"Dabbing" into Branding with Internet Content Creators

Nichole Francois, Special to Advertising Week

Chances are you’ve seen the video of a couple of friends “dabbing” during the Olympic Games. But who is the guy behind the viral video? That would be Logan Paul, Internet content creator and brand influencer.

During Advertising Week, Marcus Peterzell, EVP of Entertainment at Ketchum, sat down with Logan Paul, actress Meg Ryan, and writer Robert Gordon to discuss how the advertising industry can create content that grows bigger every day through Internet content influencers. These influencers not only act as brand spokespeople, but also help to create the content for the brand. Additionally, instead of creating content focused on the brand, marketers are more concerned with producing great content with the help of brand influencers, such as Logan Paul.

Paul, who described himself as “pretty crazy,” began creating videos when he was just 10-years-old. From the get-go, creating aesthetic on screen was exhilarating for Paul. However, it took quite a while for his career as an Internet content creator to launch, considering at age 18, Logan had only 4,000 subscribers. The break-through came when the six-minute video platform, Vine, first launched and Paul found his niche as the “crazy college kid from Ohio.” After nearly a year, a video compilation of all of his six-second Vines went viral, and Hollywood came knocking on his door. In addition to his Vine account, Paul has over 850,000 subscribers on YouTube, almost 13 million likes on Facebook, and 6.6 million followers on Instagram.

So, why do these numbers matter? They make Paul the perfect candidate for an Internet millennial influencer. Instead of using a movie star, such as Meg Ryan, in an advertisement, brands can use Paul to relate to millennials through unique content. Paul said using social media stars makes partnering with influencers easier because content can be much more visible on social posts. He creates videos and posts partnered with many different brands, such as Hanes and Aeropostale. Instead of going directly brands, brands come to him to pitch partnership ideas for his social media platforms.

 “Every single branded piece of content I’ve done has demolished, and so we’ve [taken] the laid-back approach, with the come to us, hard-to-get approach,” said Paul.

As an upside to being an Internet influencer, Paul can choose the brands that align with his goals and his voice. Obviously, if you’ve ever seen one of Paul’s videos, a conservative brand would not be the right fit. Paul tends to choose brands that are fun and risky, just like his personality. He says that the brand has to trust him and let him do his thing, and in return they will get the views and exposure. Hanes is the favorite brand Paul has gotten to work with because he was able to express himself in his own way for the brand, as he explained, “They let me do whatever I wanted. I got to ride a bull for it!”

However, social media platforms have recently placed more limitations on brands partnering with content creators. For example, Paul said you have to use the hashtags #ad and #sponsor in sponsored posts on Instagram. On Facebook, you have to disclose within the first five seconds that a video is in partnership with a brand. Logan said this has made it more difficult to create organic content, but he gets around the challenges through innovative content.

So why do brands enjoy pairing with content creators like Paul? Peterzell said brands are asking for real engagement and real narratives, and they want to be part of the conversation. It’s not always an easy formula to do, but picking content creators like Paul or actresses like Meg Ryan can help. Meg Ryan, who started acting in commercials in college, said there is a radical change in branding today. Ryan said in the 1980s, some actresses would fight for positions as a brand spokesperson. Today, actors and content creators, such as Logan Paul, can partner with brands more often on social media platforms because of social’s accessibility to the market. More importantly, influencers have the ability to give their own voice to what branded content is created.

African Nation Slaps Exxon With Fine Nearly 7 Times Its Own GDP

The African nation of Chad has ordered Exxon Mobil Corp. to fork over a sum of money that would make Austin Powers villain Dr. Evil proud ― not quite “100 billion dollars,” but close.

As Bloomberg reports, a court in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena announced in a ruling Oct. 5 that it has ordered the oil and gas giant to pay $74 billion in fines ― a figure nearly seven times the country’s 2015 gross domestic product.

The fine stems from a complaint from Chad’s Ministry of Finance that a consortium led by Exxon hadn’t met its tax obligations, Bloomberg reports. In addition to the $74 billion, the country demands $819 million in royalties. 

