Influence Global Podcast - shining a spotlight on influencer marketing

Entrepreneur and expert marketeer, William has over 10 years experience in the luxury, fashion & hospitality industries. Graduating for ESSEC Business School and Imperial College, he started out his career at LVMH and now runs talent marketing house, Talent Village. He is a thought leader on the topics of strategic marketing and the creator economy contributing to publications such as The Drum & Forbes, and public speaker at Adweek & Influencer Marketing Show among others.

David Berkowitz is the founder of the AI Marketers Guild, the FOAF.pro fractional CXO network, and the 4,000-member Serial Marketers community. Previously, he held marketing and strategy leadership roles with omnichannel ad tech platform Mediaocean, video production marketplace Storyhunter, social listening firm Sysomos, Publicis agency MRY, and Dentsu agency 360i. He has contributed more than 600 columns to outlets such as Advertising Age, MediaPost, VentureBeat, and Adweek, and he has spoken at more than 400 events globally. He lives in New York City right in the shadow of the Empire State Building.

Julianne is a pioneer in the free-from world. She was diagnosed with severe anaphylaxis at two years old, she has multiple allergies to all peanuts, treenuts, sesame, chickpeas and more. She is the founder and CEO of Creative Nature a Top 14 allergen free brand, through her own experiences and challenges living with allergies she focused on Creative Nature to be at the forefront of ‘free from’ innovation, pushing the boundaries and launching a range of free from foods with good nutrition from baking to snacks! In recognition of her outstanding contributions to business, exports, and aiding individuals with allergies, Julianne was honoured with an MBE in the New Year's Kings Honours in 2023. Creative Nature has grown from strength to strength driving change for free-from food in the aviation industry, launching products on board Virgin Atlantic and more. The brand is also into Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Co-op, Asda, Tesco exports to 16 countries including the UAE.

From sushi spots to italian gems, Asti Wagner has always loved indulging in the extensive London food scene and finding the best hidden gems in the city. With a camera roll filled with food, she decided to share her experiences on Instagram through a page called @eatwithast, of which only her close friends followed, which grew from less than 500 followers to over 10,000 within one year. Fast forward to December 2023. Over 800 posts and a combined following of over 50,000 followers, @eatwithast continues to grow with a powerful presence on Instagram and TikTok, sharing the latest hotspots in London and beyond. Arranging collaborations with PR agencies and brands became long and tiring so she founded Invyted - an influencer marketing platform to streamline influencer collaborations across multiple industries. Asti's first-hand experience enabled her to identify and tackle all the frustrations influencers and brands face and solve these problems through a simple mobile app.

Outreach Agency is a fast-growing digital talent management agency, founded by husband-and-wife duo Emilio and Amy Arciniega in 2020. After working in the Influencer Marketing industry on the brand partnerships side and seeing a monumental range in the quality of talent management that content creators were receiving, Emilio and Amy decided to launch their own talent management division. Our agency philosophy is "treat everyone how we would want to be treated” and whilst we are growing quickly, we believe this needs to be at a sustainable level that doesn’t compromise on our promise to deliver best-in-class talent management services to our roster. We do this by ensuring our Talent Managers’ rosters remain small so that each Manager is focussing on and representing an average of five creators (the industry average from our research is 10 talent per Talent Manager within most of our competitors) which enables them to dedicate unprecedented time and resource into the talent they work with. We are committed to providing a unique and exceptional experience to our talent, as well as our clients. We work with our creators as a team to ensure their careers are as lucrative and have as much longevity as possible. We recognise that different talent has different goals, and therefore deserves a personalised service bespoke to their own ambitions which may cover different revenue streams e.g. brand collaborations, merchandise, podcasting, product launches, publishing and more. As a family-run agency, Emilio and Amy encourage an emphasis on putting the people we work with first. They are passionate about building strong relationships with clients and talent and are committed to delivering an excellent level of service to everyone we work with at Outreach Agency, whether the talent on our roster or our brand and agency clients. We value the importance of working in a way that is transparent, honest, and respectful and feel that in an industry that is so dominated by online communication, a personal touch can go a long way.

