Sharkreach's Smith, Harrington, on Influencer Marketing (Audio)

of four tenths of one percent. Naz Stack is down twenty one points, also a drop of four tenths of one percent, and the Dow down seventy five, a drop of four tenths of one percent. The Tenure down three thirty seconds yield one point five seven percent. We have got gold down eleven forty the ounce the thirteen twelve, a drop there of nine tenths of one percent, and crude oil West Texas Intermediate down one point two percent, forty six forty one for a barrel of West Texas

Intermediate crew. I'm Charlie pelt That's a bloom Bird business flash. You're listening to taking stock with Katlee Hayes and Pimp and so now we want to go from Shark Tank to Shark Reach. Let me fill in the dots in between. We have two very interesting guests on the show today. Kevin Harrington has been a successful entrepreneur for over forty years. He's actually the inventor of the infomercial has seen on TV Pioneers launched over five hundred products, generating uh five

billion dollars in sales worldwide. Uh. He was one of the original sharks on Shark Tank, so you've seen him many times on TV. And if you're fanatical about Shark Tank, like my family, as you watch the reruns too. Also want to bring in a person that he is partnering with now who is the CEO of this company that Kevin Harrington has joined. Steve Smith has also a long, long career as a successful entrepreneur and their new company that they're going to tell us about now is called

Shark Reach. It's to reach millennial. So, gentlemen, long introduction, but I want to get right to what this is all about. So let me welcome you and thank you for Johnny Mean Studio. Great to be or Kathleen, thank you so, so Kevin Harrington, tell me what drew you to this company where you are now the chairman. You've got you know how to sell, you know how to market,

so why join Shark Reach? So is it the essene and TV industry has had a little bit of a disruption because there's fewer people watching television nowadays, and so our business has moved into a digital means now. So we we do over half of our sales digitally and we still have lots of TV stuff happening, but but we use television to help build the brand, but we

really use digital to test. We use influencers. And so as our industry is moved into all of the social networking and and the facebooks and the pinterest and the Instagrams and now Instagram is doing stories video. We take the ideas, we put them onto the social networks. This is the way of the future and using influencers to take products to the next level is a natural progression for us. Okay, So Steve Smith, you have just gotten this trick. Trick Sherman who brings a lot to the table.

You have so many years in marketing and uh in media you were at to discover communications w w E World Wrestling entertainment that teaches you a whole lot of different things. Tell us about Shark Reach, How did you get started? What was the genesis of this? So obviously we have the shark in common, right, so yeah, shark creating Shark Tank. So it was it was sort of a natural genesis of things. The um the world you know,

has changed. It's it's a really already changed in the way that audiences exist now in the millennial era, is is attached to what we call influencers, and influencers are really just people who have large followings across a broad selection of social networks. Sure, Kim Gardashian would be an obvious one, but you know, there's only so many Kim Kardashians in the world. And there's already a lot of doubts about Twitter and the model and how long it's

gonna last. Right, many people's look and valure critical that the original uh founders didn't do an SSA could are are you staking a lot on something that is going to involve so quickly? Well I'll speak to that a little bit. So So Twitter, Yeah, Twitter is a challenge right at the hundred the short number of awards kind of all that aspect of it. And there are other uh like an Instagram or Snapchat that are certainly moving vastly quicker in terms of growth. So we're really platform

agnostic in terms of our influence are offering. So we're we're really we have about one influencers, which basically anybody domestically who has more than fifty thou followers across any of the social works is within our system. So we were able to activate that talent, uh kept really for any brand and and that's the reach of that is pretty phenomenal. Kevin, You've had such success already, is do you feel that too for your own future success, for

the success of marketing? This is this is the train you have to jump on now, Yes, I really do, because I mean we're even used sing mommy bloggers and people in their homes that have uh, you know, ten thousand, twenty thousand followers, so you know, and that's the the advantage of a Shark reach. They have twenty one thousand access to twenty one influencers. We we can put a ton of them together in a campaign and actually have

tremendous movement. In fact, you know, Steve can talk to some of the things that the company has done, but you know, engaging people to go watch movies and things like that have been you know, very powerful. Okay, so you just Steve, you just mentioned that fifty thousand followers is sort of the minimal threshold across to be considered an influencers. So besides that, Kevin, how do you pick your influencers? Uh? Do you? And how do you pay them? How? What?

