Working with influencers is not always easy for brands. There can be a lot of back and forth between your team and the talent, resulting in miscommunication and content that does not properly reflect your brand.
SuperAwesome interviewed Nikki Nixon, mother of the SuperHeroKids, a popular YouTube channel loved by under-13s, to find out what content creators expect from brands in order to deliver compelling content. With over 3 million subscribers and 1.7 billion views on YouTube, they have executed many brand deals in conjunction with SuperAwesome, and they shared the learnings from these with us.
SuperAwesome: What constitutes a good or bad brief from a brand?
Nikki N: A good brief from a brand has simple and clear communication on what the brand expects. The more communication, the better. Share the desired outcome for your campaign and the most important aspects to focus on, as well as what should be avoided.
I would consider a brief to be bad if important details were not communicated ahead of time, usually resulting in having to re-film and extra editing work. Alternatively, overly-prescriptive briefs are bad as well. When a brand takes away all creative liberties from the creator, that results in a flop of a video that the viewers do not enjoy and of course affects the performance for the brand too – so there’s no winner in this situation!
Have you ever turned down a brand deal and why?
Yes. We have to make sure the brand is relevant to our audience. It has to be something that our audience would love. For example, we entertain kids aged 12 and under, so when we were offered brand deals by brands obviously targeting adults (such as a dinner box service and a creative technology editing software) we turned those deals down as we know that this sponsored content would have been irrelevant for our audience.
The other reason we’ve had to turn brands down is due to time constraints. We have a very tight schedule and we book everything in advance. We’ve also turned down brands when they can’t meet our rate range. We have to leave our calendar open for the brands that can.
If you could give 3 tips to a brand on how to execute amazing branded content, what would they be?
Firstly, communicate as clearly and concisely as possible the desired outcome for the campaign, including the talking points, and the things to stay away from. Trust the channels you work with to know who their audience is and the content their audience likes to see – that will result in much more authentic content and better performance for your brand.
Finally, give content creators creative freedom! The more organically a product is integrated into the channel’s content, the better it will be received from the audience.
In your opinion, what is the most important statistic clients should be looking at to measure the success of their campaign?
The most important thing to achieve with social media campaigns is brand awareness – increasing the number of people who are aware of your brand will increase sales and brand affinity over time. To measure the impact of our campaigns and the success of our branded videos, I look at the “reach viewers” tab for impressions, click through rate, unique viewers, and total views to get an idea of how much the brand awareness has increased.
If you would like to know more about how to work with influencers and create some awesome and compelling branded content, our Kidfluencer team can help! Get in touch here.
