Is your brand actually building Advocacy – or are you still buying influence?

This week, Verity’s joined by Sedge Beswick; humbly, one of the most sought-after voices in modern marketing. She’s the exited Founder of Seen Connects, Strategic Advisor to multiple brands, a Public Speaker, Mentor, and the original architect behind the ASOS social team.

From why the term ‘community’ is losing meaning, to what TikTok Shop strategies are still missing, Sedge offers a cutting breakdown of where brands get it wrong – and how to build smarter, bolder, more human-first influence strategies.

 

Expect insights marketers at every level need to hear, on…

  • How to Spot (and Support) Your First Advocates – It starts with 10 true believers. Here’s how to find them, involve them, and scale it.

  • Why Vanity Metrics Are Killing ROI: Brands still chase follower counts and forget to audit audience fit. Sedge explains the one data check every team should make before a partnership.

  • Creator Briefs Need an Overhaul: Trust and autonomy drive results. Learn what a great 2025 brief looks like, and how to adapt for different tiers of creators.

  • Performance Isn’t the Enemy of Brand: There’s a new era of collaboration on the cards, right now. Hear how smart teams are reconnecting the full marketing funnel.

  • From Run Clubs to Book Clubs: Why IRL community isn’t just a trend, it’s your moat. Sedge explains how brands like New Balance are turning participation into brand equity.

  • Inside REFY’s Influence Model: What makes their creator strategy so sticky? From co-founders to customer-led trips, Sedge unpacks the moves that matter.

It’s time to ditch short-term tactics and rethink what lasting brand love really looks like.

 

Chapters

00:00 – Bloopers, Blunders & Building a Career in Influence

05:40 – Why Influencer Marketing Fails (And How to Fix It)

10:00 – Followers Aren’t Community: What Brands Still Don’t Get

12:30 – Brand vs. Performance? Merge It.

15:15 – How ASOS Built a Creator System That Actually Worked

21:30 – The Data You’re Ignoring (TikTok Shop, Instagram & Beyond)

24:10 – Refy, Glossier & the Real Power of Customer-Led Growth

34:00 – New Balance & The Action Plan for Full-Funnel Advocacy

 

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Building Brand Advocacy S2 Ep 009:

  

Forget Followers, Find "10 People That Believe In Your Brand" To Build Real Brand Love (Like ASOS, Red Bull & REFY Do) ft. Sedge Beswick

Sedge Beswick [00:00:00]:

The obvious things are influencers. It's got to drive roi. It's not just about top funnel anymore, it's got to be full funnel. And where that influencer content lives is not just on the platform. So, yes, we've talked about owned, earned and paid for years, but actually, how is it sitting in the real world? How is it above, in, out, out of home? Is it that brands are showing up sponsoring like podcasts, like longer form content and the influencer team sitting in silo is not how the marketing structure is going to look long.

 

Paul Archer [00:00:39]:

Have you ever wondered why some brands grow exponentially, building legions of passionate fans that live and die by their logos and some, well, don't. I do all the time, and that's probably because I'm a massive brand nerd. But I believe there's a secret sauce at the core of every remarkable brand. A formula that sparks the growth of passionate communities, of superfans, building a business and a reputation that will last for years to come. My name is Paul Archer and I'm a specialist in brand advocacy and word of mouth, having consulted for hundreds of brands on a topic.

 

Verity Hurd [00:01:13]:

Hey, it's Verity here, your co host of the Building Brand Advocacy podcast.

 

Paul Archer [00:01:17]:

In this podcast, we tap into the greatest marketing minds in the world as they share the exact tactics and strategies used to build the world's greatest practise brands, dropping actionable insights every brand builder can apply.

 

Verity Hurd [00:01:29]:

We've got some incredible guests coming up, sharing insights and tips that can truly shift the marketing landscape. If you want to be the first to hear, make sure you hit that follow button. The more people following the show, the bigger and better we can make it. So if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to follow and spread the word. Thanks again for listening. It really means a lot. I hope you enjoy this next episode.

 

Paul Archer [00:01:52]:

It's time to learn and Build Brand Advocacy.

 

Verity Hurd [00:01:55]:

Hi and welcome to Building Brand Advocacy. Today. I have Sedge on the show and Sedge is one of the most interesting and one of the most powerful voices out there in the industry, particularly in influencer marketing. And I am so excited to get into this conversation. Welcome.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:02:10]:

Thanks for having me.

 

Verity Hurd [00:02:11]:

I will not do your intro justice enough because you've worked for some incredible brands and also you do some incredible stuff. So do you want to just give us the intro?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:02:21]:

Yeah. It's a bit tricky because it was easier when I ran an influencer agency and that was basically my entire personality. But since I left the influencer agency I founded, I have been consulting. I have taken on strategic Advisor roles. I've done a bit of investing in different businesses, so I am a bit of a jack of all trades. But obviously the red thread through everything is what do I and how do I support and help businesses? It's all through helping them scale through influence marketing.

