From Mommy Blogs to Multi-Billion Industry: The Evolution of Influencer Marketing with Cooper Munroe

All right, well, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is your host, Gray MacKenzie from Zen Pilot. And this week I've got the pleasure of bringing on Cooper Monroe, who is the CEO of the Motherhood, which is a really cool firm here not far from me in the Pittsburgh area. Cooper, welcome to the podcast.

Great, thanks for having me. So happy to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to dig in. Let's start with kind of what is the motherhood? Who do you serve? How do you help them?

The Motherhood's an influencer marketing agency. We were founded in 2006, so way before influencer marketing was even a term, even social media was a term. We help brands, organizations, other agencies deliver influencer marketing campaigns to their clients and on behalf of the brands.

What does the typical client engagement look? I'm sure there's all kinds of varieties right now, but folks are coming to you. How are they expressing their pain and then what is the client engagement or client journey normally look like?

Influencer marketing has become increasingly a piece of the marketing pie. So while it used to be sort of a one off tactic that people were trying, it's now more of an integrated piece to make other parts of the marketing efforts stronger. Because using in a content creator to bring messaging and a product or service to life is an effective way to, to support the other pieces of the marketing efforts. So a client will come to us to enhance a campaign to help bring to life a product or a launch and we deliver through, through either a period of time campaign so over set amount of weeks or months, or it's a long term ambassadorship where we are bringing on influencer partners to be a part of a relationship building effort that's over the long term?

Yep, that makes sense. And how like internally is there a team on the supply side like recruiting and finding influencers and you know, I think most of the work with a ton of EE Comm and D2C agencies. And so Influencer is obviously a huge part of what that looks like. You know, they're all running that in their ad campaigns and wherever else. And what I hear a lot is like the micro influencers are where they're getting kind of the best bang for the buck in terms of recruiting. But do you have a side of the business that's handling the supply side and trying to find and, and then doing the matching and then a side that's actually doing delivery work with clients, making the matches and giving the content back to clients or how is that structured internally to.

That's exactly right. I mean We've been doing this a long time. So there's, we have a core group of influencers that we, we know and have worked with for a long time. However, the sweet spot is making sure that the influencer and what they're editorial focuses or what their interest area is aligns with what the campaign is. So there's a tremendous amount of research and vetting that goes into it. And you're right, micro influencers are the sweet spot because there's so much trust that's been built up. The engagement's super high. The, you know, we see time and again that the, the clicks or the redemption coupon redemptions are delivered through the micro influencers on a team because the, the engagement in the trust level is, is really through the roof there. So we have, you know, team members who are focused on identifying just the right influencers for it for a campaign. Building up the, you know, we use a combination of our own database plus you know, we subscribe to several databases that, that help us in identification. But that's not something that can be automated. It's very, very hands on. We spend a ton of time doing the research, the vetting and making sure that we've got the right people that are going to be creating this content and delivering on a campaign.

Yeah.

Then we've got a, then we've got the client side, the client services side. So that are, that are working on the campaign, making sure that we've got the messaging right. Making sure that, you know, the content's being published on a certain cadence and delivering against what the overarching goals of the campaign are.

Right. That's awesome. And a good chunk of your work is actually with other agencies, right?

Yeah. About 50% of our work is we're subcontracted or white labeled through other agencies.

Yeah, that makes sense. Cool. Well, let's actually while we're, while we're there and then I want to dig into some of the background. But the motherhood.com is the domain. So that tells everybody that this business was not just built last year because you actually have a good domain which was probably easier to get in 2006 than, than in 2023. But if folks want to connect with you and go to the contact page on the site, is there anywhere else that you'd point people to to reach out if there's agency owners listening or looking for an influencer marketing partner?

Yeah, our, the contact page or cooperhood.com would be great.

Perfect. That's easy. So tell us a little bit about, you know, Influencer marketing as a term wasn't what anyone was talking about in 2006. How did the business start? And what's the. What have been the big points of evolution or revolution along the way?

