The Future of Social Video with Brendan Gahan of Mekanism

Last updated on June 15th, 2024

Brendan Gahan is the Chief Social Officer at Mekanism and Epic Signal. Brendan gives us his thoughts about the future of social video for brands.

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PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios

TRANSCRIPT
Brendan Gahan:
TikTok really opened the floodgates. It’s the only platform in recent years that was sort of not immediately squashed or acquired or replicated by one of the bigger players. And the reason that didn’t happen was because it came via ByteDance, which is its own massive conglomerate. And so I think they kind of were able to break through in a way that a lot of other platforms previously hadn’t been able to. It opened up everyone’s eyes to the fact that there’s more social opportunity than just sort of the Facebook, YouTube duopoly.

Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidAction.tv, where we help you up your game on YouTube for business, and transform your viewers into loyal customers, and VidTarget.io, where we help you get a higher return on your YouTube ad spend with targeted YouTube placement lists. Along with my cohost, it’s Gwen Miller. Hello Gwen.

Gwen Miller:
Hey Dane. It is always a good day to chat video marketing.

Dane Golden:
Absolutely. And Gwen, what do you do?

Gwen Miller:
I work with creative and brands to use data to crack increasingly better and better videos for their unique, one of a kind, audiences. We know so much more Dane right now than ever before about our audiences. Let’s use it to make better content for them.

Dane Golden:
Would you agree Gwen, that you are a data geek, and that I am your second favorite data geek person?

Gwen Miller:
Sure.

Dane Golden:
Is that asking too much?

Gwen Miller:
Are we guessing on who my favorite is or are you just making a play for a reasonable second?

Dane Golden:
You would be the favorite. You would be the favorite. You would be the favorite.

Gwen Miller:
I am very … I do like talking data with myself, so that could be a true statement. But yes, you’re my second favorite person to nerd out about data with.

Dane Golden:
Now, I appreciate that. Now, we’re not necessarily always talking about data, but we do talk about it a lot. Today, we have a very interesting topic, and a very interesting guest. I just want to tell you that you, the listener, you can look in the description and follow along on your podcast app with a transcript. You can read along. You can see links to our guests. Our special guest today is no other than Brendan Gahan, chief social officer at Mekanism and Epic Signal. Welcome Brendan.

Brendan Gahan:
Hey, thanks for having me. Pumped to be here.

Dane Golden:
I’m excited. Gwen’s excited. Now, I just want to make sure I am pronouncing your name right, Gahan, sort of like man, right?

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, yeah. You got it right. You got it right.

Dane Golden:
I’ve been working on this. Okay, now Brendan, you guys have worked on … now I think that this is some list of some of the people you’ve worked with, brands and sub-brands underneath the Starbucks, Amazon, Alaska Airlines, Pepsi, Unilever, Miller Coors, Coca-Cola, Georgia Pacific, Charles Schwab, Papa Murphy’s and more. And while we had you on a couple of years ago about social video is the new landing page, and I want people to look at that, but lately you’ve been talking in your interviews, your blog, your newsletter, about trends in short video, live streaming, shopping and dark social. So, we thought that would be good to talk about today. Now, that was a whole bunch of stuff. Did I get any of it right?

Brendan Gahan:
I think you nailed it. I think you got it all right.

Dane Golden:
Okay, now you’ve always blogged about video marketing and sort of high-level trends and nitty-gritty as well, especially with influencer marketing, but you’ve never really focused, as far as I know, on being the personality of your own channel, your own, but now that’s changed after years of working with creators. You’re doing your own TikTok. What the heck’s going on here? I mean, you’re an executive now, who’s doing TikTok. What did you find out that you didn’t expect about this?

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, it’s been interesting. I think with COVID and everything, and actually pre-COVID, I really made sort of a promise to myself to kind of get over sharing my thoughts in public. I have always blogged, but I have so much content that I’ve never published, and so I really wanted to push myself to get over that. With TikTok, I’d seen through the campaigns we’d done sort of the amount of organic reach that was possible, and that really blew me away. And so finally, I sort of was just like, “Well, I should kind of just pull the trigger and kind of get over myself and give it a whirl.” You know, in terms of what I’ve learned and experienced, I think the biggest thing is just sort of like …. well, I mean there’s sort of like the emotional side and it’s very difficult, at least it was for me, to sort of put yourself out there and take criticism from people and when I first got started that was analyzing all the comments and really had imposter syndrome. I mean, I still very much do, but I power through it.

Brendan Gahan:
But then the other piece that I think I’ve taken away from it all is sort of the formula. I think I’ve really zeroed in on being able to apply a lot of the things I knew, but in a really practical way. And there’s sort of like a formula to content and to growing a community, and you’re constantly iterating on it, but it’s really been exciting to sort of evolve that formula for myself and like really zero in on these are the insights that work for me and these are the insights that kind of trigger my audience and get them engaged and stuff.

Gwen Miller:
Yeah. So, in interviews lately, and on your blog, you’ve been talking a lot about TikTok of course, and then lesser known apps like Triller, Clash and [Rivel 00:06:45]. Why do you think there is so much growth in short-form video right now? And how is that driving change across social video and video marketing in general?

Brendan Gahan:
For sure. You know, I think the why is sort of like it’s the only … TikTok really opened the floodgates. It’s the only platform in recent years that was sort of not immediately squashed or acquired or replicated by one of the bigger players. And the reason that didn’t happen is because it came via ByteDance, which is its own massive conglomerate. And so I think they kind of were able to break through in a way that a lot of other platforms previously hadn’t been able to, and they opened up everyone’s eyes, not to just the fact that there’s different formats, but also that there’s more to … there’s more social opportunity than just sort of the Facebook, YouTube duopoly.

Dane Golden:
Right, right. And so you also talk about sometimes on your blog about the evolution of social video in comparison with media over the past century, things that we sort of grew up thinking about. And I think about these two sort of like when radio started. It did all sorts of content and then after TV came on, radio switched to become just like music, news and sports. Network TV was once about sitcoms and dramas. Now it does reality television. Are we seeing something similar across social video, where YouTube is this and Instagram is this and TikTok is that, or are they all still trying to be like each other?

Brendan Gahan:
Well, I think they are trying to be like each other. If you look at the features, the amount of features that are being adopted and sort of replicated and ripped off across the platforms. It’s very much the big players are all copying each other. That said, I still think there’s a ton of opportunity within each of these, each time these platforms roll out. Alex Zhu, the founder of Musical.ly, which sold to TikTok, had the analogy that the early settlers of a country are kind of like the early adopters of a platform. They take the lion’s share of the spoils because there’s little competition. And older countries, or platforms, have sort of that established class, an upward mobility, or building an audience becomes increasingly difficult as time goes on. So as a result, each new generation or each new platform provides an opportunity for a new generation of creators.
And so while the content at times might be similar, it really I think breathes new life into the creative community and provides a lot of opportunity for new players.

Gwen Miller:
Okay, so not that we’ve been stalking you, but we’ve been stalking you. You’ve also mentioned in interviews recently that one off influencer activations are increasingly nowhere near as valuable as longterm partnerships with influencers can be and by extension with their community. Why is that?

Brendan Gahan:
For sure. Yeah, this is like one of those things that just frustrates me so much. It’s like I think the mindset of so many of the brands and on the agency side as well, is that influencers are sort of like a distribution or a media outlet. And I think that’s really the wrong way to think about them. And I don’t think it’s beneficial to both the creator or the brand, because ultimately if you do a one-off with a creator, and then you walk away, well what if they do … they need to do another brand deal in three months, six months, a year with a competitor? It then dilutes the credibility of both the brand and the creator. So, I think the part that a lot of people zero in on is “Oh, well a creator bounces around and they’re a sell-out or it’s insincere.” But I also think it’s equally insincere on the part of the brands, because they’re not willing to make that commitment, so why should they expect the same from the creators?

Brendan Gahan:
And I think the future of influencer marketing in a lot of ways borrows from the best practices of the path, like the Nike Jordan model. That’s such a deep, deep partnership and that sort of collaboration and exposure has a lot of value that compounds over time. And if we were to look at Nike and let’s say that they had only sponsored Jordan for one game and then he was left open to work with Adidas on another game and Reebok on another game. We kind of look at that as silly, but for some reason, we don’t look at that as silly with influencer marketing. And I think that makes no sense. So I think really those deep partnerships is the big opportunity, and I think there’s a lot of brands that are starting to get that. You can see Ninja signed a multi-year contract with Adidas, G Fuel co-creates with a ton of big creators for product lines, and Morphy does it with beauty influencers.
So I think that model will emerge, and then I think the other model is sort of the George Foreman model, where brands can … or companies can approach creators to be the face of the brand, while the company kind of handles the back end, like Mr.Beast Burger’s is sort of a good model that sort of … he’s the brand. He’s the media outlet. He’s the distributor. But it’s the Ghost Kitchens that are ultimately sort of supporting the execution of that business. So I think really the Nike and Jordan, and the George Foreman model are sort of the two models that I see as most effective and where more brands should focus their time.

Dane Golden:
Yeah, my parents still have a George Foreman grill, and they use it all these years later. It still works. Now, I don’t know if this is an area of focus for you personally within Mekanism, but there’s been a lot of talk lately about the upcoming privacy setting changes with iOS 14 across the … and increasingly across other browsers and things like that, and it’s making it significantly more easy for consumers to opt out of most tracking by apps and websites. And that will change how ad platforms, like Facebook and Google, work because they’re less able to remark and know the interests of somebody they’re advertising to. Do you think that this tips the scales more to influencer marketing than a more standard, paid media?

Brendan Gahan:
100%. You know, I think it’s the combination of the iOS 14 changes plus, at the same time, coinciding with the development and droll out of features like all the social commerce features and functionality, like Facebook Shop. YouTube is rolling out their in-video shopping. And so I think 100% iOS 14 is going to make paid ads less effective and less targeted, and at the same time, influencers are going to have an easier time selling. So I think those two factors, the coinciding, really creates a huge, huge opportunity for influencers to monetize. And I think brands should really pay attention. It gives the creators, or really anyone in the community, so much more leverage than they previously had, because of sort of the … it reduces the amount of friction. So I think it’s going to be really exciting to see how influencers and their businesses evolve, because they’re going to be even more effective than they already are.

Gwen Miller:
Okay, so TikTok has recommendations for brands that follow something called the Flicker, Flash and Flare model. First of all, I mean that name’s very reminiscent of YouTube’s Hero, Hub, Hygiene model, right?

Brendan Gahan:
100%.

Gwen Miller:
But, what does Flicker, Flash and Flare actually mean?

Brendan Gahan:
100%. I mean, it really is. It’s like the exact same thing. Flicker is sort of akin to Hygiene, or sometimes they use the term help instead of hygiene, and help and hygiene content within the context of YouTube is all about basically capitalizing on people’s searches. So that can be Evergreen stuff, how-to videos are really popular. Or it could be jumping onto trends and that sort of thing. In the context of TikTok, Flicker is sort of analogist to that and it’s that reactive content, participating in trends, leveraging borrowed interests. And then Flash content is sort of akin to Hub content. Hub content being sort of your episodic bland format. You establish a format and you stick to the set schedule, and you’re just swapping out the execution. So, not a brand, but a good example is Dude Perfect. Their format is trick shots. They might have other pieces of content here and there that are not that, but that is their hub content, it’s just the execution that varies.