 

Verity Hurd [00:02:48]:

And just tell us about sort of the influencer agency and then obviously what you did just before that.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:02:53]:

Yeah. So I started my career working at Red Bull. Back in the day it was called Key Opinion Leaders. My job was essentially to jump onto scaffolding and give artists a kind of Red Bull as they were kind of spray painting buildings at 2:00am or, you know, Rob Damiani, the lead singer of Don Broco, would be going on stage at Rock City in Nottingham and we'd have just placed a can in hand, so all the PR shots would be him with a Red Bull can and he'd almost be a bit like, why is this here? But then very much called Key Opinion Leaders. I, I went on to work in tech, so I worked at three, the phone network for two years, went on to asos where I was the first social hire when I left. We're a team of 32 people working across eight markets and did a lot of influencer work there. And then when I was 27, I set up an agency called Synconnex. So we were, we existed to help brands work with celebrity and influencers.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:03:40]:

Clients were Nike, Lululemon, LVMH Group, Panasonic, eBay and um. So yeah, that was what we did.

 

Verity Hurd [00:03:47]:

Yeah. Incredible, incredible career so far and still lots to come. I hope I'm gonna get straight stuck in there because you've said in terms of sort of like the influencer marketing shift, like you've said, that brands are still asking the wrong questions when it comes to influencers. So we can start there, shall we?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:04:05]:

I'm not gonna give any anything away that is more than a basic here, but I find it so fascinating and obviously consulting now, but when we had the agency, a lot of brands and big brands would say, we, we have worked with influencers, it doesn't really work. And then when you drill down and you audit what they've previously done with influencers, they're still going after the vanity metric, the influencer with the biggest following, or even influencers that are on a nano micro scale, whatever we want to call them. But when you look at that audience data, do they actually align to the brand that you're working for? And nine times out of 10 it's no. So you might be a British company, female based product and actually the person that you're working with or aspiring to work with has got a product. Predominantly male us, Brazil audience. So the first thing I would say to anyone who's building out and scoping out their influencer programme is make sure that the audience aligns to your brand's audience.

 

Verity Hurd [00:04:57]:

Would that be the sort of like the one question that you wish brands asking influencers?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:05:01]:

Yeah, because I think again they just say, I want to work with that person, I want to work with that person. What they then get disappointed with is the end result. But they never set out up front of what good looks like. If you want to drive sales, you should be looking at what the swipe up data, the click through data, the affiliates, if it's fashion, the like to know it data that you've previously seen because then you can start to scope out. And obviously this is where an agency is brilliant because they have a lot of this data that they would have built performance led themselves. But if you are a brand doing influence marketing, you have to interrogate the influencers data to know that they are going to drive results for you.

 

Verity Hurd [00:05:36]:

How have you seen sort of like the influence of marketing shift, like, and where do you see it going? Because obviously I think the term influence and like marketing is just so different to what we know it to have been sort of like five years ago. And it's really interesting to think about what it's going to look like in five years time. Because like you mentioned there, like is it the mega influencer, is it the creators, is it the, the macros, the nanos, or is it the employees?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:06:02]:

The honest answer is like we shouldn't know what is going to be happening in five years time. And if you even look at what we've been through in the last five years, we've been through kind of the biggest shift as a society from Trump coming in to tariffs more recently, obviously everything that's happened with AI going through a global pandemic and subsequently people are spending more time alone than they ever were before. There's this amazing, amazing study by Scott Galloway and I think it's a 70% on average across the UK and the US, people are spending time alone from the last decade. And if you then pair that up with smartphone usage, like people are on their phones, they're replacing their friends, they're replacing, socialising, going out with their mates with being and feeling like they're being connected. So what that then does for brands is we, again we use these words so loosely, influencer, but I'm going to throw in community. Like the word community gets overused, but brands themselves, like we've got X following on Pinterest, on Instagram, on TikTok, look at us. And that means nothing. And it means nothing for the influencer or the celebrity either.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:07:02]:

It is about how active people are on those channels and whether they are actually fostering and building out a community. That has to be obviously the human part of influencer marketing and making sure that it feels like a two way exchange, that there is value for other people in being there and being present. But that can also happen with AI influencers and AI creators, which is one of probably the biggest trends we're seeing at the moment is even brands are starting to like play around with having their own AI accounts, their own AI influencers. They've obviously got full creative autonomy of how and what that looks like, but it still feels very stunt based versus seeing longevity in that.

 

Verity Hurd [00:07:39]:

Yeah.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:07:40]:

And so, you know, my honest answer is where's it going? I don't know. But in terms of what the obvious things are, influencers, it's got to drive roi. It's not just about top funnel anymore, it's gotta be full funnel. And where that influencer content lives is not just on the platform. So yes, we've talked about owned, earned and paid for years, but actually how is it sitting in the real world? How is it above and out of home? Is it that brands are showing up sponsoring like podcasts, like longer form content and you know, the influencer team sitting in silo is not how the marketing structure is going to look long term.

