Marketing Happy Hour - The Dos and Don’ts of Influencer Marketing Success | Taylor Berringer of Urban Outfitters

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

This week on Marketing Happy Hour, Cassie sits down with Taylor Berringer, Senior Brand Manager of Influencer & Celebrity at Urban Outfitters, to uncover the secrets behind crafting authentic, impactful influencer campaigns. Taylor shares valuable insights from her journey, including her hot takes on the future of influencer marketing, strategies for integrating influencers into Urban Outfitters' holiday campaigns, and lessons learned from years of experience with top brands. Tune in to discover how Taylor ensures campaigns resonate with audiences and what emerging trends will shape the industry in 2025. Key Takeaways: // Building a Career in Influencer Marketing - Taylor shares her journey and advice for those aiming to excel in brand marketing and influencer strategy. // Secrets to Authentic Campaigns - Learn the strategies Taylor uses to keep influencer campaigns engaging and authentic, even as the space grows more competitive. // Holiday Campaign Planning - Get insights into how Taylor approaches holiday campaigns with influencers, including unique tactics to create memorable, festive content. // The Future of Influencer Marketing - Taylor's predictions for 2025, including emerging trends and shifts in influencer engagement that brands should prepare for now. // Career Wisdom - Taylor reflects on lessons learned throughout her career and shares advice she wishes she’d known earlier. ____ Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: ⁠Join now⁠ Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The best advice that I always got is have numbers to get leadership buy-in and be able to confidently know what you're talking about, know how you're driving those results and helping the business. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Cassie, consultant, podcaster, and your host. Every Thursday, you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of topics, from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals, to building leadership skills and launching your own business. Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour combos with peers,

this show is all about practical, empowering chats to support your professional journey. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode. So I am very excited today. I have Taylor Beringer joining me. She's the senior brand manager of influencer marketing at Urban Outfitters, a brand that I have personally known and love for many, many years. And today we're just going to talk about best practices for working with influencers, projected trends for 2025, insights from some recent events and series that she's worked on, as well as we'll infuse a little bit of holiday campaign tips into this conversation as well, just to get you geared up to put your finishing touches on all things holiday and of course, career development insights. But Taylor,

welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. so much thanks for having me absolutely okay so as always i gotta ask you an important question is there anything that you've been enjoying lately in your glass you're in new york right i'm actually in philadelphia but oh okay yes so in my glass recently has been a lot of apple cider, actually. Yes. Yes. Love apple cider. So I'm trying to drink as much as I can before we transition fully into winter. Yeah, no, absolutely. I, the reason I was asking about New York is because I feel like there's so many good places to get different fun drinks. I'm sure Philly too. I lived in New York for a little bit and I never got to go over there, but I've heard great things. But yeah, cider was a big deal in New York too during this time of year. So I totally see that. Yeah, we're not too far. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I want to

hear a little bit about your journey first before we get into just this episode in general and talk through some of those strategies and tips and things. So how'd you get to this role at Urban Outfitters? Yeah, so I majored in communications in college. And then when I was thinking about where I wanted to start my career, the influencer industry was kind of on the rise, but it wasn't really an established position in most companies. So I transitioned into social media first. That was my first role out of college was social media coordinator for a local bridal

boutique. Eventually, I found myself in the DTC space. So I was working at brands like Parachute Home. I went to an agency for a little while. And at Parachute, I was doing social media, but I also helped them spearhead and grow their first influencer marketing program. And I realized, hey, I actually like this a lot more than I do so for social media. And so when I transitioned into an agency that was a completely influencer marketing

only role, I got to work with a lot of really cool clients across food and beverage, wellness, healthcare. And then from there I realized, Hey, I think I want to go back in house to a brand that I feel really passionate about, which led me to my role as influencer marketing manager at Coco kind, which is a sustainable skincare company. I was a consumer first and I love that role so much. I still really love the brand. I love the founder and their mission. And when I was at Cocoa Kind, that's when I really learned the in and outs of influencer marketing for a brand specifically and growing community and the best tactics to engage influencers