Brad Hoos is the CEO of The Outloud Group, a high-growth 70-person influencer marketing agency. Outloud works across digital platforms to create & execute influencer campaigns to deliver measurable results for their brand partners. A proven innovator, Brad and the Outloud team work across a number of brands including Grubhub, SimpliSafe, Athletic Greens, Keeps, and KiwiCo. Published in Forbes and featured on Cheddar, when Brad is not knee-deep in the creator universe, there’s a good chance he’s skiing, hiking, or watching college football.

Rob Mayhew is Creative Director at Digital Innovations Agency Gravity Road. Rob has over 20 years experience working at many of London’s top agencies. Using his skills as a stand-up comedian, Rob found his ability to shine a light on the agency world with his funny sketches soon earned him over 140k followers on TikTok and 90K followers on LinkedIn and is one of the most shared individuals on ad lands Teams chats and work WhatsApp groups. The Drum called Rob “Adlands favourite social media star”.

Jessy Grossman is a long time entrepreneur in the digital media space. She's passionate about supporting women in business and being at the forefront of innovation. She’s been quoted in the New York Times (again here), Forbes and was awarded a spot in the “Influencer Top 50” by Talking Influence. In less than two years she created one of the fastest growing influencer talent agencies in the country. Amidst unprecedented growth, she sold the multi-six-figure agency and pivoted to focus on her long-time passion project: Women in Influencer Marketing (better known as WIIM). Founded in 2017, WIIM is the premiere professional organization for those who work with influencers. The community offers networking and new business opportunities, career services, continuous education and so much more. Jessy also does consulting, advising and influencer marketing recruiting through her consultancy Tribe Monday. You can find inspiring stories and more about Jessy on the WIIM Podcast. Check out iamwiim.com and tribemonday.com for more information.

Goal strategist Debra Eckerling is on a mission to change goal culture in and out of the workplace. She is the award-winning author of Your Goal Guide and founder of the D*E*B METHOD® system of goal-setting simplified. A speaker, consultant, and workshop leader, Debra offers personal and professional planning, content development, event strategy, and team-building for executives, entrepreneurs, consultants, and companies. Debra has spoken on stages for TEDx, Innovation Women, SCORE LA, and more, and is the host of #GoalChatLive aka The DEB Show and the Taste Buds with Deb podcast. Connect with Deb on LinkedIn or learn more about her at TheDEBMethod.com.

James Erskine is the Group CEO of ROCKET, specialising in telling brand’s story through creating, producing and marketing content to a children’s, youth and parent focused audience. Branded content, content marketing, advertiser funded programming, brand funded partnerships, integrated sponsorships, call it what you want, James has created, produced, managed and distributed it across all media over the last 12 years in media, marketing and communications. Over that time he's worked on hundreds of campaigns and integrated advertising, sponsorship, PR and promotional activity. The campaigns he's worked on have launched products, increased basket size, won awards, driven subscription, encouraged data capture, demonstrated CRM and always demonstrated a solid return on investment.

This episode features Grace Fung (Influencer Marketing & Comms Lead at COTY) and Kay Ganesh (Co-Founder of Hypesight). COTY is one of the world’s largest beauty companies with an iconic portfolio of brands across fragrance, colour cosmetics, and skin and body care. COTY is the global leader in fragrance and number three in colour cosmetics. COTY’s products are sold in over 150 countries around the world. COTY and its brands are committed to a range of social causes as well as seeking to minimise its impact on the environment. COTY is deeply committed to Changing the Conversation around Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in an effort to create a more open, inclusive, and diverse workplace where all employees can be their authentic self.

Our guest today is Charlotte Lake. Charlotte began her career over 15 years ago within the broadcast industry working in advertising for Channel 5 before transitioning into Talent Management. It was here, looking after the likes of Meghan Markle, Lily Cole and Bob Geldof, to name but a few, that Charlotte discovered the huge potential in pairing the right talent with the right brands in order to help them thrive. And in 2017, Project X was born! Charlotte and Co-Founder Caren of Caren Agency wanted to create an agency that gave brands an unbiased view of the marketplace, helping to pair them with talent that would answer their specific wants and needs and connect them to the right audiences, at scale. Over the last 6 years, Project X has gone from strength to strength launching and scaling the influencer marketing channel for brands including, Oddbox, Skin + Me and allplants, in order to deliver exponential growth!

