright. Do you know what boy throw is? I do not. Oh my gosh. This was actually going to be like my legit creator the week and like air. You know that SaaS platform. Yeah. Which they did. Oh my gosh. Yes. Boy throw is like a rabbit hole. You got to go down. If anybody's listening to this. Boy throw is like that. I cannot tell what's going on. If it's parody or it's real. It's it's a viral TikTok boy band known for wearing pink track suits and like. Oh yeah. I did hear about this. And they're campaigning. They're always like sort of like referencing that like they're trying to get their fourth member over from India. And there's a lot of the content is navigating like they're trying to like navigate their way through the industry and like I literally I cannot tell if it's parody or if it's real or what. But air partnered with Darshan who is their fourth member who like always makes appearances like on a laptop screen like they're like filming and dancing and then they'll like be like. Darshan here like and like I was just like holy crap that they move fast because like I've been seeing boy throw up but I finally like went down the rabbit hole last week. Yeah. So like I think that was like very insider baseball but those who got it like just absolutely incredible. So I mean every brand wants those on the cusp right the ones that are about to break out and you're always searching for who could that be and that was a really good good get I saw picture of them was it at the Super Bowl or. Be the Grammys they were wearing all pink and they were holding the laptop. Yeah very funny very funny. I mean let's see how things evolve for the NFL in the off season. I'm curious kind of who they partner with how much activity they do. If they did 160 of the Super Bowl this year I mean I guess they break 200 next year and however many they worked with this year beyond the Super Bowl I'm guessing they I'm guessing they double it next year it's going to be. It's going to be even bigger plus all the brands that are bringing creators to the Super Bowl it's like that's probably 20. the X at least I would imagine. - Yeah, that's a good point. I don't know if that's included in that number if it's part of the partnership. I'm sure the YouTube stuff is, but maybe most brands who do what offs is not. That's a good point. All right, let's, before we bring Justin, we'll bucket these together 'cause I wanna hear your opinion. Moltbeuch kind of exploded a couple weeks ago, kind of quieted down, but that was one of the upscroll. So for those not following, Moltbeuch, it's a place for chat bots to link and connect with other chat bots. It's like a social network for chat bots. It is wild. It went mega viral. They're talking about like they're human owners. It's weird and crazy to watch. Like if you look at the threads, the top threads of conversations on the sites. Crypto schemes, AI world to combination, the self-awareness of the bots is kind of bizarre. Of course a week later, there was a whole, you know, privacy hacking mess that happened. So I don't know, I think this thing was probably just popped and is gonna die, but it was a weird blip on the radar a couple weeks ago. Did you follow that story at all? - I saw it. I didn't go to the site itself. To me, it seems like one of those things that feels like a great headline and I'm just inherently skeptical as to like, is anything really like, is there, there, there? That's just like my gut reaction, but admittedly I didn't go in and check it out. Did you play around with it at all? - I mean, I didn't sign up or anything 'cause you have to actually link your agents or like, you have to put your data in basically and this was before the privacy disaster. I'm like, there's gonna be a privacy disaster here somehow. So I didn't do anything. It was just weird to see the headlines and watch it. Which I guess the upscroll is kind of related kind of not, but upscrolled search to number one on the US download charts when TikTok kind of had their chaotic US onboarding. Kind of similar to TikTok, it's censorship free. It's chronologically ordered feed. It's just an alternative to TikTok, but it went from 40,000 users to over 1 million users just in that week of chaos. I don't think this will be anything. I think this is the blue sky ex type of situation, but people were trying to make a big deal over upscrolled. - Yeah, I tend to agree. I don't think that's gonna stick around long. I mean, I remember I have a long few list of a ton that had like coming on. I was like, bite and oh gosh. I've got them in my notes. Lemonate. Remember that one and like. - What about even the disappearing one? God, why am I blank out of you? You take, or not? - Be real. - Be real. What was the kind of voice one? It was live kind of podcast, webinar type of thing this was years ago where everyone was on that. - Yeah. - The graveyard is getting much bigger. They used to be Tumblr and a few odd in my space. And now the graveyard is filled out with a lot of these. But yeah, I don't believe in really any of them if I'm being honest. - Same. Unless they just got billions of dollars at this point, it seems like-- - Yeah, yeah, it's good. - Agreed. - Yeah. - All right, let's take a quick break and then we are gonna bring just and get into it. - Two billion dollars in carted products. That's how much Linky has driven for its customers. So if you're looking for an influencer marketing agency, look no further. Some of the most innovative brands in the world have turned to Linky at a plan, execute, and measure their influencer investments. We're talking McDonald's, Duolingo, Kraft, Canva, Chevrolet, Clorox. I could go on and on, we just don't have time. Find out why Linky has a 9.2 customer satisfaction rating by contacting the Linky team at [email protected]. Tell them Keith and Brendan sent you. All right, we are back, Jess, welcome to the pod. Excited to have you. - Thank you, excited to be here. - Yeah, before we go, Vegas, Brendan, you go first. What's your resort of choice for Vegas? - I'm not super savvy with Vegas, but I think Arya-- - Yeah. - Like I'm not super up to date with the coolest, but I know I stated Arya and I like that. - There? - Jess, what's your go to? Are you allowed to say or is this like picking a favorite child? - It's kind of like picking a favorite child, so I'll get political on my answer. I like to bounce around, so I mean staying cosopolitan, they have insane and stunning sweets, the terrorist views of the fountains, like you can't beat it. Dining so many things opened recently, so we just had Jim Kanna open at Arya, Carbone Riviera, Appalagio, both are phenomenal. Just be bobbing around the properties. - Yeah, I would