[00:00:00] Donny: Many of the most memorable brand campaigns have been driven by cutting edge marketers who are driving innovation in massive growth for some of the most beloved brands. This season, we’re getting a fresh perspective and highlighting women marketers who are making an impact in both crypto and mainstream brands.

[00:00:20] As always, we’ll discuss the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing our industry. While uncovering the brave marketing moments that have led these marketers to where they are today, posted by Brave Software and me, Donnie Devour.

[00:00:37] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast, and this one features Lisa Marie. the head of content and partnerships at Talent House, and they’re a technology platform working with the world’s largest creative community. 14 million members to produce digital content for many of the biggest global companies, including Netflix and Nike.

[00:00:57] Lisa is focused on leading [00:01:00] dynamic teams to build out world class strategies, authentic content for diverse audiences. And driving revenue from partnerships. She also advocates for equality and diversity within the workplace, and she’s mentoring women across the creative industry and acting as a vocal voice for leading socially focused businesses.

[00:01:17] I think you’re really gonna like this episode because we discuss what brand marketers can learn from the race to space. We talk about going out into outer space and how to be sustainable. We’re talking about how we lean into the future of technology. Returning to Life post Covid and taking a very much localized approach.

[00:01:34] And then tracking ROI and specific metrics for evaluating the success of campaigns. And then finally, the brave pick of the week. So this week we’re gonna be talking about Polka Dot, who’s been a long time client of Brave, and they are a multi chain, vision for the web three, and they utilize secure and a growing ecosystem of specialized block chains called para chains.

[00:01:58] And their absent services on [00:02:00] polka dot can securely communicate across chains forming the basis for a truly interoperable, decentralized web. So check out polka dot. So with no further ado, here’s this week’s episode of The Brave Market.

[00:02:13] Good morning, Lisa Marie. How are you today?

[00:02:24] Lisa: I’m not too bad.

[00:02:24] How

[00:02:25] Donny: are you? Good. Welcome to the Brave Marketer Podcast. We’re so excited

[00:02:28] to

[00:02:28] Lisa: have you on. I’m so excited. Thank you. Good.

[00:02:32] Donny: So why don’t we start with just learning a little bit more about Talent House and your role there. So can you tell our listeners more about talent?

[00:02:41] Lisa: Absolutely. So Talent House is a tech platform first, we’re a tech company at heart, but more than anything, why I joined Talent House is the mission to democratize creativity.

[00:02:52] So to allow anyone, anywhere in the world a relevant of their background, an opportunity to work with some of the biggest and best brands in the [00:03:00] world. We have 18 million. Across 195 countries, one creative, at least in every country in the world, which I’m extremely proud of, and that’s why I joined was really for that mission.

[00:03:11] I’m a photographer at heart from a really long time ago. I no longer do it, but that’s why I joined Talent House. And we have the capabilities to execute everything from the start of the marketing journey, from ideation and conceptualizing any kind of product or go to market launch right the way through to full scale productions, right the way through to premium stock content.

[00:03:31] Facilitating payment of all of that. So we really are kind of at the core of the creator economy and it’s something I’m really proud to be a part of.

[00:03:39] Donny: Got it. And just to oversimplify, would you just call yourself a creative agency?

[00:03:43] Lisa: my CEO probably would never like me saying it, but we work with brands and agencies alike, so we don’t.

[00:03:48] call ourselves an agency, we try to look at the agency model and then look at how we rebuilt that in a way that allows anybody to have access to it rather than specific people. And I think [00:04:00] that’s something that differentiates us. But we do work with agencies and brands alike, which is unusual that you’ll see two agencies working, or three agencies working together on something.

[00:04:08] So yeah, we’re quite open to that. So

[00:04:10] Donny: there’ll be the media agency? Mm-hmm. , There’ll be the. Aor, the Agency of Record, Creative Agency, and then there may be Talent House on top of it. Yeah. What would be maybe a scenario, could you give us an example from like, you know, the past could be a year where that has happened and how it worked.

[00:04:27] Lisa: For sure. So we actually work with a big media agency and we work with them on coming up with a lot of ideas. So we try to create an ideation Rolodex of what could the idea and the concept be. So we work with media agencies in that way, and Actually, we can also do the creative output. So it’s giving them something that they wouldn’t normally be able to execute. We also mainly directly work with brands. What we tend to find is with the brand relationships that we have, they’ll also have an agency that they have in house that they work with all the time.