How does this relationship work? Several ways? Um? One is you know, on a on a on a per action basis. Um. You know, to put the message out to their crowd. It comes on if they're doing a video, how long the video might be, what they're doing. Sometimes that some of them will get a percentage of what might occur, a percentage of sales or something like that, but generally it's it's paid on an upfront basis. Okay. Uh, proprietary technology, I here that there's something. It's not just the fact

that you guys are harnessing. Hey, let's get these influencers and let's use this as the the new wave of marketing. Maybe not so new, but how does the technology come in? Steve? So, technology is definitely a big part of our business that the way that we work with um we call them

the talent ice with the influencers. They're all within a back end system that we use has a number of tools within it which do something called Shark rank Shark polls just three or four of them, but they basically allow us to work with For example, we work with Universal Pictures for the movie Straight Out of Compton, which was sort of famous for that at this point because it really took over the social networks for three weekends and rather than we became number one and something percent

was a result of the social media. UM that was kind of the pulling. So within that context, we we take a movie like that who wants to reach a specific demographic, uh, and then we really source that within our system. It kind of tells us who the best fits are in that case, you know, hip hop sort of talent. And then we then it's kind of a white glove process of talking with the talent, matching them

up correctly with the brand and kind of that process. Okay, and you've got some things also, you just partner with mastermind correct and Mastermind to explain to our listeners that why this is interesting and important. Take that one yeah, it's a little bit more than a partnership. We we recently just acquired Mastermind. That was a couple of a

couple of weeks ago. We probably dropped that information out there in the in the world, but um so Mastermind Marketing is a digital creative agency and um what we're doing is we're really doing it quite a bit of growth through M and A. UM Influencer Marketing is kind of like our core sort of social media marketing tool set. But over the last few weeks we started announcing sort of like the stealth portion of the of the growth.

And Mastermind Marketings acquisition was one some huge clients that they've had for its ask me to understand, I mean, this is their pharmaceutical pole pre big deal. So Kevin tell us about Shark Reach Labs the project. So so we're taking we're able to take products. We have a product, for example, it's called I Grow Laser. It's a it's a hair growing product laser and um led lights and it and it grows hair right. And this has been now it's been selling on QVC for five and forty

five dollars, is blowing very big numbers. But now we're able to go out and find influencers who can talk to their their friends and family and networks about their hair growing experiences. So we can target people that want to grow hair by getting influencers that can help that help get the word out about a product like this. Just surprise. I don't think anybody needs encouragement for wanting to grow hair and get at a certain point man

or you know it's a it's a big deal. I guess The point is an influencer is presumably someone who isn't just got lots of followers, but has followers because they have some kind of credibility because I trust that influencer, not just say hey, I'm cute by this, but trust me correct and and so yes, they they and and they've been engaging with their their followers and their clients for for X number of months or years so they know what to expect and um and if they like

a product, of course, you know it is there. Many of these people do like to try and make sure that they believe in it also and and validate the product themselves. Okay, so how one of our listeners, small business or an investor, how do they what is the intersection they might have with Shark Reach Steve. So, we generally work with the mid tier to large larger brands,

but really it's across a product segment we can work with. Really, it's because like I said, followers, right, So there's a really it can go very broad and go very niche depending on what that brand or what that company you know is looking to do. There even can be like um, these kind of meetups that we do within owensers at regional level, which is kind of fun. I mean they're real people with real followings and it's kind of just a way to connect them to what the brands want

to do in a really true organic way. Okay, Kevin, you are an influence there here. Now you're going to jump in with this digital millennial approach. Tell what what's the number one thing an influencer should know or what are you looking for? Well, what I look for is I look for a credible company with a great background or if it's a product, a great product that has a proof of concept and and the ability to reach

the masses. So uh So, I think that's that's one of the advantages with with some of these influencers because they have you mentioned a Kardashian. They have such a mass following you you've got to have a mass product for somebody like that, because you can't. You can't go to a Kardashian on a hair growth product because it's it's too niche of a product. So because they'll help plenty of hair exactly. Well, thanks You guys have to come back when this is when you get your next

big acquisition or your next big influencer. Thank you so very much to Kevin Harrington, he's the chairman and board member of Shark Reach. And Steve Smith, he's the CEO of Shark Reach. I'm Kathleen Hayes. This is Bloomberg