say I saw, I don't know what, so we were talking about concerts last night, someone brought up a seeing of itchy and excess, and I saw that a few years back, it was before he passed. Arya was over served. I woke up in a very, very rough state in the Cosmo, but I will say if I could pick any hotel to be hungover as hell. (laughs) Be the Cosmo. - The Cosmoopolitan is, I mean, hungover or not, but they do have really great breakfast spot, but if you can stand waiting in the line while you're hungover, recommend. - Yeah, I pulled up a chair, you know how you could lie in the chairs in the pool, like you could just be in the water, eating my eggslot, having a drink, a little hair, the dog, so to speak. That's one of the greatest inventions ever, by the way. The chair in the pool, game changer. I love that, like the ones where they're built in, like the loungers and you just like, oh. - They're basically made for that situation, so. - It's so key. Wait, now, what about food? What is the best restaurant? 'Cause there's a lot of good food in Vegas. - Now that really is like picking a favorite child. We have so many restaurants. It really is just what, whatever you're looking for, to date, carbon, herbiera is my favorite. They have this pistachio cake, it sounds so stupid. Like they have the best food ever, entire menu, but they're pistachio cake, like I would go there and sit at the bar and just eat the pistachio cake. - What are they? We talked about, we've had airline marketers, we've had hotel marketers. So what are your perks? Do you get to stay for free at any of these properties? Do you get eat for free? What's going on? What are they giving you, Jeff? - We have a lot of perks. I think the nature of my job, I get access to venues before anybody else gets to see them, experiences that only are up brush lawn players or guests get to see. I won't go too much into that 'cause they like to keep it a secret, but I definitely get a peek behind the curtain that maybe half a percent of the world gets to see. - There, Pa. All right, that's interesting. If when we go out on the town, when I'm in Vegas, do we have to, do I have to keep all of our activities to MGM properties? - Yes. That's a good question. No, do it, do it once, but I, personally don't see a need to go anywhere else. We have so many properties on this trip. So there's really something for everybody in the MGM portfolio. - Okay, fair. I will update the MGM. - I mean, it's like 75% of the strip. - So fair. All right, cool. Good answer, good answer. All right, let's get into the work stuff. So tell people kind of what your gig is, what your focus is. And I know you've, I mentioned you've been there for a decade plus. How has that evolved over the decade plus? - Sure. So I'm like you mentioned, the director of social and influencer marketing at MGM Resorts. I've been there for over a decade and I'm very fortunate to have played almost every role on the social team. And so I've been the social manager for almost all of our brands on the Vegas trip. I was the entertainment social manager. I started the influencer marketing program for the company. And so, you know, that's my gig. We're overseeing social strategy for the brands now. And then of course, working with our influencer marketing agency to bring our experiences to life. - Okay. Is it talk to people about how it works? So you have all these properties. Do the properties have separate social channels? Do they have separate influencers channels? Is this a centralized structure? Even when you were on social, just running social accounts versus now, like how is it actually structured? - Yeah. I mean, in my time at the company, it has evolved so much. So I started actually as the social manager sitting on property at Luxor. Axori, I drove across country as a newly graduated college student, drove across country four days into my role. They're like, hey, your job's getting pulled into corporate. So you have to reply, which I'm very fortunate to still be here and have gotten the experience that I did. But you know, being 23 years old, you know, like, what do you mean? 31 hour drive. Got to drive back. So we sat at property long story short, sat at property, and then our social team got pulled into a COE in corporate. And so we sat, you know, within the corporate structure altogether. And then most recently, we actually switched back to kind of a hybrid model. So I sit within the corporate structure and the social managers, they report to me, but they sit on property for their assigned resort. And so they, you know, it's much more collaborative with our marketing counterparts. They sit within that organization. And we just go back and forth on priorities and, you know, social best practices in that way. - There, Kwa. I will tell you my first Vegas trip ever, this was a long time where there was over 20 years ago, probably, no, probably around 20 years ago, I stayed at the Luxair. It's like the first, you know, like, I was, I think it was my 21st birthday, actually. I stayed at the Luxair. And that was, you know, at that time, time you come in, it's the beam, such a cool experience. I had the room where like the hot tub is in the room. Oh perfect perfect for a 24th day. Such a good 21st birthday, but I remember we ran out of stuff to drink. I'm in the hot tub. So I'm like, I get out, I go downstairs, I'm like looking for how can it bring something to the room. I go and I get like, you know, a few of the air playing type of bottles of something. I come up, I open up, oh no, I got like a fifth, I open it up and I drop it in the hot tub and I'll never forget that. I was over served that night too. I feel like I get over-served in Vegas often. I think that's a lot of people's narrative. Although Brendan and I of all the amazing five star restaurants in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, Brendan and I shared an epic meal at the one and only in and out. We yes, this is the best, yeah, this is the best restaurant. There it is. Done, done. Do you know how many times I hit in and out over that like 48 hours in Vegas? Like really? That's sad. That makes me sad. When I first came out here, I had never had in and out and so that was like a phenomenon to me. So I always say- Wait, were you living before? I don't think I know this story. You were living where? Yeah, I'm from Maryland. So born and bred in Maryland and then just came out to Vegas. So what was before MGM? How did you make that leap? What was the job before? Let's take a step back. Yeah, nothing related to Casino or entertainment. I was in social for Kasa, which is court-appointed special advocates doing their social for the state of Maryland, but not at all