Quartz pointed out that Chad’s order would be comparable to the United States fining a company more than $100 trillion.

SUSAN LINNEE/AP

Chadian workers guide a pipe down a well in the Doba oil fields in southern Chad.

In Chad, Exxon operates oilfields and a pipeline system that transports crude oil to Cameroon for export. The country produces around 160,000 barrels of oil per day, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Todd Spitler, a spokesman for Exxon, said in a statement to The Huffington Post that the company disagrees with the court ruling and is “evaluating next steps.”

“This dispute relates to disagreement over commitments made by the government to the consortium, not the government’s ability to impose taxes,” Spitler wrote. “Contract sanctity and respect for the rule of law are core principles used to manage our business over the long term. It is vital for all parties to honor the terms of a contract and abide by applicable law in order to achieve the desired long-term benefits envisioned when projects begin.”

Brahim Abbo Abakar, president of the Chadian court, reportedly confirmed the ruling to Bloomberg.

The hefty fine from the landlocked African nation comes amid mounting troubles for Exxon in the U.S. The company faces numerous investigations into whether it lied to investors and committed fraud by covering up the risks of climate change for decades. The attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts are probing the company, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an investigation into how Exxon Mobil values future projects amid climate change and plunging oil prices.

Last week, the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group, made good on its threat to sue Exxon Mobil, filing what it says is the first U.S. legal action aimed at holding the companyaccountable for its well-documented climate change cover-up. 

There Are More Immigrant Billionaires In The U.S. Than Ever Before

The Forbes 400 list might look like just a bunch of really, really rich Americans from afar. But what’s notable this year is that an unprecedented number of those who made the list ― including three married couples ― are foreign-born. 

Overall, the 42 foreign-born entries on the 400 list have a combined net worth of nearly $250 billion, and come from 21 different countries. With six people, Israel has the most representation, followed by India with five, and Hungary and Taiwan with four each. As far as continents, Asia and Europe led the pack with 21 and 15 people, respectively.

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, is 10th on the list. His estimated net worth is $37.5 billion, according to Forbes. He and his family fled Soviet Russia when he was 6 years old due to anti-Semitism.

George Soros, the richest hedge fund manager in the world, also made the list. His family survived Nazi-occupied Hungary, fleeing when the country was overtaken by communism. 

America's 400 richest people are worth more than ever before: a combined $2.4 trillion https://t.co/7ok3eTho7O #Forbes400 pic.twitter.com/95RFWVC3AC

— Forbes (@Forbes) October 5, 2016

It’s impressive to see the ways in which these billionaires have given back to causes that are tied to their own immigrant experiences. Brin, for instance, donated $1 million to HIAS, the nonprofit that helped his family resettle in the U.S., in 2009. Soros pledged $500 million to help refugees and migrants in September.

Also of note ― one-third of the foreign-born billionaires on the list are richer than Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose net worth has dropped to $3.7 billion, down $800 million from last year, Forbes said.

Familiar names still sit at the top of the list. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, holds the No. 1 slot with a net worth of $81 billion, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, worth $67 billion, Warren Buffett, worth $65.5 billion and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, worth $55.5 billion.

Chobani To Start Offering Paid Family Leave To All Its Employees

Starting next year, workers at yogurt maker Chobani will be eligible for six weeks of paid parental leave when they have a child ― and it won’t matter whether they are mothers or fathers, or whether they work in corporate headquarters or a blue-collar plant.

Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya wrote in a blog post on LinkedIn Wednesday that the new policy grew out of personal experience. He recently became a new father, and wanted to find a way to help his employees when they have a baby or adopt or foster a child. Workers will collect 100 percent of their pay during the leave period.

“It was important to me that everyone at the company have this time ― especially the people in our plants,” Ulukaya wrote. “From the top down, we’ll encourage our folks to use this time knowing their careers at this company won’t be affected by it.”