[00:04:58] So they’ll say to us, [00:05:00] Actually, we’re working on this campaign, but we need you guys to coordinate with B B D O, Ogilvy, et cetera, and we collaborate and work with them across that project. So normally there will be a campaign, the agency will be taking care of elements and the sort of the overall project management.

[00:05:14] And we’ll be looking at finding the right creatives for the right brief and bringing that localized feel with a global perspective into some of their campaigns. So we can play multiple roles in that space, which is pretty

[00:05:26] Donny: exciting. That’s great. And what would be a good example of something that you’ve done recently?

[00:05:30] Lisa: Gosh, there’s been, tons. One case study that I really look to and go back to a lot is our work with Bacardi as a group. Group. So my first meeting actually coming into the company three years ago was going to, Bacardi’s office is in London, which was a pretty exciting meeting to go to on your second day.

[00:05:48] But the campaigns that we’ve done with them around Steer Creativity, these have been over multiple years. So we’re not just talking about one campaign and one idea and one execution of concept, but we’ve created content for them by [00:06:00] tapping into our 18 million members, 14 million creatives generating animation.

[00:06:04] Generating sort of illustrations, photography, whatever it may be for that part of the campaign. But what they tend to do then is look at how do they come back to that. So they’ll run the campaign, they’ll utilize it across socials. There was a period where we would see a number of our assets on their social media account, which was a really proud moment, but they keep coming back and dipping into that evergreen content.

[00:06:25] And then actually, That campaign ran for a long stretch of time, and they kept coming back to, how do we do more with you? what else could we do? Whether it’s the Conga, video, the music video that came out, we tapped into so many elements of that campaign, and that for me is really exciting when not only do we get to work with a brand to create sort of 600 to 16,000 assets for one campaign and one brief, but actually when we get to work with them in multiple touchpoints across that campaign over multiple years, not just.

[00:06:55] Coming to us and then leaving the clients that we have that stay with us. That’s what’s [00:07:00] really exciting cause we get to see it from the very beginning, right the way through to the end of that campaign. Whether it’s six months, a year, two years, three years. You really get to know the brand, what they’re trying to achieve with their target audience, and then that helps us execute it with them.

[00:07:15] That’s

[00:07:15] Donny: great. And we gave your kind of bio in the beginning, but can you tell us more, a little bit about your role and how you play into all.

[00:07:22] Lisa: Yeah, for sure. I wear multiple hats. I don’t think I’ve ever only wore one hat since I’ve been at Talent House. So I’ve been at Talent House almost three years across operational roles, across partnership roles, across content roles.

[00:07:34] And my role currently is head of content and sort of distribution partnerships, strategic partnerships that covers everything from creative. So looking at upcoming trends and reporting and what’s the next year gonna be for brand marketeers and what should they be aware of? What’s the color of the year?

[00:07:50] Right The way down to working with long term strategic partnership? And I work cross-functionally with our marketing team, our sales team, our operations team, our production team, our [00:08:00] creative strategists.

[00:08:01] I like it that way. I like dipping into every part

[00:08:03] So yeah, my role spans a lot of things.

[00:08:06] I don’t know if I’ll ever have a title that totally encompasses everything that we do day to day, but doing something different every day, I think is what keeps a job exciting. Yeah,

[00:08:14] Donny: absolutely. For sure. That’s great. I’m glad you wear so many hats and able to do so many different things there. So this podcast is all about a brave marketing moment.

[00:08:23] a time where you exhibited some bravery or took a risk, what would you say your brave marketing moment?

[00:08:28] Lisa: So I thought about this a lot and I think I find it personally difficult because I always never stop and pause and look at those moments until you’re kind of at the top of the mountain and you look back.

[00:08:37] So this was a really interesting thought point for me. And the majority of kind of where I went to with this was around we launch a visual trends report. Every year. One of the acquisitions we made last year was a company called Im, and they are a premium stock marketplace with authentic content and they release a visual trends report that talks about the upcoming trends of the following year.[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] And I was very grateful and lucky to lead last year’s project in 13 weeks from ideation to execution, which was a challenge and an excitement and. Seeing the feedback from the team when I asked, you know, what are the trends? What are we looking for? Sustainability kept coming up and I said, Sustainability isn’t a trend.

