Happy New Year (+Happy Sunday), Everyone!
I hope 2025 is off to a marvelous start for all of you – January is probably my favorite time of the year. It’s a fresh start. A chance to do something new, different or exciting. An opportunity to get out of your comfort zone.
And it’s that concept of doing something new and different that leads to this week’s topic: the influencers you should double-down on for 2025.
For most of the last ~three months, I’ve spent way too much time in way too many “2025 strategy” meetings, where topics ranged from which influencers to recruit for 2025, to what placements/publications the PR team will be targeting, to why upstart competitors are gaining share (and what new campaign/product/thing will fix it).
The common thread among those brands/organizations? All of them had leaders – founders, executives, thought leaders - who were unwilling to commit to playing a role in the brand’s communication strategy moving forward. Each one had tacitly ceded control of their narrative to third parties – influencers, agencies, media, employees, partners.
In today’s wildly over-connected information environment, that’s a mistake.
The single-most-impactful advantage a CEO, CMO, Founder, Executive, etc. can bestow to their organization is their willingness to play an active role in creating & communicating the company’s story. When I point this out, the response is - almost always - “Well, I’m always available to do an interview with [insert legacy publication or fancy-dancy media outlet] and I’m happy to do conferences and road shows with the team! I'm involved! Its not a problem!”
Those CEOs/Executives/Founders are missing the point.
Participating in an old-school interview or joining a panel at a trade show is hardly sufficient. What I'm talking about is being willing to be front-and-center, evangelizing your brand to the segments of your audience that do not yet believe and do not yet subscribe.
Being willing to tell your story means doing a lot more than sitting down for pre-arranged, scripted interviews (though it’s nice that you do it). It means being willing to be featured in ads (bonus points if you actually record them on your iPhone); it means being active on the social media platforms your target audience actually uses (not just delegating it to someone in Comms); it means being unafraid to go on podcasts, YouTube channels, sit for interviews with newsletter writers, it means being willing to stand up and take a stand (not just wait for your comms team or publicist to manufacture a statement so milquetoast it makes wonderbread look exciting).
The sad truth is that the vast majority of business leaders today aren’t willing to do any of those things, to any meaningful degree. And that’s why they’re losing.
There are four factors that lead to this conclusion:
#1: Everyone Is Too Connected
There are ~7.5B people on the planet, and in the last ~20 years, we’ve connected about 6B of them via the internet. I can connect with a F500 CEO on LinkedIn, have a conversation with Mark Cuban on X, or DM with a Hollywood celebrity on IG. In the past, I’d need to go through various gatekeepers - assistants, publicists, subordinates - to do any of those things. The internet (and social media, and mobile) shattered those legacy constructs. We’re all over-connected.
#2: Authenticity Is The Currency of the Realm
The Instagramification™ of everything has created a world where we all crave something real, genuine and authentic. The days where people looked to polished ads and refined statements as hallmarks of good communication are gone. This reminds me of a Japanese philosophy called wabi-sabi, which seeks to find the beauty in the imperfection of things. Something similar has emerged in social media – we find beauty and comfort not in seeing perfect, but in seeing real. A successful communication strategy doesn’t just acknowledge this, but it embraces it.
#3: Speed Kills
If authenticity is the currency of the realm, then velocity is the payment network. Even a decade ago, it was perfectly acceptable for a brand to take 24-48 hours to put out a statement following an event. It was not just fine, but commonplace to allow a comment on a social go unanswered. Today? Not a chance. Speed doesn’t just matter; it makes all the difference.
#4: New Media Is Here To Stay
Back in the day (read: 10+ years ago), legacy media served as the conduit for brands to reach large-scale audiences. The rules were simple: if you wanted credibility and awareness, you went through traditional media in some way or another (ads, PR, write-ups, advertorials, whatever). That’s no longer the case. The right podcast interview, YouTube channel or newsletter can (and often does) have 10x, 50x, 100x the impact of a legacy media interview. The world watched it happen in the 2024 Presidential election, where the single-most-impactful moment was a Joe Rogan interview. That’s the world we live in. The beauty of our massively interconnected world is that every industry, every niche, every eccentricity is able to find community. That makes it incumbent upon us - marketers + executives alike - to not just acknowledge this, but to actively embrace it in our strategy going forward.