related to hospitality, travel, entertainment. A very long story. My stepmom, she works for the government and so she had to come out to Vegas a lot for work. I don't know if you guys have been to Maryland, but it's where I'm from. It's a very farm town. A lot of commuting, even though it's a very small state. And so where I lived, I would have to commute like two hours each way to like Washington, D.C. or something of the like. So my dog is joining. Sorry, he's here. So my stepmom came out here and she's like, "Hey, you know, it's a lot more conducive to someone who just graduated college in Vegas. Why don't we go out there for spring break? Check it out." So she brought me on here for spring break. I don't know if that was a smart idea because I also was over-served. And then just said, "You know what? Full send. We'll move out here." Wow. Wow. That's a good story. And you drove across the country, but you would have to drive anyway, right? Whether you were on property or in the headquarters, you would have bad to be in Nevada, soon. Yeah. Yeah. It's very much a need to be on site type of role. Yeah. Okay. But how much time do you spend in an office versus on the properties these days? That has changed as well. So with COVID, before COVID, I'll back up a little bit. Before COVID, we were in an office five days a week. But we sat at our corporate office, which is satellite. It is away from the properties, but kind of centralized so that you can get to the different meetings and all that good stuff. COVID happened and we were from home full-time. And then just recently maybe a year ago, we got pulled back into the office. And it's been great. So now, while the schedule is still very flexible, we're in office four days a week, five days a week. Okay. And the team, like broadly speaking, what is the team meant to do for the properties? Is it about growing the audience online? As a following, is it about getting more people to stay and prove that? Is it about big events and just promoting the sexiness of Vegas? Like, what is it all of it? Like, what is your team really held accountable for? Yeah, it's all of it. And so what they do is they ingest, you know, our property priorities, our tent pole moments for the property and on an enterprise level. And they make it social forward. And so a lot of transporting, a lot of, you know, offer driven initiatives. But we do have those events like F1 and then the citywide events like Super Bowl, where we can tap in because we are, we are right there. Yeah. And is it mostly barter structure with influencers? I think a lot of people feel like, Hey, you're giving them this nice expensive hotel. That's enough. But even, you know, the dinner I was at last night, we had wine people, we had hotel people. And they're like, the ones who have real influence doesn't pay the bills. They don't give a shit. So like, how do you think about influencer partnerships? We do it in one of two ways. So the first being, like you said, those barters, we have people coming to market just on their own of all tiers, all statuses of creators, which is great. And they're already on their way here. So there's no, you know, travel fees involved or anything like that. So we do that, do that barter structure. And that's really just an evergreen type of campaign awareness, driving, FOMO driving content. And then we do work with an agency that will, they'll have partnerships on our behalf when it comes to those larger campaigns, those larger events. So think of the F1s of the world or a carbon revier. I keep going back to that. A grand opening of a restaurant. And so we will kind of hone in on a specific type of creator, a specific niche or topic that we were hitting the right audience that that'll be interested in that specific thing. I mean, I know you've got one to different properties and different moments. And they're probably appealing to different audiences. But I'm curious, like, who is sort of like the target demo these days for Vegas? Because I feel like it's like Vegas is now sort of like, I'll they become, I mean, for decades, I guess, sort of become the family destination. But I imagine there's like a key decision maker. And then like, there's, you know, the 20-somethings that are doing their, you know, bachelor, bachelor at party, there's the family vacation, there's the wannabe high rollers, the high rollers. So yeah, like, how do you segment it? Who are you going after? Great question. So take the amount of properties we have. And that is the amount, those are the different demographics that we're looking for. So we did a lot of audience segmentation last year to really identify who, who is our audience. We can't just go off of, you know, vibes anymore. We really have to understand why people are coming to our properties, what they're looking to do and how we tailor those experiences to them. So each and every one of our properties has a different, different target. So Luxor could be those 21 year olds having their birthday party in the hot tub, whereas Bellagio. Just destroying those rooms. Right. Just destroying rooms, spilling out the wall in the tub. That's, you know, Luxor's demographic. Whereas Bellagio, there are upper echelon, you know, luxury gamers. They're really looking for that very tailored to them experience cosmopolitan. Again, another luxury property for us, but that demographic is far different. I'm guessing you give the two pillars. You kind of have like the evergreen people are coming all the time. You have your bigger moments, whether it's launches, whether it's F1, whatever it is. Let's start with the first one. I'm imagining you get insane amount of inbound of can I stay for free? Can I stay for free? So how do you decide who to work with? How do you manage that? And then do you have to create like a whole experience for them when they're there where you have to like welcome them and just hand hold them or is it more like this? And we need to do this at volume. Give them the free hotel, but we can't be doing hand holding on site. Yeah, I mean, it's all of that. It really depends on the creator. So they'll reach out to us. Obviously, we want to make sure that they are a good fit for our brands. I'll hate to say this, but a lot of times we will get, I want to say apology, and it's like, okay, we're looking at your content and looking at your audience. We do use a tool to tap into who their audience is. Your audience is not necessarily aligned with the blog. So okay, great. We think your content would be more aligned with a Mandela Bay. And so we'll offer them a package based off of that. But yes, we do tailor, typically tailor in itinerary for each and every one of our guests, whether