[00:09:16] That’s not new. We’ve been talking about this for a long time. Mm-hmm. , we have to find a new perspective. And working with the team and coming up with concepts. We had the opportunity to speak to Christina Corp who was an astronaut wrangler and I didn’t know what that was until I found out, but she managed buzz old and who was the second man on the moon, and speaking to her really inspired me.

[00:09:37] And gave me sort of educated me on how space has really informed technology and how that’s helped us develop. And actually all I ever knew about Space wrongly was what was in the media around the space race and the billionaire space race and all the negative press. And it really changed my perspective.

[00:09:54] So we built out a plan to launch a trend around sustainability through space. It was a [00:10:00] really tough moment for us to decide on. Taking that avenue and a big risk to say actually sustainability does come from space and it’s factual and here are the facts and here’s who we’ve interviewed. And I got to meet a number of astronauts, which was really exciting.

[00:10:15] And interview Nicole Stock, who is a creative, she’s an astronaut. And that fascinated me in taking that moment to launch that. In the Visual Trends report only came out later when I realized, speaking to some of our clients who are in this space, one of the questions that came out of it, they said, Were you not nervous to launch this?

[00:10:31] Like nobody else talks about this in a positive way in creativity and this area, and we wanted to thank you. Mm-hmm. for being brave enough to actually have a voice and bring a new perspective to space and how that actually is so much to do with sustainability. And in hindsight that for me, And the team was a really proud moment because there was a lot of risk in it internally, and we took the risk and it massively paid off.

[00:10:54] It’s our biggest lead generator as a business. That report, and it was one of [00:11:00] my. Proudest moments with the team to see all of those trends and the work that get went into that pay off by speaking to clients who wanted to thank us for having and giving them a voice in what they’re working on. Mm-hmm.

[00:11:12] Donny: just outta curiosity, how it was sustainability in this in space

[00:11:17] Lisa: work. something that Christina kept saying was, a lot of astronauts say, All I ever wanna do in my life is go to space.

[00:11:23] All I ever wanna do is achieve that. And then they get there and they look back down at the earth and they have this moment of realizing, wow. Like look how small and fragile our earth is. Look how. it feels so different when you get there and coming back down this, but then the majority of people end up spending the rest of their life trying to save the planet and go on these kind of missions to seeing how they can execute that.

[00:11:47] And some of the examples she gave me, Was around the phone. She’s like, You know the cameras that we have went through the Covid phase, when they were scanning your temperature, all of that technology came from NASA or space initiatives and the [00:12:00] technology, when we think about it, all of these things that we’ve had to make smaller, like our phones not gonna show you my cracked phone now, but all of the phones that we have constantly are made to be smaller, smaller, smaller, because we have to get things into space.

[00:12:13] Everything has to be thought about of how do we do that more efficiently? Mm. When I step back and I looked at the data and we spoke to a lot of sustainable companies who do a lot of content writing around this as well and collaborated with a lot of people. It was a lot around fact building and understanding what isn’t in the media.

[00:12:30] What makes the media is the race to space and the money behind it. And actually if it wasn’t for those initiatives and us going to space, how are we meant to save our own planet? How are we meant to invest back in what we need to fix? And I think. That was what truly inspired me. I would recommend anybody to go and read that trend because the interview with Christina Corp, she made me cry four times and she makes me cry every time I see her because she just has a fantastic story and I wanted a really.

[00:12:58] Bring light to her [00:13:00] story and the initiative that she’s trying to run right now within her company as well. So it was a really proud and exciting moment for us as a business.

[00:13:08] Donny: Yeah,

[00:13:08] Lisa: We

[00:13:08] Donny: do a lot of work with Web three and blockchain and kind of like the decentralized web and the metaverse here at Brave. And I’m curious at Talent House, has that come up in conversations a lot?

[00:13:19] Lisa: Absolutely. And I. Web three is really exciting and interesting to me personally and as a business.

