Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Future of Influencer & Athlete Marketing with Ishveen Jolly

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About... Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of "Right About Now," host Ryan Alford and guest Ishveen Jolly, CEO and co-founder of Open Sponsorship, explore the evolving landscape of influencer sponsorships in modern marketing. They discuss how influencer partnerships serve as a contemporary form of word-of-mouth marketing, crucial for brand growth. Ish shares insights on the challenges and opportunities in the industry, emphasizing the importance of amplifying content and understanding the distinction between brand awareness and direct sales. The conversation highlights the need for brands to adapt their strategies, nurture client relationships, and leverage influencer collaborations effectively for maximum ROI.TAKEAWAYSThe significance of influencer sponsorships as a modern form of word-of-mouth marketing.The evolution of the influencer marketing industry and its impact on brand strategies.Challenges brands face in effectively leveraging influencer partnerships.The importance of amplifying content created through influencer collaborations.Distinction between brand awareness and direct sales in influencer marketing.The role of authenticity in marketing and consumer engagement.The necessity for brands to understand influencers' motivations and needs.The shift from acquiring new clients to nurturing existing client relationships.The cost-effectiveness and personalization of influencer marketing compared to traditional advertising.The evolving landscape of influencer marketing with the rise of new platforms like TikTok.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Why is influencer sponsor the IT medium for helping grow a brand of any size? It's the new word of mouth marketing. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now.
Starting point is 00:00:37 We're always keeping it right for you. You know, you know we're right. You know, I mean, the website's Ryanisright.com. You know, that's why I bring the best and the brightest from around the globe. I'm from London today. We're all over the planet. We got you covered baby. We're talking all about sponsorships. NIL. Anybody heard of that? I'm going to go there with our guests. We're going to tell you what that means. But ultimately, it's about getting value for your marketing dollar. We got Ishvin Jolly. She is the CEO and co-founder of OpenSponsorship. What's up, Ishvin?
Starting point is 00:01:10 Hi, Ryan. Thanks for the intro. Yeah. Hey, we're in this marketing game together. You know we've got to stick together. I love it. I know. It's a fascinating world out there. Navigating new media, the new stars, the new spokesperson, all the people. You got all the changing laws and rules with what happened with NIL in the US. I want to get down that path. But at the end of the day, it's about, I always say this, Ish Fien, people have never been more aware that they're being marketed to.
Starting point is 00:01:53 And so you've got to be more authentic and you've got to use their peers to sort of get to them. That's what I really love about what you guys are doing with open sponsorship. Let's set the table for everyone. And they can go check out your YouTubes and all the stuff. Ishveen's got all the accolades in the world. Let me just tell you, I'll let her mention a few of them when she describes herself. Very accomplished.
Starting point is 00:02:17 And her journey stories are out there, so we won't go that. We want to keep it real raw and interesting about the topic. But Ishveen, do set the table and give everybody a little synopsis of open sponsorship and give a little bit of the brag reel. Come on. No, thank you. Well, I suppose very quickly because I do love the marketing stuff more as well. I started open sponsorship about 10 years ago.
Starting point is 00:02:42 I used to be a sports agent. Prior to that, my background in sports, I played a lot growing up. I captained multiple teams while at university and then fell into sponsorship and then fell in love. I just thought, what a wonderful form of marketing. Of course, sponsorship today, is it influencer marketing? Is it affiliate marketing? Is it PR?
Starting point is 00:03:01 There's so many crosses with the other verticals, but really fell in love with sponsorship, the idea that your brand could leverage another brand for one plus one equals 50 kind of thing. Obviously, the fact that the money goes into sports, which I'm very passionate about, or entertainment, music, which I'm really passionate about. Started that 10 years ago, fast forward today. You're very lucky to have received quite a lot of accolades. I suppose highlights are, we have Serena Williams as an investor, one of our lead investors.
