Justin Kline: Fortune 500 Influencer Marketing

Our interview of Justin Kline for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere. Justin is the co-founder of Markerly, a marketing company and an influencer marketing software platform that helps influencers connect with Fortune 500 companies.

Justin shares his experience working with Influencers on projects with companies like Nike, Coca-Cola and Budweiser. We also talk about how influencer marketing has evolved since Markerly was founded in 2012 and Justin’s insight into future trends.

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A transcript of the episode follows:

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Jon Pfeiffer:

I'm joined today by Justin Kline, welcome to the podcast.

Justin Kline:

Thank you, Jon. Glad to be here.

Jon Pfeiffer:

You are the co-founder of Markerly-

Justin Kline:

Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... M-A-R-K-E-R-L-Y, if I spelled that right?

Justin Kline:

Yep, marker with an L-Y at the end.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Okay, cool. And you are a marketing company that specializes in growing social media consciousness, while helping influencers connect with Fortune 500 companies. And I pulled that from your LinkedIn account.

Justin Kline:

Cool.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So let's unpack that a little bit. So from a 50,000 foot view, can you tell me what you do? What the company does, and then we'll drill down?

Justin Kline:

Yeah, so we specialize in influencer marketing. And now is the first time ever, really, in human history that like your next door neighbor could have millions of followers on platforms like TikToK or Instagram, and with that comes enormous opportunities for brands to reach audiences in new ways. And that is what we do in a nutshell. And I like to pitch it as, we help brands make their marketing more human, because now is the first time ever, like I mentioned, that you can have all of these different brand partnerships with so many different personalities. It really is kind of like a Renaissance of endorsements/brand partnerships. And it's grown to be beyond what your typical celebrity endorsement looks like.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So let's first attack it from the brand side, and then I want to talk about from the influencer side. The information I found said that you've worked with the NFL, with Nike, with Coca-Cola with Live Nation among a bunch of others. Tell me about those campaigns, let's start with the NFL. What kind of campaign did you do with the NFL?

Justin Kline:

So that was a fun one, that was for the Super Bowl and it was, basically, a merchandise campaign. So we found a bunch of fans of different teams and we sent them gear, and they took pictures of themselves in the gear, and then posted on platforms like Instagram.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So how did you find fans?

Justin Kline:

I think that was the primary platform, it was Instagram.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yeah. I actually saw that campaign. How did you go about finding the fans?

Justin Kline:

So we have technology that helps us collect data from these different platforms, so that we can index influencers. And that helps us just know what the different brand affinities are by person, and it really helps us go in with like a fine comb to find the right people.

Jon Pfeiffer:

What platforms are your primary platforms that you use?

Justin Kline:

So, I mean, of course, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, now, is huge. Those are the main ones. And we used to do a lot of blog stuff, we still do from time to time, but I'm really bullish on video content. I think video is the way to go moving forward. It's just a really great way to get brands, or to get fans engaged rather.

Jon Pfeiffer:

At the end I have a put on your hat and look in the crystal ball and give me your predictions, but where do... I'm going to jump in on one of them though, it's short form video, where do see the TikToks, the Snapchats, Reels going?

Justin Kline:

Yeah, what about it? Just my prediction, just general prediction?

Jon Pfeiffer:

I wonder what you think... How much growth do you see of that over just static posts?

Justin Kline:

Yeah. So, good question. I mean, I think that platforms like TikTok, TikTok, specifically, I think really pioneered a new way of editing, of being able to edit on the fly video that you take. And there was a company called Vine back in the day. In fact, we kind of predicted the downfall of Vine, because we saw it in the data and we came out with a data study a couple of months before they pulled the plug on it. But I think that vine kind of paved the way for TikTok to come out. And they definitely raised the bar significantly.

I think adding the musical component helped them gain more traction more quickly, because video's great, but then when you put music on top of video, then, well, I feel like it makes the content, in order of magnitude, more engaging. Because music tends to... it just harps on emotion a little more. Yeah, and my prediction is that that's going to continue, and that more... I think that adults are going to start really getting into TikTok. It started with the teenagers and the 20 somethings, and I think we're going to move into more adults adoption.

Jon Pfeiffer:

It wasn't just dancing and stunts.

Justin Kline:

Yes. And it is going to broaden in terms of all the different categories that one might want to make content on a TikTok for.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yeah. So let me circle back to some of the other campaigns. You've worked with Nike, what did you do with Nike?

