Exclusive Interview with Brand Featured CEO David Varnai

Welcome to the Coffee with Q Show, your daily dose of knowledge from experts from around the world. I'm your host, JC Patrick, and your news reporter on Coffee with Q, Grand Cayman. So today I have the pleasure of speaking with David. So, David, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast today, and it is so lovely to meet you virtually. So David, we are going to talk about you and your background and how you started Brand Features. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to start Brand Features?

Yeah, so I'm a longtime marketer. Been in sales and marketing almost 20 years, well, more than 20 years, I should say. Um, I spent many years working, running various businesses. Uh, I own a couple businesses, and then I was also— I had the pleasure of joining some pretty big companies in the e-commerce space. And I served as a head of marketing and e-commerce for Zenni Optical, which is a pretty big prescription eyewear retailer and manufacturer. And then from that time on, I spent some time with the optical industry in various companies. Yeah, all the way from head of marketing roles to, to come in as a consultant to brands requiring help with marketing and struggling to get the ROI they need. And so I spent those 20 years or so in various leadership roles in the marketing industry.

Mm-hmm.

BrandFeatured came as a later part in my career. BrandFeatured is a company that I actually acquired with a group of investors, and I have a partner with me who is involved in running it. And BrandFeatured is a very interesting Very interesting little company. It started in 2020. And really, what we acquired essentially is what I would say kind of like a— it's a marketing trick, you could say. Since PR, and you guys are in PR, so you must know, but PR is not a simple business, it's not a cheap business. Yeah, I've done PR in large scale in those companies I've been involved with. And to do proper PR, you need a full team and, and you need the time and money to produce those publications, right? And what brand feature does is actually more aligned with performance marketing.

Okay.

And really, brand features is using one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book, which is the social proof, the need that we all have as individuals to have a third-party validation.

Right.

And that goes across the board in purchases and shopping and in other areas of our life. We all need that third-party validation. Brands that are doing extensive PR get that brand validation. Over time. What Brand Featured does is really taking— giving an option to a smaller merchant or professional, and it really can be used for anything.

Yeah.

From a hairdresser that has a website that is trying to maximize his appointment bookings, to a designer, interior designer, to an e-commerce company, any company that owns a digital asset Mm-hmm. That is trying to sell something. The brand featured product is essentially doing a little bit of a simplistic PR push for the company. Correct.

Yeah.

And its primary goal and objective to provide the customer is not really with a massive PR exposure. That really takes a lot more than that.

Yeah.

But it gives the option for that customer to say, I've been seen on Yes. And that social proof, that third-party validation used in your marketing, essentially is a conversion rate optimization tool.

Yeah.

That's what Brandfeature does. We saw that it was, it started in 2020, as I said, by an innovative, actually, engineer programmer that built the company. We took it over and we ran it in its current format for about a year.

Yeah.

And now it's time to innovate and we are changing the game a little bit. We are enriching the offering at Brand Featured. And I can tell you more about the products. I'm not sure if that's where you want to go.

Yeah, definitely tell me more about Brand Featured. You can go in We can go into that.

So our next kind of iteration of Brand Featured, we're going to continue offering our simple conversion rate optimization product essentially in the form of SC Non, and we continue to offer a very affordable solution in that sense to customers. Just to last touch on it, I mean, an online business spends Endless amount of money on driving traffic to their websites. Any percentage increase in a conversion rate of a website can mean a lot.

Yeah.

The bigger the business, the bigger the impact. So, this kind of marketing trick, as I call it, PR stunt, it's actually one of the best investments you can make as far as ad money that you spend out.

Yeah.

And so, highly recommend it. But PR goes beyond that, and that's what we want to offer to customers. So, we are going to essentially start introducing new packages targeting 2 additional target audiences to some extent. So, we're going to offer brand— business branding, and under business branding, we're going to offer a lot richer publications, a lot richer press releases. Packages that would start really that true PR game for brands that want to put their name out there. We're going to offer it in various forms because it needs to be fitted to the business, but there's going to be focuses that are more global, there are going to be focus points that are more local. So, that's a brand, that's a business brand marketing.

Yeah.

Then we're gonna do personal branding. And the differentiation here with personal branding is, an example, an excellent example is a real estate agent.