 

Verity Hurd [00:08:13]:

How do you think the influencer team should be working with other teams in a brand?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:08:18]:

The same way that a social team would. You, you can't just be a social team distributing content from the channels. It has to be one brand, one business, one voice. So you have to be looking at the affiliate data, who is working well from an affiliate perspective, how do you start to nurture those relationships, build on those relationships because they're already driving return for your business. You've then got to also work with PR because what are those PR moments where you also want to get your biggest brand advocates, your biggest performers and make sure that they feel respected, looked after closer to that business and to that brand? You know, again it comes into paid and I think again when we went into the pandemic, so many business went performance, performance, performance and then three, four years later they're now going, shit, who are we and who is our customer? And there's almost no red thread across all of that because it was just, we need as many sales as possible and you cannot build a brand or of performance marketing. Brand and performance have to sit closely, they have to communicate, they have to talk. And regardless of the touch point, it has to look like the same business.

 

Verity Hurd [00:09:18]:

We've been having that conversation a lot and it, and I've actually seen it across my LinkedIn feed around this whole brand versus performance. And I even got invited to an event next week which is all about brand and performance and how, you know, we need to move away from that language of versus because it isn't versus anymore. And it's, it's kind of like, it's great that we're having those conversations, but also frustrating that we're still having that conversation, that they are two different teams and I suppose, like, have you found a way to kind of help them merge together a bit more? Because it is still. Is there a way that they can do it more effectively if they're still sitting in silo of each other?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:09:56]:

It all varies, I think, very much on the business and the scale of the business. And also, you know, there's a lot of heritage businesses with people that have been knocking around for 20, 30 years at one company. And a lot often there's the resistance to change and the resistance to kind of evolve. But then you might have a really small and agile business that can actually be the best example of truly integrating your marketing and how everyone kind of sits together. But for me, that very much starts. That behavioural trend starts at the top. What is the CMO doing, the CEO doing, the brand director, the marketing director, to cohesively tell one story and to make sure that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet and the same. When I had the business like we were, by the time I exited, we were about 60 people I would have to sit on.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:10:40]:

I could talk to anyone in the us, I could talk to a freelancer, I could talk. Whoever it was, they had to know why that business existed and what it did for their customer. And they all had to be able to say the same thing in one sentence. And that's no different to a brand because if internally you don't understand it and you can't kind of sing from the same hymn sheet, how are you expecting your customer to understand why they're there and why they're going to be there for the long run?

 

Verity Hurd [00:11:02]:

So obviously you've been in the space since asos. Like you said that you were the first person on their social team. What did that look like, by the way, like, how. And then you grew to 32.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:11:11]:

Yeah. ASOS was exceptional. I joined at the absolute right time. It was still a big business. I think There were about 2,000 employees when I joined, but the marketing team was pretty small and obviously the social team was just me. There's now some, like, hilarious things that, on reflection, like, we launched in France and I was running the French social channels and I got a D in my French GCSE and I was using Google Translate to be like, this is what we're saying in the uk. And then when we hired Anise, the French manager, she literally came to my desk and she was like, who the hell are you?

 

Verity Hurd [00:11:40]:

Yeah.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:11:40]:

And I was like, I know. Like, I am fully aware. I've been doing what I can to survive and to get by. And obviously you wouldn't. You wouldn't get away with that now, because if you put out any tweet in any language with grammatical, spelling errors, wrong words, whatever it might be, you get absolutely torn to pieces. But it was, you know, we're talking, God, probably about 12 years ago now, but I was at a really fun time with ASOS where it was about test and learn, experiment, see what does work, see what doesn't work. And because I'd come from three, there was a lot of data, a lot of insight into what we did. And I didn't really realise I had that backing.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:12:15]:

But when I was coming in, like, the first person I was then, like, chatting to was the data team. I was like, tell me what's working, tell me what isn't working. If I want additional headcount, I want to be able to go to the C suite and say, this is working, this is what we're doing. And from that point on, every single thing that we did, we could tell you what it was delivering for the business. And that shocked me then when I set up the business, because I was going in being like, we need to do influencer, we need to do celebrity. We're obviously quite early on, especially in the uk, with setting up an influencer agency, but the businesses I was going into, they're like, well, can you do a social strategy first? Or, you know, we've got this freelancer that's working two days a week doing a little bit of social here and there, and you're like, oh, okay, fine. So there's some kind of stepping stones that we need to go on. And that is obviously something that we did do at ASOS to be able to scale this, like, crazy team that essentially like, operated as an agency within the wider structure of asos.

 

Verity Hurd [00:13:04]:

So what did that team look like in terms of like. Again, I'm going off piste here, but I'm just intrigued in terms of, like, where did you start in terms of building that out?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:13:12]:

Yeah.

