Cracking The In-Store Attribution Code In Influencer Marketing

SPEAKER_1 (0:12)

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.

Sarah Sluss (0:24)

Today's episode is sponsored by Basis, the leading intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising. Its enterprise AI solution transforms campaign briefs into strategies and media plans that integrate directly into Omnichannel activation. You can learn more at basis.com.

Joanna Gerber (0:52)

Hey, everyone, and welcome to today's episode of AdExchanger Talks. If your first thought was, hey, that doesn't sound like editor-in-chief Allison Schiff, first let me commend you on your discerning ear.

I am actually Joanna Gerber, Associate Editor at AdExchanger, and I'm very excited to be guest hosting today's episode of AdExchanger Talks. My guest today is Emily Steele, CEO and co-founder of the creator platform Hummingbirds. We're going to talk about why creator content, especially small-scale local creators, resonates so deeply with consumers today, as well as Hummingbirds' new solution for tying in-person sales back to creator content. You'll also get to hear how Hummingbirds got its name, which I find to be an especially sweet story. But before we jump in, programmatic IO is right around the corner. So if you haven't grabbed a ticket yet, you better hop on that. It's taking place September 28th and 29th at the New York Marriott Marquis, and you're going to want to be, as they say, in the room where it happens, because we have got a good agenda lined up for you, with speakers including Chris Kane, Martin Sorrell, Colleen Coulter, the global ad solutions lead over at OpenAI, Alexa Raff, the CMO of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, and Bob Lord, the president of Horizon Media. We've also got folks from Yum Brands, Dentsu X, the Brands Tech Group, Razorfish, Zoom, Time, PMG, and The Guardian. If I tried to list everybody, we would run out of time on the podcast, so you're just going to have to visit the event website to see for yourself.

Podcast listeners get 10 percent off with the promo code POD10. So, what are you waiting for? Grab your ticket and we'll see you there.

Hey, Emily. It is so good to see you again.

Emily Steele (2:29)

Yes, you too. Glad to be here.

Joanna Gerber (2:31)

I know we spoke back in April about Hummingbirds, but I know a lot has changed since then, both for you guys specifically, and in the creator economy at large. So I'm excited to hear more.

But first, I want to ask you kind of a fun, not super work-related question, which is just off the bat, what is something fun about you that our listeners might not know from either reading your LinkedIn page or working with you?

Emily Steele (2:54)

Oh my gosh. My normal fun fact, which maybe I need to shake things up because it's been a beat. But out of college, I biked across America, and that's something very random. And then I tattooed a bicycle on me and I don't really bike as much anymore so it becomes a conversation of like, oh, you're a cyclist. I'm like, I was more so prior to kids.

Mark McEachran (3:12)

Retired cyclist.

Emily Steele (3:14)

Yes, exactly. But that's kind of my fun fact. And it was like one of the coolest adventures I've ever taken that really taught me a lot about mind over matter and how resilient humans can be.

Joanna Gerber (3:25)

That's so cool. Also shocking how many people you ask this question to and their answer is like some crazy feat of physical endurance. We have a lot of jocks in the industry.

Emily Steele (3:35)

And I am not like you would meet me and be like, that doesn't make sense for her. I'm not athletic in any way. My parents were like, you can't do this. Like you're not built for this. And I'm like, well, now that you said that, like I'm going to prove you wrong. And maybe that's entrepreneur in me, right? But that, yeah.

Joanna Gerber (3:50)

Well, excellent transition, which is that I don't know if all of our listeners, I was going to say readers, I'm so used to everything being written. But some of our listeners might not be familiar with hummingbirds. So I would love for you to just give us a little bit of background on what Hummingbirds is and how it came to be. So a little bit of background on you as well.

Emily Steele (4:08)

Yeah. So I'm in Des Moines, Iowa. So I started this company out of running a marketing agency, and I was working with a lot of different brands that were trying to drive local behavior and a lot of what works in a local environment is word of mouth. And so a lot of my clients were looking for ways to grow their word of mouth strategy. And it was around the time that influencer marketing was really picking up, but I was like, influencer marketing in a local environment, isn't quite the same because you really need local people to influence local people around what you're doing locally. How many times can I say local? And essentially, I realized that the people who were influencing me the most locally were my neighbors, the people I did sand volleyball with, the people I bumped into at the grocery store, at the coffee shop. And so I had this thesis that everyday people who had at least some social presence, could influence their peers and ultimately drive business.