Brendan Gahan:
So Flicker is sort of reactive participating in trends. Flash is that proactive, planned, episodic format, and then Flare is kind of like the … what Hero is to YouTube, Flare is to TikTok. So, you’re big, large scale campaign initiatives. So it might be a brand with #challenge, or some major influencer activation or a lens and that sort of thing. Essentially, your go big campaign moment, and you probably only have a handful of those a year.

Dane Golden:
Yeah, and by the way, going back, you were one of the people that really publicized and analyzed the concept of the Hero, Hub, Hygiene/Hero, Help, Hygiene, and I seem to recall like maybe seven, eight years ago that I wrote a big white paper, and with your permission included some of the stuff that you did from your own studies. So, if anyone wants to look that up, that still holds up as an interesting approach to YouTube for brands, from my perspective even though it’s a bit dated. But, it still holds up in many ways, in my opinion. So, with short form video like TikTok, YouTube Shorts and everything’s a short nowadays, depending on the platform. The viewing experience, because it’s so short, the viewing experience starts to really be driven not so much by who you’re following, as what the algorithm thinks you want and predicts you want. Now, does that change any way sort of the power balance between a platform, a business or a brand, and a creator? Does it just make all the trends happen so much faster? How do you navigate, as a business wanting to promote within, the algorithm dominant universe?

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s drastically changing things. That shift away from the feed of who you follow to the For You page, it’s subtle, but the impact is dramatic. And I think the great thing about it is, it places a greater emphasis on individual pieces of content, versus just like a legacy following. So, the power balance, I think you could make a lot of different arguments for it being for creators or not for creators, but ultimately I think it’s like if you’re creating great content relevant to that moment, what’s beautiful is you’ve actually got a shot at being seen and heard, whereas if you don’t have a following on really any other platform, at least to kind of get the ball rolling, it’s really hard to get noticed. And so we talk a lot about social media sort of democratizing things, and I think TikTok has done a really amazing job democratizing content.

Brendan Gahan:
I think a great example of it is, is if you sort of look at the organic reach of content on TikTok versus an Instagram or Facebook, some data I saw from TikTok recently showed that organic reach for brands on TikTok was 118%. Now, on Facebook or Instagram, it’s in the low single digits. So, it’s really dramatic, and I think the reason for that is the focus on the FYT, and so I think it’s really exciting. I think it really places an emphasis on individual assets. Overall though, I think who benefits probably the most is the platform, because it allows them to sort of put the thumbs on the scales of whatever content they really, really want, and are less reliant on sort of old feeds and followers that maybe your tastes have changed, or you feel like you should follow someone, but you don’t really like their content. I think the platform gets to kind of cut through all that BS.

Gwen Miller:
Yeah. Have you heard of the Netflix effect, where if you fill up your Netflix queue with a bunch of things you think you should watch, rather than what you’ll actually want to watch in the moment, I do feel like my YouTube feed and my Instagram feed turn into that at times.

Brendan Gahan:
I like that. I haven’t heard that before.

Dane Golden:
Who put this movie in here? No, I don’t want to watch that.

Gwen Miller:
Yes, in one week and one day exactly, I want to watch High Cinema. Today, I do not. And every day is today. So-

Brendan Gahan:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Gwen Miller:
Facebook and Instagram, another kind of key difference between how they’ve typically done things versus how TikTok is doing things now, is that audio muted by default, or is your audio automatically on, which you can see why Facebook thought that was … because, a lot of people didn’t have their earbuds in, and they’re out in public. They just don’t want things playing. But, I think TikTok has really upended that idea on social platforms, where no, it’s just audio on all the time. How do you think that changes the content that worked well on say TikTok, rather than what worked well on an Instagram or a Facebook?

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, for sure. I think this is another thing that seems really subtle on the surface, but it has a really dramatic impact because TikTok, for the most part, the assumption is you’ve got your headphones on. I think in a lot of ways, it’s the first mobile platform built with the Air Pods in mind. And as a result, you’ve almost got a whole other sort of layer of story telling and navigation that’s emerged. On TikTok, trends occur with audio just as much as hashtags, probably even more. And it’s a whole other way to sort of navigate and identify creators, build upon stories and memes. So I think it’s given the platform just so much more depth in a lot of ways.

