DEVELOPMENT
Every brand on the planet is now a media company in miniature – part of a “creator economy” driven by real-time storytelling, behind the scenes content, and a torrent of online trends that, in some cases, last only days. This so-called “new media” is driven by small, independent creators, not global studios. Because of that, brands- like independent creators – are now expected to become – in a very practical sense – their own production companies, delivering a steady stream of real-time content that uses these trends to align themselves with potential buyers.
For hospitality-based brands, who typically have a trove of unique and compelling stories at their fingertips, it’s a mixed blessing. While the content is readily available, the strategic, creative, and technical resources needed to leverage it at scale can make it unattainable for most brands. That includes the workflow for bringing new content to market – ideation, production, talent, editing, publishing, and engagement, and measurement – in a way that ensures you can do it at scale.
This is the first in a three-part series that focuses on how hospitality brands can leverage the creator economy to drive brand growth. In total, its sections include: Becoming a Creator, Building Your workflow, and Leveraging Your Brand. You can skip ahead at any time.
What is the Creator Economy and Why Should I Care?
The term “Creator economy” refers to the monetization of clout accumulated through micro-content and delivered via social media sites. If at all you’re involved with the social sphere, you’ve likely heard the term, but may not understand quite what it refers to. Getting paid for creative content via advertising isn’t a new concept, but in an interest graph, platforms like Tik-Tok (with Facebook, et al following suit) have realized that their top echelon of creators (frequently individuals, not brands) drive an overwhelming percentage of MAUs. It’s also kicked off a battle that’s seen platforms jockeying to position themselves as the place for those looking to build a position in the “creator economy”.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.– BILLI REUSS
Independent players in the space (Mr. Beast, Charlie D’Amileo, and Bella Poarch, to name a few) have built media brands worth more than 25 million dollars a piece, parlaying them into everything from music careers to clothing lines. In the process (and by many accounts) they’ve also drawn more daily screen time from Gen Z than million dollar studios like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon. That means they’re also having a very real impact on what we expect of entertainment on a daily basis and blurring the lines between independent and studio-level content.
At the end of the day, you’re not looking to pay rent through content creation though. So, why should you care? Namely because creators are now setting the terms for how brands can be effective at social media instead of the other way around. Since hospitality and entertainment brands have always lived at the bleeding edge of content that means their communications presence, especially on social media, needs to adapt or die. Fortunately, hospitality businesses, – from hotels, to amusement parks to theaters – also present particularly fertile ground for the type of organic, visually rich storytelling that’s fueling the creator economy and, when leveraged, can help brands drive deep awareness, engagement, and advocacy.
How Can I Turn my Hospitality Brand into a Creator?
What are the fundamental tenets of being a creator? What makes them successful? And how can brands emulate these strategies to drive similar results?
Get on Camera
As humans we crave relatable, genuine relationships, not curated plasticy versions of them. It’s why most of us can pick out an ad at a gut level. The creator economy has thrived specifically because of this. Building content in the creator economy doesn’t mean that we can’t produce content though. It means that customers aren’t learning to speak our language anymore, we’re learning to speak theirs. Whether you’re creating short skits, long songs, tasty pastries, xxx, here are a couple of things to remember as you go about your creative process.
If you’re not a fan of the camera, chances are that we’re not going to turn you into one. So, whether you leverage a mascot of some sort, do it yourself, farm it out to an employee, or bring in outside help like a hospitality based marketing firm, you’re going to have to build a specific subject matter and style. For many, the suggestion conjures fears of surrendering your online persona to a single personality who will, inevitably, leave – potentially taking your following with them, dead-ending your online presence, or even risking your brand with their “off the clock” behavior. These are real concerns, but there are some ways around them.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.– BILLI REUSS
Leverage A Mascot
Mascots can be very literal (See Duo Lingo with almost five million followers on Tik-Tok) or figurative – as in making a painting, process, or natural wonder the subject of your content; zoos often use animals. The point is that the fans come to develop familiarity – a relationship – with your totem(s) as the lead actor in your show.
Build a Multi-Person Team
The Washington Post, the largest news account successfully leveraging the creator economy, recently added two new social media team members to help the account’s founder built stronger content. Multi-person teams can help drive deeper storytelling and insulate you against the departure of a single team member by maintaining continuity.
An Anonymous Creator
This can be tricky to pull off, but some brands work to make their entire team or product line the subject of their content. That is, the person behind the camera acts as an anonymous storyteller featuring workers or aspects of your business as second-person characters.
Whichever strategy you use, it’s important to remember that you’re trying to build a relationship with your followers through storytelling.
There are a narrow band of creators that can be successful without human interaction, but they tend to have an ongoing stream of visually compelling storytelling imagery. Think photographers, animators, etc. Without a face of some sort, doing it can be extremely resource intensive and not very impactful. For workers in the hospitality business, that means being on camera, whether you’re looking directly at it, demonstrating a process or feature of your business, or just an “extra” will become an ongoing reality of day to day work.