Fortunately, it’s becoming more fashionable for U.S. companies to announce they’re instituting a more progressive parental leave policy for employees (and, of course, to invite a round of praise for their decision). The U.S., unlike just about all other advanced economies, does not legally guarantee paid time off for workers after having a child. Here, it’s up to companies whether they’ll provide it.

Not many do. Only around 12 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S. report that they get paid family leave through their jobs, according to Labor Department data. And not surprisingly, those who do tend to be wealthier than those who do not. As a result, lower-wage workers are often forced back onto the job after having a child much faster than white-collar professionals.

That’s why Chobani’s move is more notable than another Silicon Valley tech company deciding to ramp up its leave benefits. Chobani has two factories and 2,000 employees, many of them employed in food-processing positions. About a third of the company’s workforce is refugees, according to NPR.

The new policy, Ulukaya said, will not discriminate between job roles, and will include hourly as well as salaried employees, so long as they are employed full time. 

Chobani’s new policy is progressive in another way: It won’t differentiate between male or female employees, or gay or straight couples, when they have children. Paternity leave can be skimpy, even at companies that are generous with maternity leave, giving men little time before they have to return to work. And that can end up disadvantaging women both at home and in the workplace, by foisting more child-rearing duties onto them and keeping them out of the workforce longer. The same problem applies to gay workers who may not have borne a child, but are new parents nonetheless.

Chobani’s paid leave news Wednesday follows a run of positive press for the New York-based yogurt maker. In April, it announced that full-time employees would receive shares worth up to 10 percent of the company if and when it goes public. The New York Times estimated that the average employee’s haul could be $150,000, and longtime veterans could possibly top $1 million. 

How I Stopped Buying Things I Don't Need

This article is part of HuffPost’s “Reclaim” campaign, an ongoing project spotlighting the world’s waste crisis and how we can begin to solve it.

I’m kind of an impulsive shopper. You might even call me a compulsive shopper. I never met a white Zara blouse I didn’t like. 

I’m also an introvert who primarily enjoys the company of New York City streets. This means a Saturday walk in November can easily turn into a $75 binge on bathing suit bottoms at H&M.

I buy something cool and cheap, rip the tags from my bounty and, by the next week, I’ve lost all interested in wearing it. On top of that, I hate returning things. My aversion is rooted in a chronic lack of patience, general interpersonal anxiety and tendency to become lightheaded while waiting in lines.

When you don’t have a ton of money or an excess of square footage to call home, these habits can get out of hand. Within the last year, I realized things for me were way, way out of hand. 

Running late to work one day, with my hands two feet deep in new blouses, I was forced to confront the fact that I was draining a modest bank account into an even more modest bedroom closet.

The person I wanted to be has one quality black blazer she wears every day. The person I had become would crawl beneath a sale rack to claim three.

Solving my problem meant confronting a lifetime of neuroses and unproductive coping mechanisms. The first step was to start returning unworn items to the stores where I found them. The next would be to stop over-buying altogether.

I was draining a modest bank account into an even more modest bedroom closet.

Fashion is estimated to be one of the most polluting industries in the world. One facet of this complex problem is the sheer volume of stuff we throw out: About 85 percent of America’s 15.1 million tons of textile waste ended up in landfills in 2013. Secondhand clothes are often sent to cheap markets in the developing world, compromising local vendors’ ability to compete.

According to the International Labor Organization, many of the 170 million child laborers across the globe are employed in garment and textile-making industries ― in part because of massive demand for inexpensive, trendy clothes in the Western world. 

Meanwhile, my walls were dripping with cheap scarves and reckless materialism. I was paying a premium for cage-free eggs from chickens treated better than some of the humans who made my clothes. I was dropping off piles of never-worn polyester to Goodwill on the way to the farmers market with reusable bags. It didn’t make sense to me anymore.

NinaMalyna via Getty Images

It me!

But returning things was not a habit I ever developed. It’s certainly not something I ever learned from my parents. My mom grew up poor and my dad grew up cheap, so I inherited an irrepressible drive to acquire as many things as possible for the lowest possible price. Where frugality began, more good sense didn’t always follow. If you took a gamble on a bargain purchase and it didn’t work out, you just cut your losses.

Why spend two hours and $5 on subway fare to return a $10 blouse when you can just buy more hangers? 

More importantly, shopping for deals was a bonding activity for my mother, sister and me. Even as an adult confronting my own issues with clutter and overspending, the idea of declining my mother’s invitations to the outlet mall fills me with guilt.

For our family, buying things for people is an act of love. My mother sent me many of the unworn items that remain in my closet, which I imagine her buying and mailing with an excitement I understand all too well. A therapist once told me that my “money issues” with regard to shopping are really my “mommy issues.” I stopped by Urban Outfitters on the way home.

So here’s how I began to break out of the cycle. 

I could keep buying clothing under two conditions: I’d leave the tags on an item until I wore it, and I’d keep my receipts. Previously I’d throw away both immediately with post-purchase euphoria. And rather than wear the item immediately, I’d wait until I really wanted to wear it. Often, that moment never came. 

A therapist once told me my “money issues” are really my “mommy issues.” I stopped by Urban Outfitters on the way home.

I found that when I bought a new item on a whim, I’d get bored with it faster than its return policy would expire. I always had the option to bring it back.

Parting with the item was painless, but something that took 10 minutes to buy often took far, far more time to return. It wasn’t long before I realized the excitement of buying something new wasn’t worth the time and effort involved in returning it. 

Finally, a closet filled with cheap clothes I barely liked no longer appealed to me. And now that I was keeping better track of the items I bought only to endure an aggressive Zara return line a week later, I just couldn’t be bothered to buy them in the first place. 

With that small change, I’m happier and slightly richer. I feel better about myself as a global citizen and as a woman with at least a little self-discipline. Walking past a department store on payday isn’t exactly easy, but paying rent on time and choosing an outfit in under five minutes definitely is. 

While I didn’t completely cure myself of the impulse to shop, I put up enough barriers to doing so that I created a clearer path to reducing frivolous consumption. Will I resist buying underwear later this week to postpone doing laundry? Well, I’m only human. 

More stories like this:

• This Family Went A Whole Year Without Buying New Clothes
• These African Countries Don’t Want Your Used Clothing Anymore
• The ‘Chilling’ Moment This Father Realized Where His Kids’ Clothes Come From
• Before Buying More Clothes At H&M, Read This
• Something To Think About Before Donating Your Clothes
• This Company Is Basically A Hospital For Sad, Damaged Clothes
• Why This Company Wants You To Fall In Love With People’s Old Jeans

Largest Private Prison Contractor Slashes Jobs After Losing Federal Business

The country’s largest private prison contractor announced plans Tuesday to cut between 50 and 55 full-time jobs at its company headquarters in Tennessee, slashing its corporate workforce by 12 percent.  

The cuts are part of a restructuring that comes one month after the Department of Justice announced plans to phase out privatized prisons, following a blistering report by the department’s Office of the Inspector General concluding the facilities were less safe than government ones and not necessarily cheaper.

“Recognizing the continuing evolution of our core corrections and detention businesses, and our strategy to grow our reentry and real estate platforms, we conducted a thorough review of our corporate structure to optimize our support of both existing and future operations,” CCA President Damon Hininger, said in a press release.

Hininger gave up a stock grant valued when he received it last year at $2 million, as part of the efforts to save the company $9 million next year. CCA paid him $3.4 million in total compensation last year, including the stock grant.

CCA’s stock plummeted after the DOJ announced its intention to cancel the Bureau of Prisons contracts, shedding about 45 percent of its value since the Aug. 18 decision. BOP contracts accounted for about 11 percent of the CCA’s revenue last year.

At the presidential debate on Monday, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton applauded DOJ’s decision to phase out private prisons and said she hoped that state governments would follow suit.

“I’m glad that we’re ending private prisons in the federal system; I want to see them ended in the state system,” Clinton said. “You shouldn’t have a profit motivation to fill prison cells with young Americans.”

