In this week’s episode of The Art of Sway and ICYMI, Danielle and Lia bring you their perspective on how the theme of 2024 seems to be “unhinged,” big changes coming to TikTok, how platform loyalty is a thing of the past, and how a company called Rembrand is allowing creators to use AI for product placement in their videos.
Episode 1 Transcript: Will TikTok’s “Boost” Turn Your Phone Sideways?
Danielle:
Hello and welcome to The Art of Sway, a podcast that goes beyond the surface to explore the power of online influence. This season is hosted by me, Danielle Wiley, and creator economy expert Lia Haberman. Each week we discuss the most talked about topics from Lia’s popular industry newsletter, In Case You Missed It. Join us as we analyze the latest influencer marketing and creator economy buzz, break down the hottest trends and decode the big stories shaping our industry.
Lia:
This week’s episode is sponsored by Sprout Social, a global leader in social media management and analytic software. It empowers more than 30,000 brands with publishing and engagement, customer care, influencer marketing, and AI powered business intelligence. As influencer marketing becomes more and more vital for building brand awareness and connection, Sprout Social’s recent acquisition of influencer marketing platform, Tagger by Sprout Social, will allow marketers to create more holistic, powerful, and informed campaigns by streamlining their social and influencer marketing strategies. For more information on Sprout and a free 30-day trial, visit sproutsocial.com/trial.
Danielle:
Well, hello.
Lia:
Hi.
Danielle:
This is a very exciting day that has been… it kind of feels like it’s been a long time coming. We started talking about this a couple of months ago. So for those who are confused and don’t know what’s going on, I’m joined today by Lia Haberman and we are launching a special season of The Art of Sway. It’s going to be a co-production of the Art of Sway and In Case You Missed It, which is Lia’s amazing newsletter. And in case you have missed that, you need to get on it and subscribe right away.
But Lia and I, we met I think over a year ago now and have been texting and Lia runs a great Slack channel community and is just such a resource for influencer marketing news. And it’s been so great talking through all developments with her, and we kind of decided to take it out of the Slack… well, we’re going to keep going on in the Slack channel, but take some of it out of the Slack channel and bring it to the masses with a podcast. So thank you so much for agreeing to do this, Lia, and I don’t know if you have any wise words to share, but we’re going to jump in today and talk about the February 2nd issue of In Case You Missed It.
Lia:
Yeah, there is so much going on, and for anybody who’s looking, In Case You Missed It’s shortened to ICYMI. So sometimes people scratch their heads. What does that mean? But yeah, no, we met on social as people do, and I think it was DMs first, now Slack and now a podcast. So who knows where this is going to go?
Danielle:
Who knows? Who knows? So, okay, let’s jump into it because like you said, this was kind of a crazy week. And it’s funny because last week we were kind of bummed out that the Snoop Dogg Solo Stove stuff had happened before this podcast was launched because there was so much to talk about there. And I think we both had similar feelings that it felt kind of tricky. And I love Snoop Dogg, but I didn’t entirely love the way that whole promotion played out. It felt like it was just kind of manipulative of his audience. But one of the things that you predicted when that happened was that other brands were going to jump in on this Punking bandwagon, and lo and behold, other brands have jumped in on the Punking bandwagon. So why don’t you first give us, for those who have not read your issue yet, give us a little update on the latest entries to this trend, and then let’s get into it and talk a little bit about what we think.
Lia:
Yeah, so what I think is interesting is that we’re seeing brands do things that are really unpredictable, kind of quirky, very unhinged. I think unhinged was the word of 2024. We launched with the Pop-Tart Bowl and just went from there. So this week what we’ve seen, and is it, I’ve called it CeraVe, but is it Sarah V or CeraVe?
Danielle:
It’s been recommended to me by countless dermatologist, and I’m trying to remember how they say it. CeraVe, I think it’s CeraVe. Yeah, I think so.
Lia:
CeraVe?
Danielle:
Let’s go with it.
Lia:
So we’re going to go with CeraVe. CeraVe, and apologies to the brand if it’s Sarah V, please DM me and let me know, they hired a bunch of influencers to plant this rumor that Michael Cera, the actor from multiple things most recently in the Barbie movie as kind of the unpopular Allen Barbie.
Danielle:
My favorite Barbie.
Lia:
And so many other things. I don’t want to diminish his career down to just Barbie, but just that’s probably the most recent place that you’ve seen him, that he’s the mastermind.
Danielle:
Yes. And Fleischman is in trouble. I think he was in that too, wasn’t he?
Lia:
Yes. And so many other things. And so essentially CeraVe planted this rumor with a bunch of creators and influencers that Michael Cera was the mastermind behind their brands, Michael Cera, CeraVe, that he’s maybe the owner of the company. He had something to do with the skincare brand, and then he did an interview with a podcaster and he kind of played around and wouldn’t answer the question. So what we think that this is leading up to is a Super Bowl ad starring Michael Cera for CeraVe. The part that I particularly loved about it is that this week, CeraVe had influencers doing sponsored apology videos. And if you’re not very online, a influencer apology video, it’s a thing, it’s a meme. Not only is it a legitimate thing, there’s actually been so many of them, and they’ve been so critiqued and also mocked that it’s now become a meme, a influencer apology video.
So CeraVe, they took kind of a format that has not been used for sponsorships before. Usually an influencer apology video is a legit apology, or as legitimate as it can be for something that an influencer has really done wrong. This way they’re sort of spoofing influencer apology videos and having the influencers who started these rumors about Michael Cera and CeraVe, apologize for starting the rumor all tongue in cheek. It’s so clever. I love it so much. Whoever thought of this is just… it’s genius because I think it took a bit and really gave it more depth, more layers. They just pushed it beyond, “Oh, we hired an actor or influencers to promote our product.” This was just so, so clever. In a similar vein, though, I think CeraVe is definitely my favorite the week, but my second favorite would be Charlotte Tilbury. They sent PR packages to major beauty influencers, including Mikayla Nogera or Nogueira, and a couple of others.
However, the packages were empty. So Mikayla did this big unboxing on TikTok open the package, there’s no lipsticks. So it was kind of like a plot twist. Where are the lipsticks? Where are the missing lipsticks? Again, the influencers played along. I don’t know whether or not this was part of a paid campaign, or maybe they were told in advance. I’m not sure that Mikayla, had she opened a PR package and there was nothing inside, would you post the video? I don’t know. They may have been tipped off in advance. But after a couple of different beauty influencers posted about the missing lipsticks, Charlotte Tilbury posted on their feed essentially these cute little campy videos about where are the missing lipsticks. So clearly this was part of… I don’t think it was just a forgetful publicist who forgot to put the lipsticks in the package. I think it was part of a campaign that we’re going to see roll out all week or for the next couple of weeks for the launch of this lipstick. So I think brands are having fun with it, and I like it.
Danielle:
And I think what I love about these two and where I think they do a much better job than Solo Stove is, one, they’re taking advantage of the storytelling ability of social media. And they’re kind dragging things, not dragging things out because that sounds negative. But kind of taking us along on this journey and taking advantage of the fact that people are coming back and they want to learn more and they want to see more. The Solo Stove one felt like, first of all, it did feel like the followers were getting punked. Like, “Ha, ha, we tricked you.” This doesn’t feel that way. These are both a lot more playful. The Solo Stove one, it was like, “Ha, ha, it was a joke.” And then that was it. The payoff of it was just very quick, not very elegant, didn’t take advantage of everything that social media can do.
So I love that piece of it. And then if, as you suspect, which I think you’re right, these continue to play out more and maybe we see them in Super Bowl ads or in additional advertising. I love this interplay between social media and traditional advertising. I wish that brands would do it more. I think that it is so incredibly powerful, and I don’t know if it’s a result of the fact that brands agency landscape is so siloed and agencies don’t want to play nicely with each other. And brands can’t bring all these agencies together to the table to just collaborate and figure out how to maximize this omnichannel opportunity that they have. But in every way that Solo Stove stunt kind of fell short, these two are taking it to the next level and really showing us the endless possibilities we have out there. And it’s so creative and it makes me kind of excited for, one, it gives me a ton of ideas to bring to our clients. And two, it makes me excited to see what others are going to do. It’s pretty cool.
Lia:
Yeah, it’s awesome. It shows you the before, the during, the after and the behind the scenes, I wrote something a couple of weeks ago about how behind the scenes is now the new campaign. So it’s not just like you said, the polished post, “Hey, it’s Snoop Dogg maybe Punking and promoting this brand.” But it’s, “How’d the deal happen. What happened afterwards? How much input did he have?” In the case of Snoop, I didn’t mind it so much, but I think also he was probably so expensive that they basically had one chance to work with him and that was it. Whereas these other ones, like you said, they’re much more developed. There’s more storytelling. You’re giving people an insight into what’s happening, how these campaigns come together, and it’s the stuff that people love on social. So yeah, this is a win for me.
Danielle:
Yeah. Okay, so jumping to platforms, there is a lot in your newsletter as everyone will see, because they’re all going to subscribe. You talk about the updates at various platforms, and TikTok by far had the most going on this week. So they have new live-streaming studios opening in Los Angeles. They are launching horizontal videos and claiming that they’re going to boost views on those, which is very, very interesting. And then I think I thought that was going to be the big item that we talked about this week. And then lo and behold, they have suddenly lost access to Universal Music Group music, which if you want to kind of get a sense of how big that is, my 22-year-old said last night, “Well, there’s no more music on TikTok.” Yes, it’s one music group, but it’s massive.
Lia:
It’s massive.
Danielle:
It’s massive.
Lia:
Yeah. They’ve got Taylor Swift, they’ve got all kinds of people, especially most important, all kinds of people who are going to show up Sunday at the Grammys. By the time you listen to this, it’s Monday, so we’re recording a couple of days early. But yeah, during the Grammys, how are you going to create memes or talk about the nominees on social if you can’t use their music? Huge.
Danielle:
And then, I mean, there’s the other piece of it. One, there’s the promotion of that music, but then two, there are the musicians who are relying on TikTok to get discovered. TikTok and music are so intertwined. I was just watching an interview with Ice Spice this morning. I mean, she owes her start to TikTok. How many other musicians do we know who can say the same thing? Lil Nas X, so many of them. I don’t know that there is surprising because I think that there’s been a tension for a while just in terms of this perception by music publishers that TikTok is taking advantage of them. And the perception of TikTok that they can do that, and the music company should be grateful to have their music on there. So I don’t know that this is unexpected, but it felt very sudden and it feels very jarring. And I’m just curious how this is going to all play out.
Lia:
Yeah, I mean it’s so interesting. I think first and foremost, we have to remember this is not Universal Music Group or UMG being the big bad guy taking the music away. Because I saw a lot of TikTokers complaining about that, and ultimately the artists need to get paid. So I understand artists, it’s the same thing with influencers complaining about not getting paid or being asked to do things for free. Musical artists also should get licensing fees for their music, royalties, et cetera, for their music. So I totally understand wanting the musicians to get paid, but it is going to have a huge impact. It’s funny because brands are not going to care as much. If you have a business account on TikTok, you can’t use the copyright license music anyways, or you’ve got to find creative workaround. So I think brands aren’t going to notice as much. A social media manager for a major brand is not going to be able to use that music, so it’s not going to impact them as much.
I think who it’s going to impact is, like you said, smaller artists on labels are going to have a hard time getting discovered. I think if you want to get discovered, well, yeah, you don’t want to be on UMG, so is it better for you to be an independent artist and try and upload your music to TikTok? I think content creators are going to have a hard time because if they want to use whoever, Billie Eilish, whoever it is, they are going to have a hard time finding the music that’s culturally relevant that they want to incorporate into their videos. Yeah, I think it is going to have an impact. I do wonder if TikTok was trying to get away from being the music platform. Licensing music is expensive, and it is time-consuming and troublesome. I worked for, years ago, Dick Clark Productions, they work on Golden Globes, New Year’s Rock and Eve, all these different shows.
I worked in Hollywood. I know that music licensing is a pain in the butt. So it’s very possible that this was part of Tiktok’s plan all along to kind of phase away from being the music platform. Especially now since they’re prioritizing longer than 62nd video and they want to start prioritizing horizontal video. Where I think that this is interesting is maybe for TikTok, this is like, “Okay, fine.” This gets them away from being considered just the music platform and into something bigger, broader, maybe they start getting more streaming and studio type, network type partners. I think the thing to watch is what YouTube is going to do. Because I think right now with the UMG taking their music off TikTok, watch TikTok and Meta, sorry, watch YouTube and Meta come out with statements about their music programs, about the licensing deals that they have, about how they provide music for creators to put in their videos.
I think they’re going to overemphasize the access, the deals that they have. If they haven’t yet, they better do it now and make sure all those contracts are buttoned up type. And I also think, remember in November, YouTube launched Dream or Dream Track for shorts. They partnered with Demi Lovato, John Legend, Charlie Puth, a whole bunch of different artists to create these AI generated tracks that people could play around with. And this is just my opinion, nobody else’s, but I think that YouTube has been making inroads to the music industry in ways that are very smart and subtle to make sure that they have those relationships locked in, in a way that maybe TikTok had not been as focused on the music side of things. Whether or not that was intentional because they wanted to get away from being the music platform. I don’t know. But I do think it is going to impact the way that we perceive TikTok and what we think about it as a social app and whether or not it’s the place where you discover new music anymore.
Danielle:
It’s so interesting because when you think about it in that way, we could end up seeing this total flip-flop of YouTube and TikTok, where TikTok suddenly becomes the place you go for long format horizontal videos. And TikTok is where you go for short music, focused [inaudible 00:17:29]-
Lia:
YouTube you mean?
Danielle:
Yeah, YouTube. Yeah, it’s like bizarro world. But I mean, we’re going to see how it pans out, but it’s all very interesting and a good segue into our next topic, which is this reminder that creators are not about the platform that they’re on. And that platform loyalty is becoming a thing of the past. So what have you seen this week that was a reminder of that?
Lia:
Yeah, the two things that I thought were interesting and worth paying attention to were there was a Twitch streamer called Pokimane who was essentially, she was their poster girl for the app Twitch. You went to the app store, her photo was there, she was really incorporated into that platform. She announced this week that she was leaving and she was going to be streaming on YouTube. She doesn’t have a deal with… She followed up with a tweet that said she doesn’t have a deal with YouTube, but she’s just going to stream wherever she wants to. Whereas previously she was very much associated with Twitch. I think it’s better for her and her business to be… We always tell creators and influencers to diversify the platforms that they’re on, and she’s doing it. I think it’s a really good… it’s a boost for YouTube. It’s problematic for Twitch, I think. So beyond just thinking about the fact that creators or influencers aren’t necessarily going to be platform loyal, I think it also has implications for Twitch very much in the future.
And then the other one is Alex Cooper and the Call Her Daddy podcast, which was previously exclusive to Spotify. Now they’re going to have, the video version of her podcast will be exclusive to Spotify, but the podcast itself is now going to be available wherever you listen to podcasts. And she was, I think they only have two big… it was Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper. I think those were the only two that were the really big ones that were exclusive to Spotify. And now it’s not really, it’s the beginning of a departure for her. And so I thought that was kind of interesting too. Does that have an immediate impact? No, but I think the more the big creators, the people at the top, anytime Mr. Beast does something, it’s, I’ve said it’s like a canary in the creator coal mine. It’s like you watch the big creators, the big influencers do stuff, and you know that there’s going to be a trickle-down effect in perception. Like, “Where should I be? Should I diversify? Should I sign an exclusive with this one platform?” And I think we’re seeing that disappear.
Danielle:
I mean, especially in podcasts, I think users don’t want to be told that they can only listen to something on one platform. There was kind of a two-year period where Armchair Expert was just on Spotify, and they got quite a bit of backlash for that. And just recently, within the past couple of months, they went broad again, which I think really, really speaks to this, that platform loyalty is a really tricky thing. I think especially seeing with the implosion of Twitter/X, you have no control over what’s going to happen with this platform and how it’s going to work, and who else is going to be popping up on there making it feel uncomfortable, whatever.
Lia:
Yeah, people want to find you where they find you.
Danielle:
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that will also be interesting to keep our eye on, which we will do. And now we’re going a little bit… I hit you with something late yesterday that I knew was not going to make it into your newsletter, but I wanted to talk about, because I was fascinated by this. So I read an article yesterday morning in the New York Times by Sapna Maheshwari, who I’ve known for a few years now, and it was a profile, this company called Rembrand, like the artist, but without the T at the end of it. And kind of clever because it ends with brand, and this is all about brands. So they’re basically allowing creators to use AI for product placement in their videos. And I’ve been pretty vocal about not loving the use of AI in creator content.
Sway Group has a competitor who’s been doing a lot in the AI space, allowing creators to create their own deep fakes of themselves to make videos for brands, which I think is so many levels of wrong. And I could go on a 20-minute rant about why that is terrible. So I’ve been pretty vocal about not loving AI, but this, you and I were chatting about it before and it’s not the most elegant look right now. Like two people will be sitting and suddenly a soda appears on the table in between them. Or in the article they showed, I read the article in the app and they showed a dance on TikTok and on the wall behind her was a little ad for something up on the wall. So it’s not the most seamless right now, and it’s a little bit clunky and stuff, but I feel like there’s a place for it. And I always think of Seinfeld when I think of brilliant product placements, right?
Lia:
The cereal and the Snapple.
Danielle:
Like you saw all the cereals, you saw everything in his kitchen and it didn’t take away, it didn’t take away from the creativity of what they were doing. But it allowed them to make sponsor money in a way that did not interfere with the creative story that they were telling. And I think there’s a place for this. And what I liked about it was it wasn’t creating a fake person and it wasn’t trying to trick anyone, and it just felt like, “Okay, this is an AI thing that I could kind of get behind and I could see my clients being interested in this. And I’m very intrigued.”
Lia:
I am on board with you. I read the article last night. I’m on board with you for the concept. I like the idea of it. And I hadn’t thought of Seinfeld, but yeah, absolutely. The Snapple bottles in the fridge, the cereal on the counter, my problem was in the execution. I thought it looked like Roblox art on the wall. And I was like, “I can’t, I don’t know, this is very… we’re still a few years and some software updates away from this being seamless.” So I’m with you. I think it’s cool. I’m on board. I keep looking at it. I’m not averse to it.
It just needs to get a little more sophisticated, I think especially for a fashion, beauty, lifestyle, home influencer where aesthetic is everything. I mean, I know we’ve kind of escaped a little bit, the perfect aesthetic. We’ve gotten away from that, but I still think a lot of creators and influencers care about what something looks like and it needs to be more beautiful, more… whatever beautiful means to you, art’s in the eye of the beholder. But it still needs to look not like an eight bit pixel or whatever on your wall. So that would be my only thing is that I think we’re a little bit of a ways out.
Danielle:
I was seeing practical applications for it. So I tell this story quite a bit. We had a pizza client who was very particular about how their pizza was portrayed. There couldn’t be bubbles on the crust and there couldn’t be olives on the pizza because olives are polarizing apparently. And on the pizza box, there couldn’t be any grease stains, which if you’ve ever ordered a pizza from a national franchise, you likely had grease stains on the box. So they had all these particular rules, and it was very difficult to get the right pizza imagery in the influencer content.
And we ended up doing our own photo shoot with a box that had never been used and had no grease stains and a pizza that didn’t have the bubbles and it didn’t have the olives. And we distributed those images to the creators. And so the creators were in charge of the lifestyle images. This is back in the blog days if this is not making any sense in the world of Instagram. And then for any of the pizza shots, they used our stock footage that we had created in studio and gotten approval on. So I feel like for something like that, this would be so great because the creator could just focus on their beautiful lifestyle shots and doing what they do, and then boom, there’s this perfect pizza there with no olives and everyone’s happy, right?
Lia:
I love that. I’m on board with that. I don’t think olives are as divisive as pineapple on a pizza, but yes, I am, absolutely. Like Flawless pizza, yes. Let’s do it. Yes.
Danielle:
Incorporate that. Okay, so when we were first talking about this podcast, we decided that we would end every episode with a question, which was what were we each influenced to read, watch, listen to, or buy this week? Mine is a little bit embarrassing so I can go first. Actually, I didn’t order it this week, but it arrived this week and I was very excited. So I am a super fan of goclean.co, which is an Instagram and TikTok account. It’s this very beautiful woman who’s in Canada, and she owns a cleaning company and she deep cleans houses. And it’s like my ASMR. I could watch her vacuum behind refrigerators for hours, and it’s like my zen to watch her cleaning these houses. And she sells a calendar, a paper, spiral bound calendar that you can order. And it gives you daily and weekly and monthly tasks to keep your house clean. And I’m very excited by this calendar. It arrived this week. It’s hanging up in my kitchen. My house is going to be perfect.
Lia:
Oh, that sounds like a nightmare having a cleaning calendar, but it’s like-
Danielle:
To each his own, right?
Lia:
I love that. I bought Papaya, not this week, but is it called Papaya Reusables? Papaya something? It’s like the reusable… Oh, you’ve got to look this up. I think they’re on TikTok and Instagram and they’re reusable cloths that you can use for your counter, your dishes, whatever.
Danielle:
Oh, like the Swedish.
Lia:
Yes, yes.
Danielle:
Yeah. And they’re compostable. Did you know that?
Lia:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think they’re Papaya something. And I’m sorry, I don’t remember the exact brand name, but-
Danielle:
Well, we can put the link on the show notes page.
Lia:
Yeah, yeah. You’ve got to look that up because they’re so pretty. Mine was not related to cleaning at all. There’s a guy that I follow on Instagram called Hungry in LA, and I basically use him as my eating guide. And every time he posts something, I will follow the restaurant that he posted. So it reminds me so that I’m able to find, if it’s in his stories and it disappears, I’m then following the restaurant. So in the past couple of weeks, I have gone to Dear Jane, which is a restaurant in LA and then also Lorenzo’s, which is the best sandwich shop ever. And I have plans to go somewhere else this weekend based on a Northgate market that he just posted about in his stories. So I will literally, the pipeline from watching his stories following these restaurants or markets on Instagram to remind me. And then going out within the next week is probably… if there’s a direct correlation between watching and me leaving the house. So that’s what influenced me this week.
Danielle:
Love it. Yours is a lot more exciting and impressive. I got to step it up for next week. Got to step it up.
Lia:
Yeah, well, they’re kind of combined, like clean the house, go out and go to the market. It’s a fresh start. Yeah, it’s all home and food related.
Danielle:
Always, always. Well, this was awesome and I am so glad you’ve agreed to do this. I’m excited for our next episode and for people to discover this one. And we thank everyone so much for listening, and we will see you and speak to you next week. Thanks for listening to The Art of Sway with In Case You Missed It. Loved what you heard today and want more? Head over to swaygroup.com/podcast for more resources and to ensure you never miss an episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