Yeah.

I happen to be involved also in real estate as an investor and actually a licensed agent, but real estate agent is really his own brand.

Yes.

It is very, very rarely that an individual is choosing to work with an agent because of the brokerage that he belongs to.

Yeah.

Now, it might be comforting when your agent comes from a name you recognize, right? So there is brand power there for sure. But an agent is usually not selected based on the broker. It's vice versa. It's a personal relationship. Therefore, it's a personal brand. And similar example is with attorneys. Many attorneys have their own brand. It's not really about the firm that they belong to, although again, it might add value. But in many instances, those savvy senior attorneys are the ones that bring actually the power of their independent brands to a firm.

Yes.

Right? So what we're trying to help with is professionals like that. And, you know, another topic we can touch on, very trendy current influencers, right?

Yeah.

Everybody, or many people, I would say, want to be YouTubers and influencers of all kinds and produce content. All that is great, and your ability to produce content is ultimately going to really dictate, I think, the success. But to get the flywheel going, you need to put your name out there. And so, we are potentially going to offer even packages for influencers that, okay, if you're desiring to go that direction, Here is a package that you can throughout 4, 6, 9, 12 months work on with us that will help you build that independent brand that will allow you to gain audience and let your content shine.

That's amazing. Yeah, no, that's a good thing. Thank you for giving more insight on that. I'm finding because, you know, I am a brand consultant at Qman Story and I am learning about personal branding. And you said some things there that were quite spot on, on what I'm learning. And I find that with a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs in the Cayman Islands, that personal branding is a platform that they can use to not only elevate their brand, but to have that specific target audience. Sometimes I find that when you don't have a personal brand, and people don't know you, you can't exactly put yourself out there. So I think it is super important to have your own story. And it's a story that people can connect to.

Yeah. So that's the story that we're going to help tell. Yes. So the services of the personal branding will include some of the similar approach we're doing right now, interview, We might not record it on video, but in some instances, maybe that is relevant as well. But we're going to conduct interviews and talk to the individual. The interview is going to be conducted by a writer or a strategic content creator. And then off those interviews, we're going to be able to produce pieces that represent the person authentically and highlight his expertise.

Yeah. And I think that for any personal brand, You want to have that being authentic because that is something that people do resonate with. What I'm learning in the K-Man Story Masterclass is people do business with people that they trust, right? So if you have that customer service and if you build that relationship, you'll have people coming to you simply because they do want to work with you. And something I found interesting with what you said is, you know, with content, Yes, it's great if you have good content and you put it out there, but content isn't going to bring business to your website. Content isn't going to bring profit. That's what you're looking for. So in order for businesses, especially small businesses in the Cayman Islands, it's about balancing the two.

Yeah, yeah. It's like Cayman and anywhere else in the world, right? It's always I can, I mean, I can see the value of building a personal brand, even in people that really are not in business.

Yeah.

Even if you are an employee, but you know, you feel I'm a star employee, but you have a brand, that brand might be in the company you work with, you're branded in the company, they, you're known for things.

Yes.

Now you can take that. And yes, it's a little narcissistic. But that's the nature of PR. And you can take that and decide, okay, I want to build that brand a little bit outwards too. So, in your next job search, when you apply for jobs, it is guaranteed that if you can pass the initial filters and get into the hands of a recruiter or an HR individual, they're going to Google your names these days, and they're going to look you up.

Right.

And if you happen to be a developer, but, you know, you have all of a sudden write-ups that can be found about you and your work that you've done for this and that company, and examples that tie you in with successful stories and companies and projects, That brand comes with you. That's how you're going to be perceived by that HR person. And the likelihood of you being the one elected to, for the job is also higher.

Yeah.

Personal branding is really important for a very broad spectrum of people.

Yeah, it is. And there's something that Qamar says all the time. He says that when you have a personal brand, it's not about how you see yourself. It's about how other people see you. And I thought that that, um, and that goes back to me building my brand. So I don't know if Qamar told you much about me, but I actually, um—

Not at all.