and keep them creating content about your brand and just keep them engaged with you. So from there, it continued on to grow my career at Pepper, which is an intimate and I would say as leisure lounge wear brand as they're expanding into new categories. And there I also had the charge of growing their first influencer program. And through those influencer programs, I was also leading ambassador programs and affiliate as they're also very interconnected. So I would say that gave me a lot of on the ground experience on the different tactics that you can utilize influencer marketing for. And if it's top of the funnel and you really just want to focus on awareness, or if you're bottom of the funnel and you want to see conversions, there are so many different strategies that you can execute. And then finally, after that, I had the opportunity to take a step forward in my career and advance into senior manager of influence marketing at Urban

Outfitters, which is amazing. And this position kind of combined all the things that I was doing at each brand previously, because at Urban, we don't only sell apparel, but we also sell beauty, we sell home, we sell music, etc. And so it was a perfect fusion of all of my interests. Again, I feel like this is a constant theme, but Urban didn't actually have an influencer marketing program. So when I joined, I was really tasked with leading that charge, building the strategy, and I just hit the ground running and I've been here for a little bit under two years and it's been great. Oh my gosh. Incredible that you were a part of kind of building that from scratch, essentially. That's huge. I had no idea they didn't have one a few

years ago. That's amazing. Well, kudos to you for that. And I also just love, you kind of mentioned this a couple of times, but this idea that you are a consumer for a lot of these brands that you've worked with. So having that customer first knowledge of a product of a brand and just being able to speak to that through your experience, I think that's so huge. And I'm, I'm sure you would probably agree with me on that, but just having that firsthand experience with experience with products is super important. Yeah, for sure. And I think in my industry, when I am trying to build those connections with influencers and get them to love the product, if they're not already familiar with a lot of the startups that I worked at, they had brand recognition, but it wasn't as widespread as a brand like Urban Outfitters. And so when you feel that much more passionate about the product, you're invested in it, you can very much easily get the influencers that you're engaging with to

be invested in it too. And then that just helps their content feel a lot more natural and engaging. Yeah, for sure. And I have to ask unrelated, but kind of related, I noticed on your LinkedIn you worked at Disney. Did you do the Disney college program? Yes, I did. Oh my gosh. I did the college program twice actually. I did it for about six months when I was a sophomore and then I went back the summer after my junior year. Okay. It was a great experience. Yeah. Amazing. I did it in 2015. So I was like, I have to, I have to ask her about this. That is so awesome. Yeah. I was 2016 and 2017. Oh my gosh. Right after me. That's amazing. Oh, I love that. I'll, I'll have to ask you more about that off record, but I'm like, I have to ask and just find out more about this. Um, okay.

Well, you've already mentioned you've worked for a number of just incredible renowned brands. I'm curious if you have one piece of career advice you would offer to those wanting to excel in influencer or brand marketing, just overall thinking about your career in general, just taking the next step after the next step, growing in your career and being able to land just really awesome roles like you have over the years? Yeah. So I always attribute my career growth so far to being very data driven with an influencer marketing. And I say that because I feel like so much of it is, of course, relationship building and it's content.

And sometimes you can have all of this great success, but you still seeing, whether it is number of content or number of influencers you're outreaching. As long as you have quantifiable metrics that you can then easily speak to and show to hiring managers or whoever you're talking to in a position that you want, or even if it's an internal company and maybe you're looking for that next step to a promotion, the best advice that I always got is have numbers to get leadership buy-in and be able to confidently know what you're talking about, know how you're driving those results and helping the business. In addition to that, just always be open to learning more. I'm definitely somebody who says yes to a lot of opportunities that come my way

and I'm learning how to prioritize my bandwidth a little bit more. But I think in saying yes to all those opportunities, you get to meet so many different people across different organizations. And at startups, it's really easy because you usually only have about 30 people and you're working very closely. But at Urban Outfitters, we have 500 plus employees. And so one of the first things that I did here and what I recommend everybody is to really take those first two weeks of any new role and set up meetings with cross-functional partners and just ask them about themselves, what they do, if there are any pain points that they've experienced when they were working with