Dane Golden:
And you also have been talking a lot about live streaming lately. Now, is the growth in live streaming all on mobile, as far as what you’re talking about? And also, I noticed you did a post about live streaming. You actually had an example of the Amazon live streaming, and that’s my friend Lon Seidman, who you put in your blog post. It was just hilarious to see him there.

Brendan Gahan:
That’s hilarious.

Dane Golden:
Yeah, he’s very much partnering up with Amazon on his tech reviews. So, how is live streaming changing shopping now? And Gwen, Gwen’s talked about this a lot too, but from your perspective, how is it changing shopping, and how will that evolve?

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, for sure. I think it’s changing pretty quickly. I think it’s going to accelerate a lot more this year. We reference sort of these social commerce tools that have been rolled out. They’ve been rolled out, and are rolling out, in live as well as just within individual posts. And then we can kind of look at what’s going on in China, where this is just massive. This live streaming shoppertainment generated 136 billion in eCommerce revenue in 2020. So, and China is really sort of the tip of the spear in terms of mobile app technology, so I think it’s a good leading indicator of what we’ll see here.
In terms of sort of where the growth is, I don’t know if it’s all going to be mobile. I know that TikTok accounts for something like 3/4 of all live streaming in the US, and while they do-

Dane Golden:
Whoa.

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty dramatic. And live streaming 2X’d in 2020, so I don’t know how other people consume Twitch, so this is more of like an anecdote and not maybe the case for everyone, but I think of Twitch viewing as more of a desktop situation, a little bit … I feel like that’s how you can sort of really experience it and interact with the creators a lot easier. The mobile app is great, but I just feel like it’s a deeper experience on desktop, so I would assume most people are watching in the desktop environment. That said, I think mobile overall is probably going to dominant, just in the same way that YouTube for a long time skewed desktop, but now it’s predominantly mobile. So I think that evolution absolutely will occur.

Gwen Miller:
So with the accedence of Clubhouse in recent months, we are seeing a lot of platforms trying to quickly add Clubhouse-like features. Could you potentially see say live streaming video platforms also using some of these features, except maybe more video oriented?

Brendan Gahan:
So, most of the time my gut reaction would be like … because, I think the platforms love copying from each other, because it’s like they’re at such scale it’s almost like they just have to have every feature to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. That said, I think the beauty of Clubhouse is that it doesn’t have video. It’s like that’s a feature, not a bug. And I think it’s in large part in response to the fact like this moment in time, where we’re on Zoom, whatever your platform of choice is, all day long. And you’re like … I think you’re kind of sick of it. And Clubhouse is a platform you can just pop on, jump on. You don’t need to worry about your background. You didn’t need to get dressed up. You didn’t need to … you can just be sitting, lounging around in your pajamas and jump on. And so I think that that’s sort of the beauty of it. It’s in response. It’s filled a need for something very different. So, I don’t think that a video version of Clubhouse will have the same impact, no.

Dane Golden:
And as we talk about combining a few of these trends, live streaming, different types of engaging, I sort of wanted to ask about the difference between watching and liking and sort of more true participation. How does that change the value for brands, and how do you, as a business, how do you say you did better because we had more of this new type of engagement?

Brendan Gahan:
Well, I mean I think there’s the sort of intuitive answer, which is like more is better. If you’re sparking a lot of UGC or just overall engagement, the assumption, which I think most of the time holds up, not necessarily always, is that those vanity metrics or non-vanity metrics, I think people like to count the number of likes they get and comments. I think that level of engagement is … I don’t know. It can be meaningful, but it is not necessarily. But if you’re willing to take the time to create a piece of content, write an actual thoughtful comment, do a video response, share a piece of content with your friend, to me that’s a great indicator that people are really paying attention. So, there’s that side of things, so I think those brands-

Dane Golden:
Well, let me ask different. Let me ask different. So would you rank, if you’re working with a client, how would you rank the … do you have a formula that’s different for a like, a comment on a live stream, a comment after the fact, or maybe some sort of … with Clubhouse, you might say a verbal engagement of some sort. Do you have any like this is worth a penny, this is worth a dollar?

