Insights on Influence from Celebrity Social Media Managers

In the context of influencer marketing, there’s a big difference between an influencer and a celebrity. My definition of that difference has always been that an influencer is someone who built an audience on social media by creating content on social media. A celebrity is someone who built an audience on social media because of something else. They’re an actor. Or singer. Or politician. Or athlete. 

Social media content is not their primary thing. 

Now, before I go further, let me circle back to the very premise of this show and my approach to influence marketing. An influencer, broadly defined, is someone who can persuade an audience to take action. That can be someone offline. Not on social media. But for the sake of this discussion, we’re confining the definition to a social media influencer. 

So celebrities have big audiences on social media, but not necessarily because of their social media.

However, celebrity social media can be quite compelling and certainly advantageous to their career and visibility if managed properly. 

A lot of times, that’s where Cassie Petrey comes in. She is the CEO of CrowdSurf. It is an entertainment industry firm that handles social media content for big stars like Britney Spears, Camila Cabello and The BackStreet Boys. 

Cassie founded Crowd Surf with a friend after managing MySpace pages for country music stars back in the mid-2000s. She came to prominence in the music industry and quickly realized there was opportunity in handling these emerging online content platforms for the stars. That was 17 years ago. 

It’s that depth of experience with celebrities and social media that compelled me to ask Cassie to come on the show. It’s insightful for us to hear what the upper echelon of creators are doing, even if they aren’t the types of creators we in the influencer space are typically dealing with. 

Winfluence is made possible by Cipio.ai – The Community Commerce Marketing platform. What does that mean? It’s an influencer marketing software solution, but it has additional apps that function to tap into your brand community to drive commerce. Community Commerce Marketing moves beyond influencers to fans and followers, customers, employees and more. With Cipio.ai, you get the vital social media discovery and data you need for your typical influencer marketing effort. But additional apps help you uncover raving fans in your own community to increase sales, retention and engagement.

The best thing about Cipio.ai? You can start using it for free. Influencer discovery and list building doesn’t cost a thing. Go to jasonfalls.co/cipio and see the software that was so good, I joined the team.

Scroll Down for a Show Transcript!

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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Cassie Petrey Transcript

[00:00:00] Jason: On this episode of Winfluence.

[00:00:01] Cassie: The biggest mistake I see aspiring artists make on social media is making content that isn’t about being an artist. I see a lot of people chase trends or do things that other people with a lot of numbers and following, you know, do so you’re gonna acquire fans that maybe don’t care about music or aren’t gonna be interested in music content when you start posting it.

I see a lot of people, build numbers with the hopes of transferring those numbers to a music listening audience, and that just doesn’t always work.

[00:00:43] Jason: There’s a difference between being an influencer and actually influencing. I’m Jason Falls, and in this podcast we explore the people, companies campaigns and stories that illustrate that difference. Welcome to Winfluence, the Influence Marketing Podcast

 Hello again friends, thanks for listening to Winfluence the Influence Marketing Podcast.

In the context of influencer marketing, there’s a big difference between an influencer and a celebrity. My definition of that difference has always been that an influencer is someone who built an audience on social media by creating content on social media. A celebrity is someone who built an audience on social media because of something else.

They’re an actor or a singer, or a politician or athlete. Social media content is not their primary thing. Now, before I go further, let me circle back to the very premise of this show and my approach to influence marketing. An influencer broadly defined is someone who can persuade an audience to take action.

That can be someone offline, not on social media, but for the sake of this discussion, we’re confining the definition to a social media influencer. So celebrities have big audiences on social media, but not necessarily because of their social media.

However, celebrity social media can be quite compelling and certainly advantageous to their career and visibility if managed properly. A lot of times, that’s where Cassie Petrey comes in, she’s the CEO of Crowd Surf. It’s an entertainment industry firm that, handles social media content for big stars like Britney Spears and Camilla Cabello and the Backstreet Boys.

Cassie founded Crowd Surf with a friend after managing MySpace pages for country music stars, back in the mid 2000s. She came to prominence in the music industry and quickly realized there was opportunity in handling these emerging online content platforms for the Stars that was 17 years ago. It’s that depth of experience with celebrities and social media that compelled me to ask Cassie to come on the show.