 

Verity Hurd [00:13:12]:

So the bulk.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:13:13]:

Well, to start building it out was local language. So France, Germany, kind of key business priorities. So we had local language markets covered and then obviously rolled out those platforms too. But then when it got to the fun bit, it was at one point, I was photographer, videographer, copywriter, customer care support, whatever was kind of thrown my way. You just rolled your sleeves up and you got stuck in and you did it. And I think that was also a time in social that whilst, you know, that gets pulled to pieces on LinkedIn. Now, if you advertise for a social role and it's got a little bit of everything, it's like, this is an eight person job. But actually what it taught me was the grit and the graft that goes into, like, operating and running global businesses, social accounts.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:13:56]:

And then it also gave me the opportunity to learn what bits I was good at and how I could then develop my career and my skills kind of further to that. So terrible. Photographer, photographer joins, videographer joins, editor joins, and then the bulk of the team. So I think it was probably about 22, 23 people were what we would now call influencers, but they were insiders, so they were essentially stylists. Going on to ASOS is still a really overwhelming experience. They get however many 800 items per day that are added across the entire site. You want a pair of black jeans, you go in how many items per sku, you've got to scroll through the site. So the idea behind what we launched then was how do you simplify that shopping journey for our customer? Through people that are credible.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:14:42]:

So they were all recruited based on the trends in shopping behaviours that we were seeing for men, for women, different age demographics. France, Germany, Spain, Australia, the us. And we scaled that team based on, again, those shopping behaviours. What was missing, what we needed more of, so we would never get away with this. Now, I think they paid £250amonth and then they had a £500 clothing allowance and they created two pieces of content a day for ASOs. The value exchange that they got was, we will teach you to be shit hot at social. And so if you now look at, you know, Leonie Han joined that programme with 2000 followers. She got paired with a stylist, so she really understood who she was.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:15:24]:

Why her style was chosen in the first place, but how to really push herself out of a comfort zone from a style perspective. She got paired with an editor. Editor. She got paired with me to help her understand the platforms, the algorithms, the nuances. Then we had the data team that would do audits and reviews on a monthly basis. And she's now got 9 million followers, is on the front row of every fashion week, partners with Givenchy to Loewe. She's at Cannes right now. And she has absolutely dominated her job as a content creator, influencer, whatever we want to call it.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:15:53]:

You've got. Freddie Harrell has now got her own business that is fully backed by the l' Oreal Group. So we've got these amazing personalities and in so many interviews, people have been like, well, ASOS made this happen for me because it wasn't, here's some money, here's some clothes, create some content. For us, it was very much like helping them in a career that they wanted to get to when that content just didn't exist anywhere else to help them to sell scale.

 

Verity Hurd [00:16:16]:

Yeah, you don't see that much anymore, do you?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:16:18]:

No, it's very much like, here's a check, go and create some stuff. Thank you very much.

 

Verity Hurd [00:16:22]:

I want to go back to like the social commerce piece and how people buy and you slightly touched on it, but in terms of like, you know, from the big celeb deals to TikTok shop, like, what do you think is really influencing those purchase decisions now?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:16:37]:

The way that Gen Z, Gen Alpha, obviously the generation's still being born, so we don't know heaps about them, but how easy can you make it for them to check out? So again, rolling it back to kind of my OG ASOS days, we were adding the product SKUs. There were no click links, there were no Instagram shop, there were no overlays. It was really hard, but we had to make sure that we were showing the value that it was bringing to the business. And today, like, even recently, I did a massive project with a business and they had a social team of four or five people, but none of them in their reporting were looking at what the Instagram shop was doing, what TikTok shop was doing. It was like, oh, it's just there. You're like, no, no, no, no, no. If you're telling me you're knackered, that you're overworked, that you're burnt out, that you need more headcount, you have got access to all of that data, but also you should be Evolving your strategy every single month based on what that customer wants, what that customer is purchasing, looking at the average basket value, looking at how many people click through, looking at the product skus that are working and that's how you tailor and adapt the strategy. So I think this in its simplest form, the barriers to exit are so easy and that's obviously where the performance piece comes in because you can see an ad, you can see something I want it, I can exit purchase immediately.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:17:50]:

Now, TikTok shop has a bad rep for that as well because it's very much. You don't really know who you're purchasing from. It can feel a bit more lo fi, a bit of a budget. I'm trying to choose my words wisely because I genuinely believe as many businesses it is right for should be on TikTok shop. Even if that is the first experience that people get with your brand, how do you then build off that and how do you then turn them into advocates of your business? Because they've already touched felt experience, your product.

 

Verity Hurd [00:18:17]:

I suppose you write with TikTok shop because I mean, I get pulled into so many things and then I'm. I get kind of get it to my basket and I'm like, who are you? Where, where is this actually coming from? And yeah, I'm seeing like a lot of dupes now.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:18:30]:

That's not a TikTok Shop issue though, that.

