The End of Influencer Marketing?

Full transcript

The 300% confidence boost

Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today, we are joined by Eric Sheinkop, who's the CEO of the Desire Company. Eric, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here. Let's start this, Eric, by you telling us a little bit about yourself and what you guys do. Sure. So I've had a long career at the intersection of content, consumer behavior. It's always focused on honoring expertise. So I started in the music industry for a couple of decades, really focusing on just amazing musicians that were independent. So they weren't really well known, they weren't what the record labels were were signing at the time, and I found an opportunity to place them in commercials and TV shows and create more consumer engagement and excitement, and more benefit to the brands and the retailers that were using that music. And then I exited that company after selling part to Coca Cola, and started the desire company. So we do something similar where we honor expertise across a variety of different disciplines. So we have the largest community of cross disciplinary experts in the world, and that goes from veterinarians to

NFL players, Olympic athletes, musicians, dancers, doctors, all the way to NASA astronauts. So what we do with these experts is we partner them in different brands for different retailers. We create video content that lives primarily on the website of the retailer, CTV, so you'll see our stuff on Hulu, Netflix, Roku, social, and then post purchase as well. We have a a tech component of our company, so we actually just launched a brand new portal. Companies are now able to browse our expert profiles before even a single frame is shot. So it shows their credentials, their backgrounds, areas of specialty, and it allows brands to connect with the experts that are gonna help explain and tell the story of their brand, their product, how to use it, who would they recommend it for, what are the results that you could expect. Mhmm. And, Eric, why do you think that credibility is becoming the real differentiator in the commerce content? I mean, we we believe that people deserve content that respects their intelligence. We think that the age of influencer marketing, people have their backup now. They're aware of it. They're not as keen to

use it as anything more than entertainment, and it still serves a great role within the marketing mix, but it is more of entertainment versus education. So the consumer, I think, is just exhausted. I mean, not only are they over flooded and overloaded with influencer content, but now you have AI generated content, reviews, undisclosed paid posts, influencer content where the endorsement is the product, not the expertise. So by giving a different way for the consumer to shop to be educated, we're seeing great benefit in it. The shopper, their guard is permanently up right now. So by using expert content and just being a voice of knowledge and expertise, we're able to break through and actually speak to the consumer, reach the consumer. I have an upcoming 10x talk that's coming out, it will be dropping soon, and it's all about when convenience becomes control, and how the systems are now designed to make our lives easier, but they in doing so, it makes us more susceptible to manipulation. So that video will be dropping soon, but that's a lot around the whole thesis

The 12x conversion lift

that we carry at the Desire Company, which is about giving people expertise that they can rely on. Mhmm. And what types of products or categories get the biggest lift from this kind of expert led format? So we used to think it was anything with an on off switch. Anything that was a little bit more complicated to understand how to use that the expert voice would really cut through. But then we started noticing that it was not just in electronics, it was not just in expensive products, it was not just in in complicated products, it's literally every product. And what I mean by that is we do a lot in baby, and of course that makes sense, but we do a lot in food and nutrition and health and wellness and beauty and consumer electronics, but also something as simple as candy. Like, it it's it's absolutely amazing that we recently had with Sam's Club, a we have a partnership with Sam's Club, we do all types of content for them throughout

the week, and that's everything from, like, the biggest brands that you could think of to smaller brands that are trying to use expert content to kinda cut through that marketing mix. And even this candy that everybody is familiar with, when we had an expert baker showing how to use it in unexpected ways, it drove more sales. It had a lift in sales. Even though everybody's familiar with it, everybody knows what it tastes like, everybody in the world has tried it, But by having an expert show how to use it in different use cases, it drove exceptional exceptional sales. So it's exciting. Mhmm. And what's what's the hardest part about it? Is it getting the right experts or the distribution part? Excuse me. Or perhaps maybe the creative? So when you are doing it without a company like ours, you run into problems every single step that you take. When it's sourcing the right expert, when it's actually contracting with that expert, getting them on set, the production, the distribution, the analytics, the post purchase use of it, how long you have to to use that image and likeness of that expert.