Starting point is 00:03:33 We have 19,000 athletes and influencers today. We work with brands like the Walmart or Reebok or whoever else and it's just fabulous. We run a small team that's mostly all in the US, and it's really rewarding. What's considered the home base of open sponsorship? Is there one? Sponsorship.
Starting point is 00:03:56 Of open sponsorship? So we headquartered in New York for the longest time until COVID, very US focused. I personally just like to live in London, but the business is in the US. I love working in the US market. Obviously, I get to meet people like yourself with all your great energy.
Starting point is 00:04:12 And so, yeah, US is our base for multiple reasons. Love the marketing dollars, of course, the budgets there, but also just the willingness to try something new. And as a small company competing with bigger agencies, which I'm sure we could exchange notes, the American market is very much like, all right, we'll give you a little bit. If you prove yourself, you get more. It's quick turnarounds. I love that.
Starting point is 00:04:41 It's a fascinating industry. I came up in marketing and sponsorship was part of what we did for Verizon and the NFL. Help shepherd in that agreement. I was a billion-dollar sponsor. That's about a big sponsorship deal. I worked on that one for about three years. It is, though, a very fascinating and sort of, I don't know, I love what you said about the one and one. Some of the parts is greater than the whole. It's something, like the amplification that happens
Starting point is 00:05:12 when a great sponsor, a great brand, and a great entertainer, athlete, influencer, whatever it is, comes together. It's like magic, isn't it? 100%. And I think the biggest thing is just like the extension of that piece of content or that partnership
Starting point is 00:05:33 across all the other marketing channels and the sales channels and the impact it has on like your employee base or whatever else. And so like, it's the, it's the fact that, I don't think there's anything like it where sponsoring an athlete, using an athlete,
Starting point is 00:05:53 and today it's never been cheaper because you literally can pay them to do one Instagram story for a few hundred bucks. But then you can take that and suddenly scream and tell the world, this is what we do. And you put it in your PR, you put it on your website, you put it in your own personal LinkedIn, you tell your team members all of this,
Starting point is 00:06:08 and the amplification and the ripple effect of all of it is so huge. Yes, and we're getting into really fast and nitty gritty, but I love it, because Ishvain, you just nailed it. We've worked with a lot of brands. I've been on both sides of it. I own a digital agency, I own a podcast network, and then now, I hate even using my word in the name influencer, but got a good following, good show.
Starting point is 00:06:32 So I'm on all sides of it. It pains me when we've worked with brands and they don't atomize it and use it the way you just said. I'm like, I just gave you gold or one of my clients or one of... We gave you gold and you treated it like silver. Why didn't you use it all over the place? It doesn't need to just live within the influencer's channel. You got to amplify it. That's such a miss, isn't it, sometimes?
Starting point is 00:07:05 100%. And this is why, you know, we talked about it slightly when we were kind of chatting before that. We started off, you know, I created OpenSponsorship with my co-founder as the LinkedIn, the Airbnb, the match.com of the industry. You know, we were like, right, we're going to help you find the person, connect, boom, done. And then we realized in the journey that if you're on a dating site or a job recruitment site or something, if you get the match, that's success.
Starting point is 00:07:35 But people were coming to us and they're like, great, you're great, but the outcome wasn't. The ROI wasn't there. And I was like, shit, I need to start thinking about the ROI on these deals, because otherwise we're just going to see all of these guys trying at once and leaving. And then we did what you did. We started trying to build into what you were saying. We tried to build into the platform. Have you thought about doing this?
Starting point is 00:07:56 Have you thought about doing this and share this? And then we realized people just either don't have the time, the knowledge, or whatever else. And so that's kind of why about three years ago, we were like, you know what, we're going to get rid of the self-service. People just either don't have the time, the knowledge, or whatever else. That's why about three years ago, we were like, you know what? We're going to get rid of the self-service. We're going to be completely full-service. We're going to be an extension of your team, and we're going to do it for you.