 

Verity Hurd [00:18:32]:

No, it's not that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:18:34]:

A global issue. Whether you are a luxury retailer, whether you're a reseller platform authenticity is a huge problem.

 

Verity Hurd [00:18:42]:

I want to just. You've obviously mentioned ASOs and like, I mean, what they did was pretty incredible in terms of how they've kind of given a lending hand to these creators, influencers. Like, is there any brands now that are standing out to you or brands that are doing it differently?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:18:58]:

I think if you take what we spoke about before around like community and Trust, the immediate brand that stands out to me is Refy. What I will caveat is unlike my entire face bar, my mascara is Refy. And their whole message is like simplifying beauty. They do that and it doesn't feel overwhelming, it doesn't feel compliment complicated. You're not looking at a gazillion shades and being told you need all of this. Bye, bye, bye, bye bye. That is not happening. What I will caveat is there's nothing that they are doing on their social that isn't really past smashing the basics.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:19:33]:

So they are utilising the platforms well, they are using all of the features Visually, the aesthetic, that is one cohesive brand story and narrative. But the thing I find really interesting is yes, they've got Jess Hunt, who is the founder, who is the face. If you take that apart and go into creator led businesses, what she's done really well is create a differentiation between her, she is Jess and she is an influencer and she is CEO of Refy. But then there is still Refy. So if in 2 years, 3 years, 4 years time she wanted to sell Refy, she could. There are other businesses out there where the personal brand and the face of the celebrity influencer profile is far too entwined that actually there's going to be no exit for those businesses. So stage one, I think she's done a really phenomenal job that a lot of people could look to of being a influencer who has launched a business, but the business stands within its own. Right.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:20:30]:

The second is they do social. They do social really well. But from a creator influence perspective, they obviously don't have the biggest budgets. They don't, you know, they're not backed by Estee Lauder, they're not backed by l' Oreal. And so subsequently they, you, they're smarter with their cash. Like an agile business, as I kind of talked through earlier. So they've taken this lens and let's be honest, like glossy. I've done this before.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:20:51]:

Like your customer is your biggest advocate, but they do their workshops. This is our product, we want you to understand it. You get to meet Jess. So if you're a die hard advocate of Refy, getting to meet Jess, it's really exciting. I want to know more about her. I want to know about her story, I want to know about her products, I want to know how she looks as great as she does as can at Cannes. And then on the flip side, you've got, you know, trips to, I think it was Mykonos or Marbella, wherever it was. So it's not people with a million followers.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:21:18]:

Yes, they all kind of had a good eye for content creation and were carefully selected, but they were already advocates of that brand and bringing them closer to a trip that probably cost them 30 grand for a couple of days to go away. You can spend 30 grand very easily on one Instagram post and one Instagram post only.

 

Verity Hurd [00:21:36]:

How do you. I saw something yesterday actually and it touches on what you said there about like how Jess has kind of built out her own like Jess Hunt. And then there's Refine, because this post said like a lot of creator led brands now without them as soon as they stop talking, their brand essentially dies. And so this was sort of like they were doing a talk around these ecosystems and how to kind of build that around your brand. So not just, I mean the founder led, the creator led piece is still really important and I think obviously we've seen this big surge of these creator led brands. How do you think she's done that? Like what are the standout things to you that has made her, has made refy being able to stand alone without her?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:22:15]:

She's had a co founder.

 

Verity Hurd [00:22:17]:

Yeah.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:22:17]:

So Jenna comes with a different wealth of experience, a different wealth of knowledge. The dominance is not on Jess and Jess only completely different. And I'm not putting myself in the same category as Jess and I never ever would. But I had a problem when I was looking to sell my business because I focus so much around growth and new business that when I wasn't in the business and I wasn't running the business well, where were those leads coming from? And a lot of when the due diligence was done on my business it was like it's too dominant on sedge. So if sedge does disappear or sedge goes or we exit her and you know, usually it's an earn out of two years, what does that look like for the business? And we've seen this is like very much a very hot topic on TikTok in the Last week, last 24 hours around creators and it works too flow like it is people who have businesses and make the founder, the CEO a personal brand. Ben Gallagher looks collective or you've got the other way which is a influencer then understands their audience, understands that what they would like and what they need and launches a brand Grace Beverly. And so I think the two, the two are very different but I think the best thing that they can do is as they start to scale is mature that business where yes they are a part of it and yes they are going to promote it and yes they're going to talk about it. But Grace Beverly is not, you know, in the productivity method in Shreddy in Tala all day, every day.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:23:43]:

Those businesses when they get to a certain scale retrograde as well. They have CEOs, they have operation directors, they have growth directors and obviously all of that comes with scale and budget and being able to afford those bums on seats. But if you are just a one man band who is modelling the product, talking about the product, how you can then scale to exit becomes a very grey area. And to your point, if you then took that person away the trust of that entire business disappears overnight.