It’s insightful for us to hear what the upper echelon of creators are doing, even if they aren’t the types of creators we in the influencer marketing space are typically dealing with. I also brought her to the show because warning, humble brag ahead, Cassie is a native of Louisville, Kentucky.

I’m only embarrassed I didn’t know that until we chatted. She lives the high life in LA now and rubs elbows, both virtually and IRL with the big stars, and she helps bring them and their channels to life on social media. The community manager to the stars, Cassie Petrey is coming up.

Winfluence is made possible by cipio.ai, you know by now I’ve recently joined the company as executive vice president for marketing, so it makes sense cipio.ai becomes the presenting sponsor of the show. What is cipio.ai? It’s a community commerce marketing platform. What does that mean? It includes an influence marketing software solution, but it has additional apps that function to tap into your brand community to drive commerce.

Community commerce marketing moves beyond influencers to fans and followers, customers, employees, and more. With cipio.ai, you get the vital social media discovery and data you need for your typical influencer marketing efforts, but additional apps help you uncover raving fans in your own community to increase sales retention, and engagement.

When I first reviewed cipio.ai last summer long before we talked about me coming on board, I declared it the first software platform I could reasonably call an influence marketing platform without the R. That should tell you everything you need to know about why I’m now with the company.

The best thing about cipio.ai, you can start using it for free. Influence discovery beyond just social media and list building doesn’t cost a thing. Go to Jasonfalls.co/cipio. That’s Jasonfalls.co/cipio. Go see the software that was so good, I joined the team. Jasonfalls.co/cipio.

What can we learn from the person who does social media for the stars, celebrities, content and influence with Crowd Surf’s Cassie Petrey, she’s next, on Winfluence.

 Cassie, first off, how does one come to be the social media manager person for the Backstreet Boys or Camilla Cabello and Britney Spears, there’s gotta be a fun origin story there?

[00:05:52] Cassie: Yeah, I mean, I would say that, a lot of it comes down to timing, but you know, I was lucky in timing in a lot of ways. So I would say my career in social media started when I was probably 11 or 12, and I became a Backstreet Boys fan, and I really used the internet to participate in that fandom.

So at that time there was, AOL was the big platform, so I made an AOL online scene, I learned how to make a fan site. I brought a book about HTML and really dove into using digital technology to show my appreciation for the Backstreet Boys as a group and then I also use digital technology to become fans and meet other people within that entity.

I really enjoyed that experience so much to the point where I started becoming a fan of other artists and being a super fan of other artists and doing similar things for them because I loved the process and I really loved supporting music. I loved making fans of other people who like the same kind of music that I do, and it also spawned another, passion that I have now, which is traveling. I would travel because I wanted to go to concerts, but then I realized, oh, I like traveling even without concerts. So I would say, you know, it all kind of started there, and when I was about 15 or 16 years old, a family member of mine said, you know that there’s jobs in entertainment industry.

And I’d always just thought about the person on stage and I knew that I can’t sing. I knew I wasn’t that person, but when I heard about that, I was like, oh, but I could help the people that I like and that made me really excited and I became obsessed with the idea of that.

And I lived in Louisville, Kentucky. I studied every single thing that I could locally. So like I worked for a local manager, I worked at a local record label. I found local bands to help support and that helped me build my resume to be able to get a job when I went to college in Nashville at the Warner Music Group in the college rep program.

And I would say that about the same time I started my college rep program, mySpace came out and I saw, it always starts with local artists for me I guess, I saw local artists talking about how they are using MySpace to promote their shows and talking about themselves and getting to know people locally, and building a fan base that way, and I went to my boss and I said, why don’t major label artists use MySpace? And she’s like, I don’t really know what a MySpace is, but I’ll let you pick an artist and run one. So I got to pick an artist that was signed to Warner and run their MySpace page, and I did awesome at it, and my story just kind of took off from there.