Justin Kline:

So we've done a couple of things, the one that sticks out in my head is, they came out with new sunglasses and we sent these... They had like these beautiful kits that they made and we helped facilitate sending out the kits to the influencers. And we found a bunch of marathon runners, because they were going after marathon runners with these really cool sporty, athletic sunglasses. So we found a ton of marathon runners and got them to post photos of them running with the sunglasses on.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I've run a few marathons. I just had-

Justin Kline:

Oh, cool.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... somebody would reach out and give you sunglasses just because you run.

Justin Kline:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you had to have a certain amount of followers too, but, yeah, that was a good one.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Did you have any criteria on how fast they had to run? Could they be slow marathoners?

Justin Kline:

Probably, I think the followers were probably prioritized as opposed to whatever their speed was.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Got it. Because I was just thinking, maybe I wouldn't have qualified. One of the other companies you did was Coca Cola, what was that campaign?

Justin Kline:

So we've done a bunch of stuff with Coca Cola. I liked the one where it was about... Well, we did a couple that were pretty notable. One was, they came out with sparkling water, it was like, Dasani Sparkling, and we actually got a bunch of bloggers to write about, and they also posted on Instagram, but to talk about, what in their life makes them sparkle? So I thought that was like a fun one. Yeah, it was just like a fun, what about your life is great and makes your life sparkle?

Jon Pfeiffer:

What was the best sparkling life?

Justin Kline:

I don't recall, to be honest. My hands weren't really into that campaign much, but yeah, I'll have to follow back. I'll send you some links.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Okay. I'm curious.

Justin Kline:

And then there was, we did one with AMC and Coca-Cola, which was kind of cool, because we got a bunch of influencers to go and they basically got their followers to go and try out the new Coke Freestyle machines. And you could go and redeem with like a QR code, we set it up so you could go with a QR code and you get like a dollar off of your Coke, and that was pretty cool. That was a fun one. Yeah.

So, and then the last one I had on my list was Live Nation, what did you do with Live Nation? And when did you get started with them?

So that one was in partnership... Yeah. That was like a Budweiser/Live Nation thing, and there was a big event. It was a festival and we got a bunch of people to promote the festival.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So we've been talking about Fortune 500 companies, how is it when you're working with a smaller company, is the approach different?

Justin Kline:

So we have pretty hard minimums. So that kind of... It definitely prevents us from working with too small of a client, but, yes, the strategy needs to be different. It really just depends on what the goals are too, because every client is different in why they want to do influencer marketing. There are many different reasons. The obvious one that most people think of is, "Well, I want to boost sales." And yes, that ends up being very transactional. And it's very... you have to approach that in a very specific way. Other reasons why people do influencer marketing, would be to create content. That is one that most people don't really think of, but there is a lot of value there. You can get content created more cost-effectively in many cases by just getting a bunch of influencers to create the content. And then you also get the eyeballs of their followers along with it.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Shifting gears, but I read where your company has worked on several mission-driven campaigns, and list-

Justin Kline:

Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... examples of Healthy Texas, stopping voter suppression, anti-vaping, childhood development. First, just in general, how has a mission-driven campaign different than a corporate campaign?

Justin Kline:

Good question. So a mission-driven campaign is more story-driven, so it's more about the narrative versus getting people to go buy lipstick or something like that.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right. So let's go through these, the Healthy Texas campaign, what was that?

Justin Kline:

So Healthy Texas was a campaign about... And it was actually for, it was for COVID. It was when COVID was starting up and we partnered with our agency partner, Sherry Matthews group and the state of Texas to basically launch this campaign to help spread the word on social distancing and wearing a mask, and just all of the things that the CDC was recommending people do upon the start of the pandemic.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So we're recording this on March 29th, I'm in California and we still have the mask mandate and you're in Texas, and the mask mandate is, from my understanding, completely lifted. Are people still wearing the masks-

Justin Kline:

Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... or is it back to normal?

Justin Kline:

So I live in Austin, and it's a little more liberal here and I think there's more mask wearers, to be honest. If you go out to the country, if you drive like three hours away in the middle of nowhere in Texas, I think you'll find less mask wearers. And it's funny that it's a political thing. I mean, it's kind of weird, but it is. And yeah, I'll go to the supermarket and there will be some people that don't want to follow the rules of the supermarket, because while the governor lifted the mask mandate, businesses can still decide to have that as a rule to come into their business, and most businesses are doing that. They're requiring masks.

