Althea Lim, Co-Founder and Group CEO, Gushcloud International
Gushcloud is a force to reckon with in the influencer marketing space. Starting in Singapore as a social sharing platform in 2011 by Althea Lim and Vincent Ha, Gushcloud grew into a leading digital talent and media company with operations in 11 countries.
Over the 13 years of its existence, the company secured investments from GDP Ventures, Golden Equator Capital, KB Investments, Korea Investment Partners, and Kejora Ventures.
In this interview, Gushcloud Co-Founder and CEO Althea Lim discusses trends in the influencer marketing space, social media and digital marketing world, and the role of generative AI in this industry.
Edited excerpts:
Gushcloud positions itself as a connector between brands and influencers, but how do you ensure transparency and authenticity in influencer marketing, especially considering recent controversies surrounding fake followers and engagement?
At Gushcloud, strict policies ensure we only engage influencers with legitimate following and engagement. We run through these profiles via our own proprietary technology platform and cross-check them with various third-party platforms we have active partnerships with. Following that, we share their profile and statistics with our clients to check who amongst our talent roster best fits their brand.
Most importantly, we do not encourage nor help our influencers buy, engage, and interact with fake followers. Authenticity is critical in this business, and it is what drives the audience’s trust. Hence, our advice to all influencers we work with is to refrain from doing anything to disrupt that trust with their audiences.
With the increasing number of influencer marketing agencies in the market, what sets Gushcloud apart from its competitors? How do you maintain a competitive edge?
While we provide influencer marketing strategies and solutions for brands because we hold onto an exclusive roster of creators, Gushcloud is beyond an influencer marketing agency. In the last few years, we have pivoted to become a content and brands management group powered by the creator economy. We manage and finance content and brands alongside exclusive creators we work with.
Hence, our competitive edges are our network of 11 offices globally, allowing us to serve both brand and talent clients. Secondly, our content and intellectual property unit co-produces, licenses, and distributes content globally across platforms. And lastly, we co-develop and distribute our brands alongside creators via our commerce unit.
Trends and platforms constantly evolve in the fast-paced social media and digital marketing world. How does Gushcloud stay ahead of the curve and adapt its strategies to ensure maximum client reach and impact?
In the last few years, we have developed two units within the organisation, called Global Brands Solutions and Global Talent Solutions. Both are growing units where we place some of our best minds – to analyse key market trends, to project where this industry is headed alongside key platform players, and to keep testing out various new technologies to implement them into the company. By integrating these two units, we can give brand clients a substantial reach and impact based on their needs.
Can you provide examples of successful brand-influencer collaborations facilitated by Gushcloud that resulted in tangible business outcomes and return on investment?
Recently we launched V of BTS as the ambassador of Sinarmas (an Indonesian securities company). Gushcloud brokered that international partnership with the help of our Korea and Indonesia offices.
With V of BTS, the brand encouraged more young people in Indonesia to be an investor. It launched the partnership in March with an advertising campaign in Indonesia and followed it with a fan-meet called “Siminvestival Goes To Korea” in Seoul last June.
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The TVC production resulted in a lot of buzz through capturing the aesthetic side of talent, and the tagline, including the brand name “Hey Sim” became viral among the audience.
During the launch, the brand achieved 550 per cent growth in social media (from 23,000 to 130,000), trending no.1 worldwide.
Gushcloud claims to co-create significant IPs in the content and event spaces. Can you elaborate on the IP creation process and share some notable examples of successful IP developed by the company?
We have a unit in the company under the content management department. Currently, our IPs are focused on entertainment and education –two areas that can help reshape how future generations can feel and think for the better.
Two of our IPs were on exhibition in Singapore. The first is Sneakertopia, the world’s largest sneaker exhibition, previously at the ArtScience Museum. It first opened in Los Angeles before the pandemic, and we licensed it and worked with a production company to reproduce it in Singapore. The exhibition did extremely well, and we are now on track to opening it up in Jakarta, Taiwan and Japan.
