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Who is Glenn Ginsburg?
Glenn Ginsburg is the President of QYOU Media, a media and entertainment company that works with influencers and big brands in the entertainment industry.
“Our kind of core business is working with big brands, a lot in the entertainment industry, and helping them develop and execute really large campaigns on social platforms that drive mass awareness, engagement, and excitement around their product.”
QYOU Media is especially well known for its work within the film industry and for helping movies become massive box office hits. Recently, they helped six major films, including Sonic the Hedgehog 2, The Lost City, and Scream, hit #1 at the box office through influencer marketing on TikTok, which exposed new audiences, primarily Gen Z viewers, to iconic film franchises.
Behind the Scenes of Successful QYOU Media Campaigns
Glenn Ginsburg shares that the first step is working with their brand partners to understand their target audiences.
Next, they look at “What are those communities that are on social platforms that are important to reach to open up the film?”
From there, they agree on their audience and direction and work on developing two things: a list of creators that speak to those audiences and a creative idea that will appeal to the target audience.
For example, one recent campaign started with the trailer launch of the movie. Then, Glenn and his team worked on launching a singing campaign with influencers, especially influencers on TikTok who would post duets.
“[This] gave the influencers and the community the opportunity to do their own acts and get judged by the Wolf character in the film… The influencers in the community at large are interacting with the [film] characters around a key thing, a key theme of the film.”
The influencers would share links on their posts to the movie, and Glenn shared that the campaign was massively successful.
QYOU Media typically works on long-term projects with multiple campaigns leading up to the film being released.
The next part of this project was hiring influencers to create a dance trend aligned with key characters and scenes in the film. Lastly, they had a massive singing contest on TikTok as a final big push before the film’s release, including a hashtag campaign and hiring a lead singing coach.
Glenn Ginsburg shares that this campaign drove tens of millions of views. A few notable influencers working on this campaign included Montana Tucker and Piper Rockelle.
Determining a Campaign’s Success
Glenn Ginsburg shares that views are a large part of determining a campaign’s success.
“The great thing about social platforms is you can reach, you know, tens of millions of people, so that’s one major piece and then engagement.”
Engagement is critical because viewers engaging and interacting with the content indicates that it was interesting to them.
“I’d say that the majority of our campaigns now [are] short-form video, [since video] has become kind of the prevalent way of social media, of sharing and receiving entertainment on social media.”
Glenn Ginsburg notes that they are continually surprised by how one piece of content may explode on different platforms. For example, one creator may have a strong audience on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts, but a particular piece of content may explode on only one of these platforms.
Glenn shares, “it’s definitely very beneficial to run it across multiple [platforms].”
The Resident Evil Village Campaign
Recently, QYOU Media worked on the Resident Evil Village campaign by helping Resident Evil build a TikTok following for the first time.
After looking at parts of the game, they decided to focus on one of the characters in the new game, Lady D, who is a 12-foot-tall vampire that many fans were excited about.
“So our approach on TikTok was to really treat the Resident Evil franchise as if it were a creator, so we built a channel for TikTok, started from zero [and] brought it up over just a short time to over half a million subscribers.”
Glenn shares that they created multiple creative campaigns with influencers to spread the word about the game. This effort led to over 40 to 50 million organic views.
What they didn’t expect was to hear back from so many fans of the game. Many Resident Evil fans reached out to them about creating content for QYOU and Resident Evil. Many were cosplayers.
Choosing the Right Influencers for a Campaign
When QYOU Media begins working with a client, they start by identifying the target audience.
For example, with the Resident Evil campaign, Glenn shares that they discussed, “Do you want to reach gamers or do we want to expand it out to more entertainment? And so once we’re very clear on those audiences that we’re trying to reach, We then are able to … aggregate a collection of creators who speak to those communities.”
This led them to choose influencers that reached people who liked gaming and could become new fans of Resident Evil rather than targeting hardcore gaming audiences.
Glenn shares that QYOU doesn’t “just hire them [influencers], and they do whatever they want. It’s a much more integrated approach with the brand and the creator, and we feel like that really has produced some high-quality results.”
The Biggest Mistakes in Influencer Marketing
Glenn notes that it’s hard to pin down one big mistake because influencer marketing is a broad term.
However, the biggest mistake he sees is not enough collaboration and understanding of what the creator is creating for the campaign.
“You know, it’s kind of risky. It’s like they [the companies] are rolling the dice.”
The lack of understanding between a company and influencers can easily make or break a campaign, which is why companies like QYOU Media that craft campaigns with precise planning and communication are essential to campaign success.
Final Thoughts & Future Plans
Trends that Glenn sees coming up include changes in influencer marketing due to the metaverse, blockchains, and FTS.
“We’re already envisioning the ways and look with influencers and creators in particular. They’re the grid. They’re the great connectors, right? They’re the ones who were able to form relationships with large audiences, and they will become even more valuable.”
Another area of growth he noted was live shopping and how that will impact the way companies will use influencer marketing in the future.
In terms of future plans for QYOU Media, Glenn shares that they plan to go deeper into entertainment categories and grow the overall company. They are currently working on their first automotive campaign.
Amy DeYoung is a freelance blog post writer covering influencer marketing and business topics. As the daughter of two business owners, she’s been fascinated by all things business from a young age, which led her to graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree in business. When she’s not typing away, she spends her time reading nonfiction books and mystery novels, baking scrumptious desserts, and playing with her dog.
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