Jon Pfeiffer:

It was a total sidetrack, but I'm curious to see what it's like in public-

Justin Kline:

Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... without a mask. So one of the other campaigns, the mission campaigns was anti-vaping.

Justin Kline:

Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I mean, who is the constituency there? Who were you working for?

Justin Kline:

So that was Texas, that was the state of Texas. And that one was really cool, because I mean, there's a big problem with teen vaping. And there are all of these studies that are coming out that are speaking to the harmful effects of vaping. Most kids, they were told, "Oh, it's much safer than cigarettes, and so you can just do it all day long and you'll be fine, because it's just vapor." But no, it's actually... Kids had been going to the hospital with collapsed lungs, and yeah, it's really bad for you. And we don't know the long-term effects, because vaping is relatively new. So we don't have people that have been vaping for 50 years, whereas we have people that have been smoking all their lives.

Jon Pfeiffer:

How did you get influencers in that campaign?

Justin Kline:

How did we get influencers?

Jon Pfeiffer:

Yes.

Justin Kline:

So that was all TikTok. And we used a lot of the same methodologies as far as how we identify influencers, but it was more... we wanted to find cool kids that other kids look up to, that would talk about how you should put your vapes down. And the whole thing was about, it was #vapesdown, put your #vapesdown was the whole story there. And it was just... Yeah, it talked about... Well, here, now I'm kind of rambling. But yeah, we found kids that got TikTok famous because they dance. A lot of them are dancers, as you know, and yeah, it was cool. That was a good campaign.

Jon Pfeiffer:

And the last mission-driven campaign I want to ask you about is the childhood development-

Justin Kline:

Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... who are you trying to reach? Young parents?

Justin Kline:

I'm sorry, you were breaking up a little.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I'm sorry, who are you trying to reach with that campaign?

Justin Kline:

Okay. So that is for First 5 of California. And so that reaches out to parents that have children that are under the age of five, because First 5 is all about the first five years of a child's life, and how important those first five years are to a child's development. So we've done a few things with them. We're, in fact, wrapping something up currently with First 5, but that's fun, because we're reaching out to parents and they usually have like really cute kids, and they're talking about just how important those first five years are. They just launched a new website, so we're helping them promote that. And there's just a lot of educational material for parents, especially parents that might not have time to go and research all this stuff. It's all in one nice, centrally located place, all this information.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I've heard the campaign, just talk to your kids, you should read your kids, you should-

Justin Kline:

Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... put your phone down, pay attention to your kids.

Justin Kline:

Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Ironically, what was the platform you used to reach them, the parents?

Justin Kline:

That is primarily Instagram.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Which that's the irony of this, part of the campaign is to put your phone down, reaching them on the phone.

Justin Kline:

Right, right. It's like, yeah, we're reaching them on the phone because that's where they are, to remind them not to be on the phone. It should say, "Put the phone down right now," is what it should say.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Oh, yeah. So shifting gears, your website has a blog and there's some great posts, one of the posts is 22 ways to track ROI for an influencer marketing campaign. First for the listeners that don't know ROI is return on investment. What are the top things that you use for the brands that help track their return on investment?

Justin Kline:

Yeah, that's a good question. So, if you're tracking sales, for instance, you can use promo codes to give to the influencers that they can use on their content, that's one way. You can get them links, trackable links as well. You also want to track the ROI on the content that's being created. So if it would have costed you $10,000 to hire a photographer and like go to a studio, and we were able to get the content created for a fraction of that. Well then, there's a little ROI built in to that, because you're getting the content created at such a reduced rate. And then on top of that, if you're having influencers post this out to their followers, well then there's value associated with that.

So you can look at the media value that you're getting compared to what you're spending. There's a lot of different ways you can do that. You can look at, what does a site visitor cost? How much do I value a site visitor? How much do I value an impression by my target market? So there are lots of different ways you can back into ROI outside of just tracking straight up sales from a transactional standpoint. And I think that... Yeah, yeah. And there are so many different dimensions of value that you get from an influencer campaign. And there are ways to track value accordingly, depending on what it is you're trying to... what needle you're moving.

Jon Pfeiffer:

How much of working with a brand is education, in the sense of you're educating the brand on what the influencer can do, because they're still stuck in the traditional media?