it's barter or whether it's through our agency. But to your point, we do have to do it at scale. So for those barter situations, it's not going to be the white glove, you know, escorting them through the property. And there's a content creator with them. But then on the other side, with our agency, they're very well, is some, but maybe it's a content creator with them from our team, where they'll bring somebody with us. There's definitely going to be someone who helps check them in and make sure that they go to all their experiences. They're briefed on everyone of the venues. It's a lot. Do you have someone who does this full time? Like, this sounds like you can be doing this day and night based on what I assume is the volume of messages you're going to get? I have done this day and night. Yes. So as it stands right now, our agency is handling most of it. And then we are still building our team on the organic sense. And so trying to see where that fits in in the day to day for our social media managers and potentially a coordinator who can help tailor those experiences for us. And how many people are you? Right now, I think it's eight. I think we have eight people on our team. And that's organic social influencer, not paid social or yes, like paid a separate effect. So organic social. Not paid social. We do work very, very closely with our paid team, but these are organic social media managers. How many times is Brendan DM'd to get a property barter deal? And how many times have you said, no? Hold that up, really. They say, go to the circus circus. We don't want you here. You're five and audience feel circus circus. That's amazing. If in and out how to hotel, that would be one of my favorite. Oh my god. Yeah. That would be that would be so clutch. So talk about experiences. I do want to hear about, well, I don't want to pollute you and give you examples. Like, what are the coolest either launches for a restaurant or big events, sporting events or otherwise? Like, what have been some of the really cool things you've been doing? - Yeah, I mean, I mentioned it a little bit, but Formula One is a site to see. I've done three of them thus far, and each and every year it gets better and better. The Lodgeo Fountain Club has just the best view of the experience. And so, and it's kind of like Super Bowl weekend, right? So it's not just the race, there are activations, there's so many brand partners in town and so many creators in town. That's probably the upper echelon of events that we do. Super Bowl, we had Super Bowl a couple of years ago. And we actually partnered with Doritos to turn Luxor, theme of the episode is Luxor. And to Dorito, so we had a Dorito wrap on Luxor. I love the brand partnerships and how we bring them to life, especially for our brands who are really interested in experimenting like Luxor. But yeah, I think those are my two favorite. - Nice, any really creators that you were either star-struck or just had like such an amazing experience where you were. - For the opposite, you want to drop some tea. - We're all ears. - I do have some tea, I do have tea, but I don't, I don't want to spend it. - Oh my gosh. - It's just between us. - It's just between us, girls. No, I won't, I won't throw anybody under the bus. But I mean, Bajee fountain club, you see everybody, like Naomi Campbell and Kendall Jenner walk through, they didn't participate, but they did walk through our red carpet. We had the glam bot with Cole Wallace, so it's just so cool. The experiment experiences and just the types of people that come through Bajee fountain club is insane. We had Ace from Love Island, I was like, oh my God, I didn't even know you were gonna be here. - I should know this. There's no properties outside of Vegas, right, that I'm Jim O'Han? - There are, there are. Yep, so we have our regional properties in the US, so we have, oh my gosh, this is like a quiz. We have Empire in New York, Springfield in Massachusetts. We have MGM National Harbor in DC or Maryland. We have Fort Gata, that's an Atlantic city. We have Boervage in Mississippi, MGM Grand Detroit. That's here in the United States, and then we have a couple properties in China, so we have MGM Macau, and then we are building a property in Japan. - Wow, it do those, how much attention do those, can't, or Vegas start? - A lot. Oh, they do, okay. - Yeah, a lot of our properties, the audience is different, so it's a lot of drive market people coming to the regional properties and their gaming focus is a lot greater than ours, but yeah. - I wanted to tell you that. - These have their own social handles. I know, I was gonna say, we gotta start noting what our asks are here, Brenda. (laughs) So we, back to the social, like each property of its own social handle, are you creating content for each property? Do you have, is the team structured by property or is everybody kind of structured more like specialty and they're covering all the properties? - Yeah, so our regional friends, they're a little bit different, their social media managers do sit and report into that marketing org on property, so they create their own content, but as a marketing organization, if they're doing a large scale campaign, we'll help them out with strategy in that regard, we do influencers for them as well. Nothing international yet, but I don't see that very far away. - Okay, but in Vegas, do you have like a Bellagio person or it's more like you have a content when they cover the different properties? - Nope, every property, except for a few, they're, we call SouthPod, which is like the Mandalay Bay, the Luxor's Ex-Galbors MGM grants of the world, that is a pod, and that's an internal term, of course, but we have two individuals that split those properties, where Bellagio has their own, Cosmopolitan has their own social media manager, so. - Okay, and there are they onsite creating content, every single day. - They are, and they are insane at it. Each and every day they surprise me with a crazy trend, or a creator that they saw, that they wanna invite out, and so very fortunate to have such a talented team. - I would imagine like, so Vegas, you guys are like, looking for like high rollers and stuff coming in, but then like, do you guys also scan automatically to be like, who is just booking something on their own, and then if it's an influencer, you go out of your way to like, you know, getting in front of them, maybe creating an experience for them, is that something that happens as well? - We do, so a couple of our properties have a VIP team that will kind of flag when someone is on property, and then we'll collaborate with them to do, something simple, like an in-room amenity, and a note that usually