I liked what I was doing, I was doing something that nobody else was doing at the time and was able to show like data and prove that I was having success with it. So I started there and I’m lucky because the timing was great because I didn’t know what I wanted to do at that time and then I found this and I was like, wow, I want to do social media and I wanna talk to, you know, I wanna help artists connect with fans and find new fans and you know, help fans build community online, together. So that’s where I started. And I’m lucky because nobody’s been able to do it longer than I have because I literally been doing it since it exsisted.

[00:08:56] Jason: Yeah, that’s true.

[00:08:56] Cassie: And, I’m really grateful for the timing, because it couldn’t be better.

[00:09:01] Jason: Well, and a couple surprises here, first of all and people are gonna think I’m full of crap saying this, I didn’t know you were from Louisville. I’m in Louisville, I didn’t realize you were a fellow Louisvillian, so that’s cool. But you also to go a little bit further back, well, not further back, coz you talked about, you know, thinking about this when you were as a teenager, but you’re a Blue Raider, right?

Middle Tennessee state, you actually went to school for this type of career, right?

[00:09:24] Cassie: Yes, I sure did. And it was a, I kind of fell into it coz the school, you know, Google didn’t exist, 15, 20 years ago the way it does now. So it was was hard to research college harder than it would be now, and the only music business program I knew about at the time was Belmont and I applied to Belmont and I just, it was a private school, I couldn’t afford to go to Belmont.

So I was devastated because I wanted to study Music Business and I couldn’t, so I actually was gonna go to University of Louisville and study something like, publicity or communications coz that was the closest thing I could find to music business and what I was interested in.

I was really sad about that coz I really wanted to do music business. And I remember one day, this was probably like in July, so really close to when college, you know, first term starts. I got a letter in the mail from Middle Tennessee State University and they said, You can go to our school and pay in-state tuition through this program called the Academic Common Market because your state doesn’t have this program and that letter changed my life, like literally I don’t know where I would be right now if I’d never got that letter and that piece of information.

So I’m very grateful for whoever coordinated that outreach and found me and knew I couldn’t go to Belmont for whatever reason, cause that letter changed everything for me, and I’m really grateful I was able to, you know, get to study, it’s something that I, you know, really love and I’m really passionate about.

[00:10:48] Jason: Well, I’m also taking notes on the side here because I just took my son to Belmont this last weekend for, you know, the preview day, and I’ve already had a couple of friends tell me, hey, Middle Tennessee State’s got a great program. It’s a state school, so, probably won’t be as expensive, so I’ve been thinking along those same lines. So it’s good to get that reinforcement from you.

[00:11:08] Cassie: Yeah, and the program was great. Like the, I imagine it seems, you know, I know people went to both schools. I think the programs are very similar and the only big advantage I think Belmont has over Middle Tennessee State is the location, coz it’s in Nashville, in the middle of it, but I was able to make it work and I think it was worth the money I saved long term to do the drive.

I enjoyed my experience and I liked Murphysboro. It was a college town and there, you know, I think there’s some really, big pros to going to a school like that.

[00:11:37] Jason: Yeah, for sure. Well, and I went to a regional state university too. I went to Morehead State, that was where I got my undergrad. So we were in the same conference athletically for a while there, MTSU and Morehead State so anyway. So, you know, I was actually a bit surprised when I started digging into your background a little bit at how old Crowd Surf is. Companies started in 2007, that’s long in the tooth for the social media world. That was even before we were calling people influencers. How did that firm come about for you?

[00:12:06] Cassie: So I was really blessed, I got to work at Warner Music Group in Nashville alongside going to college. So I worked at Warner Music for three years while, and I went to college for three years from 2004 to 2007. And at that time I worked in a department which was called, New Media because like digital marketing was a term that wasn’t widely used yet.

Social media marketing was definitely not a term that was used yet, or even had like jobs affiliated with that at that point. So I was just a general, like new media assistant and a lot of that was working in MySpace and running MySpace pages, but I also did things such as calculating ringtone sales, which was a huge financial generator at one point.

Building websites, email lists, you know, other traditional you know, web marketing duties, and I really liked social media and I, knew a lot of people didn’t see it yet, still at that point, but I really believed this is not going away, and my business partner was in a similar situation as me.

