Russ White 0:00
izea worldwide Inc, the premier provider of influencer marketing technology, data and services for leading brands, has appointed MSU brode College of Business alumnus Ryan Schram, as the company's president, and Chief Operating Officer Ryan, congratulations on all your success. And it's great to finally welcome you to MSU today, thanks for having me, Russ. I'm really pleased to be here and go green go white, and Ryan's a graduate of the Eli Broad College of Business. We met back around the turn of the century when we were both doing our thing at MSU student radio the impact but Ryan, give us a snapshot of your career from MSU, to President and CEO of izea.

Unknown Speaker 0:43
Well, I had the really fortunate opportunity to looking back to go to undergrad during what is now considered web 1.0. Russ, right. So it was that bridge when we all took our AOL dial up internet experience and brought it to broadband. And actually, that's one of the reasons I chose to live at Holden Hall in South Campus was that at that time, it was I think, the first or second residence hall on campus to get wired, Ethernet high speed internet. And by high speed, I think it was in one or two megabytes at the time. But I decided that that was incredible at the time. And so that was key me choosing my location. It also happened to be the home of impact in the basement downstairs of holding Hall. So I chose very, very strategically when I came on campus, but I actually spent my experience in East Lansing working full time I had the opportunity I grew up in a an immediate family as you know. And a lot of my dad's contemporaries who ran radio and TV stations, were looking for people to build them, these newfangled web pages, right. And so I had taught myself in high school, very basic HTML and JavaScript, and was fortunate to have this confluence of I had high speed internet where I lived and worked, I was able to do that remotely. So way before this COVID economy when we're all at home, I was doing it remotely. And I grew up in an industry that I loved. But I realized that I wasn't going to be the person to be behind the mic, like my dad used to be when he was growing up in the business and that I could actually forge a new path by really embracing my history and marrying it with this future opportunity. So I started working for what was then am FM Inc, very quickly through FCC D regulation, it became clear channel, which is today known as I Heart Radio, and went from designing one or two station websites to overseeing an entire portfolio by the time I graduated in 2002. And so I had a really incredible foot in the door, to now set myself up for what became web 2.0, which was these more interactive experiences that, you know, certainly the rise of social media transformed all of that. And I was able to take that experience from I heart and transform it to CBS and Westwood One and really gain sales and marketing chops at the national level. Then parlayed that into joining a Detroit based firm that at the time was called e prize, to help transform the world of loyalty programs and engagement promotions. So again, this was around when smartphones were coming online and the idea of having to be stuck behind a laptop or a desktop computer that was being thrown out. And so to be able to have these brand relationships with consumers that were on the go and harness all those tools just fascinated me and really stoked my curiosity. So I built a incredible seven and a half year run at at E prize, which became hello world and now is owned by Dentsu, a Japanese advertising conglomerate.

Unknown Speaker 4:15
And that's where at a price hello world I met Ted Murphy from izea. And Ted actually was a partner of ours. He was talking about this very early stuff social media endorsements so there wasn't a name for it. Yeah, it wasn't called influencer marketing back then. And, and we became fast friends and I was in Central Florida where Isaiah is based quite a bit for work. We had business at a prize at Darden restaurants, a conglomerate that owns things from Olive Garden to capitol grill, we worked with Universal Orlando Resort and so Ted Nye would grab breakfasts or beers whenever we can fit it in in between my client obligations. He would tell me these stories that he had in his head, he had had run very successful ad businesses in the southeast. And he had this idea that at the time, there was this newfangled social network called my space. And I'll never forget the breakfast Ray said to me, I believe there's going to be a day, Ryan, when advertisers will pay people to create content on their MySpace walls, and have them tell their own individual story, it won't be a banner ad, it won't be the same story on everyone's wall. It'll be, you know, this really authentic, transformative thing. And that really stuck with me. And so long before I ever was an employee of the firm, my wife and I actually cut checks, we became investors in Isaiah. And one day, in the spring of 2011, Ted called me up. And he said, Hey, I'm gonna buy I'm gonna buy you a flight to come down to Orlando this weekend. What are you doing? I guess I'm coming to Orlando is like we, we he's like we've talked about working together more closely, like this, this is that we have, we have to do this, like Hear me out. So I got on this flight, and I pinned my stomach, I wasn't looking for a new job. I was happy as a clam doing what I was doing. And I really thought that I was going to be taking a flight to tell one of my close friends know a bunch of times over and over again, uncomfortably. But Ted had set us up at the at the JW Marriott grand lakes in Orlando, which has a very unique feature in that his backyard has this massive, elaborate lazy river, you know, waterfalls, and big lush palm trees. And so I get to the hotel, and I'm thinking that we're going to have a meeting in a meeting room or in the lobby or somewhere his talk is like, hey, throw a suit. Let's just sit in the lazy river. And let's just talk. So the real story is how I came to be at Isaiah, is we said that that lazy river for darn near the entire day, Ross and now you know me, my skintone is not compatible with the Central Florida suns. He always imagined the layers of SPF I had on to be able to endure that the size of floppy hat that was required to make that happen. But the bottom line was we sat in this lazy river. And we talked about what today in 2021, we would call the crater economy. We talked about this mass opportunity for democratization of storytelling of advertising messaging, how the the the proliferation of social networks would change all of this, how the inefficiency of traditional advertising and marketing can play a role into the benefit of this company. And so, you know, I I got out of the ways you're ever I went back up to my hotel room, I called my wife and I said, I know that I told you that I was coming down here to say no a bunch of times, but I think I'm saying yes. And so in the fall of 2011, I was named the firm's first ever chief marketing officer. And that brought me to where I am today. And it's been an amazing nine year run, catching up with MSU alumnus and Isaiah worldwide President