Nick Ronald is a Division Director at Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit organisation that has provided communication and leadership skills since 1924 through a worldwide network of clubs. There are more than 400 clubs and 10,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Members follow a structured educational programme to gain skills and confidence in public and impromptu speaking, chairing meetings and time management. To find your nearest club, visit www.toastmasters.org

As CEO as one of the inconic advertising media companies, Pearl and Dean, Kathryn Jacob extols the benefits of why cinema is still a highly effective advertising medium. Kathryn sits on the Development Board of RADA and The Council and Board of the Advertising Association, and also where she is the board lead on inclusion work across the whole of our sector. She is the President of SAWA, which represents screen advertising companies worldwide, bringing together expertise and knowledge. She is also the very proud Chair of HOME Manchester, an iconic arts venue. This is a truly inspiring interview.

Lucy Robertson heads up the marketing team at SEEN Connects, a global creator and social agency connecting the right people to the right brands, including Nike, Panasonic, LVMH and eBay. A strategic thinker & experienced creative, Lucy loves nothing more than getting under the skin of a brand to understand how to deliver results. Lucy forged her career working for agencies such as Edelman and We Are Social where she was agency lead for brands such as Netflix, HP and LEGO. In this episide we talk about successful influencer campaigns not least of all one with retail brand Very which saw a 400% increase in Unique Visitors

Will Guidara is an inspirational speaker, but he is famous for being a Michelin Star restauranteur and the author of best selling book Unreasonable Hospitality. In it he talks about why we should apply the skills we have learnt in hospitality to all sorts of businesses. A relentless pursuit of customer service, Will talks about how be bought a new role - the Dreamweavers into his business which transformed his business into an iconic brand. Now running a business called Thank-you, he is an international speaker and host of his annual conference aptly named Thank-you.

Josef Schinwald is a podcast guesting strategist and founder of the Podcast PR & Booking Agency Guest Experts On Air. Their mission is to book experts, thought leaders, solo-preneurs, authors, speakers, and brands on world-class podcasts. His talents in Public Relations, Media, and Marketing made him the Associate Publisher & Vice-president of a hemisphere newspaper in 16 countries, and a professor at three universities and got him interviews on more than 50 TV shows. He has worked with Wall Street Journal and New York Times' #1 ranked bestsellers, thought leaders, and gurus in marketing, business, and spirituality.

Martine Croxall is a seasoned BBC TV and radio presenter, interviewer, conference host, debate moderator and presentation skills coach. She has fronted BBC News for many years and in todays episode we talk about her life as someone in the public eye and why trust is an integral part of influence.

Adam is a co-founder of Group RFZ, a digital measurement firm focused on the influencer marketing space. Utilising brand lift research and other methodologies, he helps brands and agencies get past vanity metrics and understand exactly how their marketing programs are impacting the way consumers think, feel and act. Adam counts 20 years of working in market research, marketing and PR, including advising hundreds of clients on how to test, create and optimize their marketing and communications. Group RFZ was founded with a similar charge in mind – to give the marketing suite the tools and insights they need to be successful. Adam previously co-founded iModerate, an online research firm and, during the shift from offline to online, he helped agencies navigate this new landscape.

Sheila Flavell CBE is President of techUK and has over 31 years experience in the global tech sector. She is a dynamic business leader who has a passion for enhancing diversity in the workplace and creating exciting careers for the next generation of digital talent. She played an integral role in FDM’s flotation on AIM in 2005 and was a key instigator of the management buy-out of the Group in 2010 and the subsequent listing onto the main FTSE Market in 2014. Sheila’s knowledge of the sector has been crucial in driving FDM’s global expansion programme, taking them into the FTSE250. She spearheads the ‘Global Women in Tech’ campaign and created FDM’s hugely successful Returners Programme. Sheila is President of TechUK and member of the Government’s Digital Skills Council. She has won numerous awards during her career for services to the tech industry and was recognised in the 2020 New Year’s Honours list with ‘Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire’ (CBE) for her services to gender equality in IT and the employment of graduates and returners.