We both felt the same way, and I think we wanted to, we were both temps at record labels, I think we would’ve probably stayed at the record label if the job we wanted existed, but jobs like social media manager didn’t exist at that time. So we left, not because we had this dream of being entrepreneurs, but because we had found a job that we liked and we wanted to continue doing it and have growth and we were kind of at a point where we couldn’t really be a temp for year four. So it really just kind of grew out of the job not being available, but we sort of seeing the vision of where this could go, and I think you know, looking back on it, I think we definitely made the right call.

[00:13:44] Jason: So a couple of 20 somethings wanna be social media managers in the music business and you start a company, and now that company is, If I do the math quickly in my head, 15 years old, give us a little bit of a size and scope. How big are you guys now? Where are you located? How’s it going?

[00:14:00] Cassie: Yeah, so we have 50 ish employees now. Which is, you know, it feels like a lot, but it was a slow and steady climb there. It didn’t happen overnight. And you know, we never raised money, so we didn’t have like this vision of let’s go out and raise cash and hire 300 people.

We’ve always, me and my business partner completely own the company still, and we’ve always built slow and steady and as demand. it’s way bigger than it was when it started, obviously, but it didn’t ever feel overwhelming coz we did it gradually and we started in Nashville. Now I’m based in Los Angeles now, and my business partner was in Los Angeles, but she moved back to Nashville, and lives there now. So I would say our two main locations are there, but we actually have a pretty sizable team. In the, like, New Jersey, New York area now.

So we have like eight or nine people that are based there now and then because of Covid, we ended up hiring people in a lot of different locations now, we have a Michigan person, we have a couple people in Texas, somebody in Atlanta, and a few other places. So we’re a little bit all over now, which is cool, I like that. I like having people in different places in the country.

[00:15:01] Jason: Well, that’s, fantastic. What a great success story and congratulations on all that. All right, so I want to get into the meat of this celebrity thing. I have long held the view that a celebrity and an influencer are two very different things, and the way that I’ve distinguished between the two is an influencer in this context gains fans and popularity because of the content they create on social media.

A celebrity is someone in my view who gains fans in popularity from some other more traditional means. Music, movies, television, sports, politics, whatever. Their social media content doesn’t really have anything to do with why they’re popular. They have social media followers because they’re popular, not because of their content. Is that fair? And do you distinguish between the two why or why not?

[00:15:48] Cassie: I really like that definition actually, I haven’t heard of it, but I think that’s a good way to define it. You know, I think that their vinn diagram maybe has a little bit of crossover sometimes, and I’ve also, I think we’ll see more of this in the future, but I think we’ll see, influencers move into like celebrity category.

So for example I, manage a lovely woman named Lauren Gray and she started, definitely started as an influencer. She was one of the biggest personalities on Musically, was at one point the most followed person on TikTok. But I think because she’s sustained so long that she has started to enter, general celebrity category, especially in the Gen Z space. And I think that’s led to her being a part of projects that will push her into more of a celebrity category versus an influencer category. So, it’s interesting, but I like your definition and I think that it’s a good way to sort of, describe the two.

And I also think a lot of times influencers are a little more niche in terms of, you know, type of content, whereas celebrities, like you said earlier, people fall celebrities coz they’re a fan of that person versus just the content that they make. So it’s interesting and I think we’ll see this, these definitions and categories and terms, continue to evolve, but I think that’s a good place to be right

[00:17:08] Jason: There’s always an exception to the rule and there’s certainly plenty of what I would call influencer slash content creators who have crossed that line and, you know, become celebrities because they’ve gotten a TV gig or they’ve, been invited on reality TV because of their following.

Or they’ve written a book because they have a big following or whatever. So there’s always gonna be crossover, but those, that distinction has always been important for me. So, you know, the difference between. You know, an influencer, content creator and a celebrity even using my definition, what are the differences or are there differences in how those social media channels are run? Do you think of one managing one different than the other, or are they really the same thing?