goes over really well, but then we do have a team, our social care team, and our social media managers that do social listening, and so if they identify somebody on property, that they want to send something to them, we can go ahead and do that. So a good example of that is we had Leo Skeppie, who was just an enormous creator, stay at Cosmopolitan, you know, he was invited by our public relations team, but our social media manager just went above and beyond to send him this custom, there's a hat bar on property, so you can create these custom cowboy hats, and he's from Dallas, so she made this insane cowboy hat, like put in his room, he made so much content around it. I'd love to see that, 'cause you know, there was no contract, he was just staying with us, and to see a creator of that size really give back to the brand for these very small gestures, it's just a super organic partnership, so love to see it. - I mean, let's be honest, Brendan, VIPs are not, they're not booking anything themselves, no one's discovering a VIP through a booking system, they're getting cops, they're getting hooked up. - I don't know. I feel like there's like more people like these stuff, like am I crazy just, like, - No, you're not crazy. - If you're a family, you're gonna go stay somewhere, you're not gonna call for a couple of groups when you go stay with them. - Yeah, yeah. - They typically will reach out, but there is that unicorn that's like, you know what, I just wanna have a great Vegas experience, and they just do it on their own, but, and they'll tag us, and we do see it, and we try to do our best to, to plus up their experience. - 'Cause like, I imagine sometimes, like, I don't know, like, if I was like a big influencer, like, I could imagine just being like, I just don't wanna feel any sense of like obligation, I just wanna like, pay, and just be like, that's, I'm a customer, I'm just like, you know, going in and out like anybody else versus like, even if it's amazing, like, you know, if you're there, like, yeah, I'm vacationing, you're like, you don't, you can turn anything to a job, you know, especially if you're a creator, and sometimes you need a break from that. - Yeah, they're high grade, you know, you and I travel just like regular people, Brent, you know? - I know, they're so happy, so just like podcasts, you know, episode 83 level podcast is we're in the top one percent here. I mean, like, - Brennan, I am gonna pull your DMs in our social listening and just chat. - Just chat. - After this all I know. - Let's just keep that between you and I. We don't need to have any Brennan's DMs getting out. The Brennan files. - No, I'm just kidding. - Next, because we're talking about Vegas, I just gotta go back to, you know, what's Vegas stays in Vegas, but what is the best, craziest Vegas story Keith Jess go? - I feel like I gave you my to, I mean, if you want me to go deeper into my, - Dibotras. - Dibotras, yeah. - The Dibotras. I'll sum it up in a PG way to say, I went to see a VG, as they often do, they come on quite late, much later than the state of time on your ticket would say. I was escorted out before that time came. Let's just put it that way. - Oh, nice. I did not get to see a PG that night. That would be, that would be my short answer. - I haven't seen this Keith before. - Why? I was asked to leave the first time, 'cause I was in a state and I was in the bathroom. And they took me and they said, you know, you gotta go. But even when I get to a, to a heavy place, I'm still fairly, as you can imagine, like, composed and competent. And so I'm walking out with the bouncers like kicking me out of this club. And like we're talking, like I'm learning about him, his family, blah, blah, blah, by the time we get to the door, it's a long way from the bathroom door. He's like, you're good, man. Just like, just continue on. And then I went back and then another one. Shortly after, asked me to leave. And now that was the end of the night. (laughing) - Club story, this is before my MGM days, but the trip that I came out to Vegas with my stepmom, she brought my best friend as well. It also happened to be my birthday. So she got my best friend and I a table at, I think it was Tau, nightclub, just us two, which was insane. It was just insane. So of course, had a little bit too much. And then I had no idea where I was. I had never been to this place before. I had these like six inch heels on blisters, the whole nine and I just like come to you and I look up and my stepmom is sitting there and I just start crying. I was like, thank you for coming and getting me. Like I never want to found you. - This is a cool stepmom you've got. I have very different relationships with my mother that you had with your stepmom. I'll say that. - Well, she saved me from getting lost or worse in Vegas. - I'm looking forward to those moments with my daughters. I'm looking forward to those. Brenda, what is yours? You had 25 Indian Out Burgers. - 25 Indian Out Burgers for sure, done that a bunch of times. This is definitely not the crazy one, but this is the one that I could share and is related to a creator podcast. Years ago, we worked on this very short live in Heiserbush, Inbet brand. And we did, I don't know if it was like a launch or an activation in Vegas with a bunch of creators. and it was, it's so funny. Like I just have bits and pieces. in my memory and I don't remember how it all pieced together 'cause this was like 15 years ago, but we had like Jimmy Tattro there who went on then to our Tattro, went on to be in the 21 Jump Street reboot and all that, like so funny, a hand of heart, a bunch of other creators, and I don't know if this was part of the brand activation or if we took everybody to a ludicrous show and then we had a suite that was for a brand activation and for some reason in there there were baby goats and stuff. It's like one of those things, it's so long ago, was such a day, I just remember bits and pieces and glimpses of things, ludicrous, baby goats, crazy suite, don't tell me. Yeah, it's very hangover-esque. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which by the way, reboot a 21 Jump Street, one of the most undurated comedies. So good. So funny. So much. Really is impressive. All right, we're getting way off topic. Let's reel it in and then we gotta get to cowbout. Before we do, all right, anything you can tease just about 26, just something you're really excited about or something people should keep an eye out for. Oh man, nothing that I can say in full detail, but we do have a couple of really fun offerings coming up for our South Pod. So be on the lookout for that. We always plus up, again, the F1s of the world, disbording events that we do, the MGM slam is coming up at T-Mobile Arena. So yeah, those are my picks. Any trends that you're getting, that you're focusing on are caught up in like episodic content or you guys testing a series based thing. Like anything that's been hot in the conversation that you're trying this year. So I talked about my team a little bit and we have two what we call producers. They're content creators for organic social and they are so good at both luxury and just kind of our regular content, but lately they have been kind of merging event style content with brain rot content. And so it's a crazy mixture, but it works. Like for the MGM slam that's coming up, we made kind of a brain rot teaser and it worked so well. So that's what we're tapping into. I also have a girl on my team who every second of the day is sending me these crazy trends and they four blocks away a theme of the episode and they work for the brand. So there's so many. - Do you find that like senior leadership understands that or do you have to spend a lot of time being like, just trust, just let us test, let us trust? - It depends on the brand. Of course, we want to be protective of our luxury brands of the world and like Cosmopolitan, for example, has a very specific brand. But like I mentioned, some of them are more experimental and so our senior leadership is on board. We have a protocol for transporting that within a certain amount of hours, we need to jump on this or the trend is going to come and go. And we're very fortunate that our senior leadership works with us on that. - So what happens? So the producers see something on social media. Do they ping you? You ping leadership and you get back and say, go film, you're good, go capitalize. - Yeah, a lot of group chats. So it could be one of our producers or our social media managers will say, hey, I saw this trend. Here's exactly how I want to execute it for, for example, a Luxor. Here's the audio I want to use. We have issues with trending audio, so we won't go into that. But here's what we're going to do. I sign off property director or marketing team will sign off and then we just run with it. Get a final sign off really quick once it's done and good to go. - What about platforms? What's your priority platform and where you guys looking to invest and explore more? - Yeah, so definitely TikTok and Instagram are big two. When it comes to live coverage, X can get into the mix as well. We are on Facebook for our MGM rewards fans of the world. There's a lot of groups that personally as an employee of the company will tap into to see, you know what fans and members are really saying about the MGM rewards program. But one that we want to really tap into is YouTube shorts. Shorts and I think long, long form content. We haven't really dove headfirst into that. - Okay. Is every day a production day or do you have like Monday is ideation, Tuesday shoot, Wednesdays edit, like how structured do you have it? - It's funny that you mentioned that because we have like a two week work back and we just really honed in each day what you should be doing on each day. So Monday and Tuesday is ideation, getting sign off from the stakeholders and then we have to content production days within that work back and then some approval days as well editing approvals, all the good stuff scheduling. So. - Okay. And the production folks you have are they in front of a camera tour? You have to kind of switch who is in front versus behind. - Not all of our content has like a person of focus. So our content creators are behind the camera, but that's not to say that when we have a creator that maybe they couldn't bring a content creator with them or whatever or there's just a larger initiative that will have a subject in front of the camera. Our social media managers have stepped in. - Yeah, I mean, it's a group activity, right? I'm curious like, I don't know how many people go to Vegas and everything is perfectly planned and so you need to hit them among three months, six months versus are people like Googling what's happening today or tonight or tomorrow. It would be cool to have almost the series where it's like tonight across Vegas, do do do do do do. - We do make a lot of itinerary based content around those events. And so if there is a concert at Dolby Live, for example, here's everything you need to know about what you can do before and after the show. And so in both the organic sense and the influencer sense, we will kind of hit on that. - All right, final two, quick. One always curious to me, where do you park? Do you just get free parking? Like if you have to be on the strip all the time, where do you go? - That is a perk we do get free parking. Yeah, we do get free parking, so really, really anywhere. - Okay, do you hate going to the strip or do you like going to the strip? - I like going to the strip. - Okay, I always wonder for the people who live there when I'm like, hey, do you want to meet like for a dinner or a coffee, like are they, oh, gotta go to the strip or that, all right, that's fine. - No, it's fun. There's always something new to do. Even being there every day, there's something new that I haven't done. I'm sure. - Parking, that was, parking was a big question. Like if you've got parking, taking care of it, it's a big deal for coming to the strip. All right, final one, if you were a creator, what would your content be about? - I think the insider's POV to travel in hospitality. - I love that. I love that. - Yeah. - I would be good. I just got a few people doing it, I guess I haven't seen it, but I feel like that would be very interesting content. - Yeah, like the peak behind the curtain of what happened, not anything crazy, but what happens at MGM, what experiences you can get, like there's all the questions of like, are there secret tunnels under Vegas and stuff like that? So answering those questions. - Yeah. - Did you ever watch the HBO show was years ago? How was it called? It was the people who put on the concerts, like all the backhand stage people, the Rodies? - Yes. Yes, it was called Rodies. It was such a good, I loved that show. That was a really good show. The behind the scenes, it's what, like your ordinary is, is other people's extraordinary. That's, yeah, I think that would be good content. All right, Brendan, any final questions we shall we move to Calvab? - Let's move to Calvab, move. (upbeat music) (audience applauding) - All right, Calvab, creator of the week, brand of the week, and what we are following. Let's start with our Cal creator of the week, Brendan, who do you got? - Okay, it's this Instagram account, somebody, Sunday, nobody, art. It's this meme artist. This is like the Google