Well, I actually, um, have been doing pageants for quite some time now. Um, I was Miss World Cayman Islands 2019, and then I just got the title of Miss Supranational. Cayman Islands 2024. So using personal branding for these platforms are super important. And for me, community service is a very big thing in my life. So I use my brand and my platform on social media to promote that. And what I found with building a personal brand is your brand actually showcases who you are. And I started learning that You can post content, like I said, but is it— is your content actually relevant to what you believe in and what you're passionate about? So I had to find the balance between the two, the personal branding and what do I want to put out there professionally. So I found that having personal branding in my platform was one of the key things to get noticed, not just locally, but globally as well. So David, I have one more question for you in terms of Brand Featured and how it was established. So what was the primary vision behind Brand Featured and how has it evolved since you first started?

Well, the vision for Brand Featured, to be honest, when it started, the business was Coming from a very performance marketing perspective, right? Saw a quick solution and ability to offer a highly high-return marketing campaign essentially to companies, and it relied on a lot of automation and technology. As a global team with Brand Featured, we are all over the globe practically. We have team members in Canada, US, Europe, Israel, India, Philippines. So everywhere. It's a very, very digital business and it started as a lifestyle business to some extent.

Yeah.

Now it's evolving into a lot richer actual PR Digital PR company that is offering solutions in digital PR.

Nice. Thank you so much, David. I want to go into influencers. Now, you touched a little bit about using influencers for like products and services. And again, you know, living in the Cayman Islands and seeing small brands and entrepreneurs, we often do use influencers online. to showcase their products, but it's something that is increasing during, you know, anyone who wants to promote their business during this time, they're using influencers. So what would you say would be the marketing landscape? How has that changed over the years?

Influencers is an interesting topic. Influencer marketing is not a new thing. It's always been around. I mean, if you think even 50 years ago, sponsorships are influencer marketing. You're using someone else's influence and sphere to promote your product. So, influencer marketing per se existed always. These influencers gained their brand awareness and reputation used in various, right? So, it could be an athlete, it could be a movie star.

Yeah.

Could be a model.

Yeah.

I mean, they build their sphere of influence in various ways, and then influencer marketing comes in later when they have that influence. Now they have a new tool in their toolkit. It's a new commodity, right? I've done influencer marketing with when we had Tom Brady as our ambassador.

Yeah.

And I mean, he is an athlete. He's a world-class athlete, but His influence is a commodity that is very highly paid for, right? So, it always existed. I think the difference these days is that there are so many platforms available. And in reality, it's made the influencer marketing world a lot trickier. The flow of information, the stream, the feeds we're all getting of social media is ridiculously high Volume. I mean, and there's how many hours of a day you have that you don't hold your phone in your hands, right?

And scroll social media.

I mean, so these days, honestly, a lot of people are, um, I would say quote unquote influencers. They're not really influencers. They just produce content. They self-promote. They try and do personal branding and gain influence. In that process, they're already trying to commoditize that influence a lot earlier than it used to be.

Right.

So in my view, influencer marketing these days is a lot trickier because you have to be able to discern who is someone that actually has a sphere of influence around them. And it could be that they have 10,000 people that follow them, let's say, on whatever platform, but those 10,000 people are actually following them and really listening to them. Like it's an actual influence they have over them. Versus a lot of influencers that really, the biggest commodity they have is the actual number of followers on their Instagram. And it's a numbers game purely. They do clickbait stuff. They don't really have influence on anything. They just built up that number. And now it's a perceived influence. So, it's a very tricky space to operate in. As a performance marketer, to be very honest with you, I looked at it always as any other advertising mechanism.

Yeah.

How much I'm gonna pay for getting the exposure to your audience and how much is that going to return? Over the years, I experimented, I believe, with millions of dollars spent in influencer marketing from the brand side. And it's a very— it's a tricky space. It's not always the highest return. It's a lot of work for a brand. So I think that landscape is changing a lot.

Yeah.

And hopefully now it's a Wild West, like anyone and everyone can create content. But, and YouTube 5 years ago wasn't what it is now.

Yes.

Now, YouTube 5 years ago, I think hit a certain peak of these, like, you could, you so-called influencers, it was flooded with content.

Yes.

And nowadays you see bigger content creators that again bring their influence to the platform in all kinds of areas. Let it be Joe Rogan, is, you know, people that you can find on YouTube. It can be Dr. Phil that I see recently developed his own channel and is basically now producing content for YouTube and digital channels versus the traditional TV. You could see a lot of political commentators. That used to be on major channels that are going now independent and finding these platforms just an easier way for them to get their message out there and with less constraints, right, of a whole channel behind you.