Those are all different barriers and companies fall, if not at every step, at one of those steps. So that's why we found this opportunity where we now have the largest community of cross disciplinary experts that are pre clear, it's signed up with us so that when brands come in, we are able just to produce at scale. And the results that we're seeing are phenomenal. It's it's it's truly it's a 12 x conversion lift, Not a 12%, but a 12 x conversion lift. People are spending 62% more time on-site, and that's because they're watching our videos and learning, and then that means that they're actually spending 25% more on their purchases because they're actually confident. They feel relaxed. They know what they're buying. And when you look at what that actually does overall is it reduces returns. So our expert content being proven to to reduce returns, it means that we have a formula that's educating the consumer before they buy the product, and then after they buy the product to make sure that they're using it right. And without a company like ours,

Respect the shopper

you're gonna face those barriers every inch, and you're not gonna get the full value out of the content that you create. Mhmm. That's awesome. I was just about to ask you, like, what's the before and after if there is a brand or a retailer that starts working with you? So that's Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we see across the board. Every retailer that we've signed, we've we've been live with Best Buy for five years. We've been live for several others for several years, and every time they take it from a test, and they can't believe the results. And then they invest a little bit more in our partnership, and then a little bit more until it goes full scale. And the results are just phenomenal. It's a 300% increase in purchase confidence when you put a desired company video on your site. And what's nice is they all keep our logo. It doesn't matter if it's Target or or Amazon or Walmart. Anytime that our video is there, it has our logo on it, and that is shown to increase purchase confidence by 300%.

Consumers really it is when you see the seal, you know it's real. So people are starting to skip over other videos or influencer videos and just look for our seal, our logo of the desire company. And that's the video that they're watching, and once they watch that video, then they're purchasing the right product the first time. That's great. So if we fast forward, let's say, twelve months, what does a big win look like for you guys? And where are you kind of most focused on Yeah. This year? I think for us, the twelve months success, it means an expert video becomes the standard line item in every retail media strategy for every type of retailer, not just an experiment, not just a pilot that's slowly rolling out, something that you will see at every single retailer. We also just launched an Engatik commerce solution, and it really addresses the probably the biggest blind spot in retail right now. So when a consumer asks an AI assistant or an AI chatbot what product to buy, we make sure that the expert video,

the product, and the retailer are all showing up in the results and actually driving to that retailer to make that purchase. So having that out in market, we we just launched it in twelve months. We expect it to be a big part of our business that's really important to us. As I mentioned earlier, that our TEDx, my TEDx talk will come out when convenience becomes control, and we hope that that sparks a broader conversation about what people will generally deserve from their interactions with technology, with retailers, with brands, with products. And that that conversation is good for business, but again, it respects the intelligence of the consumer versus just bombarding them with noise. We're actually trying to give consumers the information, the content that they deserve, and that we actually require to make an informed purchase decision. Mhmm. Eric, what's some of the most significant trends that you're currently seeing in the commerce content industry right now? I think there's two huge one. One, obviously, is retail media. That's the biggest change that I've ever seen in my lifetime, actually, and I've been in the marketing industry for many decades now. But the transfer of

money and responsibility from traditional advertising agencies to the retailers themselves means that the retailers need to broaden what they're offering brands. And that's where the Descartes company comes in to be that creative, to be that content, to help them distribute the content, get the right experts for the brand. So I think that's a really exciting trend that's only gonna keep growing is retail media and that shift of spend from traditional advertising agencies to the retailers. And the second is agentic content, agentic search. So agentic commerce, when you are looking for a product, people are no longer starting on Google. They're not even starting on YouTube anymore. They're really going into their AI platform, and they're saying, what is the best product for x? And influencer content doesn't show up. A lot of what is deemed fake reviews, which is the majority of reviews that we see, both one and five stars are fake. A lot of that doesn't come up because AI is aware and knows enough to understand what's real, what's fake, more importantly, what's helpful to the consumer. So making sure that you have that expert voice,

that's what AI is looking for. That's what AI pulls. That's why our videos surface in AI searches. So those two areas are the trends that we're most excited about. Great. I would like to wrap this up with one piece of advice that you would give to any listener that is interested or is in the same industry as you are, what would you say to them? I think if you're selling a product to respect the the shopper as much as you yourself want to be respected and treated. And throwing a bunch of noise at them and influencer content that doesn't talk about the function of the product, it just says, hey guys, you should buy this and and more of that lifestyle stuff. I think that consumers are ready to move beyond that. I think they are looking for real guidance in this overly saturated world that we live in. There's endless places that are telling you what to listen to, what to watch, what to buy, and to be a guide that says come to us with questions, and we're gonna help find the right product for you. I think that's gonna set you apart,

and that's what expert content could help do. Hey. Thank you, Eric, for coming on the podcast. I will make sure to add links so people can check you out, and thank you guys for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks so much. It was a pleasure being here.