Influenced!

Influenced!

NOTE: While this transcript has been reviewed, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript.

Jill Wiltfong

I’m Jill Wiltfong, Chief Marketing Officer for Korn Ferry, and this is Briefings, our deep dive into topics that corporate leaders need to care about.

Two-martini lunches, rounds of golf, paid TV commercials—the ways companies build influence have changed pretty dramatically. Today, a TikTok creator, a TED Talk, a podcast, or even what employees say about a company online can shape what clients and consumers think, trust, and ultimately buy.

And companies are investing accordingly. An estimated $90 billion a year is now spent on influencing.

But where does influence actually come from? What makes it credible? And what’s changing?

One shift worth watching is the convergence of formats and platforms. YouTube, for example, has become the largest platform for podcast consumption—a reminder that what we still call podcasting is increasingly a video-first medium.

So, where should companies place their bets, and what actually moves people? It’s all about how they’re influenced.

Before we start, if you’re watching us on YouTube, please be sure to like, subscribe, and leave a comment to let us know your thoughts on this topic. You can also read about this subject today in a great feature in our Briefings magazine, available at airports and online.

Jill Wiltfong

I’m joined now by Ross Pomerantz, whose Corporate Bro social media brand reaches millions of viewers across the globe, sharing laughter as well as the occasional corporate message along the way.

As someone who’s squarely in the middle of the influencer world, it’ll be pretty enlightening, I think, to hear his thoughts on this topic.

Ross, it’s really a pleasure to have you on.

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

I’m honored to be here.

Jill Wiltfong

So, Ross, before we get into the weeds of influencer marketing, tell me how you got here. How did you get in that room?

You have this really interesting background. You were a minor league pitcher who then went to Stanford Business School before making this move into corporate comedy and content.

How did this current version of your life come about? Take us through that.

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

I started my career in enterprise sales, like a lot of washed-up athletes with no hard skills who thought they were going to be professional athletes.

People ask me all the time, “Did you ever think you were going to go into creative or film or content?” And the answer is obviously no. It didn’t even exist when I was a child.

But if I look back on all the signs, I was the kid who made home movies. My love language, for some reason, has always been, “Let me make films or something entertaining for my friends, coworkers, or family.”

And the rest is kind of history. I would make these little six-second Vine videos for six or seven years, and then it started to take off.

It definitely wasn’t an overnight, one-video-went-viral moment.

Jill Wiltfong

Corporate Bro, I think, started back in 2013. People didn’t even know about creator marketing back then. You really kind of created a category.

Did you mean to do this?

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

I wish I was that smart. No.

It was catharsis for being in a really tough selling environment. It was the classic smile-and-dial boiler room—200, 300 cold calls a day sort of situation.

We’re selling products we don’t understand. We’re getting breakfast burritos in the morning. It smells like coffee. We’re all wearing poorly fitted collared shirts and slacks.

And I was like, “Everybody here is just a corporate bro. We don’t know what we’re doing, and we just think this is normal.”

Nobody talked about this. No one said, “Go into tech sales,” when I was in college. No one said this was a career. I had no idea what I was doing.

And so it was sort of, someone’s got to talk about this.

Jill Wiltfong

That’s a scene from the comedy film Wayne’s World, where Mike Myers’ character satirically objects to the idea of, quote, “selling out” to a corporate sponsor.

Of course, it can all go terribly wrong for companies if their message comes across as inauthentic.

So, Ross, when a company approaches you with a sponsorship opportunity, how do you determine if it’s a good fit? And what advice do you have for company leaders looking to find that authentic fit with an influencer?

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

So many companies find creators because they’re looking at audience, and they’re like, “These are the demographics we’re trying to get to.”

But they’re not looking at the creator’s delivery to that audience or their voice itself. They just want access to an audience. And that’s where a mismatch happens all the time.

I think one of the other problems is we force-feed product marketing language into creators, and it just reads “ad.”

I’ll do it, right? We all have a price. At the end of the day, you’re paying for something. You want something a certain way. I’m going to fight to tell you why it’s wrong.

But at the end of the day, you’re like, “Look, we’ve got 17 stakeholders here. Everyone’s got to feel like they got a little piece in this.”

I’ll do it—but not before saying, “I just don’t think this is going to perform as well.”

Jill Wiltfong

It is no secret that influencers hold pretty impressive sway over younger people.

Fifty-four percent of Gen Z consumers say they have purchased products promoted by social media influencers, compared to only 21% who say they’ve been influenced by traditional advertisements.

What do you think makes a branded piece of content feel credible to an audience, rather than like the ads on social media that people often scroll past?

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

Look, I turn down a lot of stuff. I do, because it doesn’t fit my brand. I wouldn’t use this.

At this point, it costs us social capital. If you see creators just becoming the ad machine, that’s a problem.

I try to do, I would say, one a week. That’s my typical cadence. I might have a conference with the same company and we’ll do two a week.

Worst case, I mean, I’ve done three a week maybe twice. And that feels bad. That hurts me in my soul to do.

But that is on the creators—to not sell out, to go back to our boy Wayne.

If we become an ad machine, then we lose our credibility. We lose our social capital.

And so it actually, to me, falls more on us and making sure our audience knows that when we do it, we are serious. That we do believe in this. That we think this is something of value to them.

Jill Wiltfong

So here’s a sign of the times that we’re in: Executives increasingly seem to be becoming creators themselves. Good or bad? I don’t know.

Last year, LinkedIn reported that CEO posting had increased 52% over the previous two years.