Justin Kline:

So it's kind of split, some brands are very savvy and they've done influencer campaigns before, and it's become a staple to all their media plans, it's just becoming that proverbial box you have to check whenever you're running an advertising campaign. And then there are other brands that do need more education. It's their first time doing an influencer campaign and they need a little more handholding, and yes, more education. It's a little bit more of a... I think there's a little more anxiety maybe because it's new and they've never done it before. So, yeah, there's a little of that. And yeah, I mean, there's a first time for everything though.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So I want to shift gears, in the sense of, now, I want to look at it from the other side, from the influencer side. You have a blog post on how to become a social media influencer. In your view, working with the brands, what's the best way for an influencer to get started?

Justin Kline:

So influencers can reach out to brands directly, that's one way. If you love a brand, if you wear these shorts every day, and they're your favorite pair of shorts, and you want to tell all your followers about the shorts, and maybe you want to go and make a partnership with the company that makes the shorts, it doesn't hurt to reach out to them and tell them how much you love their stuff and let them know how many followers you have, and that you would be open to collaborating in some way. You can also reach out to companies like ours, sending information about your audience. That's another way you can go about it. And then just keep creating really great content.

I think like tagging brands in your content, even though you aren't getting paid or they haven't reached out to you to do something with you. That's okay, still post a picture of your favorite, I don't know, anything, and tag the brand, and they might reach out to you, if you do a good job, and they might want to work with you.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So I want to shift it to you now, where are you from originally?

Justin Kline:

So I grew up in Maryland, outside of Washington, DC.

Jon Pfeiffer:

And then I saw you went to school in Tampa.

Justin Kline:

Yes. I went to school at a small liberal arts college called University of Tampa in Florida. And then I moved back to DC after that. I actually wanted to be a musician, originally, and I traveled the world, playing-

Jon Pfeiffer:

What instrument?

Justin Kline:

... music for... Huh?

Jon Pfeiffer:

What instrument?

Justin Kline:

I play guitar, anything with strings. I can do bass. I can do guitar. I can do ukulele. I play a little piano. I sing. Yeah, so like, I thought I was going to do that, and I just traveled for a good solid year, and I was busking on the streets. I traveled to Europe and I was busking in DC for awhile, for like probably a year before I went to Europe. And then I went to Australia for a few months. And then I went home and I don't know, I ended up getting a real job and got into advertising, and the rest is history. And then, after a couple of jobs in advertising, we got into this program in California, in Menlo Park called 500 Startups, and they invested in us and this was back in 2012. And we moved to California for a few years and now we're in Austin. We decided to move from there to Austin.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So the company started in 2012, you're in San Francisco, tell me about the decision to move from San Francisco to Austin.

Justin Kline:

Yeah. So, I love San Francisco, I think it's great. I think that our main reason was... Well, I started the company with my wife, who's also a co-founder, and then my buddy Roth, who I met in a previous job, And Sarah and I, we had visited Austin a bunch of times and we were just really loved it. And we always kind of in the back of our heads, before we even started the company, we always wanted to end up in Austin. And while California was awesome, it was just a good time, it was perfect timing, because we thought it would be better place to scale a company. I think more cost-effectively, because it is just very pricey in California. And it's just a more affordable if you want to buy a house and start a family. And now, it's funny, because Austin is blowing up now. So I think we timed it right. And now, there's a lot of Californians moving Austin now and driving up the real estate.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Joe Rogan.

Justin Kline:

Yeah, yeah. Joe Rogan. Yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I think he's-

Justin Kline:

I got to go see him live.

Jon Pfeiffer:

... played a little more role in that one, but that's because he's-

Justin Kline:

Yeah. And he's apparently doing comedy all over the place in Austin now. I got to go see him, he's so funny.

Jon Pfeiffer:

So how do you consume content? What's your favorite platform?

Justin Kline:

I like to read. I like books. That's my preference. Yeah, I like books. I mean, I'll watch documentaries and stuff. I like that too. I read the news online, but I do like physical books. I don't like Kindle. I don't like eBooks. I like need the tangible thing.

Jon Pfeiffer:

The touch. So how do you keep up with what's going on in the industry?

Justin Kline:

So, I read trade publications, I think that helps. And I actually try not to fixate too much on the space, because I think that that kind of puts blinders on you and then you can't... it's harder to be innovative. So I like to have a broad range of categories of content that I like to consume.

Jon Pfeiffer:

How has COVID-19 affected your business?