description, absurdity driven physical art projects, such as the 3000 foot concrete tomb for a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. This guy makes crazy stuff, and then lots of times, he'll sort of hide it in plain sight. One time he actually created, he hid this artwork in like garage and painted the hidden compartment so that it blended into the background of a parking space and stuff. He's just like, the stuff he does is so elaborate. It is fascinating. He made this thing where he created these, oh gosh, all these little characters dancing, and he put it into a library and hit it behind like a fake wall of books. So it's like, you would have to go to the library, find this section, and then you'd pull down this, like all these fake books basically, and then see this diorama thing revealed. And it's just like a really fun rabbit hole to go down. And you're like, how does this guy do all this stuff? It's crazy. - Just Brendan's feed is kind of like an eight year old boy who microdoses is how I would describe. (laughing) - Brendan's for you. - That's a good description. I like that one. It's pretty random. Do you have a cow, a creator of the week? - Creator of the week. I'm gonna go super macro on this one, but I think all of the buzz around bad funny, the memes from the Grammys, just took off. I think he inadvertently is a creator in this sense, and then just his ability to bring creators and celebrities together with his super bowl performance, even though Keith didn't see it. - I know, you're too busy watching the, the Kid Rock one, right? - No, I love the meme culture that's coming out of all of the bad bunny buzz. My favorite is the person who's like the bush in his Super Bowl performance. It's like me doing social listening in the background. - I loved Elmo's too, where Elmo was like, bad bunny actually. - Oh, that was good. - Yeah, Elmo won. - Yeah, and all the blowback, Elmo received so ridiculous. Yeah, the tree people, there was a point where I looked up, and I was like, am I tripping? Are there trees or these people? I thought they would dance or something. I was wanting more from the tree people. It's wanting more from the tree people. - Yeah, well, they gave it a meme, so. - Yeah, they entered meme culture. I like that one. That's a good one, bad bunny. It was a very good half-time chef, despite me watching it from the Jumbo Tron. One question I had real quick on the bad bunny thing. I didn't quite understand his outfit. Because it looked like he had shoulder pads or something on under his shirt. Am I crazy? There was just something almost like. Someone told me he was wearing a bullet professed. I don't know if that was true or not. There was just something funny about it. I couldn't tell. Is it a deliberate decision? It was a stylistic choice. - Everything is deliberate about every moment of that. So I have to assume. I'm sure if we look up what bad bunny's outfit, there's millions of threads on this. I don't know. I don't know if the bullet proof thing was true or not, but I did hear that. All right, mine was similar theme. Ad-large was dar, man. I know I've had him before, possibly, as a creator of the week. But I don't know if any creator has had as big of a month as dar has had. He was named the NFL's Chief Kindness Officer for the Super Bowl. He did the old Navy. He signed that short form branded series, which actually started at advertising week when he spoke with Damon from Gap. And they ad-libbed collaboration together, and then they walked off the stage, and I guess decided, "Okay, let's actually do this." And so he signed that deal. He did the Fox deal, which was a multi-year deal to produce 40 original narrative driven vertical videos. So he's been on a tear. And I know we had Sean, his CEO on Brendan, a few episodes back, and I saw him here for Super Bowl last week, so we were chatting for a while. And I was like, "You're a tour paid off." Because I didn't see Dard any event two, three years ago, and I've seen him at every advertising event. Can advertising week? I've seen the guy everywhere with Sean and his team. And they really did a blitz. They made a conscious effort to go engage brands, more go-do-more brand deals. Because he was doing before, I think, 98 or 99 percent of his money was from the platforms. He did basically no brand deals. And Sean, obviously, with his history came in and kind of said, "That's low-hanging fruit." So I just, I'm blown away by how much news he had in the last month. All right, that is our cow, our bow, brand of the week. Brendan, who do you got? Shout out, "Friend of the pod." Little chunk, you know, Brian Reesberg, the owner of Maxine the Corgi. We had him on. They talked about Little chunk, and they launched some supplements last week, I believe it was. And I remember correctly. I know I read a recap, but I think they like, sold out almost instantly. But yeah, those guys are just doing a great job, like, chippin' away, building a great brand. Did Maxine pass or sick? Or. Well, she's got somewhat tied into the supplement launch. Basically, they were talking about how, like, they've been dealing with, like, arthritis and stuff. So, the last couple of years, they've been doing all, like, tons of crazy treatments. Not crazy, but, like, you know, treatments that, like, pretty elaborate for, like, a dog. But, yeah, and that was, in part, why they decided to launch a supplement's company. Yeah, they do a great job. All right. Just brand of the week, who do you have? DKNY, so they just launched their campaign with Haley Bieber. And so, I feel like that's a kind of a throwback brand, like, they had a really prominent stance in the '90s. And so, the campaign itself and the clothing goes back to the '90s, but what I love is that they integrated a celebrity who is very Gen Z forward. And so, bringing this nostalgia, while tapping into a new audience is really, really interesting to me. Love that. I mean, God Bieber's got to be just and thrilled with Haley, because she's safe in the financials of that family. The hide was American Eagle, you know, absent the controversy of earlier the year, but, or last year. But right now, they're doubling down on their creator rewards program. And I think this is where a lot of brands are going to be going. They have the AE creator community, and now it's become a very much a reward system. So, it's this structure where it gives you points based on activity. And so, some of that is how often you post, and it is just doing certain challenges. And so, I think we're entering this phase where brands are realizing, affiliate isn't really working at scale, because creators, it's not a direct attribution channel for a lot of