Brendan Gahan:
We’ve done that exercise in the past. You know, we’ve weighed specific actions and assigned a value to them. I’m actually not that big of a fan of it. I think at that point, it’s probably better to just do a brand lift study or something like that, that’s a little bit more scientific. Because, at the end of the day, it’s like ultimately assigning a … you want to understand the impact that it’s having on the brand, and both the engagement and then the monetary, assigning a monetary value to that engagement, these are both sort of proxies, and one is a proxy of a proxy. So, I think it’s better to just cut through the clutter and invest your time in paying for some sort of a brand lift study, because otherwise you’re sort of pulling a lot of this stuff out of thin air, and it’s going to vary so much based off of like the medium and the target and all this other data, which you may or may not have.
So to make it really meaningful, I think it’s best to do something where it’s like measurable, and you know you’re being statistically significant and all this stuff. So that’s sort of where my head goes anyways.

Gwen Miller:
There’s been a lot of changes in social video consumption, caused a lot by the last year of the pandemic. But after the pandemic, what happens? Are there any old social media viewing habits that return, or will they … a lot in the same pattern we’re seeing now? Will we see higher consumption or less, or just different?

Brendan Gahan:
I think what’s happened is things … everyone’s talked about sort of 2020 accelerating adoption of a lot of things, and I think that’s very much the case. I think a new baseline with all this has been established. People do want to go back to aspects of their lives, 100%. Like I know I can’t wait to be able to just see people again.

Dane Golden:
Oh yeah, boy.

Brendan Gahan:
And have some variation in my life other than my apartment. That’s going to be amazing. But, I don’t think every big client meeting is going to require me jumping on a plane anymore either. I was probably traveling, I don’t know, definitely I was jumping on a plane several times a month, easy. Sometimes several times a week. And I think now we’ve established that okay not every meeting has to be an in-person meeting, and Zoom or whatever can be just as productive. So, I think it’ll … some of these behaviors will go down a little bit, but no doubt, it’s going to be much, much higher than before. And I think stuff like the adoption of live stream and all these other things that really took off, they’re just going to continue to grow overall.

Dane Golden:
Right, right. And so this is a question. I never really asked you about this previously, and it was a few years ago, but I’d like to ask now. It’s a little bit of a side note from our topic, but you guys took on an initiative a few years back with Mekanism and Epic Signal, and it was called It’s on Us that you guys worked on. What’s it all about, and what did you guys do with that?

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah, for sure. So, It’s On Us was a big pro bono campaign that we started. We started working on it, gosh, I don’t know. I think it was 2014, 2015, while Biden was VP. We kicked it off with the Obama administration, and it was really Biden’s passion project. And the goal of It’s On Us is to stamp out sexual assault on college campuses. So, Mekanism created the It’s On Us brand, concept, logo, architecture. We’ve done, and have continued to sort of maintain it. We initially launched with a PSA that had blew up on YouTube, and continued to build upon it. We did influencer programs. We actually got to bring a bunch of creators to the White House while Obama was still in office, and we got to see Biden speak on a number of different occasions.
And over the years, we’ve driven a lot of people to … gosh, I think it’s over half a million people, to go and take a pledge to help stamp out sexual assault on college campus. In short, the jest of it is if you see something, do something or say something and step in. And I think we’ve gotten over half a million people sign up for that. And so that was really rewarding and it was exciting to go to the White House. I got to meet Biden personally a handful of times, which was amazing. And that actually led us to, because we had a relationship with him, we actually ended up developing the brand identity and logo for his presidential campaign, which was pretty exciting as well.