 

Verity Hurd [00:24:12]:

And then I want to jump back to sort of the creator piece. I mean, obviously, the way you kind of like brief the creators within asos, again, very different. But what do you think is a good creative brief? Now, what does that look like in 2025 or what should it look like?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:24:25]:

My disclaimer would be, I probably haven't written a creator brief for like a decade. But the thing that I would always emphasise and always stress is you are choosing these influencers to work on their platforms because they know their audience and they know what works. So it is so important to make sure that whilst you have a hero campaign and that you've got your overarching brand messages, you have got to give the trust to the influencer to produce and to create the content that is going to work best for their audience, that they're going to see the best results. They know what will work for them. Again, caveat is that's the middle tier. That is the people. That is the people at the group of people who have become influencers, content creators, because they know how to produce and how to create content. You then have the micro, the nano level influencers who need support.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:25:14]:

They're not the best content creators. They are at the start of their journey for building. And I would always recommend, whether it's like a content farm or whether it's sending a photographer or videographer to make sure that you get the assets that are really gonna work for both parties. And in the same respect, when you look at the celebrity level, they are footballers, comedians, artists, whatever it might be, they are not content creators, but you have to make sure that it's right for them. Like, I never wanna be the person that kind of throws shade at other people's work, but I think an example of why and where that is needed is NatWest with Marcus Rashford. It wasn't right for him, it wasn't right to his values. I would love to work with NatWest and unpick, like, why were you doing this campaign? Who are the types of people that can really bring to life that narrative and how do you produce and create that content? That doesn't feel like a pay to play ad for the end consumer because they've switched off. You look at Raheem Sterling, you look at Paris Hilton, they now have their own production agencies.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:26:10]:

So if you want to book Paris Hilton for a job, you also book and pay for her creative team. She's going to turn up, she's going to trust in the creative she's going to trust and feel comfortable on set. So the output for everyone is going to be significantly better.

 

Verity Hurd [00:26:21]:

Okay, I want to touch on sort of the people element. And, you know, we've talked about TikTok and Instagram being sort of like these search engines and these discovery platforms, but we also know that there's platforms like WhatsApp. You know, even Discord has had, you know, had its moment. And let's not forget email.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:26:42]:

Email. Everyone has their own CRM strategy now. And again, if you look at all influencers, they are scaling up, owning that data and being able to communicate and see what works, whether that's through affiliates, whether that's open rates. So you've got Frankie Bridge, who's launched Faves, you've got Victoria, the founder of Pew. There's a reason why people are taking their audiences away from platforms and moving on to email, where they have more control and more ownership of who is there and what those behaviours are.

 

Verity Hurd [00:27:12]:

Yeah, building sort of their own communities, Right?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:27:14]:

Exactly.

 

Verity Hurd [00:27:15]:

Yeah, exactly. And that's obviously because that's where they actually hold, like, actual conversations. Like, I know, like a few. They're not, you know, mega influencers or anything, but they're sort of like micro influencers having their own broadcast channels just so they can, you know, have a conversation and just kind of let them in behind the scenes. But that's still on Instagram. And then they're going, oh, maybe a substack. I'll do a substack now because I need to take it away from these other platforms. So it's interesting to see how they're shifting their sort of audience across different avenues.

 

Verity Hurd [00:27:47]:

But what I wanted to ask was, do you. Is there a recent example that you've seen of a brand using sort of like this full funnel journey?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:27:54]:

The brand that stands out for me is probably New Balance. So New Balance for me have basically, if you take what they've done with Running Club, as an example. So again, they've looked at the problem and then they've built the solution around it. So the problem was they want to engage younger audiences. I think it's like 29% of Gen Z want to exercise with other people, more so than millennials. So tapping into. They want to engage younger audiences, they want to show up for Gen Z, but in order to do that, they need to basically get people together, exercise together, and that's what their product, at its core, does and offers. So they've got the New Balance running clubs, they've taken kind of this real world Experience like online world made it into an in real life experience where people can run together.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:28:40]:

They're building relationships, friendships through a brand that they love, that they use, that they are part of. So again, taking that customer trust, turning that into genuine advocacy of I met this person, they made this happen for me, they're making them better runners and they are then being able to scale that across multiple markets and then they're scaling that out in terms of like different partnerships, they're scaling it out in terms of doing talks because they're spending so much time on the floor literally with their customer and then they've got photographers, videographers to produce all of that content that isn't forced faking. We're going for a run because we want you to buy this silhouette for a running sneaker. What they're doing is these are actually people today out running in London, in Singapore, in wherever it might be. And those assets then being distributed across email, across the WhatsApp groups that have been created to get all those people together to those key locations out of home. So when you think full funnel, you think of full touch points. Yes, it starts with a real customer problem and a solution for that customer, but it is then being distributed and used across so many different touch points as well.