[00:17:49] Cassie: I think it depends on the type of, either creator, celebrity or influencer. I would say a lot of times I almost view many influencer properties as running a, like a television station or channel. Like you have to really produce content. You have to have something on your new, on your channel for people to watch, for people, you know, wanting to tune in.

And I, really view it as like a, you know, sort of, its. television production in a sense is, I think, kind of the closest comparison I can think to, traditional media, whereas other maybe more traditional celebrities use it as a platform for a combination of things, either to promote, a music project or a television show that they’re on, or maybe just to share like a, piece of, their life, you know, slice of lifestyle content.

But I would say that, for general celebrities, it’s more of a marketing platform or way to connect with fans, where I feel a lot of influencers really have to truly program their channels the same way a television station does.

[00:18:47] Jason: Yeah, that’s fair. Now, from my perspective as an influencer strategist or an influence strategist, the biggest difference for me is the path I take to get to the person. So a social media creator is either a direct message or an email, or maybe I go through a talent manager. A celebrity might take going through a business manager, an agent, a publicist, and those people are focused on bigger pieces of the pie than social media partnerships so I’m never a priority for them.

I wonder if you have any tips or do you know, the big secrets to getting through to a celebrity that might be a good content partner for a brand? Is it even feasible without having to do hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra stuff? Or can a celebrity engagement happen without killing a brand’s budget?

[00:19:32] Cassie: Yeah, I mean, a lot of bigger celebrities aren’t gonna touch something that’s under a million dollars and that can be rough. But there’s a lot of people and artists and groups that are interested in, deals that don’t quite hit that level. And I think the easiest way to get in touch with somebody that’s, quote on quote a celebrity.

You know, I think it’s, you know, trying to figure out to try a couple different people. I think the artist manager is always a good way to go. I feel like a lot of times, like agencies like a CAA, William Morris, UTA unless the number’s a certain number, they’re not even gonna entertain that deal, if it’s not six figures like, it’s gonna be thrown out of their inbox.

So I think a lot of times a manager, you know, might be more likely to care about a number that’s a little bit smaller. Or sometimes, and I’ve had this happen to me too, sometimes reaching out to the social media manager can be a good route to take as well.

And dms I think can be good too, if your account is verified or you’re reaching out from verified account, a lot of times either the social media manager or the artist is more likely to see it because of how the inboxes are divided in dms. So I’d say it’s always worth, sending a message to the talent directly, the worst thing that’s gonna happen is they’re not gonna see it. But if you do those things and you still don’t get ahold of the person, I don’t think it’s worth anymore time. I think you kind of gotta be like, okay, I’m willing to give it like three shots with three different outlets, and if it’s not gonna work, I’m gonna move on to the next person.

[00:20:51] Jason: Well, the most, I mean, I’ve had some good fortune along the way, but most of the time what I am forced to settle with is an agent at one of the agencies will email me back and say, we will, take this opportunity to him or her for consideration, and then I’ll hear back from him and, that’s the brush off probably, but I appreciate that perspective.

We’re talking to Cassie Petrey from Crowd Surf. She and they are responsible for the social media accounts of a number of a-list celebrities like Camilla Cabello, Britney Spears, and more. When we come back, we’re gonna ask Cassie for her advice on how you content creators out there can turn your social following into a career, perhaps even become one of those celebrities and more, don’t go away.

 Back talking to Cassie Petrey from Crowd Surf, Social Media Manager to the stars, I suppose, Cassie, let’s turn our attentions to the content creators out there who aren’t yet at that big audience level. And let’s start with an area you know, particularly well. If there’s anyone out there who is a musician or an aspiring one, even a rapper, a dj, somebody like that, how can someone in that world leverage social media to parley that content into a career?

[00:22:12] Cassie: Yes. So the biggest mistake I see aspiring artists make on social media is making content that isn’t about being an artist. I see a lot of people chase trends or do things that other people with a lot of numbers and following do. They’ll see, you know, an account that has a huge engagement and they’ll be like, well, I can make that kind of content now and be good at it, and they do it, but has nothing to do with being an artist.