influencer teams in the past or the process, and how you guys can work best together. Because again, you're not only thinking about your area of the business, you're also thinking about how you can impact multiple areas of the business. Yeah, related to the data conversation too, I feel like especially early on in your career, this idea of how do you properly articulate data and like tell that big picture story to higher ups or whoever you're presenting to can kind of be difficult at times. I feel like depending on where we're at, we either overcomplicate the way that we're sharing data, like we use too much jargon or we whatever. How do you best, and again, this might be a or we whatever, how do you best? And again,

this might be a loaded question, but how do you best kind of go into those conversations, ensuring that what you're sharing is impactful or you're pulling the right information or you're telling a story with that information? What's the best way to kind of go about those presentations, you'd say? I would say I've experienced this a lot because even in 2024, influencer marketing is growing exponentially and there's a lot of money being invested into it. But I do think that a lot of leadership still doesn't fully understand the impact or how to necessarily utilize the influencers to see positive ROI. So I always like to paint a picture of what were we trying to achieve and what did we spend and then what did we get back from that. So something that

I always look at and I use a platform to do this but there are so many ways that you can also report if you don't have an influencer marketing tech stack is earn media value. So, again, we have a platform that basically pulls that number together from every piece of content that we have. And that is really beneficial for leadership to see because that is a dollar value. And so they can see if we're spending X amount and we're getting 2X back in return, then that was a good investment. I would also say if you don't have those tech stacks, looking at things that are related to growth. So maybe if you have a campaign and one month you're seeing five pieces of content, then

you run an influencer campaign and now you have 25 people talking about you and that number is growing, then you can say, okay, well, this is what we can achieve with influencer marketing. We're seeing X percent growth. This is how I think we can continue to scale if we book more influencers or we invest more money. And you can do the same thing with impressions. You could do the same thing if you're leaning into experiential. At the smaller companies I looked at, we would also look at site traffic. So look at influencer posts going live within a time span. Was there any incremental lift in site traffic or sales? So really just trying to find any avenue possible where you can attribute the things that you are doing to positively pushing forward in the right direction.

It doesn't have to be every single influencer is going to drive thousands and thousands of dollars. But as long as you're seeing some growth, even if it's tiny and some aspect of impressions, engagement, content, etc., then I think that's where you should always start when getting leadership buy-in. Yeah. Yeah. Great advice. And kind of along that, let's say you're approaching an influencer campaign for the first time. Are there any tried and true approaches that you'd say work for any influencer campaign? I know depending on what you're trying to do with that campaign, it might vary, but anything in terms of just authenticity or any of those buzzwords that you hear that you feel like no matter how big of a buzzword they are, they are very important for each campaign that you're approaching. Yes. So I would actually say authenticity is definitely the first that

comes to mind and that will look different for every single brand. At Urban Outfitters, working with authentic creators means that we are championing creators who express their individuality unapologetically and they're very open with their self-expression because that is who we are as a brand. That's what we stand for. And then I would also say influencers who really care about the values that we also care about as a brand. So that is what we look at first, style, aesthetic, et cetera. If they're in the age range of our consumer, I would always recommend that if you're launching an influencer marketing campaign, that you not only look at the influencer themselves and make sure that they might be in the age range, but also get their audience demographics first, because they could be in the age range, but their audience demographic could be

very much outside of your target consumer. So you always want to keep that in mind. And then I would also say tried and true is always letting influencers lead with creative concepting. So what we usually do whenever we pitch influencers or provide them a content brief is we go through their content, their organic content with a fine tooth comb and we look at what is organically performing very well for them and how can we have them emulate that type of content, but still organically and authentically integrate urban outfitters into the creative. So we also do provide them examples, I would say, within the creative brief so that you can be very confident that they know exactly the type of content you're looking for. And that just decreases the amount of reshoots. You're getting content posted within a more reasonable timeframe because you're cutting down on the reshoot process. And the influencers just feel better. Their managers feel better about working with you because they know that you value their organic content and what they bring to the table and

