Voice Over (00:00):

Welcome to the Taylor 10. A fast-paced, 10 minute deep dive into the minds of those shaking up the marketing world, bringing you the sharpest insights, boldest ideas and breakthrough trends driving the industry forward. So tune in, get inspired, and stay ahead.

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Mar (00:17):

Hello, I am Mar Gonzalez and welcome to Taylor 10. I'm here with Adriana Tercilla from Collectively to learn as much as I can about the fascinating world of niche influencing in only 10 minutes. She's a fantastic example of this because she really carved out the significant space in the anime community (Sailor Moon hive stand up!) while also working in the broader influencing marketing landscape as a senior manager of client strategy. Adriana, thank you for joining us. To start, could you tell us a little bit about your journey into becoming an anime influencer?

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Adriana (00:50):

Sure. Thank you so much for having me. My career started on YouTube, and I say career very broadly because I was a YouTuber when I was in high school, when I was in college, and it helped me get my first job in social media, and I think that that hands-on experience is just so, so important, but it was a little bit rocky road. I started in community engagement. I know that's something you're very familiar with. It is a tough job. It is a demanding job emotionally and just like learning all your clients and getting all the details right. It is a challenge, right? But long story short, I was doing influencing myself. I collect sailor moon toys and anime toys, and I love sharing them, filming them, learning about different filming techniques and all these other things that you don't necessarily think about when you're in an agency outside of the creative department. So I kind of took that experience and it just launched me on a long path that led me to client strategy where I get to work on different strategies from my very different clients over the years and making my clients very happy and creating these great relationships with influencers that when you're a person doing it yourself, I find that it just makes it infinitely easy to put yourself in the influencer's shoes.

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Mar (02:10):

But I do want to talk about the anime community specifically. They're really passionate. So what do you think about this niche really fosters such a strong engaged audiences compared to broader lifestyle influencing because I know that there's a complete difference when you like talking about a niche versus a broader influencing style.

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Adriana (02:26):

I think you bring up a really good point. We do love our niche communities. We love to tap into them in ways that might seem unexpected for a brand. Specific to anime, I find that the audience has been overwhelmingly friendly in comparison to maybe just your regular lifestyle audiences. I am a millennial and I know that it was tough to find people who like the same thing as me, we got made fun of, and I think that we've brought that to the internet from real life. We're creating a big sense of community and making sure people feel included across not just demographics, but different types of thought. It's really welcoming. It's something that I haven't seen. My other friends, they'll do lifestyle, they'll do DIY, and sometimes they'll end up on the bad part of TikTok. And I find that when you're into anime, you're doing your anime collecting, people just want to see something cool.

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Mar (03:26):

And because you've built kind of a notable presence in the space, especially in the Sailor Moon world of it all, what do you think are some unique opportunities or challenges that come with being an influencer in a specialized lane versus being an influencer in a more broader sense?

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Adriana (03:39):

The licensing piece, super challenging. The opportunities on the other hand is when you're working with a fitness creator, their audience is going to be into fitness, but anime and collecting toys and things to decorate your home with is something that as much as it is a niche, you'll find something that everybody loves. So if they love a strong female character, you could show them a bunch of anime toys. You can attract many different audiences. So it's a great way for brands to, if they want to work with creators that do more anime style, either they're reviewing anime or reviewing toys, it's a great opportunity to have an audience who would've never found you.

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Mar (04:21):

And knowing that you also work in influencer marketing, does it change your approach when working with brands that are looking into a specialized community like anime? How does that change your approach then as an influencer marketer yourself?

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Adriana (04:34):

I think one of the greatest parts of working at an agency is working on a team with very different interests. So if you're into anime, you're into music, you're into knitting, for example. Knitting is huge on TikTok right now, and there's BookTok. There's all these different little niche communities. So I always put, I have two hats that I put on at work. One is my client hat, making sure that my clients are happy, satisfied, and taken care of. And then my influencer hat to make sure that our relationships, when we are working with other influencers and we're asking them to do X, Y, Z as part of a strategy, I always want to make sure that that influencer feels heard, valued, and it creates a greater, not just for the agency, a greater relationship for us, but a greater relationship for the brand. Because there are many ways where you could go wrong in over-prescribing someone on their content or not really hearing them out on what works for their content. Something that I feel confident saying is that authenticity is a huge piece of organic social. We always want it to be super authentic. So I think about that every day at work. How do I make it work, not just for the influencer, but also keep my client happy. So two hats, and I love putting on my influencer hat.

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Mar (05:49):

We are starting to see some discussions around a potential shift in influencer popularity, given some of the backlash that they have received with some of these brand activations and the brand trips of it all. So we've seen that shift. Have you seen any of these changes within the anime influencer space or in the broader influencer marketing world? Is it something that is in your radar?

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Adriana (06:13):

Of course. So I think everything has to be on our radar, right? Coachella week two is happening right now. I've got to be tuned in. So we're always thinking about what makes a brand trip work great, and when it goes wrong, what are the key pieces that went wrong? And that's not just brand trips, that's all kinds of activations. So when Poppi did their vending machine activation, we saw what pieces went right and what pieces went wrong. There's always learnings to be had by researching what other people are doing, what's happening in culture. We have to put a strategic lens on what we're seeing out in the wild and always bring it back to work. And sometimes there's really great learnings and sometimes there's things that are completely out of your control. We want to learn from our own mistakes. We want to learn from what's going on outside.

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Mar (07:00):

Outside of the Poppi example, do you think that we're seeing just a change in consumer behavior or trust when it comes to influencers and how before people were enamored with them and now it feels like there's a dystopian disconnect between a consumer and an influencer and then the brand in between?

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Adriana (07:19):

I think you're right. I think there is a great shift in moving our trust from what we would call a macro influencer to a micro or a nano influencer. It's almost like you want someone with an audience to get all of those great impressions that you're looking for, but the authenticity piece always comes back. So yes, we have seen a shift in really moving towards either brands working with smaller creators or audiences resonating far better with smaller creators than with larger creators. Audiences are smart, they're getting smarter, so we have to move with them and work with them. Not to say that we don't want to work with macro influencers, we love those guys, but we have to be mindful of what is working outside of just these big influencers in the broader social world. We kind of try to always bring that back. It's an interesting challenge that I think is going to continue to get more complicated as Gen Alpha is coming online. Gen Alpha was growing up with the internet 24/7. I think those kids are going to think very differently from Gen Z that we mainly market to right now, and I'm really interested to see what that looks like.

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Mar (08:26):

I feel like we've seen a huge popularity with these lifestyle influencers that are now at a level of celebrity that maybe we never thought that they would be. Do you think that this shift in authenticity, trust consumers kind of being more iffy of the influencer world, brings something better for these niche communities that are more cultivated and more engaged into whatever their topic or area is?

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Adriana (08:50):

Selfishly, yes. Just for myself, I have seen these niche communities grow as one influencer might lead them, or one podcast of maybe three influencers. It's interesting that I've seen specifically in the anime space, the people who are doing very well are on YouTube and they are collaborating with each other as a group.

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Mar (09:13):

What are some of your hot takes of what influencers should do moving forward or brands should do moving forward when working with influencers to continue to maintain these meaningful connections and draw impact to their audiences?

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Adriana (09:26):

The best brands work with their influencers. They work on a creative treatment. They'll kind of walk through what the content will look like, what will make the brand happy.

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Mar (09:35):

Well, I want to say that this has been really an insightful conversation, so thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your perspective on navigating the influencer world as a niche influencer, but also as an influencer marketer. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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