Such a great question. I love talking about this. You know, I came out of Agency Life many moons ago and worked in agencies in Washington D.C. and then in New York for a number of years before moving back to Pittsburgh. And when we moved, my husband and I moved back here, we had little kids and I started a blog and I was writing for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and thinking about Agency Life and how I, you know, it wasn't necessarily what I wanted to go back to. And these things called blogs had popped up and they were really exciting and innovative. And this is about 2004, and there weren't very many women with children blogging at the time. But those who were, it was, I mean, nothing short of revolutionary because, you know, at the time, if for young parents, there were books and magazines and to do, you know, how to lists, you know, 10 steps to potty training, but that was it. So what was emerging through these, through these blogs were real life, real tips, real stories. And, you know, we take it for granted now, obviously, because it's the air we breathe. But. But at the time, it was very brand new and never really been seen before. So seeing this community emerging and the support and the solutions that were offered was just, you know, incredible. And then when Hurricane Katrina hit, wrote a blog post on the blog that asked readers to donate in kind. Donations. There were people stuck on the rooftops for a week. There were, you know, relief efforts had, admittedly, the institutions admitted that they had failed, but the blogs. Our blog post went viral and tens of thousands of donations later, we were, you know, getting relief to the Gulf Coast. So it was an epiphany. It was a crystallizing moment. Because while that type of thing, that kind of viral thing happens on a regular basis now, then it had not. And it was very clear that these tools. A blog post, which we didn't even have a dedicated URL, it was a Typad blog and a comment section was able to generate tens of thousands of donations in an instant. It was clear that there was so much power in individuals banding together to do something. So the motherhood was born out of that effort. And the motherhood is a play on the word neighborhood, because in that effort, we were being good neighbors to each other. We were supporting each other. And it felt like everything had changed in that moment. There was no Twitter. There was no Facebook. There's no way to amplify this. I mean it was just really simple. And from that the motherhood was born. At first it was a, you know, kind of a community to do just what we had done, you know, help each other out, you know, you know, with big things like a natural. How are we going to do a relief effort to, you know, I've got chicken breasts in my refrigerator. What am I going to do with them tonight? And everything in between. It was pretty much female driven at the time because social media is a matriarchy or at least it was a founded on a matriarchy. Women with children really figured out social media, figured out how to use these platforms for support and for community and also for sponsorships. So you know, if we're looking 15 years ago, if you want to see how all this all started it, it was you know, kind of, and people call it say the mommy blogs, which is kind of condescending. But it was women with children who are creating this content, figured out how to do it.

Yeah.

So you know, we, we built this platform and then how do you keep the lights on? Server costs are, are, you know, significant. So we were going to do ad based and then, you know, trying to figure it out, trying all these different things. And in 2007, 2008, Ketchum which was an, was is a big agency and, and used to have offices in Pittsburgh. We talked to, you know, I talked to, to somebody there who said well, the Kimberly Clark team in Chicago really is looking for some support around Huggies diapers 30th anniversary. And, and I suggested why don't we get bloggers to help with this? And that had not been done before. And so we had bloggers go to local events and, and cover them live with these big like five pound WI fi cards. And you know, it was pretty hilarious. But the thing that was so cool about it is that there were real people and the, with their real kids singing Happy Birthday to Hunter buggies and creating mp3 recordings and creating content and celebrating this anniversary. And a business model was born in that moment because it was clear that having content created by real people was very effective. And the, the, the, the blogs had created real audiences and, and, and very trusting communities. And so you know, very quickly as agencies do, the, the Kimberly Clark team told the ConAgra team who told the Colgate team who told the Kellogg team and, and our, we really did go from 0 to 100 very quickly and that's, that's how we built the business yeah, and that was 50, 15 years ago.

What does 100 look like? So is that like, hey, I'm hiring people and we're, we're staffing this up or. What was that?

Yeah, it was, it, it was like this. I mean, it was, I mean, these are big global brands that, that were all very intrigued and excited about this, about. There was no term for it. We didn't know what to call it. I, you know, it was, we tried social media marketing for a while and then we, you know, we tried all these different names and eventually in the, you know, probably 2012, 2013, influencer marketing became a term. But yes, we, we, we ended up, you know, I was, I was actually doing it from this room and we, we got an office and, and staffed up and it was really exciting.

That's awesome. What. So kind of from that 0 to 100, then how did the business evolve over the last decade, growing from there into. Has it been kind of a continuous. Hey, we keep growing, we keep adding headcount. Have there been major changes to the business model and kind of what suits what you want out of the business along the way?

It didn't exist. So there was, it was kind of trying to, in, it was inventing in, you know, in real time, trying to figure it out. So in the early days it was, you know, putting the processes together and the protocols and how do you do this thing and, you know, trying to figure it out what are, what are the best ways to approach this best? What are the best practices for this? Because it didn't exist. There was literally no manual, so just the guardrails of how we're going to do that, that took a few years and then figuring out how, what worked best. So in terms of the best type of content, then, you know, and then all these new platforms show up. So, you know, first it started with the blogs, and then, you know, we go to Facebook and Twitter and Twitter parties were huge for a while. And then Instagram came along and that was huge. And now TikTok, Pinterest along the way. So, I mean, you know, every time there's a new platform, trying to figure it out, how are we going to use that? There were many times where we had influencers who were on every platform and that just didn't make sense. So, you know, becoming more specific or more specialized became a best practice. Authenticity has reigned from the beginning. You, you, you know, the, you gotta be real, you've gotta have an actual relationship or a, an affinity with the product or the service or the cause and you know, consumers are smart. They can tell if it's just purely sponsored. So we like to say that people show up for content that adds value to their lives. And you can define value in any number of different ways. But that's the key piece of it. It has to add value to the people who are reading it, listening to it, watching it, caring about it.