But even as prison contractors like CCA stand to lose lucrative contracts with the Bureau of Prisons, the DOJ decision leaves much of their business untouched. The U.S. Marshals Service, a division of the DOJ, still relies on private corporations to lock up about one-third of the people in its custody ― roughly 18,500 people per day, as of 2013.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement depends even more on private companies to handle detention. About two-thirds of the people in immigrant detention sleep in beds managed for profit by private corporations.

That may change. Jeh Johnson, head of the Department of Homeland Security, last month ordered ICE to review its use of privatized detention centers in light of the DOJ reform.

How Can SEO Be Used to Target Millennials

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains one of the most powerful ways to reach your target audience. But Google's changes have meant that ranking websites is based on the user experience each customer gets. This means companies have to change the way they do things. SEO is not just a case of throwing in a few keywords and links to sites.

I spoke to Arya Bina, Founder and CEO of Kobe Digital, to talk about how SEO can be used to target millennials, which is one of the hardest groups to hit.

AJ: Thank you for joining me today. Could you tell me more about Kobe Digital?

CEO: Kobe Digital is a company that caters to small and medium-sized businesses. We help them to reach their target audiences. We remain a small firm with a global reach. Our role as a boutique Los Angeles digital marketing firm enables us to give our clients the personalized services they want to conquer the most competitive industries.

AJ: Do you think millennials look at SEO differently than any other generation?

CEO: Millennials definitely view SEO differently. The main difference is that millennials perceive strong SEO to be a requirement for any company they do business with. They have grown up with the Internet and Google their whole lives, the first generation to do so, and finding a piece of information online has become second nature. They do the same when they want to find out more about a business.

For the vast majority of them, the Internet is the first place they look when learning more about a company and its products. Companies that have failed to make a strong online presence their top priority are practically invisible to millennials. They're as good as dead in the water.

AJ: As a boutique LA digital marketing firm, do you find most of your clients are from the local area?

CEO: We have found that the majority of small to medium-sized businesses enjoy working with local agencies. This is because we find that any cultural and logistical challenges are already understood by the agency. Our list of clients reflects this, and the majority of the businesses on this list are based in Southern California to enable this personalized approach.

But Kobe Digital is a national company and there have been many companies from across the country deciding to work with us after being referred. Los Angeles is one of the biggest and best creative hubs in the country, which is why top marketing talent tends to flock here which has enabled Kobe Digital to hire some of the top millennial talent .

AJ: What direction do you think SEO is taking now?

CEO: To us, it's clear that SEO is becoming the new reality when it comes to marketing. SEO has enabled companies to execute campaigns that are targeted, scalable, and measurable. That's the gold standard in advertising. With over 90% of online experiences beginning with a Google search, SEO is the clear choice for any company that wants to hit millennial audiences.

SEO is part of an environment that's dynamic and fast-flowing. It's difficult to predict which direction it will move in over the next few years. But targeted marketing services are sure to continue their relentless advance. Companies will be able to leverage granular data, including time spent on pages, search engine users' search histories, and bounce rates. To a large extent, we've already seen this transformation.

AJ: When marketing to millennials does SEO and/or Social have the stronger place?

CEO: It's easy to think that millennials share every detail on social media, therefore social media marketing is the future of online advertising. At Kobe Digital, we have found that this is true to a certain extent. A strong social media marketing campaign is one of the most effective tools for building your brand and engaging with your customers.

But when it comes to introducing your company's products and services to new demographics, SEO is the best way to increase your visibility. Search engine users are far more likely than social media users to convert. 72% of people who perform a local search will visit the closest store to them. 61% of local searches also lead to a purchase.

Those are numbers social media marketing has yet to reach.

Conclusion - SEO is More Important than Ever

SEO is more important than ever before and there's no doubt that it's a cornerstone for reaching millennials. SEO might have been changed, but it's not going to disappear anytime soon. Companies that fail to invest in SEO are going to be at a crippling disadvantage. And there are no signs of this changing anytime soon as SEO becomes more targeted and more affordable.

What do you think is the most important benefit of SEO?