Starting point is 00:08:16 Great examples. A few months ago, I was speaking to my team. I didn't even know that they did this, but they'll go to a tool like CapCut, and they'll put music overlay and the text overlay onto a video. And I was like, you do that for our clients? And they're like, yeah, but it's just like, it's harder to get them to do it and teach them and say,
Starting point is 00:08:35 oh, this video would be so much more effective. They're like, we'll just do it for them, and it'll take a few seconds. And so I think what I've realized is, whatever the brand's reason is to not do, it's ultimately our problem. And so there's no point in doing these partnerships if you're not going to make it happen.
Starting point is 00:08:57 Yes. And what you realize is the total, I don't know, the total filling the entire circle in, okay, is not just connecting brand to influencer. It's all the magic in between, making sure the content gets done, making sure the content gets used, make it, you know, all of the, you got to lead them to the water and make them drink it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:21 Yeah, I got it. Honestly, yeah. It's true. And because ultimately it's what makes it work. And the only way for it to keep happening and to have success is if it works, right? 100%. 100%. Yeah. I love that. And I, it's an interesting pivot. I mean, I've definitely seen with like the athletes, especially, you know the athletes especially, they can get all these deals, they want the deals, but creating the content is the hardest part, isn't it? How many emails have been sent with, we got to get content for this brand?
Starting point is 00:09:59 Yeah, and making it not look like it was read off a script or that they've been forced to do it. Definitely a challenge that still exists. I think again going back to the point, what are you using them for? So if what you want is content creation and great UGC to put in ads, don't use that guy who never does reels and is a little bit stiff.
Starting point is 00:10:28 But if what you want is to be able to say that you sponsor the quarterback of Clemson, then great. Then, you know, or whatever else. And I think that's the other thing is I realize that a lot of times when you, and I do this as a CEO with a marketing budget, you conflate everything.
Starting point is 00:10:47 You're like, you start off going, I want a testimonial and then five weeks later you're like, oh, but it didn't produce sales and you're like, well, that was never the goal. And so I think it's really important. Again, the benefit of being hand in hand is like you can keep saying, reminder, this is the goal of this campaign. This is the goal of this partnership. If you want to change the goal, we've got to change the creative. We might need to change the person. We've got to change the deliverables. A great example is if you want sales, Reels doesn't allow you to have a link. It's not going to produce
Starting point is 00:11:20 sales. But if you want a brand awareness piece, stories disappear after 24 hours. Very, very different. Which one do you want? Yeah. I'm going to go down that path with you here, but since you brought up Clemson, I mean, did you know I was a Clemson guy? No, I didn't. I graduated from Clemson. I'm a Clemson grad. Yes, Tigers, K. Klivenik. Yeah. Is he on your platform? The quarterback? Don't ask me questions about individuals. I'm from Clemson. I'm a Clemson grad. Yes, Tigers, K. Klivenik. Yeah, is he on your platform? The quarterback? They ask me questions about individuals, I'm sorry. Oh, I won't go there.
Starting point is 00:11:51 I know, he should be. He's still in the Heisman this year. I'm going to say the answer is yes, because I have faith in my team. Yes, I have faith too. We'll get him on there if he's not. So, I always have this trepidation. So I want to see if you share it.
Starting point is 00:12:12 I don't know about you, but awareness is not free. And the age old influencer deals for affiliate deals, for percentage of sales is great. But what I've never understood about that whole equation as a marketer and an influencer is why the hell would you give away free awareness? Nobody gets to run, get free awareness. Verizon and AT&T, you see those commercials over and over and over again, and they don't know if they're generating sales. Television is not direct to consumer, not, you know, but because they know they have
Starting point is 00:12:51 to feed the top of the funnel to get to the bottom. But for some reason, influencers, and I'm sure you guys are working big athletes where maybe this isn't as big of a problem anymore, but why the hell should I give you free awareness? And if only if I drive you a sale, do I get paid? Who made that rule up? It's not the rule for everything. I know the big guys get paid, but you know what I'm saying, it just seems like that's at a false reality
Starting point is 00:13:18 of what you have to spend as a marketing and as a brand. I love what you say. We don't do as many of those deals, to be honest, but we also count product as value. So I'd say cash is king, product is second, then really equity if you've got it, and then it's royalty, exactly what you're saying. So we basically do zero royalty only deals with no product. And when people say to us royalty, exactly what you're saying. So we do very, we basically do zero royalty only deals with no product. And when
Starting point is 00:13:48 people say to us royalty, I say, do a deal for product. And if it works, if there's alignment, if you like their work, if they like you, then fine, talk about a long term deal with royalties. But the expectation that you're going to come in and get good things. Now, let's talk about them why is it still, why is it happening? Well, obviously, TikTok shop is changing the whole game because they've got this whole thing. I don't think it happens that much on matter or wherever else.
Starting point is 00:14:17 It might be on Amazon. And if I was going to play like devil's advocate, like, why is it happening? Well, why is it not happening to us so much is because athletes, this is not their primary job. Yeah. But if you're a content creator, let's say on TikTok, firstly, you need content to post three times a day. Yep. So if you get paid like 20 bucks for a video, or like you're going to just generate a bit of sales, like
Starting point is 00:14:40 one, two, this is your job. Because those brand awareness dollars are drying up if you don't have a viewpoint. I used to say, we're not influencer marketing, we're sports sponsorship. We're influence marketing. And sportsmanship is kind of- Fine line. Yeah, exactly. Well, if you're the buyer and you buy influence marketing, I'm here for it. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:15:11 Frankly, but I'd also say, with the rise of the athlete and the celebrity and the TV star all becoming better value, I think it's hard for someone who's not famous for a reason to make money from brand awareness. They're probably the ones doing the affiliate deals. I know. I understand it. It more drives the shit out of me that brands expect it more than they should, I think. I get that the dollars have gotten to where they want it. Look, we need outcomes.
Starting point is 00:15:49 But if your funnel's not good, it doesn't have anything to do with how good my read is. And so if I do a read, how do we know that the vacuum cleaner I'm pushing doesn't get sold three weeks from now and I get no attribution for it? I mean. I wish there were more, and we've done a few of these, I wish the deals were like more creatively set up.
Starting point is 00:16:15 So it's like, okay, what does your funnel look like? I can guarantee you this amount of traffic, let's pay for that and then let's do royalties on top of. So it de-risks you, it gives me a bit of upside, but there's also, like you said, if your website crashes on that day, I shouldn't be held. And also, I say this to our brands, we're not in the business of understanding your competitive set, your pricing, your packaging, your flavors. So we can't predict the success, but what we can, but I do feel like
Starting point is 00:16:46 there's probably a mess that it's like no guarantee or sales. Ideally, it should be like a guarantee of something within funnel. And that would be easy, right, Ryan? Because then you'd be like, well, if I don't hit it, I'll just do two extra ad reads for free. And if I do it- Exactly. Exactly. We'll hit it. Yeah. We'll deliver it, but it can't just be bottom line sales because there's just too many. I mean, I'm not saying never.
Starting point is 00:17:15 Depends on the, like you said earlier, trying to get an Instagram reel to drive sales. Good luck. I mean, you got to have a really tight funnel or like, because friction is the enemy of influencer deals. And, and what do I mean by that? From knowledge to click, from, from influence to sale has to be super clean. I think also the other thing is, like you said, awareness or whatever else, what that also does is it goes against
Starting point is 00:17:52 everything we were saying before, which is the value is also in using that ad read and putting it in paid ads, posting on LinkedIn, posting it organically, doing a marketing email and being like, hey, did you see us on this podcast? Or using it in VR. By trying to make it free, you're basically saying it's got no value anywhere else other than the influencer's channel, which is the wrong way to think about it. That whole thing doesn't really work. But I think what needs to happen is almost like this, there needs to be a very
Starting point is 00:18:26 separated approach, like your Mac, like, you know, like your macro, and what does that look like? Or whether it's macro or micro, or like strategies and buckets. And it's like, this is my royalty only people. But these are my people who do something else. And these are my people, and they else and these are my people and they've all got different goals and that's what we've been trying to work on with our clients where we're like, your product only deal is for a testimonial review for you to use. It's not going to drive sales because they've probably got less than 5,000 followers.