An Anonymous Creator
Creating anything comes with risks; the risk of saying the wrong thing, of looking dumb, of earning criticism. Yet, we see that engagement in the creator economy is based on exactly this type of risk, on building imperfect, yet relatable, genuine communications, not curated plasticy versions of them. It’s why risk-averse brands have a hard time tapping into new media; It’s also why there’s a huge opportunity for smaller brands (including those in the hospitality space) that are willing to take the chance and become real life creators to gain . We’ll dig into the creative workflow for bringing content to market in part two of this series.
For now, let’s talk about how to leverage your brand standards to support the creative process, not kill it. Building content in the creator economy doesn’t mean that we can’t produce on-brand content. It just means that customers aren’t learning to speak our language anymore, we’re learning to speak theirs. We need to adapt our message to the format, trends, and style. Here’s some hints help you break out of the mold:
Color Outside the Lines
This isn’t your grandfather’s media, have fun, engage trends, be self deprecating, reference current events, curse (audible gasp). We’re not working from some kind of archaic playbook. Don’t tell potential followers you understand their challenges; show them.
Build from Passion
There is nothing so viral as genuine passion about a subject, no matter how obscure. Laugh, have fun, get excited, make jokes, teach. Your goal is to invite potential loyalists in for a deeply interactive experience where they get to talk to brands.
Color Outside the Lines
No one goes on social media to be talked at. They go there to learn new things, engage in conversation. It’s deeply important that you engage with your audience. Respond in real time, with video. Ask what they think. Remember, your brand should behave as a person.
Why do some organizations thrive on social media while others flop? If you said production quality, charisma, and subject matter, you’re not wrong. You’re not right either. None of these explain why brands ranging from real estate companies to library’s – with no special abundance of these capabilities – have done well in new media. Their one commonality is that they’ve foregone parts of their own brand in ways that yesterday’s “suit and tie” brand managers would have recoiled at, in order to build original content that speaks authentically to the platform’s users, in the language they’ve developed. In other words, they took a risk and created.
Go Where the Trends Take You
The most pronounced difference between older social platforms, like Facebook and Snapchat, and newer, creator-driven social platforms, like Tik-Tok, is social vs interest graphs. Social graphs show content based on social connections, and are influenced by shared interests. Interest graphs care, almost exclusively, about what’s driving the conversation and can be influenced by social connections, but are not based on them. For example, Tik-Tok and Facebook Stories both offer a feature where you can see only your existing “connection’s” content, but default to a global audience predominantly influenced more by the type of content you spend time looking at and your geography that any type of social grouping.
While it may be a technical point, it’s an important one for anyone in the hospitality business to understand before building new content. Here are three types of algorithmic functions that can be leveraged to get seen there.
Leverage Communities
“Book-Tok”’, “Knitting-Tok”, and “Travel-Tok”: Just a few of the affectionately named communities on Tik-Tok (formed by appending any subject matter with “-Tok”) where those interested in these topics can find themselves. Though these communities are algorithmically-driven rather than opt-in, they’re not difficult to find and are usually based on the amount of time you spend consuming any one topic. These aren’t huge brands or creators. What’s important for hospitality brands trying to take advantage of communities to remember is that they offer an opportunity to tap into a highly niche community of your most likely buyers by showing your expertise in subject matter relevant to the user viewing it.
Leverage Formats
Formats include a familiar set of characters and routines adapted to some aspect of your unique brand and are commonly accompanied by text overlays that adapt the scene to specific facts about your life or brand. These can be a fun, relatable, and organic way to educate or inform followers about your industry, a particular pain point within it, or how a particular product helps solve it as well as misconceptions about your brand or service.
Leverage Sounds
Sounds (referring to short sound bites from third-party sources like TV/Films, Musical Acts, and even computer software and games) come and go quickly, but are a great way to work the algorithm to get your content seen. You can either apply the sound to a unique aspect of your business or use it, as above, as part of a trending format.
Leverage Sounds
You’ll find no shortage of hot-takes on interest graphs or how to leverage the trends that define them. One thing we can say for certain is that they are much better at helping hospitality brands engage adjacent and lookalike audiences than social graphs – possibly signaling greater opportunities for brands who learn to leverage them correctly. Doing so means that you have to go where the trends are though. Buyer beware: interest graphs are much more fickle. Understanding the cadence and speed of trends here is essential. Those who get in early have a lot to gain, so having a responsive content team or leader is very important to success.
Leverage Sounds
In part two of this series, we’ll focus on the practical tips for hospitality brands to build a content workflow that lets them operate like a creator. If you’re looking for a partner to help your hospitality brand grow on social media and leverage the creator economy, Front of House has been building hospitality brands for over twenty years. We help brands leverage the latest trends, not get sidetracked by them.