[00:13:25] We are a technology company first, so we try to innovate and we try to look and lean into the future of technology. I think. We would be naive to ever sort of sit back and say, We know everything about what’s coming in web three, cuz we don’t. And one of my favorite quotes of all time things I’ve tried to stand by in my work is you don’t know what you don’t know because you don’t know it yet.

[00:13:46] And we have to learn, we have to be agile and we have to keep adapting. So as a business we try to look to the future of technology and how is that gonna help? With creatives, how does this give the power back to creatives, which [00:14:00] truly aligns to the value of what we are doing? And then most importantly, really think about how are we gonna take that next step?

[00:14:07] What do those steps look like? And I think the uncertainty of all of that is what’s exciting. It can be scary. And I interestingly went to CAN earlier this year where I met some of the brave folks. What I find is still people are most nervous to talk about marketing in Web three and what that means because they don’t understand it yet.

[00:14:25] But at one point, we didn’t understand what Web two was gonna be and what that was gonna do for us with social media and everything that comes with it. So the lack of understanding and awareness and the education that needs to happen, I think is really important. But as a business, we’re truly excited about the next generation of the web and that what that’s gonna bring back to creatives and marketing.

[00:14:42] Donny: That’s great. Have you dabbled at all with Web three yet

[00:14:45] Lisa: with your clients? We talk about it , we do talk about it.

[00:14:50] We are doing a lot behind the scenes as a public company. I can’t talk too much about it, but there has been a lot of talk internally about what we’re doing and what this means for us moving forward. I think we are [00:15:00] excited about what this looks like for our brands. And how we can be their safe partner in that space

[00:15:06] Donny: So as you return, you said you were at can and you were kind of returning back to life, you know, a little bit post covid. Are you guys doing more kind of experiential marketing things or is mostly everything still

[00:15:18] Lisa: digital?

[00:15:19] I think it’s an interesting question and I think for us, everything starts with a story, whether it’s digital, experiential, everything starts with a story for us and everything has to be relatable. And

[00:15:29] So our target audience and people today, more than ever before, wanna be able to relate to something. When I was growing up, it was all about adverts on tv, and I’d want it for Christmas because I’d seen it and it was on TV and they were telling me to buy it.

[00:15:43] Now you have to be able to relate. It has to be authentic, and that really has to be thought through. So whether that’s an out of home piece, whether that’s something. A new ar, vr, immersive experience, or whether it’s digital content and marketing now is at a different [00:16:00] stage where you cannot just say, This is what we’re gonna do and this is what we’re gonna go and do it, and you should buy our product.

[00:16:06] You have to think about who you are speaking to. , What is their life like? What’s relatable about that? I’m a mother of a four year old who keeps me extremely busy and you know, it makes me think all the time of how he consumes information and how that impacts his day to day, and what does that mean for marketing and how do I want my work that I put out and us as a business.

[00:16:25] To be more realistic and relatable for people. and I think that comes back to where we are at the moment around needing more content than we ever have before.

[00:16:35] We need so much content with all the different channels that we have, whether it’s TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, there is so much of it, and it needs to be high quality. It needs to be. Quick. It needs to be in budget. It needs to be on time, and it’s a really tough time in marketing right now, knowing where to spend your money to have the best impact for your target audience.

[00:16:56] Donny: Yeah. It’s so hard nowadays to, it’s always been [00:17:00] to, to measure roi, especially like in the kind of creative side of things and what you’re doing. It’s not performance marketing per se, it’s more brand building. Mm-hmm. , and, I mean, how are you guys looking about ROI and, what are the metrics that you’re looking at to see if this, if certain campaigns perform?

[00:17:17] Lisa: Yeah, and I think for us, you know, I look specifically at what we do when we work with brands in the community and executing campaigns. It’s understanding what do we wanna achieve? Do we wanna achieve awareness in specific markets? Do we wanna. Change the shape of how that brand or we are viewed by our target audience because your target audience shapes who you are, how they perceive you and who you are.

[00:17:43] I saw something the other day around on LinkedIn, around Pepsi and saying, you know, why don’t they do a campaign around how, if you’re in a pub, somebody will say, Can I have Coke? And they say, No, we’ve only got Pepsi. Why don’t they do that in their marketing? But it shouldn’t be led by that. It should be led by how the brand wants to be [00:18:00] perceived and whether they wanna lean into it.