creators. They don't make the money even though they know they're influencing mass purchasing. And so, they need to be rewarded and incentivized in different ways to be equivocal to like the value that they're developing and creating. And so, I think we're entering this kind of loyalty era of influencer marketing, where a lot of it is going to be incentives that aren't just conversion based incentives. All right, let's round us out. What are we following, Brendan? What's got your attention? Boy, Thrab. Check them out. Go down that rabbit hole. Is it satire? Is it parity? Is it real? I cannot tell. You guys do your own research. Come back. Let me know your take. But these guys just crack me up. Like, I like, watch a ton of their videos. Because it was like one of those things, like popped up and you know, you see so much content. But then it's just like, hit this point where I'm like, I'm seeing these guys all the time pop up in my feed. And I'm like, what is the deal? Like, I thought it was a joke, but now I'm not so sure. And I saw like this whole video then like filming their first music video. It's fascinating. I remember like, I was reading comments. Like, I think I was going on this Reddit thread. Like, for people who are debating, it's like a parody or not. And they're like, people chiming in who like knew them growing up and stuff. And they're like, no, like, I know these guys. This is real. They're like, really giving this a go. This is not a joke to them. I think brands can learn a lot from this stuff between, you know, episodic and that trend and between what Boythraub is doing. I challenge marketers to just sit there and like put on a timer for five minutes and be like, I'm going to write as many ideas I can relate it to these themes. I don't want to overthink it. Don't worry about the executive approval money. Just write a ton of ideas and just try one this year. If we were to spend time unpacking Boythraub, I think there's so many lessons for marketers in what they're doing. 100%. And there's so many, like, it's like, there's a clear like journey. They're trying to bring the fourth member. But then there's like million questions like, who what's the deal with the fourth member? Why is he on the laptop? And then like, is this real? Is this not? Like, sparks a lot of conversation. Yeah, that's a great point. All right, Jess, what are you following? What has your attention right now? There is a travel and hospitality creator. Her name is travel with Livy. And so she kind of does that behind the scenes as well. Where she showcases her clients, phone calls with her clients and the absolutely ridiculous requests that she gets. And so it'll be ridiculous in the way of like, well, it's raining at my wedding and do something about it. Or it's not raining. And I'm in Arizona, like, what do you mean? I saw one over Thanksgiving where she got a request from one of her clients asking her to fly in on Thanksgiving with certain pastries that were only specific to where she lived. And she's like, I wish my family they're like, I don't care. Just get it done like all by your ticket. Her content, if it's, you know, real or not, remains to be seen. But it is, it's really funny. It's gotta be fake, right? I'm sure. I'm sure it is. In my opinion, it is. But you never know. Where can you travel in hospitality? You do get some some crazy requests. So maybe some of them are half true. I wonder this too. Do they have to accept that the other, like, because what was the guy's name, the jet guy? He did the jets and he would always, you know, record. And that created a whole series of this style of content. But in my head, I'm like, does the person have to agree to you recording them and then publishing this content? Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure there was one where she did. It was like a dad on the phone and she was trying to get him to approve like a $250,000 budget or something along the lines for his daughter. And he was like, absolutely not. But I love that content. It makes it feel real to me that I also do this. Totally. And even the, like, the less exciting, I remember for Lincoln, Lincoln Bayo, she did a story on this where the, the deli, like they just record the deli interactions, the cheese place. And like he's just talking about like the types of cheeses and people come in and what should I get. And it's not like, it's not this. It's not drama. But people love it. It's just people love being a fly on a wall. But yes, I am curious, like, even in that deli before the person leaves to see like, hey, can you sign something that would allow me to use this? It's almost like many. Maybe many reality TV. Unscripted micro dramas. All right, that's a really good one. Mine, I had, I had two, so I'll cheat. One is just, I am following the whole saga of the under 16 ban that started in Australia. It seems like Spain is on its way to it. 15 European governments are now actively planning to institute some kind of ban for miners. This is the trend that's not going away. And it's spreading across the world. world and then kind of related in politics was the Senate Democrat strategic communications committee just at a crater event. I believe yesterday I was actually texting Brendan Monica because she was there and she was sending me some pictures. It's interesting like Democrats are focused on engaging with content creators like independent journalists, new media, I think court bookers will lead on it. But we saw Biden kind of do that thing last year where he brought a bunch of the crater economy industry experts into DC. This was obviously not the White House because Democrats are not in the White House, but it was it was a clear indication of the Democrats saying we got this part wrong probably we need to do much better. Let's bring in all of these people and learn and try to do better with creators for in terms of this year. All right. That's all we've got. Just such a pleasure having you on. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. This was awesome. I'm excited to see you in a couple weeks in Vegas. We will not be going to end it out. So we'll pick a we can go change the invite to be a property of this MGM restaurant and Brendan. I don't know what I'm going to see you next, but hopefully pretty soon. Thanks for listening and for more of the latest news on what's happening in influencer marketing and the creator economy check out the crater economy insider newsletter delivering awesome content straight to your inbox every Friday. You can find links to the newsletter and more info on the live event in our bio. Thank you for listening and remember to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode.