Joe Friend @ Social Circle - Lets get some insights!

Joe Friend @ Social Circle - click to contact!

As always it is best to get an insight into who you are and your career history so, in your own words – how did you get to where you are now?

I come from a traditional media background, specifically commercial radio. Having started in the media industry 10 years ago, I’ve learnt a lot on the way. Being completely honest, I never thought I would leave radio.

I’m originally from Devon and so my media career began here, working with Global Radio as Heart was launched across the UK. After 5 years of working within street promotions and regional radio sales, I moved to London joining the Live Entertainment team. I created multimedia campaigns across both radio and digital platforms for the entertainment sector. I specifically worked within the ticket sales industry such as music tours/concerts with talent management/agencies, premier film releases, festivals, West End theatre, comedy, art galleries and exhibitions.

Moving to London enabled me to decide how I wanted to progress in radio and it was within delivering content led solutions. I joined the National Content Solutions team, driving audio and visual campaigns for a fully encompassed approach within commercial radio. An example of work would be launching a live, outside broadcast in Disneyland Paris with the Heart London breakfast team, launching Disney’s new Frozen attractions.

Although radio is still my passion, I could see the digital marketplace growing quickly, specifically Social Media. I took a risk of leaving radio to progress my newfound passion in digital commercial partnerships. Influencer Marketing was becoming a buzzword that was passed between media professionals, I wanted to challenge myself to learn more about an emerging commercial industry.

Since joining Social Circle, we’ve moved from being a start up to a scale up business. I have planned and executed hugely successful Influencer Marketing campaigns for large agencies and brands such as The Telegraph, Google and Barclays. A new page turned in my life and I’m excited to be seen as an expert in this forever changing, exciting space.

In your words, do you stand behind what your company stands for and provides?

I joined Social Circle as it officially launched. There were 4 of us, now there are over 20! Previously, it existed within our sister agency.

I’ve been a part of the evolution of our company from day 1. Social Circle is powered by data but driven by people. We have invested in fostering meaningful relationships between Creators, Brands and Agencies. We invest in data to deliver amazing results, while keeping creators at the heart of everything we do. We’re fostering a creator community that is harnessed by our GDPR compliant self serve platform and expert Consultancy team that uses our unique algorithm to understand the effectiveness of social engagements and how best to deliver ROI. 

You have probably one of the best insights into the influencer and social media world daily, is there anything that strikes you as the next big trend? Or fail?

This year for me, transparency should be the biggest trend for Influencer Marketing. That is one of our core objectives at Social Circle, from costs for brands and agencies to advertisement disclosures for the creators. Not forgetting fraudulent activity such as paid for followers / engagement growth.

With the new emerging social platforms such as TikTok and Twitch, audiences perception / usage of social media is forever changing and therefore, Influencer Marketing needs to adapt to remain entertaining as well as being powerful form of marketing for brands.

If you look at the Social Media trends of this year so far, the 10-year challenge has taken over Instagram. #10yearchallenge Throw backs have existed online for some time #TBT however this time, users of Social Media are uploading a direct comparison of themselves 10 years ago VS now. The perfect way to give yourself a self-confidence boost by following an online trend. 

You published an article on LinkedIn over a year ago discussing how far the engagement between a creator and a brand can go. Do you still agree with this? Have you seen any changes?

I still agree with this, the engagement excursion will always be an effect of successful Influencer Marketing. A most recent example would be running a large Chupa Chups Influencer activation with an experiential meet and greet launch at MCM Comic Con, in partnership with Summer In The City. The influencers had such an impact on their audiences, we saw Twitter users changing their profile picture and banner display in to photos with the Influencers during the meet and greet as well as images of the lollipops!

How far can this go? Will it get to a stage where companies leave the leg work of advertising their products and styles to influencers and the social media gurus?

 We can see this happening already. After all, an Influencer knows their audience best! We always allow the influencer to have the final say on how they can activate our suggested strategy and creative ideas to ensure that the content resonates in the best possible way, whilst empowering the brand that has given the Influencer the opportunity to partner with them. We are experts of this space and have built data over the last 9 years to optimise for the brands and agencies we partner with.

In your opinion, who is getting it right? If you could name a brand that is hitting on success levels who would it be and why?

I have a favourite campaign of 2018, it’s a brand we did not work with but the strategy was genius! It was with Gordon’s Gin, making their brand synonymous with the first alcoholic drink over 18 people have after a busy week of work. Their agency created an algorithm that locates and targets commuters in London affected by train delays and cancellations, offering them the chance to claim a free Gordon’s gin and tonic at the station they’re in.  Influencers were used to amplify this campaign and show exactly how you can claim your free G&T whilst moaning about your train delay experience. Over 7.4 million social media engagements were created with the vast majority-taking place between 4.30-8.30 on a Friday – the campaign was a success! This breaks the boundary of launching an offline and online strategy, with influencers being used as part of a 360 approach.

Any advice for companies out there who have not explored what you offer?

Our experience has enabled us to discover five core industry challenges that brands and agencies face. Identification, it’s difficult to find Influencers that have built an audience that is most relevant for your brand. Verification, ensuring the Influencers that you have identified can deliver the desired amount of Effective Engagements as well as holding true audiences. Evaluation, grasp how to price a campaign and how much to pay each individual Influencer. Tracking, how to measure the effectiveness of a campaign and how to continue to track the growth of content over time.  Analysis, how can you report the campaign and look at the overall ROI. Social Circle can help overcome these main challenges both from a self-serve platform user as well as partnering with our expert Consultancy. 

Any advice for individuals looking to make their break as an influencer? I hear you have a training course - is that right?

We have launched our Social Circle Academy to help train and educate Influencers for free! The core focus is to offer courses on building, maintaining and monetising their audiences. We demystify the professional Influencer industry enabling both emerging and established Creators to turn their online passions into an online business.

From the look of it you have had a lot of progression in your career from Street Marketing Coordinator to Account Director - what changes would you like to see or make in your current position that can help brands/companies?

My career path is never set in stone, that’s something I have learnt over the last two years. I work in an industry that is extremely fast paced and forever adapting. My goal for the first quarter of 2019 is to connect the services within Social Circle, specifically looking at commercial opportunity. We have a self-serve, Brand and Agency version 2.0 Platform that invites you to be a part of our open, honest and transparent market. We tokenise Influencers data, allowing us to be GDPR compliant. We then have the creator community that are using our Platform to understand their costs, engagement and value across all of their active social media channels. Finally, we have evolved our Managed Service in to a Consultancy – we have some of the most experienced team members in the industry that can help strategise, deliver and report ROI on large campaigns. We have exceptional USP’s and heritage in what is becoming a saturated market place.

Last question, I swear – any advice to brands you work with or those you have on your radar?

Always remember the inventory of this media space is real life humans. Working with humans requires a much more, personal approach with the consideration of the Influencers recommendation as ultimately, they and their audience is your inventory. Think about long-term effects not short term fixes. Less one-night stands and more marriages.