Russ White 8:20
and Chief Operating Officer Ryan SRAM, in this Spartan profile on MSU. Today, a lot more on Ryan's company IZ eia.com iz.com. I'm going to read this right off the website, Ryan that Isaiah created the modern influencer marketing industry in 2006, when they launched the first technology platform to pay bloggers to create content for brands. Since then, they've grown from a guy with an idea to a NASDAQ traded company serving the world's top marketers and creators. So first, sort of define influencer marketing and kind of give us the, you know, the history, the origin, the evolution of this field. Sure, I

Unknown Speaker 9:03
think if you really go way far back, the origins that I use, I draw from my background growing up in broadcasting, the most valuable inventory is when a personality opens, and like in a stop set, you know, breaks the norm from the recorded commercials, and talks to you about a local dealership or their favorite restaurant or something they've seen or done with their family. That is a paid endorsement deal. And in radio, the combination of that storytelling and the theater of the mind makes it the most single valuable inventory in the entire arsenal of what those stations sell to advertisers. So if you think about modern influencer marketing, it's the same idea. But instead of having one morning show personality doing it, it can be hundreds or 1000s of different individuals from all walks of life, all shapes And sizes of follower base across all multitudes of social platforms. But the basics are the same. They're being compensated in cash product or both by brands to create that content, that content can be written word on a blog, it can be video on YouTube or Twitch, it can be an Instagram story, it can be all those things. But the idea is, what's happening from an outcomes perspective, is incredible amounts of reach, and engagement and authenticity that transforms what would normally be a one to many marketing message that a brand would traditionally do to a many to many perspective in modern influencer

Russ White 10:46
marketing. Wow. So now specifically, then what does izea do in this influencer marketing world.

Unknown Speaker 10:51
So fundamentally, what we are is a marketing technology company. And we provide software and professional services that enable those brands to collaborate with influencers. So on the services side, we may go to a fortune 100 brand, like Warner media, and help them hire or I should say, identify which types of influencers might be a great fit, define the investment strategy, ultimately hire those influencers, and execute programs for, say, the launch of HBO max. And we didn't do that at incredible scale. And that is actually fueled by software we built originally for ourselves. So we are not a traditional agency model at izea. It is it is flat rate is not billed hourly, so you know what you're doing up front, it is delivered by our incredible professional services team. But at the end of the day, the onus is on us to be able to be an efficient organization to execute those programs within budget. So along the way, we realized that automating portions of that workflow would be central to be able to accomplish that mission. So we built that software for ourselves. And about six or seven years ago, we started realizing, gosh, for customers of ours, that do so much influencer marketing, they may actually want to form their own in house team to do it. And instead of losing that customer, what if we gave them the keys to the kingdom? What if we sold them the very software that we were using, along with all of their historical data from all the past campaigns, and said, Here you go, Mr. or Mrs. brand, go ahead and use our software. And so we now do that as an entire business. So whether brands or large, PR agencies like Edelman want to do that for themselves, they can with our software, we call that Isaiah x unity suite, or if they don't want to, they can work with our professional services group who use that very same software to achieve the same.

Russ White 12:59
So Ryan, what are this is a fast changing world, I'm sure what are kind of some trends now. And what are you looking at, as they say Wayne Gretzky wanted to look for the puck was going out where it is what's ahead for Isaiah,

Unknown Speaker 13:11
I think what's ahead for us is really two or three key things, top of mind. The first, which is so special, is the continued advancement of diversity and inclusion in the work that we're doing. And it's not only people of color, it's really embracing the entire spectrum of diversity and bringing more equality to the influencer marketing space because very fairly, the industry, it's a bad rap for frankly, young white girls making duck faces on Instagram is kind of what people think influencer marketing is. But the very best influencer marketing is a broad range of voices and perspectives across a complex matrix of societal norms and norms. And we've seen over the last several years, not only the recognition from our Brand Partners, this was so critical, but we also see it where the rubber hits the road, which is the average cost per post, meaning what someone's being paid for that sponsored endorsement, increasing in key sectors, you know, people of color, in fact, African American females, earned more than all other race types here in 2021, which is the first time it's ever happened before on average. So I like to believe that we're starting to see the evidence well, that while we have a long ways to go, the industry is trying to really understand what is inclusivity look like and what is how do you make that part of the fiber of what makes this industry great?

Russ White 14:53
And Ryan, I'd love to hear what you think about even just the remote workplace of the future as we talk off the air the other day, you said Went from two to three airplane flights a week to nothing for almost a year. Now, how do you see the whole remote workplace and, and just work in general looking down, I

Unknown Speaker 15:10
know that's a huge, just harsh, you know, the Alaskan workplace is just it's been incredible we had at 1.7 physical office locations throughout North America, Russ and Isaiah. And to that point, it caused me to be on an airplane a lot to either visit our team members in those offices, or the clients that we placed, you know, those offices nearby. And you know, when March 12 happened, meaning that when I called the Great grounding for me, I stepped off of a flight from Orlando back to Detroit. And, you know, the governor of the state of Michigan closed schools The next day, and, and the world as we know it, you know, went into this COVID era,

Unknown Speaker 15:54
we didn't really know what was going to happen. We knew that as a company, we had always been cloud first in terms of our infrastructure, we had joked that our headquarters facility could unfortunately burn to the ground, and Isaiah would still be able to function because there was no physical infrastructure, no servers, no anything, it would just be the stuff out in the cloud. So the technology switch that some companies struggle with early on. Thankfully, we never had, in fact, the biggest struggle we had was trying to figure out how do we get furniture from our office, to the homes of our staff safely if they wanted a more comfortable chair or a standing desk to be able to do this duration. But what we found along the way, is that there's really three camps, three psyches of people, that as they look at the world ahead, and we hope that immunizations continue to ramp up, what will happen the other side of all this, it's taught us overall that you can have an incredibly productive workforce, but that the quality and frequency of communication at all levels, the company has never been more important. And making sure they don't get caught in, you know, becoming a prisoner to the tools as opposed to using the tools as a force multiplier is, is part and parcel to that, you know, we run slack at Isaiah, and it can be a gift. But it also can be something that is tremendously overwhelming when not harnessed the right way. And so as an executive leader, one of our big lessons was helping people understand what was going on making sure that it was inside the boundaries of the workday, because you know, there's there's so much sensitivity and reasonably so that when you invite an employer into your home, and that is your workspace, there can be a very much an invasion of the balance between what your work life is and your non work life is. And I think you kind of marry that with the fact that in a time of a pandemic, people may not be able to go anywhere. So then they sort of feel like, well, I'm here, I might as well keep working. Well, the next thing, you know, that person's burnt out, and also, you know, you know, feels very much of the company took advantage of their generosity. So we've tried to put all those things in balance. And, you know, as much the future, we think it's gonna really land in three camps. And this is what we've been calling the elastic workplace that we're going to be virtual first, but not virtual only because camp number one are people who are itching inclined to get back to the normality of office life, and maybe people who maybe live by themselves or relocated for a job at izea into a market and they're their friends, frankly, at work became part of their family, because that's who was local to them. And, you know, they really want that structure back in their lives once it's safe to do so. The second camp are people who say, you know what an office sounds great, you know, I may, I may live in a high rise in Toronto and not have the office space that I want to have, or both my spouse and I are at home, and we have kids and it just noisy, I can't concentrate. But I don't want to be in office five days a week, I want to be there when I want to be there. And so being able to accommodate that, from a facilities perspective is something we've spent a lot of time thinking about what that looks and feels like. And then a third camp are people who really have tasted the benefit of being virtual only right now. And that's the way that they actually prefer live in their life. And it's not just you know, what you assume, you know, some people think, Oh, it's the folks who are anti social, they don't want to be around people. It's it's not that at all. It's sometimes they want to be closer to their family. And they may have been, they've been raised in Kansas, not Florida, or California or New York, and they can still be incredibly valuable contributors. But the what the company owes them is not just the tools and the infrastructure to allow that collapse. to happen. But I think the bigger cultural norm of saying, we were bringing people together, we're bringing them together physically and virtually as the table states to operate in your business, not the ideal vision of what it could be.

Russ White 20:15
Well, it'll be very interesting to watch how this all unfolds over the coming years catching up with MSU alumnus and Isaiah, worldwide President and Chief Operating Officer Ryan Schramm, in this Spartan profile on MSU. Today, a lot more on Ryan's company IZ eia.com iz.com. I know we could have a conference on this, but obviously a lot of what you do the social media involved, sometimes I think we'd be better off if it had never been invented. It can be so wonderful, and such a cesspool at the same time. But just, again, social media, where do you see it going? And can it get a little better?

Unknown Speaker 20:54
It can. And, you know, I think that the the challenge we're having right now, post election, you know, sort of in this COVID economy, is the fact that we have a lot of people who have a lot of time on their hands, and are very apt to you know, be behind those keyboards or thumb through on their phone and say things or do things that they wouldn't ordinarily either have the time to do the thought to do or both. And so the platforms are really trying to figure out what is their role in all of this without limiting free speech, but also at the same time not being a vector for promoting hate. And the good news is, we're talking about some of the most valuable well resourced organizations on the face of this earth, with some of the smartest people in our space. And I think that there will be a path forward to doing that, will it make everyone happy? Of course not. But not everyone's happy now. So that is going to be something that I think here in 2021 and beyond, is going to be top of mind on that platform side. Secondarily, I think that when you think about from the consumer standpoint, what does this all mean? The industry right now is very, very fragmented, right? You have all these platforms. In fact, some would argue maybe too many platforms, depending on your worldview. And I don't think the answer to that is, you know, having a company like Facebook get even bigger. And I think that the federal governments of multiple nations would agree with that in terms of their way of looking at them today from an antitrust perspective, perhaps. But I do think there's going to also be a great recognition of, you know, which of these platforms can really survive and operate profitably as as a company, versus those that are more of a flash in the pan, so that it'll be really interesting to see how that plays out in the years ahead. And then I think, lastly, what the last 12 months or so have taught us as a society of human beings on this planet, is that, gosh, there is some good in all of this, there's the connective fiber that we've had, while being so lonely, and being by ourselves at home, that, at least for myself, has been very good to my mental health, to be able to still talk to people and interact with them, like you and I are doing you know, over zoom right now, in recording this podcast, I wouldn't have the chance to be able to see your talk to you in real time, if it weren't for these types of tools. And for that, I'm grateful I think about even Christmas Day in our family. I ended up buying Facebook portal TV devices for members of our family that couldn't safely travel to Michigan, for the holidays. And for those that aren't familiar with it, it's a little tiny webcam that sits on top of your TV in your family room or living room. And it allows for multi party video chat, like you'd have with zoom on the enterprise end. But for everyday people on the on the consumer end. And it was wonderful to see my nephews in Nevada in real time and have a little AI camera following them around as they were opening their gifts and not having the weird interactions have a bad Skype experience for five or 10 years ago, it made it the next best thing. It wasn't the same, but it was the next best thing to being there. And I thought to myself after that day of like, How lucky are we to while we're not while we're dealing with a global pandemic, to be able to at least have these tools where people like my in laws who are missing, their daughters can still, you know, be together in a way that is better than it would have been a few years ago.

Russ White 24:38
What's your advice for these youngsters sitting in the road college like you did a few years ago who think they want to do some of this influencer marketing stuff or just just in general the workplace we're entering what what's your advice to the Spartans coming out these days that

Unknown Speaker 24:52
that what we've seen from a new entrant to the workplace perspective in recent years is A real cognisance from folks earlier in their in their career path that they need to be humble but hungry. And those that really succeed the best, don't form a sense of entitlement. They realize that there's tremendous equity and being able to be self starters, and to have the grit of getting through things that it's okay not to know early on in a career. And I think that Spartans are really well equipped for this, you know, when I when I, when I see students around East Lansing, maybe it's because we're from the upper Midwest, maybe it's just because of the type of people our school draws, it tends to be people who are a little bit more entrepreneurial in nature, a little bit more focused on the substance versus the sizzle. And ultimately, an industry like mine, where there's, there's plenty of frothiness. And plenty of shiny coins going on. At the end of the day, that the types of young professionals that we're looking for, are those who can really separate the wheat from the chaff and say, You have great our business as elevated by some of those frothiness types of things. But it doesn't change the fact that we need individuals who can take a look at what we're doing, figure out how to continue to transform it and continuously improve upon it, and can do so knowing that they're working in a space that never has had a playbook. So it's not that we don't want to give you one, it's that if we were going to we'd have to rewrite it every day anyways. So being able to live in that uncertainty is critically important. I also think that from a pure educational perspective, specifically specific to advertising and marketing, it's important to realize how these two, you know, historically, very separate things have collided together at lightspeed over the last decade or so. And the world works in a very integrated capacity right now, there is not somebody is just this nice, clean silo of, Oh, I'm going to walk into, you know, this departments office anymore, you you walk into some of the largest companies that do consumer marketing, like PNG. And all you're hearing from those chief marketing officers is that they want integrated marketing talent that understands what the media world, it's like what the creative world looks like, how do you measure all of it from a business intelligence perspective? And it requires a worldview where you have to become not a generalist, but actually someone who understands how matrix those things are, and why they matter together in total,

Russ White 27:47
will now take me back to when you were coming out of high school, why was MSU then the place for you? And how did it help prepare you for where you are, I

Unknown Speaker 27:55
grew up in a Spartan family, not only my parents, but coming from a large family. Many of my aunts and uncles were Spartans, and even some of my great aunts and uncles dating back to the 20s. And 30s spent time in East Lansing. So I would say that, first and foremost, it felt like home to me. I never had any pressure from my parents to end up at Michigan State. But you know, certainly being there for football and basketball games and other alumni functions, gave it a sense of home for me. I think it also became very apparent as I was starting to compare it to other schools when it came time that it had a business program that was rising in the ranks nationally, and was really well acclaimed in the types of areas that I was starting to think about as a potential young professional. And, you know, that was married with the fact that the Communication Arts and Sciences school is one of the best in the entire country on top of it. So when I was thinking about gosh, it could there be a career that marries some of those communication things that I'm so passionate about and that I was raised in with more foundational business in a school that is on the rise, it became very clear to me that I actually was staring down the barrel of the best option being the one that also happened to feel the most like home.

Russ White 29:23
While I've been talking with MSU brode College of Business alumnus Brian SRAM, and recently appointed president and chief operating officer of izea worldwide Inc. IZ ea.com. Ryan, so kind of leave us with a couple of takeaways on this whole influencer marketing thing and where it's all headed.

Unknown Speaker 29:44
I think we're headed that a couple of different directions. Ross, I think that the globalization continues to be a major trend, as you have fortune 1000 business leaders who want to be able to take their campaigns out of whack. conception of the world and bring them to others, there is going to continue to need to be a real focus on how does that storytelling evolve on a country to country basis. And working together with with, you know, those different brand leaders in different corners of the world is something that we think is going to be a real trend and that in the years ahead, secondarily, there's also this idea of how do you continue to get as much utility and measurement out of influencer marketing as best possible we feel like the reusability of what we're doing can be tremendously powerful, even beyond the ways that we've conventionally measured it. So all influencer marketing can provoke engagement and certainly impression based media outcomes. We're also seeing more modern marketers start to utilize it for things that may not necessarily have been conventional in the past. So taking really great Instagram video and repurpose it because you have the rights to it for pre roll it across digital outlets or digital platforms by taking full photo assets from a campaign maybe on a blog and repurpose in them to retail activations. There's a just a plethora of ways to get more and more utility out of those investments that we think will continue to push the industry forward and, and really continue to elevate the promise of what influencer marketing can be. Well, Ryan, congratulations

Russ White 31:41
on all your success. Thanks for sharing some of your insights with me today. It's just been great catching up.

Unknown Speaker 31:47
Thanks for having me, Ross. I'm so glad to have been here.

Russ White 31:49
That's Ryan SRAM. I'm Russ white and this is MSU today

Transcribed by https://otter.ai