Ever wondered how those beautiful people on Instagram score major deals with Australia's biggest brands? Well, meet Genevieve Day, the woman who transforms fledgling social media accounts into booming businesses.
At just 26 years old, Day runs her own marketing business called Day Management. Unlike traditional marketing firms, Day's job is to promote the public profiles of social influencers online.
Day Management is a bespoke agency, representing influencers from Australia, LA and New York with a combined reach of more than 2 million across a range of social platforms.
Day connects talent with suitable brands to forge partnerships and activate audiences.
Nothing is random in the world of social media marketing, and every pitch decision Day makes must fit into the personal brand of the individual influencer.
"Our talent are exclusively selected and managed with a personal, individualistic approach designed to take our influencers to the next level, moving them from behind the computer to in front of the camera as brand ambassadors, emcees and media personalities," says Day.
"Our talent are not only gifted content creators but also recognised social media authorities, providing a unique offering in a saturated field."
Day's stable of influencers is impressive. On the books are Tully Smyth, Kristy Wu and Jess Alizzi, to name a few. Day's job is to score these influencers incredible gigs that leverage their follower count and public profile.
Notably, Day scored Sam Wines the title of Ambassador of the 2017 Portsea Polo, Tully Smyth became the official face of Bertie Cider and Kristy Wu was named Style Ambassador for the launch of St Collins Lane shopping precinct in Melbourne.
Before embarking on her entrepreneurial journey, Day worked in a luxury PR firm for over five years with large scale hotel and tourism clients in a time before influencers and blogs dominated the media sector.
She noticed influencers were not being paid for their work at brands who wanted to take advantage of their social reach and decided to start Day Management to provide an interface between talent and brands.
We spoke to Day about what it takes to be a social media influencer, some of her biggest milestones and her key tips for starting up a successful business.
What does it take to be a successful influencer these days?
We look for people that have a really engaged audience. There's no magic number of followers, we have people that range from 18k to 350k followers. It's really all about the beautiful content they're creating that is their own and reflects their personal and distinct style, but also their audience, people being interested in what they're saying and people wanting to shop what they're promoting and commenting and liking as well. The two major things we look for are a really engaged audience and beautiful content.
How different is managing influencers to models or actors?
I actually have a whole range of influencers and models and actors but I do the social media in synergy with their acting agents as well. It's really interesting to have a different approach to a traditional blogger or an influencer to someone who wants to be slightly less commercial and do more of a lifestyle approach who's an actor. We do try and have a case by case approach to each talent or influencer because they are different and have a different target market and different demographics as well.
So basically you have to look at them and assess their vibe?
Yeah, it's kind of a nice marriage between the influencers brand and what they stand for and what the actual brand's objective is.
Who are some major influencers you manage?
So we look after Tully Smythe who has 230k followers and a TV background. We also represent Demi Harmon who was on Home & Away and Winners and Losers. We also have some really top tier fashion influencers who've been doing it from the beginning when the term influencer was kind of coined, like Sam Lyons one of Australia's leading male fashion influencers and people like Kristie Wu really stood out in the market and was chosen to be the face of St Collins Lane and got a whole lot of ambassador deals because she's so recognisable from her Instagram.
What's your number one tip to starting up a successful business?
I think definitely doing the hard work beforehand. As much as you prepare you just have to have the confidence to make the leap. Trusting your gut instincts, trusting your research, and then just committing to it and putting the hard work in.
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Business News Australia
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