So you’re gonna acquire fans that maybe don’t care about music or aren’t gonna be interested in music content when you start posting it. I see a lot of people, build numbers with the hopes of sort of transferring those numbers to a music listening audience, and that just doesn’t always work.

So the number one piece of advice I have on that front is to just make content about being an artist and the name of the game can’t always be to have the most followers. The name of the game needs to be, how do I get people who will stream my music and who will come to my shows.

I actually am managing an artist right now that I started working with a couple months ago, and she has about 600,000 followers on TikTok, which isn’t, the biggest number in the world, but is good number. But she went on tour and people showed up and people sang all the songs and people bought the merchandise.

So to me that’s a success more so than if she had five million followers, but she was making the wrong kind of content. it is clear when you look at her page, she is an artist, and I think in general, whether you’re an artist or somebody else, when somebody goes and looks at your social media pages, they should be able to understand pretty quickly who you are and what you’re about.

[00:23:43] Jason: Yeah, that’s very cool. Well, I would think and you mentioned, your artists that you’re managing there with 600,000 followers on TikTok, I would imagine that TikTok has probably changed the game a bit for the musicians and the music artists out there, because obviously it, you know, started out as a music based platform, but, they’ve figured out the algorithm better, you’re able to, connect with fans in a really interesting way and get in front of more people that you wouldn’t necessarily get in front of on other social networks. So it seems to be that’s the trend spotting platform of choice at the moment. That’s gotta be a great inroad for an artist, wouldn’t you say?

[00:24:21] Cassie: Yeah, for sure. And sometimes when you’re thinking about, you know, I wanna build my music career, you have to think about not necessarily just building fans, which that’s helpful of course, but you want, like you said, music executives are on there looking for the next big thing. So if they come across your video, wanna make sure that they understand who you are and they think you’re great in that video.

So each piece of content has to be great because you could only have a thousand followers or whatever number you might have, but if that video is awesome and somebody gets you it doesn’t matter how many followers you have. So you have to think about your general audience in building that, but also, if a music industry executive that I would wanna work with me sees my profile, would they get me and would they want to work with me?

[00:25:02] Jason: Right. So I think I saw you comment on this topic not long ago, and I want to hear more of your thoughts here because I think we may disagree, but I wanna make sure I get your thoughts right first. I think you have the opinion that influencers should not attach themselves. To other influencers. I want you to clarify that for me a bit, because it may or may not clash with a practice that I use a lot, but from a different perspective, but I wanna hear your perspective first, so influencers should not attach themselves to other influencers, is that your perspective and can you clarify what that means?

[00:25:35] Cassie: Yeah, so that’s actually a big philosophy of an artist that I work with, Lauren Gray has, is she feels like she’s been able to sustain success through Musically and through TikTok because she doesn’t not collaborate with people, but she isn’t like, if you know her, she isn’t automatically also affiliated with other persons, she’s her own brand and her own identity.

And seen a lot of both influencers and artists, kind of come up off the back of somebody else or get brought into somebody’s circle and your identity becomes being that person’s sidekick, I see a lot of people not being able to kick that and be able to become their own person.

So, you know, I don’t think that you should not attach yourself in the sense of like, not collaborating and not doing things like that, but I think you have to be careful about like you know, if you’re friends with somebody, like maybe not every piece of content should be about them, even though that might get the most engagement.

But, it’s hard to shake being the shadow of somebody. And I think a lot of people, they do a piece of content with somebody and it goes well, so they keep repeating that pattern, but it comes to the point where, they become so affiliated with somebody else that they can never get out of it. So that’s, you know, a little more clarification on my, stand.

[00:26:46] Jason: We’re not necessarily gonna clash there then, but I, as you were saying that, I’m thinking, well, you know, it worked out okay for Barry Manilow, it worked out okay for Bruce Hornsby it, there’s a lot of people out there who piggybacked off of other artists to become famous. But I get what you’re saying, you have to protect your own brand and make sure that it stands alone as opposed to, you know, being a, sideshow John, who’s always gonna be, oh, and this guy, or you know, whatever the sidekick.