you're not forcing them to confine to whatever your brand expectations are. So I would say authenticity and then just making sure that you have a really good grasp on creative and letting influencers do what they do best, which is create organic content and engage their audience. And I love how you related the idea of authenticity, not only to just allowing the creator influencer to infuse their personality into the content, but value alignment is so incredibly important between brand and creator. We talk a lot about career on the show too, and same with career, just ensuring that you are working with brands that you truly believe in what they stand for. I think obviously on the

creator side, this is true, but as professionals to the brands that we decide to work with is a representation of who we are as human beings. And same thing with the brand, working with an influencer and vice versa. So that is incredibly important. And so doing your due diligence is incredibly important with that and ensuring that there is true value alignment. Is there with that, is there like due diligence calls that you all are doing? Like, are you chatting with the influencer quite a bit prior to signing a campaign? Or what does that vetting process typically look like for you? With any new influencers, we do typically hop on calls with either the influencer themselves or if they are repped by a talent agency, it would be with their management team.

And we just chat through what the intentions are behind the campaign that we are launching, just so that we can make sure that there's alignment between both parties. Because sometimes it does happen where you're launching a campaign and you reach out to somebody who you really love and think they'd be a perfect fit. And they say, I'm sorry, but the creative just doesn't align with what I'm doing right now. And that's totally okay. And so I think getting those questions out of the way first, especially when it is a larger, more macro influencer, celebrity, et cetera, and you're investing a lot of money into it, you want to make sure that there's no confusion on both ends and both ends are getting what they mutually want to receive out of the partnership. And so I would also say with

partners that we have longstanding relationships with, there isn't as much back and forth via phone. It's usually via email. But again, that's because we've already established that these are people that we have built great relationships with. We trust them. They trust us. And we can move forward with a seamless partnership without having to get that out of the way beforehand. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great advice. I want to talk about UO Live, too, this amazing event you did for Back to School. Tell us a little bit about that and how that worked, and just also how did influencers come into play with driving success for this event? Yeah, of course. So UO Live was

very fun. That was part of our back to school campaign, which the overarching campaign theme was Shift Happens. And so we were really exploring all the different ways that college students are shifting as they return back to campus, or maybe if they are going to college for the first time. And so we held in-store performances with these artists that are really popular and resonating with Gen Z at four Urban Outfitters locations that are adjacent to college campuses in our key markets. So we were at Georgetown in D.C., Tucson, Arizona. We were in Soho in New York. And then we were also in Athens, Georgia. We had artists like Quavo, Toa Bird, Tinashe, and the Marias. And we held these free concerts. And so

a lot of our target consumer college students came out. It was again, right as they went back to campus. So they were already kind of buzzing, being around their friends, a new school year. And so we just really wanted to invite them back to campus in a big way that would get them to organically engage with the brand, but then also just come out with their friends and have it be a really memorable moment. We integrated influencers to act as the host of each show. So we tapped influencers like Chris Clemons, Enyan Drew from Emergency Intercom, and then Leon Ondigie. And essentially they opened the show, they did a few audience segments, really interacted with the crowd. If the music artist had a Q&A at the end of their performance, then the hosts were the ones who were asking them the questions. And so they were really organically integrated into the entire run of show.

And the reason why we centered influencers is because we know that music is so important to this consumer, but so are influencers. And they really trust the opinion of their favorite influencers. And those are the people who they are constantly being engaged by on social media. And to some extent, I feel like a lot of consumers who are Gen Z feel like they know and trust influencers even more so than they do these A-list celebrities or musicians. So we wanted to make sure that we were tapping both from a cultural perspective. And it was great. I would say the influencers had so many fans that came out. Some of them even gave them presents or flowers. They camped outside for many, many hours just to be their favorite influencers. And I think at least for myself and my career, that was the first time that I really truly saw the full,