Dane Golden:
Oh, I didn’t even know that.

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dane Golden:
Oh man. And tell me about the types of influencer projects you did with that, and how a nonprofit might think about something like that if they were getting it rolling today.

Brendan Gahan:
Oh, for sure. In terms of the creators, we did a number of different things. But, I think the thing that I always love, and we got to do here, was really integrate the creators into the broader campaign. So for example, I think it was the second year of doing It’s On Us, we did a TV spot and the first year it was just a bunch of celebrities. I shouldn’t say just, they were huge celebrities, but the second year we were doing another one, and we got to bring creators into it. And so that was really exciting, I think both for them and for us. I think given the fact we’re talking to college kids, who better than creators that they’re paying attention to? Because, celebrities are great, but I think generally they don’t inspire the same level of engagement as celebrities do. So, we integrated a number of influencers into the TV spot with great … and we brought a number of those same creators to the White House.
And several times, whenever we got the opportunity to have an audience with Biden, we’d recruit more creators to come out and meet him, see him talk, learn about It’s On Us, and then we asked them to help spread the message. And it’s great, with something like that, people want to help. It’s a worthwhile cause, but having something as exciting as sitting down with the VP can really open up a lot of doors.

Dane Golden:
Sure.

Brendan Gahan:
And in general, I think the same sort of principles in a pro bono, or sorry, regular campaign, apply in a pro bono campaign. You want people to do more than just kind of read the bullet points of a brief and regurgitate those in a piece of content. You want them to really understand it, have a meaningful connection to it, so they can then translate that into their own words and still communicate it very effectively. And so in typical campaigns, obviously not during COVID times, but typical influencer campaigns, we like to host events, have them get face time with us, get face time with the marketing teams, and really often times spend a couple of days on big ones, really getting to understand the brands and the products and what we’re trying to accomplish.
And with this, we didn’t do this for days on end at a time, but we did it multiple times. We were able to provide access and immerse people into the campaign and what we were trying to accomplish by hearing from Biden himself and then kind of doing open Q&As, so people could really learn and build upon it and understand it so they could go out in the world and meaningfully communicate it.

Dane Golden:
Wow. Wow, Brendan Gahan of Mekanism. Tell us how people can find out more about you, follow your TikTok, and I think you have like a personal email list that you would like people to check out.

Brendan Gahan:
Yeah. Thank you. Well, yeah you can find me, whatever your platform of choice is, @BrendanGahan, B-R-E-N-D-A-N-G-R-A-H-A-N. If you’re on TikTok, awesome. If you’re on LinkedIn, awesome. Twitter, awesome. Give me a follow at wherever. I’ll gladly take it. But then yeah, I would love it if people signed up for my email list. I’ve been keeping up a bit of a newsletter that I think is interesting, and talking a lot about influencer marketing trends and marketing psychology and community building, and you can find that at my website. If you just go to brendangahan.com, and I’ll just say it again, because I know my spelling is a little bit weird. B-R-E-N-D-A-N-G-A-H-A-N.

Dane Golden:
That’s great. I do usually spell people’s names out, because it’s audio. I want to make sure that they get it right. And I do subscribe to your email, and it’s great.

Brendan Gahan:
All right, thank you.

Dane Golden:
Yeah. So, thank you Brendan Gahan. My name is Dane Golden, with my co-host Gwen Miller, and we want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today. Right Gwen?

Gwen Miller:
Absolutely Dane. I had a lot of fun today, geeking out with you and Brendan, and I am here for it.

Dane Golden:
I want to invite you to review us on Apple Podcasts. That’s how people find out about this podcast, is if you review it and it tells other people about it. So, click those three dots and review it. Gwen and I do this podcast, and our various other YouTube videos and projects, because we love helping marketers and businesses, just like you, do YouTube and video marketing better. Thanks to our special guest, Brendan Gahan. Thank you Brendan.

Brendan Gahan:
Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was awesome.

Dane Golden:
It was awesome for us. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.