Starting point is 00:18:56 This person, they're going to produce content that you're going to put in your paid ads, that you're going to be proud of, you know, blah, blah, blah. I think there needs to be a college course or a re-education of the brand marketers out there, you know, a course put on by Ryan Offred and Ishvin Jolly. I love it. And it's going to be royalty based only. Exactly. Oh, talking to Ishvin Jolly, she's the co-founder and CEO of Open Sponsorships, making it accessible to everyone.
Starting point is 00:19:30 I think it's interesting serving the brand, serving the athletes. You got to serve both if you want to eat. They're both part of the equation. They're both the main course. They're both part of the equation. You know, I mean, they're both the main course. No, they're both equally important. Is it ever feel like like you had to, you know, who, who am I serving first? I'd say having been in the sponsorship game a long time. If you have the brand dollars, the right brand with the right dollars,
Starting point is 00:20:11 you can make any deal happen. Yeah. And so we needed enough base to say like, hey, Brian, become interested. But really the last eight out of 10 years, it's been servicing the brand. But when we feel like we built a mobile app, and that was that was predominantly with the focus of the athletes and the agents, because we realized that they're
Starting point is 00:20:38 on the go, they don't set a desktop all day. They want to upload content from their phone, all of that stuff. We've actually probably built more tech. The tech is 50-50, but the service is probably 75 brand, 25 athlete agent. It goes back to the fact that at the end of the day, well, one is we work with a lot of agents, so they do part of the servicing. And two is, you know we've had companies approach us for partnerships and they're like, hey, we've got this
Starting point is 00:21:12 great business, put it in front of your athletes. And we're like, look, our athletes come to us for sponsorship, for marketing dollars. They're not coming to us for like a merchandise line, or to launch a shop of either. Like maybe we'd get there, but to be honest, if we didn't give them brand dollars, they'd be like, why am I here? You know, like, you know why you go to Uber, you know why you go to Airbnb, you know what
Starting point is 00:21:35 you're so I think we've been very clean and clear that we're not trying to give you, we're not trying to do everything for you, athlete and agent, we're trying to do this and to do this, we need to have the brands. And once we have the... And you know, right at the beginning, we had very small brands. You know, you're a smaller company, you don't have any notable names. They love it now. We just did a great campaign for Live Golf in Miami. And they're like, oh, yeah, we want to work with Live and we want to work with Western Union and we want to work with Drunk Elephant. And so they love it when we bring them better brands. They respect the fact that that's our job. with John Telephant. after the athletes and the brands, right? Again, probably the same thing.
Starting point is 00:22:30 Dollars-wise, we focus on the brand. Because we have so many athletes now, we've got 80% of the NFL, we've got thousands of college athletes, we've now moved into different verticals. We just ran a campaign with a Costco vegan Parmesan cheese brand, and they wanted foodie influencers who drive Costco sales. We'll go out and get new people, but to fulfill a campaign, like what I was saying about podcasts. If one of our brands is like, why aren't you interested in podcasts? We're like, cool, we'll go out and get opportunities for you.