 

Verity Hurd [00:29:44]:

Obviously New Balance are doing that quite sort of specifically from a product point of view as well. But also we're seeing a lot of brands bring in these communities doing something outside of their own product group, if that makes sense. And I think it touches on what you've mentioned right at the start that we are feeling alone and we're very much in like this doom scrolling era. And so the sort of like the experience of being together in real life is obviously having this kind of not moment because we sort of saw it last year as well, like these third spaces. Where do you think that's going?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:30:19]:

I think right now more brands are looking at what their experiential arm and activations look like, how they actually meet their customers. And that could be down to a focus group. We're going to get you in a room, we're going to understand you, what you need, what you want, how that's going to show up. A lot of agencies should be starting with that when they receive the briefs and the problems from brands that they're working with. And once you're then with them, understanding them, spending time with them, fostering building those relationships, it's again, how do you evolve, how do you develop what that strategy is? But I think right now in real World, whether that is through community, club running clubs or whether that is because you get to do an experience experience to meet your kind of idol, whatever it might be. You know, was it Spotify who had the Charlie XCX experience? And they've had all of these like big amazing moments where you can, they were timely, they were relevant and you get all of the people together. It's very easy when you're Spotify because there is big budgets, you're a cool brand. But again, if you're a smaller brand, like how do you actually.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:31:15]:

If you've got someone who is a huge advocate across constantly liking commenting, I love this. If you thought about doing this in a different colour way, I'd love to meet you. I've had this, I'd like to tell you more about it. Get them in, go and meet the founder for a 20 minute coffee or go and get them in a shoot that they might have a photographer and you give them this experience of a lifetime that they just won't get anywhere anywhere else. And that's how you can really bring them in closer to the business.

 

Verity Hurd [00:31:40]:

And is that how you think brands will scale their community through creators by simply just bringing them in 100%? Why do you think? Is it because you think it's a long term strategy piece that. Because that's not like, you know, kind of getting small groups of people together having those conversations. It's not necessarily for social, it's not necessarily content that you're putting out there. It's literally just a two way dialogue and they're not seeing it. It takes time to build that kind.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:32:07]:

Of like community, but it all takes time, right? You don't wake up and launch an Instagram account as a business and have a million followers tomorrow, you've got to understand your audience, you've got to understand what they want from you. You've got to understand what works. Any business that writes a strategy and sticks it in a drawer and 12 months later, we need to look at the strategy again, they are not going to be the best at understanding and spending time with a customer and creating a product and a service that is going to be right for their customer because that constantly evolves, that constantly changes. The world throws curveballs at you. Whether that is everything that's going on with AI or whether that's tariffs, whether that is cost of living for a customer like your end customer. We've lived in a perma crisis now essentially for five years. Like you said, it feels like doom and gloomy. So understanding how as A brand, you can show up and you can support them.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:32:50]:

And it's the same way if you were to say to me, you know the brands that every week, every month do an Instagram competition, you know, share this like this, they are not building an audience, they are building people that are following you because they want a freebie. So when you're then trying to sell them something or whether you're trying to then bring them into the community, they do not give a who you are, they don't know why they're following you. They were just hoping for something free yesterday or tomorrow. And so again, that nurturing, that developing into it all takes time. Doing it the right way takes time. Working with influencers takes time. You've got to understand them. There'll be influencers you work with.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:33:25]:

You know, I've paid influencers 15 grand a post and received focal for it because we were working with I don't know what it was probably 2,000 influencers a year. We had all of that data. We knew who would work, we knew the categories where they would absolutely drive follower growth, where they would drive click through, where they would convert. And that's how we could adapt and evolve everything that we were doing for our clients to make sure that whatever their result was, we were able to use the data to deliver it. But you don't get that data overnight.

 

Verity Hurd [00:33:53]:

How do you distinguish between someone that is just after a freebie to like you said to, to establish those advocates that you want to bring into the.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:34:00]:

Community piece are the people that are showing up when it's outside of a competition or something that is gamified mechanic and they want to tell you about their experience or they want to come to the book clubs or your run clubs because they care more about your brand. And again, you've got to understand like who it is that you're speaking to. Like as a Gen Z, as a gen Alpha again all their behavioural traits are being learned because they're still being born. But right now, Gen Z, they want to go out and they want to have these in real life experiences. I can't do those as a millennial because I've got two kids. I've got to make sure that I've got child care and got to do nursery drop off and nursery pickup. So all of a sudden my time constraints, I can't just do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. So it's also understanding as your audience matures, as their life cycle changes, what do they then want from you? What do they then need from you as a business rather than just assuming that that is always going to be the same every five, 10 years.