And then there’s the final piece of the puzzle: the death of the marketing myth. For too long, I’ve heard that marketing isn’t as valuable as a product, isn’t as essential as operations, isn’t as exciting as R&D or Innovation, and isn't as profitable as sales or customer success/service. Not just from one CEO or Founder, but from almost all of them. Not just in their words, but in actions (or, in many cases, inaction). The overwhelming majority of executives + founders have delegated their communications responsibilities to others. They’ve ceded control over their narrative.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: the single-most-important factor in whether a brand/organization is successful isn’t the product or the team or service or the financials; it’s the story. Telling that story is the job of the founder/CEO/Executives.
What Do You Do?
Given all of this, what can brands do? The simple answer? Demand that your executives become your best influencers. Most brands have (at least some of) the infrastructure required to support and elevate influencers – a following, a media budget, production capacity, audience insights, a team of capable marketers and a whole bunch of ideas. Instead of (or in addition to) bringing those resources to bear for outside influencers, use them to elevate your own executives.
The reality is that there is no-one more passionate, more invested or more convinced of their brand’s future than a founder or executive. These are the people who have poured years (if not decades) of blood, sweat and tears into their company. They know the secret sauce upon which the brand is built. They believe in the organization with every fiber of their being. They love their brand as if it were a member of their family. They see the future of the brand as clearly as you or I see what’s right in front of us - and they’re willing to fight tooth and nail for that future.
You won’t find that passion, vision, conviction and expertise in anyone else. In today’s environment, where authenticity is currency, your executives/founders are sitting on a proverbial goldmine.
Here’s 4 ideas on how you can start to extract those resources:
Idea #1: Have Your CEO/Founder/Executives Make Ads
I firmly believe that every executive should have 30 minutes each week - that’s less than 1% of the average exec’s working time - blocked to create ads or content for the brand. With the right preparation, that should yield a minimum of 10 short videos, plus another 10-15 other assets (article, email, infographic, statics, quotes, etc.). For brands with 2-4 executives/founders, that alone is enough content to fuel a good chunk of your ad accounts. And the best part? You have unlimited usage rights, no influencer nonsense to deal with and a near-zero incremental cost per creative.
Liz Giorgi from Soona is among the very best at this - every week, she creates a minimum of 5 video ads for her brand – and many convert like gangbusters. Why? Because she LOVES her company, she has incredible insight into her customers, and she’s willing to make hundreds of ads every year. Some of them are home runs, some are strikeouts. All of them have the same cost: $0.00.
The advantage isn’t just that your brand’s best spokesperson is your CEO/Founder/Executive; it’s that they’re already on payroll. Instead of spending $10k, $20k, $50k for influencers to create these ads, you can get better quality versions for zero dollars, then take that extra $10k, $20k, $50k (or whatever) and invest it in something else (media, resources, talent, ads, whatever).
If an executive isn’t willing to commit 30 minutes a week to marketing, they’re not the right executive to lead your organization in 2025.
Idea #2: New Media Tour
Every industry, every niche, every random thing under the sun has some kind of “new media” – whether it’s a “must-read” newsletter, a podcast, a Discord community, a popular podcast, whatever.
Finding those is surprisingly easy: use Sparktoro and/or do some audience insights research.
Once you have a general idea of which one(s) are relevant to each sub-section of your audience, uncover the pain points/positions/issues/challenges that the individual community faces, map those onto your brand/product/offering, and start pitching. The secret advantage a CEO/Executive/Founder has for most new media is their own credibility – most smaller-time new media outlets are constantly trying to get high-quality guests, so when a CEO/Founder/Executive is interested, they’re often interested, too.
