The Startup Connecting Social Media Influencers With Brands

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Tribe /

The ubiquity of social media has created a new economy. In a landscape that commoditizes mere product differentiation, brands are being encouraged to leverage targeted communities to more effectively market their offering. This represents the demand. Conversely, on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, users are establishing large audiences of engaged follwers by posting authentic content. This represents the supply.

In combination, these market forces are forming the foundation for an influencer marketing economy.

An Australian startup, which has recognized these shifting dynamics, aims to accelerate the rise of influencer marketing by acting as the conduit between demand and supply.

Founded in 2013, TRIBE is a "marketplace connecting brands with influencers to create word-of-mouth marketing at scale.” The startup was born out of a desire to improve a cumbersome process. Targeted marketing, although advantageous for companies because of its ability to reach qualified customers, proved elusive because reaching such customers was difficult.

In my conversation with founder, Jules Lund, he describes specifically how TRIBE’s aims to improve this inefficient process for companies.

"A brand creates a brief in 10 minutes via the campaign builder, outlining what they’d like to see from influencers. Within hours, they’ll begin to receive beautifully crafted pieces of content from influencers, celebrating their products. If the brand likes it, they buy it. If not, they don’t.”

This curation-focus allows the platform to connect brands with content that's relevant, while also preserving the creative authenticity of influencers. Lund continued to note that the platform is only paid when a brief is filled, emphasizing that TRIBE’s priority is in facilitating value exchange first and foremost.

"For brands, it is free to build a campaign, launch it to thousands of influencers and receive content. TRIBE only charges brands a 20% commission on the posts they approve and purchase. For influencers, TRIBE is completely free to use by downloading the TRIBE app."

Although the marketplace crowdsources posts as marketing options for brands, ultimately, the appeal of the platform is predicated on the efficacy of influencer marketing in the first place.

Influencer marketing is attractive because it demonstrates high yield for brands. Compared to traditional marketing alternatives like media advertising or PR, it encourages a higher rate of audience engagement.  This is because an influencer attracts followers who genuinely identify with their content.

Influencers post about what they truly like whether it’s brands, experiences or activities and this honesty filters the types of people that follow them. People follow influencers because they want to, not because they have to.

This creates a community of commonality.

According to Lund this alignment of interest is important for TRIBE and is taken into consideration when evaluating the vision for the platform.

"When TRIBE launched, we felt strongly that if the influencer doesn’t already own the product or isn't willing to buy it, then they have no right to recommend their followers should. So instead of sifting through thousands of influencers who fit the demographic but aren’t authentic consumers, brands can now receive content upfront from an army of talented influencers who already love and use their product.”

This authenticity also appeals to the psychology behind brand loyalty.

Because influencers post content that reflects their genuine interests, it develops a relationship of trust with their audience. When an influencer, therefore talks about a product, their audience is encouraged to view this recommendation as sincere. Through a heuristic known as the Halo Effect, the product is viewed with the same positive characteristics that followers associate with the influencer themselves.

In effect, this positions the audience to trust the product’s value, because ultimately, they trust the influencer. This is a leading contributor to establishing brand loyalty, and ultimately, consolidating a market advantage.

To ensure this level of trust is preserved with the influencers on the platform, Lund says that TRIBE is about how it on-boards.

"We focus on micro-influencers more so than ’top tier influencers’. This is where the real value lies for brands. The smaller the audience, the more potent the influence. We decided on this target audience because we felt they had a stronger sense of authenticity and created higher quality content… For influencers, we let the quality of their content do the talking, not vanity metrics like follower count.”

But in addition to this considered approach, it’s important to note TRIBE’s reception by the market overall. The startup has 21,000 influencers, fulfilled 3500 brand campaigns and paid out $3.5 million to its creators. Tellingly as well, TRIBE’s growth trajectory seems complimented by the burgeoning popularity of user-created content.

The market forces that dictate supply and demand have created an opportunity. The accessibility of high definition cameras — on smartphones or otherwise — have decentralized creativity. The availability of social media communities has democratized influence. TRIBE, as a result, is aiming to create value at the intersection of all three.

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Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Anti Hero Capital, the world's first investment fund exclusively dedicated to investing in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencie...