Balancing empathy and analytics in influencer marketing with Roberta Cammisa, UGG

Empathic, flexible, and analytical.
 
These are the characteristics that have fueled Roberta Cammisa’s robust career in influencer marketing. 

Over 10 years, Roberta has worked with various luxury beauty and fashion brands like Ray-Ban, Net-a-Porter, and Charlotte Tilbury. Now as the Head of PR for EMEA at UGG, Roberta embarks on a challenge that many marketers face – how to keep your brand relevant in this fast-paced digital world.

In this podcast episode, you'll hear Roberta’s advice on how to build focused, relevant and impactful influencer programs. More importantly, you’ll hear how the skills that Roberta picked up during her influencer marketing career have set her up to keep UGG and its Classic Boot iconic.

During the conversation, Roberta also shares

• Why all marketers should embody a chameleon
• How to set attainable goals for your influencer program
• Her favorite metric for measuring influencer marketing success across different markets
• Why she’s excited for the next generation - Gen Alpha

Keep up with Roberta by connecting with her on LinkedIn.

Know another Rockstar in influencer marketing? Let's get them on the show!

Email us at ft@traackr.com. 

Keep up to date on what’s happening in the influencer marketing industry by following Traackr on social.

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Have a question for us? Email ft@traackr.com.

Transcript

Therese Little:

You're listening to The Fast Track podcast. Hear the stories, strategies, and insights for the change makers in the influencer marketing industry. I'm Therese Little, Head of Sales in the Americas at Traackr. I've been in the influencer marketing industry for over a decade, and have a long history of advising brands on how to work smarter, with the right data, mindsets and performance driven strategies. But even after all this time, I still find that I learn new things whenever I talk to the best of the best Traackr clients.

Today I'm chatting with Roberta Cammisa, who is the Head of EMEA PR at the global lifestyle brand that is recently taken social by storm and is known for its iconic classic boot, UGG. Roberta and I talked through the highlight reel of her career, what key skills she developed to help her move from the beauty to the fashion industry, along with what she views as some of the myths and underrated superpowers of influencer marketing. Hint, empathy and relationships are big themes, and her advice for how to build focused, relevant, and impactful influencer programs. Here's my conversation with Roberta. I hope you enjoy.

Good afternoon, Roberta. Thank you so much for joining today. I'm really excited for this conversation. I was hoping that we could start off by you providing a brief introduction for our audience, like a movie reel of your career thus far, if that's not too much to ask. Do you mind?

Roberta Cammisa:

Of course, of course. Thank you so much, Therese, and thank you for having me. It feels so special. I mean, being a friend of Traackr now, because I'm going to tell everyone in a second that I've been working with Traackr now for a while. So, this year I'm celebrating my 10-year career, which feels quite a lot, but actually, it's not. But it's like one of the first step box that you can pick.

Therese Little:

Congratulations. It's an accomplishment for sure.

Roberta Cammisa:

Thanks. So, 10 years I've been working across different industry, from fashion to beauty, online, so quite a lot. I'm currently the head of PR for UGG, a Californian brand, most well known for their classic sheepskin boot, and I'm overseeing the public relations team, the influencer marketing team, and also the product collaboration team. I think I've been lucky enough in those 10 years, because I had the chance to work across also different regions and different markets. So, I was global. I was also working for EMEA, I was for a time also working for Australia, and now I'm back to work for EMEA region. So, yeah. I just had the chance to work with different markets, which is probably the thing that I like about my work the most because I have always a chance to meet different people, learn different perspectives, and learn how things work differently across different markets. So, that's me in a nutshell.

Therese Little:

What did you study? Did you know that you would go into this kind of work?

Roberta Cammisa:

No. That's really interesting, because... Well, I studied business administration first, so pure economics basically. Then I specialized in marketing. Then where it was when I had this, okay, maybe amongst all the things that marketing is about, because for the marketeer on the line and that is listening, we all know that marketing is loads of things, and I've also been learning whilst I was actually working. But while I was finding I was like, I'm definitely not that of way of an analytical mind. I'm more of a creative person. I really love to meet new people, just the human interaction. Then by chance, I got offered an internship at Luxottica, the eyewear big company. They were like, "Okay. According to your profile, we think you can suit better the PR position. Do you want to try?" I wasn't super sure because back then public relations wasn't really a thing. Companies were really investing in paid channels, rather than earned.

So, I didn't study much about what public relations was. It was mentioned that was one of the marketing levers, but they didn't go into that much detail. I was like, "Yeah, sure. Let's try." Then, again, casually I'm here and it has been 10 years that I've been working in public relations. So, yeah. It was very casual. So, for everyone that is like, "I'm doing something else, but I know that I want to do PR," it's totally fine. I've met people in my 10-year career who have completely different backgrounds, so I don't think that matters a lot. It's one of those things that you learn by doing, and also it's probably about your character really, more than the skills. It's about soft skills rather than learning on the books, I think.

Therese Little:

Intangible. I was curious about that. I think you illustrated this in that explanation, having a backbone of economics and things like that. But I'm curious if there are... And maybe having a creative side and enjoying people a lot, which is what you just mentioned. But are those some of the superpowers that you feel make you good at your job or what else is it?

Roberta Cammisa:

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I don't want it to sound like my background in economics didn't help me, but I think it did help me and it's definitely helping me now more. The more I grow, the more I need to have a top-line overview and big picture of the situation. It’s definitely a bit of that structure and that analytical mind that I'm trying to develop more and more is definitely helping. But in the beginning, probably it was empathy that helped me a lot, it's a soft skill that I think PRs... When it comes to press, but also influencers, I think need to have. If they don't have, definitely it's good to develop because you'll have to be in the background, on the backstage. You are never going to be the frontman, and you need to make sure you are empathizing enough with the person you have in front of you, that might be the founder of the brand, it might be the editor-in-chief of a magazine.

It might be the influencer who has two million followers you are talking to, so that they feel super comfortable to talk to you, open up to you and you are getting from that what you want. So, I think empathy is probably one of the superpowers. The other one, I'd say having that agility in your mind, that agile mindset that helps you to blend in any situation. As I said, you are like an iguana. Is that the translation in English? Yeah. That changes... Exactly.

Therese Little:

Chameleon, right? Chameleon, I think it is.

Roberta Cammisa:

Chameleon, yes. Thank you. Thanks. That's actually what I think a PR person has to be. You need to blend in without really having people staring at you because again, you are the person behind the scenes making sure everything goes smooth, making sure the editor is writing the right article, the influencer is posting the right thing, and that the spokesperson of your company is saying the right thing. So, having that agility and flexibility in terms of mindset, I think really helps. Because according to the industry, you're going to work in and the people you're going to talk to, you need to change your tone of voice and again, just blend in. So, I think being quite flexible in terms of, again, the way you think and the way you act is really important. Then last but not least, building relationships needs to be basically your bread and butter.

So, very interestingly, I don't define myself an extrovert person, but I can be very easily when I'm at work. As in my personal life, I'm a very introverted person. I love to spend time by myself, doing my thing. I'm not a party person in my personal life, but I really enjoy the company of people working in the same industry when it comes to work. So, I've just recently come back from a global press trip with editors and influencers in Iceland last week, and it was the highlight of this month for me. Because I had the chance to spend a week with people from Japan, China, New York, Los Angeles, and all around Europe, just fully immersed in an amazing landscape, and just talking about anything. From your personal life to what UGG stands for to why we launched a new collection now. But also in general, trends. It felt really inspiring. So, I guess, yeah. You have to be just good at building relationships with people.

Therese Little:

I think they call that an introverted extrovert, I learned that term over the pandemic. I think I am too. Where you are really extroverted in certain situations, but then you need alone time to recharge and do-

Roberta Cammisa:

Exactly. Exactly.

Therese Little:

I think that empathy and agility, the two ones that you mentioned first, both lend themselves to building relationships. Of course, the more empathy that you can summon, the more agile you can be, the more you can build relationships with all kinds of people.

Roberta Cammisa:

The good thing is that you can develop those skills. So, if someone is like, "Oh, my God. I'm not that empathic," but I guess it's also something you develop with age, I think. When you are that young, you don't care about anyone and anything, so you're just like, "Yeah, I'm just going to do this," et cetera. But I think the more you grow up and the more you know other people and learn from them, you develop this sensitivity to empathize with people, I guess.

Therese Little:

It's so interesting. I was just going to ask you if you felt like empathy could be taught, and I agree with you that you get more of it from learned experience, or from lived experience, but you can also turn something on in people's minds. So, I agree that as you're younger, it's normal to be very centered on yourself. But you can flip a switch and prompt people to consider other perspectives. I think that that's a true gift to teach people that. I mean, it's gotten you very far to have that empathy backbone. I want to hear more about Iceland, but I'm going to ask you, throughout your career, you have worked for very loved brands. We met you originally at Charlotte Tilbury and you moved from there to UGG, I'm curious if you feel like with influencer marketing, and PR broadly, but influencer marketing specifically, if there is a big difference between industries, moving from beauty to fashion, what you've noticed as the changing texture of those industries?

Roberta Cammisa:

Yeah. It is an interesting thing because when I was thinking and getting in the mindset of this interview, I also realized that influencer marketing, is something that has developed quickly, but also really recently. So, again, when I started, 10 years ago, influencer marketing wasn't a thing. So, first thing first, I had to learn it as I go, as in, it was not something that I learned in the books and that I could apply straight away because back then it was just bloggers. We really weren't working with bloggers at the time. Then all of a sudden I moved to London and then I started working at Charlotte Tilbury, it was my first experience in beauty and also the very first time I had to work with influencers. So, basically, I learned the influencer marketing in the beauty industry. I have to say, there are definitely learnings that I then brought from Charlotte Tilbury to UGG, so from beauty to fashion.

But the beauty industry is quite peculiar, as in there are things that you do with the beauty brands that you can't do with fashion, they just don't work. The beauty industry is really quick, really fast. It was interesting because I was just coming from an online retailer, so my previous experience was at NetApp, so that was easy for me to apply because I was used to new product launches every week. With new product launches, you also had influencer campaigns. So, I guess the very first difference probably between beauty and fashion in a way, not the online fashion industry, it's more like the proper fashion industry, is speed. So, beauty is really quick, with lots of influencer campaigns one after the other. With that comes also quality versus quantity. So, I guess with beauty it's like you want to target as many people as possible.

So, just to quote Charlotte Tilbury, we wanted to own every one's makeup bag. So, not only do we want every single product in the makeup bag to be Charlotte Tilbury, but we also really want to target from 18 to 80. So, literally everyone. At some point, also men with skincare. So, it was lots about, again, very frequent and lots of people, lots of product, lots of send out. When it comes to fashion, it's a bit different. Of course, the cost of lipstick is not comparable to the price and cost of a pair of shoes. So, of course, in terms of mindset, I had to quickly adapt and think, first thing first, you won't have a launch per week. You'll probably have a launch per season or per quarter. So, how can you become more strategic when it comes to sending out, how can you refine better your seeding list?

But also we have specific consumer profiles that we want to target. So, it's not about quantity, it's not about targeting everyone from 18 to 80, it's about targeting specific people. So, yeah. It's like finessing those seeding lists, making sure the people we work with, and talk with the audience, are the audience we want to target from a brand point of view. So, I guess those are the two main differences that I think I can spot. But that said, again there are lots of learnings that having worked at Charlotte Tilbury, I brought with me at UGG and I could easily apply. One of these was making decisions based on data, and Traackr comes into place here. Because when I joined UGG, they were working with influencers but not on a big scale as we are doing at the moment. They were just starting.

So, with me coming from Charlotte Tilbury, where influencers were everything basically, I was like, "Oh, my God. It's quite obvious where we should invest our effort now." So, it was literally over a season I joined and we were planning the autumn/winter, which is also our hot season at UGG. So, we started working with Traackr, we started to have some data that we could analyze and be like, "Okay. Fine, this is where we are at the moment. We know we are just getting started, but at least we know where we can go and how fast we can grow." So, I think that was also essential, and that was a learning that I took from Charlotte Tilbury. Because the good thing was that we were making decisions based on data, and this is what we are now doing at UGG.

Therese Little:

In my experience, I've seen, and I hope this isn't offensive to anyone, but I feel like beauty mastered influencer marketing first, and that we've seen other industries like fashion quickly catch up. I completely agree that it's a different landscape and different tactics. But I think that it's a real get for a brand and a different industry to hire someone with beauty experience and beauty expertise so that they can understand how to apply it. Would you agree with that statement?

Roberta Cammisa:

I think so. Again, we don't want to offend anyone here, but I think also fashion brings with it a more traditional mindset, especially the big fashion houses. They're now getting of course up to speed because the world is going ahead, so they need to catch up. But I think the way they've always presented themselves was more traditional, prioritizing press over influencers. Then all of a sudden, because it was a sudden change, all of a sudden they found out that it was influencers that were leading the trend. So, they had to pick up really quickly. Then as you said, they probably, even if they don't have anyone in-house, they had to look at what the beauty brands were doing and quickly adapt. So, I totally agree.

Therese Little:

It can't be a copy/paste exactly for what you talked about, the product costs. You couldn't seed at the same volume, you don't have something new. Where I feel like relationships come into play even more than a long-term relationship with influencers because you don't have a new product to send them every single week. You need to figure out how they're going to incorporate it into their lives long-term.

Roberta Cammisa:

Absolutely.

Therese Little:

Maybe that's a good bridge to thinking about measurement. You talked a lot about data, and I would assume that leveraging data, to summarize perhaps poorly, when you came into UGG, you looked at what they had done thus far and that there wasn't a ton of data to build off of. So, you had to measure, what have we done and how can we expand from that. How do you think about goal setting and what success looks like with influencer programs?

Roberta Cammisa:

That's exactly the question I ask myself now it's going to be two years I joined UGG. This was the first question I asked also my boss when I joined. I was like, "Listen. I'm so enthusiastic to have joined this brand. I know we are on a new trajectory, repositioning the brand, it's very exciting. But I need to have some data and facts to build on my strategy. Otherwise, I have no idea where we stand." I can say, "Yeah. This thing I've done has been a success, but based on what?" So, I had to have a benchmark. Again, I'm thankful to Traackr because not only they could provide me with the current situation, this is where UGG stands, but also could benchmark ourselves versus brands that we consider competitors. So, I think this is so important. Then once I had the big picture across, again, all market, I could say and set objectives that I felt at the time were achievable.

So, I'm always about setting small, achievable, and also measurable objectives, because it doesn't make any sense to me, and I've learned this by doing of course, probably five years ago I had no idea and I would just aim to the moon. Sometimes I know that people say, which I am inclined to agree, "You need to aim to the moon to then achieve your more achievable goal." Fine. But you need to have it in your mind and then also have those more small, achievable objectives that you can use to track success, share with your partner, and make sure everyone is aligned. Because of course, as we know, it takes a village to achieve what we are achieving now at UGG. What we achieved at Charlotte Tilbury is not one person. It's like a big team, lots of people internal and external. So, having some common objectives that everyone is aligned on is important, so we all aiming for the same thing. So, yeah. Those I would say are things that I had in my mind and that helped me to get to where we got so far basically.

Therese Little:

Small, achievable and measurable, and they all add up perhaps, into that big moonshot that it's hard to define. Yeah. I oftentimes hear from individuals who are a little earlier in their career than you who innately understand the power of influencers for their brand or the need for data, but they struggle to educate internally about what is a good objective with influencers. Do you have advice for people a bit earlier in their career than you, who are trying to make an impact in their organization and need to educate internally?

Roberta Cammisa:

Yeah. I mean, it isn't easy. I'm going to start with that. It's probably the biggest challenge, I think. It was a challenge when I was a bit more junior. It is a challenge right now that I'm leading a bigger team. I think the first thing that makes a difference is making sure the whole organization believes in influencer marketing. So, if it's a battle you are fighting alone, that is going to be tricky, but it rarely happens, because if they hire you and if it's your job, that means that they're already believing in it. Because there are little brands that don't have an influencer marketing person, team, whatever. So, that means it's going to be hard to let them change their mind. So, first things first, I think having support from the company itself helps. Then I think one thing that I found useful is translating all this data, engagement rate, and followers, into very easy comprehensible headlines.

Well, sometimes it's like, think about those people who don't have any idea about what influencer marketing is, and try to explain it in super simple words, making examples, relatable examples, maybe ideally if you have in front of you a finance person, have more data in, so you'll buy them. If you have in front of you more of a creative person, play with content more. But definitely, my advice is to translate it in a way that is comprehensible for people that have no idea about what is. It's not an offense. I don't think anyone listening from the senior leadership team would get offended. Sometimes they will also have at some point to explain those data to someone above them, maybe the founder, or the CEO. So, they need a really easy headline to tell the story. So, that helped me a lot, especially at UGG, just again, and of course, my boss is trusting me about what I'm doing.

But sometimes it's like I need three very easy headlines so I can tell the story. I can tell if we're doing good. If we're not doing good, why we are we not doing good? So, just speaking easily, because this industry, like influencer marketing, can sometimes get difficult. There are lots of metrics you can get lost in when you are overseeing multiple markets, maybe there are different trends. So, it's very easy to get lost in numbers and figures, et cetera. So, just be able, and it's not easy to take a step back, look at the big picture and understand, what are the three key headlines that this person needs to know about all of this.

Therese Little:

I love that advice, and I'm sure that your background in PR helps with that too. Messaging here is so important. It's not, of course, it's not a dis on anyone who doesn't understand. First of all, we have so many metrics. I talk to so many different organizations that measure things in completely different ways. 

There's still not one end-all-be-all way that everyone has agreed upon to measure this practice. It is newer. So, you and I, having worked in it for a while, we can talk about it all day, but I do have empathy for people who are like, "What are you..." Even people who studied marketing, but maybe they studied marketing 20 years ago and this wasn't part of their learning. It's a constant challenge for me to synthesize it. 

I'm sure that you can attribute some of your success to your ability to do that, to package it in a message that can be conveyed to all different kinds of stakeholders, then an organization. What is your favorite metric for measuring? Does it depend on the campaign? I would assume, but...

Roberta Cammisa:

It does. But I find, now it's across the industry, I find the engagement rate probably the most relatable. I've learned at Charlotte Tilbury, that 3% was the ratio that we should all aim at. No matter the industry, I always have that in my mind, because it might be not a video-led campaign, so you can't look at video views, for example, which we all know they're super important. Now video views are three times more watched than pictures, et cetera. But it might be not a video campaign. So, what do you look up? I think there are so many metrics and probably engagement rate is the one that I just have always a look at, to make sure that we are on track. Because when it's down, that means that one of the other metrics is probably not right, and we need to deep dive into what didn't work. It's also quite easy for me to understand and remember.

Therese Little:

Yeah. Yeah. No, I like the engagement rate too. I also feel like boosting has changed how we're looking at engagement rates now, and the definition of what is good when we look at an average over time, and how much that skews things. Sometimes the average will be 6% because one video had a 700% engagement rate or things like that. But they're keeping us on our toes all of the time. Do you sit down at the beginning of the year and make a plan? Are you thinking for all four quarters what your influencer campaigns are going to be as aligned with launches and things like that? How much room is there for spur-of-the-moment capitalizing on a trend or a conversation that you see happening out there?

Roberta Cammisa:

Yeah. I'll talk about UGG now because it's my, of course, my current experience. We sit down at the beginning of the year, which for us is not January. We are operating differently, on a different fiscal year. Our year starts in April. But anyway, yeah. We are just sitting down right now to finalize our spring/summer plan. 

This is probably one of the things I forgot to mention before, regarding the differences between beauty and fashion. I think with beauty you would have to be ready to jump on trends. Beauty tutorials are a thing in the beauty industry, and if you are lacking in your collection of products that will help you to jump on the trend, it's a massive deal. So, basically, the MPD team will be behind the scenes creating that product for you, because trends are something you don't want to miss. 

I think with fashion it's slightly different, especially at UGG, and is the thing that I love about working in this brand, that we leave quite a lot of freedom to the talents to interpret what they think UGG stands for.

We rarely give super strict briefs when we work on a paid basis because we say that UGG is a very inclusive brand for everyone. We want to make sure we are not restricting the freedom when it comes to being creative. With that said, we are also a very agile and flexible brand when it comes to budget. If there is something major that happens during the year that we feel is the right thing to invest in, we'll find a way to make it happen. 

We are not that structured as a company. We decide the budget at the beginning of the year and then that is it. We revisit it by quarter, which I think is good timing. Every three months allows you the chance to stay flexible and stay relevant, because it's really hard in our job, influencer, but also from a press point of view now, to establish a plan 12 months before. It's very tricky for products because some products might feel quite old 12 months later. But for us, you have to stay flexible, because only by staying flexible you can be successful.

Therese Little:

Yeah. I find something you said at the beginning, that response, so interesting where you were talking about trends in makeup versus trends in fashion. I think that if we had had this conversation 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, you thought about at least... Let me know if you feel like this too. 

I thought about trends as applying to fashion much more so than makeup, and I feel like creators and influencers have changed that conversation. Where there are all of these... I didn't know about makeup trends in the early two thousand. I knew about makeup and what makeup was good for my skin, but it wasn't the latte look or things like that. Creators have changed this so much, and now makeup and beauty are the trendsetters and fashion is a little bit slower, which I think is really surprising.

Roberta Cammisa:

It's true. Things can change again, and that's probably the beauty of it. There is no playbook for this. You just need to be, I think, ready to react. The cool thing, but also quite scary, is that influencers can lead this. They're leading trends. They're the trend leaders. So, in, I don't know, one, two years, things can change again and we can go back to what it was 15 years ago. So, on the one side, I think it's very exciting because it's one of those jobs that you can't get bored of because things change so fast and so quickly and constantly, that you either change with it as a brand and reinvent yourself, or you'll be left out. So, that's one thing.

The other thing is also this is quite scary. After all, you don't know where you are going because you're going with the flow. So, you'll have a strategy for a brand, a brand strategy of course, that is guiding you, is guiding your decision. But at the same time, as we just said, you also need to stay flexible, because at some point your strategy might not work and you need to take the risk and jump on the trend or whatever change the market is going through, in order not to be left out.

Therese Little:

Yeah. The context is changing all the time for our work. You also said something in there about, it might go back to how it used to be. I've been having a lot of conversations about Gen Alpha lately, and the next generation that's coming up. Are you thinking about that at UGG? How to target Gen Alpha?

Roberta Cammisa:

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because at UGG we don't have a consumer profile by age, but by interest, which I find interesting. So, we don't care if who is buying into UGG is 18 years old or I don't know, 40, as long as... I'm making this up, because I'm not going to do specific references. But as long as they are into music, for example. So, that's really interesting. But of course, we need to make sure, no matter the interest and how we target the consumer, that we stay relevant. We can observe new trends at the moment, especially with Generation Alpha. 

Yeah. They're starting to take distance from social in a way, we've been seeing those social detox trends. Again, it is a trend, but we need to be aware. So, otherwise, again, we'll be left out. So, with that in mind, it's probably, again, it comes down to quantity versus quality.

So, more and more, although this is already our way of working, more and more we will be prioritizing quality over quantity. So, not overloading people with content, because there's so much happening out there, people are already feeling the need to take a break. So, us contributing to that noise is not going to help. So, instead of releasing tons of content per week, we'll start to release less, but be more insightful maybe. But also observing trends like YouTube and longer content is interestingly gaining more attention again, just because probably people are getting tired of scrolling and don't even pay attention to content. But more like listening to what a brand has to say, or what a talent has to say on behalf of a brand or just in general.