the full power of influencer marketing at play in an in-person experience. Because when you have events, you usually are just interacting with influencers or press, but consumer events are so totally different. And sometimes because we're working with influencers on social content, that can feel very much like an echo chamber, just a bubble since everything's online. But when you really get out into the open and you see how many people are like crying because they see their favorite influencer or screaming their names, I think it's undeniable that this is a marketing channel that brands should be investing in. And it's at this point, pretty crucial. Yeah. And it's a very 360 approach to a campaign. It's experiential, it's influencer, it's talent infusion. I'm curious with something like that,

like an experiential event and infusing influencers into that. What is, what would you say is the brand impact? Because obviously UO was a big part of this, but how do you feel like that kind of thinking about those bottom line conversations we were, we were having earlier in the show, how would you communicate the bottom line value of that to someone, for example? Yes. So we, and as you mentioned, it was very much 360. So we had influencers appearing in editorial on the site. We had custom emails going out that had, or linked out to landing pages on the website. So you could say shop Tinashe's picks or shop Enya and Drew's picks. And so we were hoping to drive consumer traffic and sales that way. And then also on the engagement front, we really just looked at the holistic number

of total impressions. We looked at the holistic earned media value, what the reach of all the partners was, how much content that we got out of that. And then we also did social listening so that we could see the number of organic pieces of content that we got from our target customer. And it was exponentially higher than anything that we had done in the months prior. And so within my area of business, when I'm communicating that to leadership, again, I think it's clear that if you are seeing those month over month changes and they're positive,

that it is positively impacting the business. And I would also say that before you go into any influencer partnership or a large experiential campaign to align with KPIs with leadership in advance, align on those KPIs because they could be expecting to see sales, but maybe something is better for awareness. So going into UO Live, I had already communicated with leadership and said, hey, this is a big awareness play for us because we're inviting people to a free concert. And so it's not necessarily about sales. We're still going to try to drive conversions by having this 360 approach but as long as we are seeing awareness metrics rise then that was a success for us yeah absolutely and i think just ultimately as you mentioned there were people showing up waiting for hours to meet

their favorite influencers see their favorite artists etc you're tapping into this long-term memory area too like these people who attended, I'm sure are going to be talking about this event for years and years to come. So it's, it's this longevity play. And to your point, communicating that, Hey, there might not be immediate sales on the day of this event, but you don't know what's going to come out of that. And just being able to tap into that human emotion and connection with someone's favorite thing in the entire world has huge, huge lasting impact. Yeah, totally. And something that we are really honing in on this year is how are we driving connection with our consumers? And so with this experiential play, that was a surefire way of driving

connection because they're coming out to our stores to see a performance of their favorite artists. And so again, I think in that vein, it was successful because we are driving connection. And so sometimes it is about what are the pillars of your brand? What are you trying to do differently? And as you said, that might not always lead to a massive uptick in sales, but it is a longer brand strategy so that you can get to a place where you are seeing those positive lifts in sales because of the great positive interaction that these consumers had at one of your events. Yeah, 1000%. I love that. And, you know, we're going into 2025 as we're recording this, the end of 2024 right now. I'm just curious overall, do you have any influencer marketing hot takes or things that you see changing in the next year so that you're either looking forward to or maybe a little bit hesitant about just in general? What do you think is coming up for us in this industry? Yeah. So something that has been top of mind for me and that I have seen other brands executing with a lot of success is leaning more into your community as the influencers. And I think that

is so smart. I do think while I of course love this industry, that it is saturated. And I think from a business perspective, a lot of brands are thinking about ROI and thinking about how they can really turn their community members into advocates because those are the ones who are day in and day out buying their products and spending their money. So I've seen a lot of brands start taking community members on what you would consider a brand trip or inviting them to gifting suites. And I think for us at Urban, that is definitely something that I will be pitching and recommending that we lean into. And I'm not saying that that's going to replace influencer marketing because I definitely don't think it will. I think that both are beneficial and you should be, if you have the capabilities, executing both at the same time.