 

Verity Hurd [00:34:56]:

Said you've mentioned some big brands that you've worked with. I want to kind of go into the campaign side of it. Is there one campaign that still gives you the chills?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:35:05]:

Yeah. I worked with, with ebay for a very long time and the campaign that we did with them, which was absolutely my favourite, was sneakers like I am a sneakerhead. So it naturally was like the most exciting brief that could fall across my desk. And what we did was it's actually touched on this as well, but it was around authenticity. You buy sneakers from ebay, they will guarantee that they are authenticated. But it wasn't about saying to everyone, go to ebay. Ebay's got dunks, they've got New Balance, they've got whatever it is, they've got them and they're legit. It was about really making sure that the community, the sneaker community felt like ebay was the best place to buy and to sell sneakers.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:35:47]:

And in order to do that, we had to really understand how the sneaker community were feeling, what they were missing from other resellers, but also other brands like directly. And it is a very close knit community. It is a community that are more than happy to kind of spill their guts and tell you everything. Which is also fun because it gives you so much insight and so much data to then build on. So one of the fun things that we did was as simple as we were getting the limited run sneakers that were being flipped for, you know, 50, 60, up to 100 grand. And we were making sure that sneakerheads could get them at retail price. So we were having grown adults in their 40s in tears being like, now I've wanted this pair of sneakers.

 

Verity Hurd [00:36:26]:

It's a side hustle for quite a lot of people. I've been shocked. It's a shocked.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:36:30]:

It's a full time gig for a lot of people.

 

Verity Hurd [00:36:31]:

Yeah.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:36:32]:

But then we also wanted to show up in their world and where it was relevant to them. So, you know, you think ebay, you think big corporate, they've got parts and accessories, they've got luxury, they've got so many categories that they cover. So actually what they're posting for sneakerhead isn't going to be relevant for someone who's got a small business on ebay. So it was very much about them and their world and where it was. Right. And you know, in London we turned up at Morley's, we Went to Manchester, we went to Sneaker Con and again, we had like so many people that were genuinely in tears about the experience, about, you know, we had a mum who'd been out of the community because she'd had kids and she got brought back in through this ebay event and she was like, I lost my identity and ebay have brought this back to me. That's not just about go and buy a pair of shoes and like, you know, maybe you can get it a bit cheaper here than you can on StockX. It was really the community, the customer was absolutely the most important person and everything else was built around that.

 

Verity Hurd [00:37:23]:

And what do you think is one sort of like outdated belief that you see marketers still cling to when it comes to influencer community, that it'll be.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:37:31]:

Built in a day. I know we've talked about that, so I was trying to think of something different to say, but I do, I do just think everyone thinks I've got an Instagram account and my business, my brand, me as an individual is the most important person possible. So you all need to follow. It's not how it works. It is a two way relationship. It is hard graft. There is a lot of nurturing, there is a lot of insight, data, understanding. If you are one of those brands that pulls a report together and send it to the CMO because you got told and it was in your objective, you're not going anywhere.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:37:59]:

You have to constantly evolve and interrogate what is working, what isn't working, which type of influencer is working, what categories are working for you and that's how.

 

Verity Hurd [00:38:07]:

You scale and how do you build brand advocacy, the customer.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:38:11]:

I've probably hammered on about that for the last hour, but I think that's the bit that often gets so missed. And actually that was the bit that got drummed into me by Nick Robertson, the founder of asos. You have nothing if you don't have customers. So you have to understand what your customer wants, how you show up for your customer. Like, yes, your product has to work, has to be the right price point, it has to have the right customer service. Smash all of that stuff. When it then comes to build in the advocacy like I could talk about Dyson Nike all day long because I am a die hard advocate of those brands. Cleaning not right for me.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:38:42]:

It's great for Mrs. Hinch. She can tell you every cleaning product, what works for her. So it's understanding the who, the what and how you take that brand love and how you just amplify that through being there and showing up for them constantly.

 

Verity Hurd [00:38:53]:

And on that you just mentioned, like, brand love, like, what language are you using now to talk about the people who shape brand love?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:39:00]:

I just think it's too broad because I, you know, can you have someone who has the same level of brand love for a BUPA as a Nike or as a, a cleaning product, clearly cleaner as you do your hair care? So it's again, it's like based on the category that you are in, yes, it could be someone of influence, but those words constantly evolve. They constantly change. But for me, it's like, like you build brand love after, after getting and understanding your customer through and through.

 

Verity Hurd [00:39:29]:

Sedge, that was brilliant. Thank you so much. If anyone wanted to get in contact with you, where will they find you?

 

Sedge Beswick [00:39:34]:

I'm the easiest person to find because there's not too many Sedges out there. So I am Sedge Beswick across every platform.

 

Verity Hurd [00:39:39]:

Awesome. Thank you.

 

Sedge Beswick [00:39:40]:

Thank you for having me.

 

Paul Archer [00:39:43]:

That was another episode of Building Brand Advocacy, the world's top brand building podcast. To find out more about Building Brand Advocacy and how this podcast is part of a bigger plan for our brand building cookbook, then make sure to search for Building Brand Advocacy in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are fine. And make sure that you click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks to Duel for sponsoring. To find out more, go to www.dual.tech that's D U E L DOT T E C H. And on behalf of the team here at Building Brand Advocacy, thanks for listening.