[00:18:01] But I do think. It’s important to balance humor and relatability. And then kind of going back to your question, using examples, Thinking of clients that we work with around their marketing campaigns. A lot of the time, the importance now is, especially in the entertainment space, It’s the next big thing.

[00:18:20] How do we make this not only fan building and fan engagement, but how do we engage everybody? So everyone has to watch it cuz it’s what everybody’s talking about. Mm-hmm relevant. If you don’t like, you know, Lord of the Rings, or you wanna watch the rings of power because everybody is talking about it, how do you get that level of engagement?

[00:18:40] So it kind of depends, I think when we’re looking at metrics and how. We are defining the success of a campaign is what do we wanna achieve? What do we really wanna get out of that? And then look back whether that’s how many people have reviewed the campaign that we’ve put out and the brief in our community.

[00:18:58] Cuz our community is also the [00:19:00] target audience for a lot of brands today. 63% of our community is Gen Zed or millennial, and they’re very much paving the way with their viewpoint on marketing. So, For me, it depends on what are we trying to achieve with that, depending on what we then get out of it and how is that successful.

[00:19:18] That’s how we kind of look at it with clients right now.

[00:19:21] Donny: you talked about things are changing in marketing. What do you think are the most pressing issues for marketers right now? Like what do you worried about? How are you’re responding to it?

[00:19:30] Lisa: I think it touches on a little bit of what I said earlier, is, The relatability, that buzzword of authenticity, which I’m really trying to find another word to use, but it’s the only one that I keep coming back to cause it’s so overused.

[00:19:41] I think the need for content, So recently, ad week running this week, some feedback that’s come out from the team there is just the need for more content, the need for more perspectives, the need for understanding the audience more. Really high quality in budget, fast [00:20:00] and on time. It’s really hard to do.

[00:20:02] It’s really hard to do all the different formats that you need, whether it’s content that we’re thinking about pushing out for podcasts, whether it’s TikTok, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s snap, there’s so much, and you cannot push the same content on every channel. It has to be different.

[00:20:16] I think that’s the biggest challenge right now alongside the lack of talent. So there is so much talent in the world creatively, but brands I think are really finding it difficult to tap into that talent and find that talent. That’s a big challenge and that’s something that keeps coming out from the conversations that we’re having at events is it’s just hard to find new and fresh talent.

[00:20:35] We can’t keep utilizing the same people because you want new perspectives, and that for me is. Some of the biggest challenges we see how we respond to that. I think that’s why I chose to move to Talent House when I did was because that’s what we’re able to create is, and the ability to have endless talent pools, endless creativity, endless ideas to help do that and help achieve that and tick all four of [00:21:00] those boxes which we’re able to do.

[00:21:02] Donny: That’s great. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast.How can our guests get in touch with.

[00:21:06] Lisa: You can find me on LinkedIn, do reach out. We’d love to talk, anything to do with content. We can talk about content marketing, creativity all day long.

[00:21:14] Donny: That’s great. And anyone that you’d recommend to be on the Brave Marketer Podcast in your network?

[00:21:18] Lisa: Everybody. I’ve got a few people actually that I think you guys should speak to, especially in the web three space and kind of with, NFTs and everything that’s coming. Well, that’s great

[00:21:26] Donny: that you mention them because our next season’s gonna be Web three metaverse.

[00:21:29] It’s got all gonna be about the decentralized web, so we’re filling up that calendar fast. So those introductions

[00:21:35] Lisa: would be great. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s been lovely speaking to you. Yes, thank you so much, Lisa Ray. Talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye.

[00:21:45] Donny: Thanks so much for listening to another episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast.

[00:21:50] Four quick things before you go. Number one, if you like what you’ve heard, it’d be really awesome if you’d rate us or write us a review on your podcast player. And if [00:22:00] you didn’t like what you’ve heard, then don’t worry about it. Number two, if you would like to advertise to Braves 60 million users and have a budget of $10,000 or more, simply email us at.

[00:22:12] sales@brave.com. That’s A D S A L E s@brave.com. And let us know you’re our podcast listener for a 25% discount. Number three musical credits. Go to my brother Ari Devor. And finally number four, go use brave@brave.com and we will see you next time on The Brave Marketer.