Starting point is 00:23:06 In terms of our marketing dollars, I'd say very brand focused. But actually, I don't know how you feel about this or what you've seen on your side of the table, but we are more focused now on retention and growing our existing client base than new clients. We've really flipped our focus because we would rather completely service you and get more of your growing influencer budget outside of sports or get your podcast budget or get your events budget than having to sign another person and starting from scratch improving ourselves. I have a book that's halfway written and you know how they, you know the old term LTV,
Starting point is 00:23:49 lifetime value? Yeah. It's, the name of the book is Lifetime Loss. In a world hyper-focused on growth, the customer you already have is the biggest secret to your success. You got to nurture it. You gotta nurture it. You got CRM, baby. I mean, customer relationship management,
Starting point is 00:24:09 nurturing what you already have is the name of the game. Because you take care of them, there's always more budget, especially if it's a good customer. There's always referrals behind door number two. And it's just, it's real damn hard to get a new customer and it's real damn hard to replace a great one. It's also like it just feels so good to produce wins for customers like yeah I think about five years ago it
Starting point is 00:24:40 felt good to sign new customers that like what you're saying that the whole thing was like growth and customer acquisition and that's what the world is all about. And now it feels so good when someone tells us something worked. Yeah. I just love the feeling of being able to go like, we actually produced something for that person. I pivoted my whole company based on that.
Starting point is 00:25:00 Like I've been doing digital advertising, you know, advertising agency life for 20 plus years. Left that world because I got tired of the advert tower. I was the creative account guy and I'm like, I don't, I'm going to do my own thing. And saw the video thing coming. And you know, we did that successfully for seven years, but the last couple of years, I I felt like no matter what we did, I didn't feel like the clients appreciated it or saw the value in it. But we got good at the podcasting and we found something where I knew we could deliver wins for both sides.
Starting point is 00:25:39 And that's exactly right. It's so rewarding and fulfilling when you deliver the wins like if you're not in it to do that, then I don't know what the hell you're in it for Yeah, it's true. It's true. And When especially I mean, yeah Helping a young athlete who's getting going who's you know got some things going they get a little money in their pocket The brand sees results from it. I mean, ding, ding, ding, ding, right? 100%. I absolutely love it. Especially like we do loads of like deals in like the health and wellness space and truly authentic. And so you're like, even if it is a small cash
Starting point is 00:26:18 thing with a bit of product, like these like supplements are like hundreds of dollars. And if they're actually helping you achieve your goals, help you get fit, or it's a product you used to use, that's the coolest thing we can do. Tell me, if I'm a listener out there, Ishvien, why is influencer, sponsor, why is this the it medium for helping grow a brand of any size? I think there's a few reasons,
Starting point is 00:26:51 given that it's having such a growth moment, I think it is a few reasons. So one is, it's the new word of mouth marketing, essentially, right? Like word of mouth marketing, like you said, referrals, used to be and still are technically the number one channel, but it's quite limited. And influencer is the new version of that.
Starting point is 00:27:13 Fine, there might be people you don't know necessarily that you follow them. So I'd say, if you think word of mouth traditional, what's it, so word of mouth, it's the new version of that. PR is still hugely important, but it is so, like, for us, when we raised our last round and had Serena Williams and David Blitzer and some of it, getting PR was so much easier
Starting point is 00:27:36 when you're aligned with a person. So we're all trying to sit there getting more PR. It's like the new version of that. In fact, you kind of don't even need the PR because it almost is its own PR. In a way, it's PR channel, like doing a podcast and sponsoring an ad read. It's like pay their tutorial. So that's second. The third is, for better or worse, we have social media.