Justin Kline:

How has COVID-19 affected my... Well, we can't go to an office, everyone is remote and now I think we're going to be permanently remote, so it pushed us over the edge.

Jon Pfeiffer:

I've heard... from a lot of people I'm hearing that.

Justin Kline:

Yeah. So permanently remote, which is cool, because now we can hire people from anywhere, and we're not restricted to the talent that's in Austin, which is nice. So now we have people in Dallas. I'm interviewing someone in Chicago. We have someone in Wisconsin. We've got people just spread out all over the place now, which is nice.

Jon Pfeiffer:

How has influencer marketing changed during the pandemic?

Justin Kline:

So, obviously, certain industries got hit much harder than others, so I think in the beginning, there weren't many airline campaigns going on, not many restaurant campaigns, not many concerts. Yeah, so certain industries definitely there was a drop-off, significant drop-off as far as a brand spending money on advertising, in turn influencer marketing. So I'd say there was that, but I think that probably some companies they couldn't stick around, so I think there's a little consolidation going on. So I think the ones that are left standing, will probably come out better than when they went in. If they can stay alive to reap the rewards of whatever holes in the market, any companies that became defunct left.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Now this is your prediction time, so don't have your crystal ball, look into it, and will Instagram Reels take off like Instagram wants it to?

Justin Kline:

I think it was probably a good move, because Instagram's audience is a little older, their user base is a little older than TikTok. And like I mentioned, I think that older demographics are going to start to flock to these kinds of platforms. And Instagram obviously has the benefit of their massive user base, of just the pure Instagram user base that they can kind of siphon users onto Reels from, so they have that benefit. And I think that there is a little bit of a... I think TikTok has very loyal users. I don't think that someone that loves TikTok... I think it's going to be really hard to get TikTokers to leave TikTok and go to Reels, but I think that the low hanging fruit for Facebook is the existing Instagram user base that might not have tried out TikTok yet.

Jon Pfeiffer:

What do you think, will Clubhouse take off?

Justin Kline:

I have mixed feelings about Clubhouse. I think it's great. I think it's cool. It's like an interactive podcast, but I feel like it's a rabbit hole-

Jon Pfeiffer:

Without the production value.

Justin Kline:

Yeah. But it's kind of a rabbit hole. It's it can be a time suck too. You could spend hours just listening to people talk about a topic, it's like a never-ending black hole of discussion. I mean, I feel like I don't have enough time in the day as it is. It's just competing with a lot of stuff, and people have gravitated towards it. So I think if like certain speakers, if they're going to be on it, like if Joe Rogan's on Clubhouse, I think that'll be interesting. That'll be kind of cool. It's like a live podcast, Joe Rogan, that's cool. But there are a lot of weird categories that... I mean, I guess there's a lot of fringe groups that probably would love to talk to 20 people about, I don't know, like Warcraft or something.

Jon Pfeiffer:

This is my last prediction question, where do you see the industry in one year? And then three years? The influencer marketing industry.

Justin Kline:

Where do I see the industry? So I think that more and more brands are going to make it a permanent part of their spends, of their advertising spends. I think that it's going to be interesting how these platforms develop around influencer marketing. It'll be interesting to see how they integrate it into their buying platforms, because I think that's going to happen and you'll be able to buy influencers kind of like you buy Facebook ads. I think that that's kind of inevitable, but at the same time, it might not be, because of all the moving parts and the contracts and the agents. That actually might be really hard to do. I think that it's going to be interesting to see if they can do it. I think that at the very least they're going to make it so that agencies like us can buy ads and boost content more easily.

Because I think that that would be the smart move for like Facebook, that's the low hanging fruit for them. All of this influencer marketing content is being created, they should make it easy to boost the content. And they kind of are right now, and we do a lot of that. If an influencer creates a piece of content, we can easily go in and boost that post and put spend behind it. So that is something that I'm excited about, building technology around that and hooking into some of these buying platforms to be able to do that more seamlessly.

I also think that... What's another prediction I have. I just think that it's going to become like a normal advertising medium. It's just going to be, you've got TV, you've got digital, and inside digital influencers, you have display, and it's just going to be one of those things that brands have to do.

Jon Pfeiffer:

Right. So my last question, if a brand wants to work with you, where can they find you on the internet?

Justin Kline:

So markerly.com is our website. And you can reach out directly to me at justin@markerly.com that's M-A-R-K-E-R-L-Y.com.