And I think it was how, like, how social media is actually increasing throughout the years. You know, you have, I think TikTok right now is one of the highest platforms that people are using. And now, having political figures use these platforms. I think it's really interesting because now they're seeing, okay, we can kind of move away from traditional advertising but bring in this new aspect. And that resonates with younger audiences like millennials. They're the ones that are online. They're looking through social media, and that's where they get a lot of their content from. So now that they are using social media, I think Obviously, it's a balance, right? You want to produce great content, you want to have a message out there, but it's about balancing and finding what works for you and the company and what works for your target audience.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, David, my next question again is about influencers, and it's about the future. of influencers. So what would you say the trends are that you would predict for influencers in marketing and content creation?

Well, I mean, again, it's a topic that is— it's hard to tell the future, of course, in any topic. But I think that the natural and unnatural kind of filters of content are going to evolve more than anything. Right. So, you hit a certain peak where the distribution ability, like the megaphone the internet offers you, was so broad anyone could scream into it. And if you know how to scream loud enough, then you're going to be heard.

Yeah.

The filter is now going to evolve a lot more. And I think it just goes back again to quality versus quantity. And you're going to get the stage even though, yes, the megaphone is available to you, but the bandwidth we each have to receive information is limited. So, what fits into that bandwidth, the filters, I think, is going to evolve the most, whether it's through platforms or honestly just through the audience itself. The target audience itself is getting more savvy. TikTok is, yeah, it's the recent trend, to be honest.

I don't— And do you think that—

I'm not on TikTok. I think it's a little bit of a dangerous platform.

Yeah.

And so honestly, I stay away from it personally and professionally.

Yeah.

I think it's very important, again, that you got— that's my filter, right? And it might be right for me and not for you, and that's fair enough. But for me, that's filtered out as a platform as a whole. But because just generalized, I mean, the content there is very inaccurate, very It's very trendy. It's narratives that are not— it's very false narrative oriented in all kind of stuff. I mean, whether it be politics or marketing. I did experiment with it and that was my experience. And I just stay off of that platform. I believe what started with Twitter, maybe these short form conversations or not conversations is something I always personally, again, found it very deceptive. You cannot speak in short form if you want to actually have an intelligent input into anything. So I think it's going away from that. It's what these days to me becoming more and more popular, not just personally, but I see it across the board. is podcasts. In fact, long-form podcasts. I listen these days, as ADD as I am, and I am, um, I can sit and listen to a 2, sometimes 3-hour conversation between 2 individuals on a podcast because I find the topics intriguing. And in that long form is where you can actually have intelligent conversations. And it's conversations.

Yeah.

It's dialogues. It's not a certain pitch. It's not a certain type of brainwash. You can have a dialogue between people. And so I think the long form is going to take more and more of the stage versus short form. At least that's what I hope too.

Yeah, no, at least for me, I find that with podcasts, because I've started, well, not just hosting them, but listening to them as well. And I found that with podcast, you get so much more insight. And going on social media like TikTok or Instagram, you get a small clip of someone's life or their story. And a lot of times, um, I don't know if you've seen, but there's actually videos going around on how influencers actually make their videos. So I thought it was so funny because everything's kind of curated in a way And it's nice to see when you have, like, say, podcasts and you have normal people having in-depth conversations. Like, for me, that's how I learn. That's how I connect. So for me, I think podcasts have really become a platform of not just education, but networking as well.

Right. Yeah.

So, David, do you think that news and press releases are important for influencers and content creators?

Well, for the same reason we discussed for all the other professionals. I mean, especially again, you call someone influencer, for me that's hard. Why are you an influencer?

Yeah.

You know, I mean, you have to be— if you're an influencer, that cannot be the beginning of the road, right? You develop influence because— so you do something well that people like to listen to you talk about or show. Or, and if you do have one, you know, if you do have a trait like that, or, you know, you have something to offer, then personal branding is what helps you put that out there and be known for it.

Yeah.