What would be your advice to corporate leaders who are wading further into influencing? What should they be doing, and what should they absolutely not be doing?

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

What they should absolutely not be doing is just being another extension of the PR machine.

People just want to see that leaders are humans dealing with human stuff and going through life for the first time, as we all are. And that inherently feels more authentic.

People want to know: What’s inside the mind? What are you thinking? What’s keeping you up? What do you fear?

It can’t be all sunshine and roses.

So I think if you feel something, if you have an opinion about something, don’t be scared to put it out there. That’s what people are looking for.

It’s so easy for all these execs who have had their PR training, who are told not to say anything of substance.

It’s coach speak. That just can’t work on LinkedIn, especially if you’re trying to build an audience.

Jill Wiltfong

Well, we wish you the best, Ross. It was really great to get your insider’s perspective today on this topic.

Thanks for being here.

Ross Pomerantz – “Corp”

Yeah, thank you guys for having me.

Jill Wiltfong

We’ve taken a firsthand look at the world of social media influencers. When we come back, we’ll dive into the other ways that companies are influencing not only clients, but their own employees.

Stay tuned.

BREAK

Jill Wiltfong

And we’re back.

We talked to a social media influencer to get his personal perspective on the world of influencing. Now we turn to the company perspective and the many tactics firms are employing to reach customers and even employees.

Joining me for this conversation is Peter McDermott, head of Korn Ferry’s Corporate Affairs Practice in North America.

Peter, thank you for coming on.

Peter McDermott

Of course. Glad to be here.

Jill Wiltfong

That last clip featured the world’s first-ever TV ad, which is kind of amazing to see.

It was for Bulova Watches. It aired in 1941, was seen by an estimated, astounding 4,000 people who owned television sets in the New York area, and it cost—you ready for this?—$9.

For decades, companies have invested in building corporate brands through traditional ads, not unlike that one.

But today, we’re seeing organizations invest just as heavily in executives, employees, and creators as public voices.

Why is trust shifting from faceless brands that are very controlled toward individuals? And what does that mean for brands and for leadership?

Peter McDermott

There are a couple of data points to share around this question.

The first is that if you look at ads historically, there is no face behind them. You don’t know the company leadership. You’re not really seeing the company’s true values come through, or their mission, or anything like that.

I was looking at a perfume ad in an airport yesterday, and we were just making fun of it because it was kind of so ridiculous.

If you have a corporate leadership face behind the ad or behind the company messages, it becomes a much more personal element. You feel an actual connection to that brand. You start to buy into what’s behind that organization.

And that gets people talking.

Jill Wiltfong

Many companies now produce podcasts. They have live events. They have newsletters. To your point, these video series—even earnings calls—are designed as content.

Are the most successful organizations becoming media companies as much as product or service companies?

Peter McDermott

There’s a media element behind it in terms of the production, in terms of making sure that you’re targeting certain audiences.

We’ve had chief communications officers and chief corporate affairs officers come to us and let us know that they have stakeholders they’re looking to connect with through social media campaigns, through communications and media campaigns.

They’re able to be very smart about that now.

Instead of just thinking about the halo effect that an ad will get in terms of getting the message out there, you can target that message and reach that specific audience through those media channels.

Jill Wiltfong

That’s a scene from the comedy movie Office Space that pokes fun at certain corporate attempts to engage employees.

Historically, town halls and internal newsletters were enough to engage workers.

Today, many employees hear executives on podcasts, LinkedIn, and conference stages long before they read an internal memo.

So, given that, Peter, how should leaders think differently about internal communications in today’s environment?

Are there things they should be considering that maybe they didn’t have to think about before?

Peter McDermott

Well, if you put yourself in your employees’ position—or a consumer’s position, anyone’s position, a stakeholder—you’re constantly getting barraged by emails, by messages, by memos, by social media, if you’re on social media.

And all of that stimuli makes it very easy to check out and not pay attention to it all.

So you want to make sure that you’re being creative in terms of how you’re reaching your employees and putting a face behind that.

Doing something on a multimedia platform like a podcast, or doing something like short-form video, is smart. It connects better with that stakeholder or with that employee.

Jill Wiltfong

I do want to end by touching a bit on AI.

As AI makes it possible to generate really an endless amount of polished content, do you think authenticity becomes more valuable?

Will podcasts, live conversations, and conferences actually become more important because people want to hear from real people?

Peter McDermott

I do think so.

AI is interesting. We’ve hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of what it’s going to do in our future, though.

When you think about how inundated we’ve been with social and digital media over the past 15 years now, we might get to a point where we feel the same way about AI content.

I do think we are going to get to a place where people are going to start to filter out and, unfortunately, tune out those messages if they become, you know, AI slop.

Jill Wiltfong

Well, Peter, as always, really great to have you on today. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this topic.

I’m sure we will talk again soon.

Peter McDermott

Thank you.

Jill Wiltfong

The executive producer of Briefings is Jonathan Dahl. Today’s episode was produced by Rupak Bhattacharyya and Zachary Dore, and it was edited by Jaren Henry McRae.

It contains reporting by Russell Pearlman, Ariane Cohen, Peter Lauria, and Meghan Walsh. Our video segment contains original artwork by Fraser Milton, Haley Kennel, Jonathan Pink, and Sasha Kotzek. Our web operations are managed by Ed McLaurin.

Don’t forget to read our magazine—available at newsstands and at kornferry.com/briefings.

That’s it for Korn Ferry Briefings. I’m Jill Wiltfong. See you next time.