So, just longer content that is more meaningful. Podcasts are becoming something more and more. I think people need more time to reflect and listen to something, maybe even learn something, which is not a documentary, but longer video content, longer than a reel that doesn't even say something because it's just images. So, it is interesting. 

I have lots of hope in the new generation because it seems like a generation that has learned something maybe from COVID, maybe that break that we all had, everyone, learned something. The new generation was probably more of a shock for them because they were so young. But they've probably learned to pause more, reflect more, learn more from what happened. Now they're looking for more meaningful content, I guess.

This is a challenge for us as a brand because we keep on asking ourselves, "Are we enough?" Because they also are very informed. Compared to the previous generation, they know a lot, because of course, they are lucky enough that they have more sources to learn from, et cetera. Anyway, you as a brand feel constantly judged and be like, "Okay. Are we offering the right content? Are we being enough? Are we being sensitive enough?" So, I think it's going to be the next challenge for everyone. But I also think it's a cycle, because all brands, as I said, need to change and reinvent themselves as new generations come up. But this is going to be a good one, I think.

Therese Little:

Yeah. No, I agree. I'm really excited about it too, and I do think it's going to change our ways of working, but in a positive way in my perspective. We're seeing more influencers and runway shows and more offline experiences too, because I think community is something that is top of mind for much of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. But you mentioned the longer videos, we did a report recently where we saw that Gen Z even prefers five-minute-plus videos on YouTube to learn about products, which is a game changer for how a lot of brands consider leveraging influencers or the content that they're putting out online. 

Well, I feel like I could talk to you all day, but you are running out of time. I think that we just... I was going to ask you to wrap up about changes in the influencer industry that we should about, but you just touched on that. I am curious. I mean, maybe you already touched on this too, but do you have any last thoughts on predictions for next year or things that you're especially excited about as we look to the year ahead?

Roberta Cammisa:

I think you just mentioned the willingness of influencers and people in general out there to have more in-person experience. We are just coming out of a time where digital events, masterclasses, and bringing people together online were the thing. I'm excited for all of this to go back to, not normal, but to physical. Personal interaction is one of the things I've been missing the most during COVID, as everyone. But I think for the PR teams in general across the globe, it has been a massive issue because it was our bread and butter. Just learning how to communicate, and empathize with people online, is not easy. Being able to read the room through a screen is difficult. So, again, not to reference, but we have also done one massive event recently, probably the biggest one in Europe for a while, in Paris a month ago.

Again, bringing people from all around Europe together for a week in a house. It was so exciting. You could tell, and people also said, they were missing this physical interaction. It was so exciting also to see my team really enjoying and being all together, it makes such a difference. So, yeah. This is probably the thing I'm excited about the most. Next year also, finalizing now plans and budget looks like it's going to be full of physical events, which is a lot of work. I mean, surely organizing an event digitally is not as lot of a hassle as it is producing an event physically. But it's more exciting for people that work in this industry. So, yeah. That's the thing I'm excited about the most.

Therese Little:

It's very exciting. I want to come to the house next time.

Roberta Cammisa:

Definitely, you're on the list.

Therese Little:

Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Roberta. I love that empathy was a major theme of our conversation and that that's one of the superpowers that you bring towards your career. You can feel it in the interactions that I've had with you throughout the years. It's really important, so I love that theme here and I appreciate all of the insight and wisdom that you shared. We're really lucky to hear from you. Thank you for your time.

Roberta Cammisa:

Thank you so much.

Therese Little:

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fast Track. If you're interested in connecting with Roberta, you can find her LinkedIn profile linked in the show notes. Have someone in mind who would be perfect to come onto the show? Email us at ft@traackr.com. That's F-T@T-R-A-A-C-K-R.com. We're always searching for more rock stars in the influencer marketing industry. If you enjoyed this episode, brighten someone else's day by sharing it with a friend. Thanks again, and until next time.