Starting point is 00:28:00 And back in the day, the biggest thing for us is I back in the day, you needed to put a TV ad up. That TV ad was one spot and it would cost a million bucks, let's say, you're not going to put a person in that ad unless it's a LeBron James or Tom Brady or someone big. But now you can literally you don't even have to pay for production. These people are putting it out themselves. you can literally, you don't even have to pay for production. These people are putting it out themselves. And so it's like buying a mill, like the one thing I haven't done, I really want to still do is Super Bowl do take someone's budget, instead
Starting point is 00:28:35 of a Super Bowl ad on NBC, give it to us and let us do like 500 NFL player deals across all and see what the return is. So I feel like that's another one. And then the fourth thing is around like the idea about localization and personalization. Like I was at a talk last week, advertising week, and some guy would say talking about in-store retail and like how when you walk around the grocery store there's so much inventory that and they're going to start putting like digital banners in inventory and that's going to be the
Starting point is 00:29:11 place and it completely made sense and then they gave the one case study, the best case study and it was Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a little thing with Hellman's mayonnaise and when you walk past he would speak and go How are you doing your mayo for 4th of July and they were talking about the results of this? But let's be very clear that is because it's him. It was local to that market where Where was it probably in the I don't know some words Where probably is where I'm at in South Carolina Yeah Was it probably in the, I don't know, somewhere? Probably where I'm at, in South Carolina. Yeah, probably, yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:46 A lot of NASCAR lovers in North Carolina and South Carolina. Exactly. It was a local store and that is probably the cost of that versus doing a TV ad, which they might not have seen, which is not, like you said, not even connected to retail. Of course, you walk past that, he interacts with you, and you use AI to do this stuff. Why influencer? I don't think that Instagram Reel is the answer. I think it's the integration of people who influence you at points where they can make
Starting point is 00:30:19 an impact for you at values that you could never have gotten them before at. There you go. There's a little study called Z-M-O-T, zero moment of truth. That's what that is, is when in the store, walk-and-by, Google put that on. Now, you're truly a billion dollar study on consumer behavior and the moment of truth. When you hit the decision points in that, and that's what you're talking about, hey, they're in the freaking grocery store walking by. How many people are putting that in the shopping cart?
Starting point is 00:30:54 That's the zero moment of truth right there and leveraging it across. Look, attention is fleeting. There's never been more things vying for our attention. That's number one, and number two is our attention is not where it was 10 years ago. It's not on linear TV, it's barely on radio, it's on these social media channels, it's on podcasting, 18, 34 year olds listen
Starting point is 00:31:21 and watch podcasts more than they do television. That genie's not going back in the bottle. And so you have to be, and it's so funny, Ishvi, you and I think a lot alike, I use that exact word of mouth thing the other day. I was trying to describe it as like, this is the new word of mouth. It is. And because it's more authentic and it's more on that local, granular, authentic level, especially when done right.
Starting point is 00:31:50 And that's the key. That's probably the hard part of your job, I'm sure, is to take that balance of, you know, you know you got the right brand, you got the right athlete, like bringing all that magic together. 100%. Yeah, it's super fun. It is fun. Where can everybody keep up with everything you're doing, learning more
Starting point is 00:32:10 about open sponsorships and open sponsorship in yourself? Come check us out online and sign up for a free account. Play around www.opensponship.com and then if you want to have a chat, we love any brand. And there's a lot of brands who are like, yeah, but it's athlete focused. And I'm like, give us your category and we'll find a fit for you. There's literally not a vertical or a type of brand
Starting point is 00:32:37 that there isn't a fit to some sort of retired, younger, older US international athlete. And so we love making those matches happen. So so yeah come find us on LinkedIn or wherever else. It's been a lot of fun talking to Sveen, I'd like to do it again soon. Thanks Ryan, same to you. Hey guys today's sponsor is the Radcast Network. If you're out there listening, thinking about starting a podcast, I already have one growing, we're here to help you. Guaranteed growth, guaranteed monetization, and look, we got top 30 shows left and right from using our formula. We're ready to help you go. Go to theradcastnetwork.com. Hey guys, appreciate all our sponsors. We appreciate Ish Vien. You
Starting point is 00:33:16 found all our content at Ryanisright.com. Highlight clips, the full episode and links to open sponsorship. We'll see you next time. Right about now. This has been Right About Now with Ryan Ulford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show, or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.