The second offline experience is Escape @ Science Centre, where we have three STEM-themed escape rooms now open for mystery solvers. It is open from Thursday to Sunday, 10:00 AM to 10:30 PM. We worked closely with the development team at the Singapore Science Centre for this project and are currently working towards licensing it out of Singapore. Beyond that, we are also working with owners of beloved IPs to license their IPs to recreate them into Escape Rooms.
Influencer marketing often involves navigating complex legal and ethical considerations, such as disclosures, endorsements, and privacy. How does Gushcloud ensure compliance with relevant regulations and industry standards?
We do not compromise on legality, especially because we have a lot of cross-border contracts. Accountability is key for us and our influencers, especially for paid collaborations and sponsored partnerships.
At Gushcloud, we work closely with the brand to ensure that there could be little or no miscommunication and misrepresentation of intention. We also stay away from paid influencer gigs that could have the possibility of being mistaken to be propaganda. At the same time, we also handle the due diligence of incoming brand clients on behalf of our talent today.
Building long-term relationships between brands and influencers can be challenging due to changing market dynamics and shifting audience preferences. How does Gushcloud cultivate sustainable partnerships and ensure continued success for its clients?
At Gushcloud, we believe in long-term partnerships. When we think about long-term partnerships for our brand clients and talent – it has to be a “win-win” situation.
The brands we work with must gain awareness that turns into engagements and conversions. The talent we work with must align with the brand and develop those results for the brand such that the brand becomes a long-term partner to the talent. That’s how we think about packaging and performance.
Beyond that, we also believe in providing high-quality service to talent and brand partners. At Gushcloud, we always say, “everyone wants to fly business but pay economy and Gushcloud aims to be the SQ of the creator economy”.
And lastly, at Gushcloud, we constantly innovate in the space with the data we are collecting, developing more sticky services such as content publishing and content commerce, creating more cross-border and platform solutions and creatively investing in more performance for our brands and talent.
Content creation and media production have become increasingly democratised with the rise of user-generated content. How does Gushcloud adapt its services to leverage the power of user-generated content while still providing value to its clients?
We have a unit within the company called Gushcloud Unscripted Content division. This is where we hire some of the industry’s top film producers and directors to co-develop and co-produce high-quality content alongside the content creators to be acquired by the streaming networks and studios.
Also Read: Influencer marketing strategies: Driving engagement and reach in Indonesia
We also have another division called Content Publishing, providing content optimisation, licensing and publishing services to multiple platforms. This allows the talent to produce a single piece of content but is distributed on multiple platforms, hence allowing the content to monetise more efficiently.
Measurement and analytics are crucial for evaluating the effectiveness and impact of influencer marketing campaigns. How does Gushcloud track and measure the success of its campaigns, and how do you ensure accurate metrics reporting to clients?
The measurement varies depending on client needs or requirements. We look into social media engagement and reach, hashtag performance, critical message awareness, and, most important, sales and conversion performance.
In the case of the partnership we brokered between Sinarmas and V of BTS, we also indicated our success with the number of new investors and the number of investments they received during the launch phase.
As the influencer marketing landscape becomes saturated, how does Gushcloud navigate the challenge of finding and working with authentic and influential content creators amidst the noise and competition?
We have built an internal data platform, which has effectively given us data on follower authenticity and the creator’s engagement rates, allowing us to know if the creator will have the ability and power to convert. The platform also informs us on which notable creators follow that particular creator and the data on them. We found huge success in making such informed decisions alongside the brands.
How does Gushcloud leverage advanced technologies like Generative AI to stay ahead of the curve?
Three ways:
- By implementing AI in our operations and processes: we started using AI to increase our team efficiency and productivity and predict market trends. We also use AI to scout for new creators and will be using AI next to execute and develop campaigns.
- Virtual Influencers: we have huge hopes for the Virtual Influencers industry and are using AI to bet big in the space. AI assists us with character and story development.
- Licensing of rights: Imagine using generative AI to develop Snoop Dogg’s voice and have it sing nursery rhymes to your children. We are also big betters in that space.
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Image Credit: Gushcloud.
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