A brand last year when all of the major superstars were having their world tours took influencers to Taylor Swift's Heiress tour and then they also had a suite for their consumers. And so I think that that's a great example of how you can do the same thing for of your targets and still keep influencers engaged while also not forgetting about your consumers. And so that is the biggest takeaway that I have seen in terms of what is trending that I think is going to really explode in the next year. And then I would also say experiential is going to be hugely important. I think it's already at that level, but I think more brands are going to see the positive effects of investing in experiential, not only for influencers, but again, for consumers as well. And I think, again, it's all about driving connection. That is what we need at

the moment. That is what brands are looking to achieve and looking to do better at is really community interaction. And then influencer marketing interaction, because it is saturated, you really want to get out and meet those influencers in person and make sure that they have positive relationships with your brand and your team so that stay engaged with you. And so you're not dropping off from their top of mind. Yeah. And is that for you? That's actually a really great point. Just relationship building with influencers. What does that look like? Like, how are you maintaining those relationships in between campaigns? Is it meeting regularly? Is it shooting them a quick note here and there? Like what, what specifically do you prioritize, excuse me, to be able to do that?

Yeah. So we do stay connected with influencers in between campaigns and that could look like gifting. So that's one of the easiest things for us to do is if they're going on vacation, we can send them a new outfit. But then we also do take it to the next level by really staying up to date with what they are doing or what they have going on in their day-to-day. We have a lot of influencers who are moving into new homes or celebrating their birthdays, of course, or getting engaged. And so usually when we see that happening, we will send them some flowers or we'll send them some goodies, a little treat. And so that makes it feel for us a lot more personable. And it's getting away from that sense of branded content, because at that point,

we want them to know that this is from the people who work at Urban Outfitters. It's not necessarily directly tied to the brand and it doesn't feel as transactional as gifting might. That is something that I have done at many companies and I will likely bring that to any other company that I'm at because I do really think it helps for influencers to stay engaged with your brand and then have a really positive association with your brand. And then we also do have regular coffee chats with influencers, usually when we're in New York, which we are a few times per month. And we'll just sit and chat to them about what's going on in their lives, what campaigns they're working on, and then how they would love to work with us for any seasonal

moments or campaigns that are upcoming. And I think, again, that's really good to stay in touch and to build those connections so that when you do have a campaign, they are more willing to say yes, and they're excited because they know you and they love to work with you. Yeah. And I love how you just mentioned to making it a two-way conversation. Like not only you as a team identifying influencers or creators you want to partner with, but literally asking the influencers or creators, what do you want to work on? Like what gets you excited? Because I'm sure you guys have probably seen that brings a lot more excitement to the campaign when it's something

that they have identified that they want to work on and they're looking forward to that. So I love, I love that simple ask to them. I think that's huge. Yeah. So I want to ask to really quickly, just a quick brush over holiday. I know we're nearing the end of this year. So hopefully if you're listening, you have done your holiday planning well in advance now. But maybe something you can look forward to next year. So how are you just overall integrating influencer with holiday, if at all, and any tips around just increasing visibility opportunity for the holiday season because of course it's it's a big gifting time so of course and we are really doubling down on our marketing in terms of gifting which again as of as you know this time of year is very crowded with promotional deals and everybody has very similar messaging

going live and so the thought is how do we stick out from the crowd and within that I would always recommend that content still feels very organic because you're going to see so much content during this time that feels very much sponsored and it's very in your face, buy this product, buy this product. And so for us, we still like to authentically integrate influencers to our campaigns in a way that it doesn't take them out of that social experience. So if they're scrolling on TikTok, it doesn't take them out of their For You page. It feels like it naturally is integrated into the content that they like to see. And I would also say for holiday, of course, we have product priorities, but we usually like to do a big in-person moment as well.