If you're an influencer for the sake of being an influencer, and you sit there and you build, uh, your Instagram profile and TikTok, and you, uh, you know, pumping up the numbers and doing clickbaits and, you know, again, building content that is there to gain, again, a fake influence. Like you build content that is tailored 100% to the reaction of whomever is watching it, right?

Yeah.

Designing the content to generate the reaction you want, which is a follow, a like, a comment, something, you know, that's advertising. That's not influence. So anyway, I think that, yeah, the world of influencers is a tricky space. And if you are an individual, and I would say if you're a professional, if you're an exceptional marketer, if you're an exceptional developer that does a lot of cool stuff and you engineered really nice things and you built applications and you did a lot of great things, If you take that and put this information out there using personal branding methodologies, then you can become an influencer in that sphere, right? Because developers in the world that are getting exposed to it are gonna say, okay, who is this guy? And let me see what else he does. And that's what's gonna get you to really be an influencer. So, you could be a really great cook. I mean, okay, so then that's what you gotta talk about, right? And so I would like to think about it that way versus tailoring a product for influencer. It's really tailoring— is helping a successful professional become an influencer by amplifying all his success stories, amplifying and creating awareness around his skills and successes and projects.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you. So can you also touch a little bit on what sets BrandFeatured apart from other platforms in order to help influencers get noticed?

We keep it simple. Yeah, affordable. And honestly, we are all performance marketers behind the brand marketing company. So, we'd like to make things that are impactful in the numbers and everything we do is with that type of mindset.

Yeah.

So, customers that work with us, we're trying to make the impact be an impact they can count. Yeah. Well, PR is very abstract.

Yes.

I, again, in my career, I had many, many years where I had big PR agencies on retainer and we did a lot of work and how it's, uh, work and content and connections. But a lot of times it's very abstract. You don't have tangible, uh, revenue you can tie back to that activity.

Yeah.

So I value that impact and input, and we're trying to do that, but all with the mindset of performance marketing, which is why the, the initial product of As Seen On, the, the ability to buy social proof Yeah, yeah. It's a PR campaign product that is in its nature abstract, but we leveraged it in a very performance marketing way, which is, okay, it's a conversion optimization tool for your website.

Yeah, thank you. Well, speaking on some people that you have worked with in the past, do you have any success stories on how your company has helped them?

There is a lot. I don't— so a lot of the beauty of this company and the website, it's very online, it's very self-service. We do have a lot on the website. You can see testimonials of customers that had great success with us. You can see a lot of reviews everywhere. I think the biggest challenge with Brand Featured and customer feedback is, is that the question lies in did the customer understand 100% what is he buying?

Yep.

Where we have sometimes challenges is where somebody thinks that for the $200, $300, $400 that this product costs, I'm gonna get a true big PR exposure. Any marketer would know that's not a realistic expectation. That's impossible. You can do that over a long time and quite substantial Investments to get that. But what you're buying is that social proof. And I think the customers— and we have a lot of agency customers that do it for their clients, and they are very successful with this because they have the opportunity to explain the nuance of what really is being offered here to their customers. And then they apply it in their websites and it works tremendously. So, yeah.

Great. Are there any new, like, technologies or features that you're planning on introducing soon?

Like many others, we're playing a lot these days with AI. Yes. So AI is a big keyword, and I don't want to use it as a buzzword. We definitely are playing around with AI tools and trying to see how we can enhance our services using AI. We're not going to write the articles, for example, purely using AI, but AI is a great tool that can help you better your output. And so those are things we're experimenting with right now, and we'll see how we can integrate them in the future.

Nice. Sounds like you have some big plans ahead.

Always.

So I'm going to go into how influencers, like, what challenges do they have and how can brand featured help them overcome these challenges?

Influencers specifically? Well, again, it's if you're trying to gain your, your sphere of influence, and you have something to show, we help you showcase that. That's, that's the whole essence of it.

Yeah. Great. Thank you. Well, David, we have reached the end of our questions. It has been so lovely speaking with you. And I I got a lot of insight into not just personal branding, but we talked a lot about influencers and the importance of using influencers, um, to product your services. So thank you so much, and I look forward to having another episode with you soon. And I'm sure that you'll be heard not just locally in the Cayman Islands, but globally. So thank you so much, David.

Yes. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Bye.