Unlike traditional media appearances, a podcast/YouTube interview doesn’t have to be a thing (in fact, it shouldn’t be a thing) – there’s not likely to be much (if any) “gotcha” stuff, and showing up prepared to talk about that community’s issues/challenges/pain points is goes a LONG way toward building goodwill.
Sure, that random podcast may only have 20,000 listeners – but if 75% of them are in your target audience, the impact of that interview is 3-5x higher than a daytime MSNBC interview where only 2-5% of the audience is in your target audience.
Idea #3: Launch A Direct Communication Channel in Their Natural Content Language
Every person has a “natural content language” – a preferred medium of communicating. As an example, Rand Fishkin’s is probably whiteboards; Fred Vaelleys’ might be podcasts; Aaron Orendorf’s is most assuredly in-depth, long-form content.
We all have one.
The reason most communication endeavors fail isn’t poor execution, or lack of initial results, or an unwillingness to do the work; it’s because the medium is wrong. That old saying, “if you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,” is true for communication, too.
Help your CEO/Executive/Founder find their natural content language – what’s the one way they can communicate every single day and never get tired or bored? Is it emails? Great - newsletter. Is it Looms? Amazing - YouTube channel. Is it whiteboards? Podcasts? Slide decks? You get the idea.
Find the way they love to communicate. Build a channel around it. Create a structure to facilitate content creation (i.e. ideas for topics, big questions, trending searches, etc.). Then unleash them. Minimal editing. Minimal cuts. Minimal re-takes/re-dos.
Let their passion, the knowledge, the expertise, the vision come out.
Idea #4: Get Them on (the Right) Social
My biggest pet peeve is founders/executives/ceos who do not personally use the same social media platforms as their target audience. It drives me INSANE. I can’t count the number of meetings I’ve had with executives who have said, “We spend $1MM+ a month on Meta Ads, but I don’t know….I’m not on that stuff.”
What gets me is that in ANY other function, if a single third-party was that significant to the business, the executive would insist on having a relationship with that group, whether it be a supplier, a distributor, a partner, a financier, an investor, whatever. Take eCommerce. If a single supplier was 50%+ of a brand’s total production, you can bet your bottom dollar the CEO would know everything there is to know about that supplier. S/he would be visiting their factories. S/he’d text with the CEO. S/he’d fly out to events or dinners. You name it, they’d do it.
But when that supplier is a social media platform? The CEO won’t even create an account. 2025 is the year that stops. Be prepared: the CEO/Executive/Founder will push back.
Do not give in.
The hard truth is this: the relevant conversations about your industry and your brand are happening on the social media platforms where your audience hangs out. If your executives aren’t there, they’re not able to see those conversations happening, they’re not able to participate in them, and the inevitable end result is that they (and your company) will be slow to respond to changing conditions/trends. And, in today’s always-on, hyper-connected digital world, being slow is the same as being dead.
If you’re a consumer product brand, and your CEO is only on LinkedIn, that’s not going to get it done. Get him/her on IG. Have them follow your competition, the influencers you’re using, and the other key personalities in your space. Within a week (maybe two), they’ll start to see the value. Give it another month, and they’ll be proactively sending you comments, posts and ideas.
That’s when the magic starts happening everywhere else – because now they can use that inspiration to create new ads, to share new perspectives, to adjust their product, to expand to new verticals/industries, etc.
2025 is the year of going direct. We’ve seen it with everyone from Elon Musk (love him or hate him, he’s the most accessible centi-billionaire on the planet) and Mark Cuban to Mr. Wonderful (Kevin O’Leary), down to Sean Frank (CEO of Ridge Wallets), Cody Plofker (CEO of Jones Road Beauty), Kevin Plank (Under Armour Founder & CEO), Richard Branson (Virgin Companies CEO), and many others.
The era of outsourcing and delegating communications is over. If you want to win in 2025, the single-best step you can take is to get your executives/CEO/founders not just involved, but front-and-center in your communications strategy.
Until next week,
Sam
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