Again, driving connection. We actually just had an influencer and press cocktail party a few weeks ago and that was really great because not only did it get influencers and press out to see the new offerings that we have for holiday in terms of giftables and new apparel, but it also brought people together for a very fun night and it felt very welcoming it felt very engaging and we had a few brand partners involved as well that also had some of their influencers there so everybody was connecting mixing and mingling meeting new friends and I think within the holiday season that's what a lot of

people are craving and looking for it's less about buying products and it's more about spending time with their loved ones, their family, and their friends. I would always recommend if you're leaning into content, just trying to make it feel as authentic as possible, knowing your audience, and then also thinking to yourself as a consumer, as we're all consumers, what type of content entices me to buy something during this year, and then integrating that thought and that strategic process into all of your influencer campaigns. And then if you can try to invest in getting out and bringing your community together, whether that's consumers, whether that's influencers together to just be together and have fun and not have it feel so formal or professional. Just get out and see each

other. Yeah, that's really good. I love that idea of just putting yourself in the shoes of the consumer. I mean, we're all consumers, but I feel like sometimes when we're working at a brand, we have this like different layer at looking at things. i love that reminder to just kind of simplify with how you're looking at campaigns what would you be interested in consuming and kind of going from there back to the basics i guess yeah totally yeah well taylor this has been awesome i want to close out by asking a little bit about career so just kind of looking back earlier on in your career do you feel like there's something that you wish you knew when you started out that you know now? Or just general one piece of advice that you'd pass along to anyone listening today, just for career in

general, you know, pushing forward, staying sane in your career, whatever you want to share there. The piece of advice that I would give to anybody listening is to make sure that you are not conflating your self-worth with your work performance. I think in corporate environments and especially in marketing, so many of our ideas are tied to creative and sometimes you might not get buy-in from leadership or you might launch a campaign

and maybe it's not as successful as you were hoping it would be. And it's very easy to get stuck in this thought spiral of, I'm not good enough. Can I do this better? Why didn't this perform? But I think at the end of the day, we just have to remember that we're all humans and we work to live. We don't live to work. And that is something that I have struggled with grasping. And what has really helped me is having those routine things that I love to do outside of

work, like reading a book or seeing my friends and family, being with my pets that help me turn off my work brain so that I am not consumed by the thoughts of work. And I think it's so easy to just get stuck in that pattern. But self-care and realizing that your worth is not directly attached to your career is really important to understand as you're navigating the career landscape, especially if you're early out? Yeah, 1000%. It's something that I have juggled with too, and still am really to this day. I mean, it's, it's so hard because it takes up so much time out of our lives. But it is so important just to prioritize those other things. And it can be literally anything. But having something else to look forward to and get excited about and just

to your point, find your worth in outside of work is it's so important. There was someone that we had on the podcast a while back, Les Alfred, and she said, I'm probably going to butcher her quote, but she said, your work is just an assignment or your job is just an assignment. Assignments change all the time so knowing that there's something else that you're working towards outside of that work so that as soon as that assignment changes you're not devastated you're not i mean obviously go through the grieving period depending on what's happening job loss is is a real thing but i think just having other things to kind of nod to that and say okay okay, that happened. That really sucks. But I know I have other things outside of that to look forward to. It's so important. Exactly. It's all about balance.

And it is hard, but it really feels so much more fulfilling when you dedicate yourself to finding those things that make you happy outside of work and committing to actually engaging in those. Yeah. Could not agree more. Absolutely. Well, Taylor, this has been wonderful. I have to ask you too, before we close out here, just where can everyone follow along with you personally, but also Urban Online, what's the best way to get in touch? Yeah, so if you are looking to connect with the brand,

we are just at Urban Outfitters across all platforms. To connect with myself, I'm on LinkedIn. And so it's just my name, Taylor Berenger. And I'm always happy to chat. Just send me a connection or a little note and that's how you can stay in contact. Awesome. Yes. We'll have that linked below in the show notes and excited for everyone to just hear your story and get to know you a little bit better. This has been such a great actionable episode. So thank you so much. Really appreciate you taking the time today. Of course, this has been great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation,

I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level, sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea for a future Marketing Happy Hour episode, shoot me an email. Hello at marketinghappyhr.com. Thank you again, and I'll see you next Thursday.