Right. Makes sense. Are there any segments or audiences that have surprised you in terms of who's having success or business models that you think should be doing with more with influencer marketing? So you mentioned a bunch of CPG examples. It's all over E Comm, but we don't see it nearly as much in the agency space or, you know, a chunk of other business types. Are there like untapped opportunities or business models that you think should be using influencer marketing more heavily?

The highly regulated areas, pharma finance are dipping their toe in more and more. There's a ton of opportunity there. And you know, we've put together over the years a process for highly regulated companies for compliance. That's really key here because we are talking about human beings. But there's huge opportunity in pharma healthcare finance also. We see real opportunity in B2B. It brings a product or service to life if you have it in the hands of the end user, but also to bring things to life from a B2B level. So I think that that's just starting as well. But there's a lot of potential.

Yeah, that makes sense. I ask everyone this question. I'm going to lead up to this question, but I always ask folks like, hey, what's the number one tip that you have for other agency operators? But today, if I could ask a couple questions before that, what's the team size at the motherhood?

Right now there are seven of us and then we have a, you know, tons of subcontractors and we engage about a thousand influencers a year.

Yep. Right. And then so sitting in the CEO seat, if we split up the business into these three areas of growth, you know, kind of our sales and marketing delivery, which is all the client services and then operations would be the third bucket. And it's kind of the juncture of the business world. It's the, you know, hey, we've got a little bit of everything. We got hr, we got people in culture, we got finance, we got legal and compliance, we've got all these different areas. I would imagine you're sitting in some of the growth seat though. Not the whole growth seat, but probably some deals Maybe still go through you some marketing stuff like this you're involved with, I would guess, but I don't know. So I'll let you fill in the blanks on like how much you do on the operation side and maybe a little bit on the delivery side or mostly out of that right now. What is like a week in the life for Cooper, if I was watching kind of where you allocate your time, what does it look like kind of among those three buckets, or is it all higher level than that?

I would say growth in sales and marketing primarily. Yeah, that's, you know, in, in any evolution of a, of a, of a leader or a founder, we, you know, I was everything at the beginning.

Right.

And worked really hard to get to just one or two buckets. And it's, it's hard. It's hard to do. Yeah.

Okay, so that's, that's helpful if that's where you're spending most time. And I asked that to give the context to folks. So now I'll throw it to you. Do you have a clear number one tip? What is that tip for other agency operators?

We spend a lot of time looking at how people, you know, best practices, how do people do this? We love the book the Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. Do you know that book?

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. So those, those questions that, that leaders need to ask themselves and, and their leadership team is, you know, why do we exist, how will we succeed? And, and revisiting that on a, on a regular basis, making sure that we are understanding our purpose and our values and our objectives, our strategies. I mean, we were built in an, in a, in a unique way. Our foundation for this business started in a. In one way and ended up in another. You know, I didn't set out to become an agency, but ended up as an agency. So it are who we are is defined a little differently. So being built as something that didn't exist and figuring it out is a point of pride for our team because we helped form what is now a multibillion dollar industry. We were there at the very beginning. So understanding how it was built, how it's evolved, what makes it the most. What makes it most strong is a big piece of our culture. But remembering that and making sure that that is a part of our culture building is important.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Are you into like, is Pat Lincioni one of your. Like, is that one of the favorite business authors we just reread as a leadership team every year leading up to annual planning. We'll go through the five dysfunctions. Any other authors that stick out to you or any other books that have been super impactful?

Yeah, I mean we love eos. It's really important to us. I am part of Vistage. I don't know if you're, if you're in Vistage as well. So, you know, there's constantly books that are recommended there. I our, my Vistage leader is always saying clarity and alignment and anything that can help us get to clarity and alignment is, you know, a book that will pick up or, or, or share.

Yeah, I want to make sure that we point folks to themotherhood.com I know you're also on some other social platforms as well and you shared your email earlier. Is there anywhere else, anywhere else you want to point folks who may want to follow up and especially agencies who might be interested in partnering with you all to deliver influencer marketing services for their clients?

Yeah, that's great. If you can email me or go to our contact page, Find us on LinkedIn. I'm also a Forbes Agency contributor, so Forbes Magazine Agency we write articles and you can find me there as well. As part of the Forbes Agency Council, we've got a lot of information about influencer marketing best practices tips there as well.

That's perfect. Cooper, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for coming on Agency Journey today.

Thank you so much.