So you know, where I was coming from on that from a brand and agency perspective, I think influence campaigns, and of course I’m talking probably more of your content creator influencer versus a celebrity or an artist.

But I think influence campaigns are more successful when you do cross pollinate your influencer activities. The more creators that are interacting with each other, the more organic reach you get, the more value added content that the brand gets in return. Because let’s say it’s on Twitter, which is probably not a great example in this day and age, but if I’m engaging four or five people on Twitter and I can make part of their engagement talking to each other, now all of a sudden I’ve got an organic conversation happening that I’m not paying extra for, it’s happening cause of that, you know, platform and its dynamics. So that’s not quite though, where you have an issue and so I can see both of those opinions existing in concurrence with one another.

[00:28:07] Cassie: Yeah, and I like collaboration too, and we see that in music too. I mean, some of the biggest songs, you know, of the past five years have been artists collaborating together. But it’s kinda like, you know, I think a good example would be you probably don’t wanna see those same two artists to continue release songs together over and over again.

They go do songs by themselves, they go collaborate with other people, and maybe they’ll come back and do a song together again later, but they have their own identity because it’s not always being attached to another person.

[00:28:36] Jason: Yeah, that’s fair. I don’t know that there’s been a hip hop or a song or a pop music song that doesn’t include a pop singer doing a refrain or a rapper doing a rap in the middle of it, in the last 10 years. I think it’s every rap song has, Lauren Hill or Rihanna or somebody singing the chorus and every, you know, pop song has some rapper coming in for a break in the middle of it, which I, find funny.

I mean, it’s, not good or bad, it’s just something that I’ve noticed as someone who did not grow up in the era of that cross pollination. All right, so, that is, I mean, these are just fantastic insights and I really appreciate you being with us here today Cassie. If the folks out there want to connect with you and learn more about Crowd Surf, where can they find you on the Innerwebs?

[00:29:19] Cassie: So I’m just my name across all social media Cassie, c a s i e, Petrey, p e t r e y. And then Crowd Surf is. Crowd Surf across all platforms, so we’re lucky and it’s easy on our end.

[00:29:32] Jason: Pretty easy stuff. Well, I appreciate the work you do and I appreciate you sharing the insights with us today, great stuff, and thanks for being here.

[00:29:39] Cassie: Thank you.

[00:29:47] Jason: Great story and fun path to success for Cassie. She told me off mic after the interview that she looked at Belmont University in Nashville, which is well known for its music business program, my son Grant is actually looking at Belmont as well, he’s a senior in high school, but Cassie wound up going to Middle Tennessee State, which has an equally good program, but is a public institution not private. So, I told Grant and he started researching MTSU now too. So useful conversation for me personally, as well as to share with you.

Check Cassie out, the links to her and Crowd Surf are in the show notes. Now, I don’t wanna be a celebrity, but I do want more people listening to Winfluence. Do me a big favor today, gang, tell someone who might want to know more about Influence Marketing about this podcast. Send them to winfluencepod.com or share a link to this episode on your social network of choice.

If you have a moment drop Winfluence or rating or review on your favorite podcast app, we are on them all. You can also help make a future episode of Winfluence awesome, you do so by asking me a question about influence or influence marketing that you want my answer to or take on. Send an email to jasonfalls.com.

If you’re feeling adventurous, record a voice memo on your phone and email me that file, I’ll let you ask the question right here on the show using the recording. Winfluence is a production of Falls and Partners. The technical production is by MPN Studios Winfluence airs along MPN, the Marketing Podcast Network. Thanks for listening, folks, let’s talk again soon on Winfluence.

Winfluence, the Influence Marketing Podcast is an audio companion to my book Winfluence Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand. Get your copy online at winfluencebook.com. While you’re there, sign up for the latest ideas about influence marketing delivered in my periodic newsletter, or book me to speak to your company or organization about influence marketing.

And if you need help with your influence marketing strategy, drop me a line at jason@jasonfalls.com. If you were someone you know as an influencer, a brand manager that uses influence marketing or one of the many amazing people working in the influence marketing services world, and they would make a good guest for the show, email me at jason@jasonfalls.com.