One of the fascinating new trends in the influencer space is that of influencer houses. You may have heard The Hype House, probably the biggest example in the U.S., is queued up for a Netflix distribution deal after starting on social media channels. There’s another in the U.S. called the Sway House, yet another called Club Beverly Hills.
The concept borrows from the original reality TV show — The Real World on MTV. Influencer Houses bring together some number of large audience content creators and put them in a big, fancy house with each other to collaborate, create content, participate in challenges and more.
There’s a lot of smarts behind these things: Talent agencies created them to cross-promote client audiences and grow each influencer’s network, while at the same time building a frequently watched episodic content creation — a TV show — that can be monetized with advertising, merchandise, syndication deals and even big network distribution.
But is this really influencer marketing? Or is it entertainment with online influencers playing the parts?
I invited two of the people behind Wave House, an influencer house concept out of the United Kingdom to help us understand it all. Jidé Maduako originated the Wave House concept to support his stable of influencers at Yoke Network and is the primary producer of the series. Ali Clifton helps produce the show and series through Brave Bison, a social content firm in the U.K. that partners to support Yoke’s mission with the show.
I talk to them about the concept, the reasons for being, the end game and I even dig into whether or not these are reality TV shows or overacting zaniness to get eyeballs. You’ll appreciate the discussion, I’m sure.
This episode of Winfluence, the podcast, is sponsored by Julius. You owe it to yourself to do a demo of Julius today!
I mention that software more than others in my book because it’s the platform I’ve been using for a few years now to find influencers, engage with them and manage campaigns. Julius has powerful filters that let me drill down find just the gardening influencers in New England. Or the people who get excited about brick oven pizza. But it certainly also gives me the mega influencers and celebrity influencers I might need to help promote anything from stationery to toothpaste.
And in most cases, it has contact information so I don’t have to go fishing to reach them.
Oh, and they have their own audience health score to help you weed out ones with suspect audiences or engagement.
All the elements of campaign management are in the software, too. I love the fact I can assign a purchase price or value to every single social deliverable that is a part of campaign, automatically track it based on the influencer using our campaign hashtag, and get an ROI report for each element.
You know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true — You owe it to your brand or agency to do a demo of Julius today. Go to jasonfalls.co/julius and request one. That’s jasonfalls.co/julius.
The Winfluence theme music is “One More Look” featuring Jacquire King and Stephan Sharp by The K Club found on Facebook Sound Collection.
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Winfluence – Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand is available now in paperback, Kindle/eBook and audio book formats. Get it in the medium of your choice on Amazon or get a special discount on the paperback version of the book by clicking the button below, buying on the Entrepreneur Press bookstore and using the discount code FALLS20. That earns you 20% off the retail price. Read and learn why we’ve been backed into a corner to think influencer marketing means Instagram and YouTube and how reframing it to be “influence” marketing makes us smarter marketers.