Understanding what is actually responsible for shaping buying behavior in the modern age is the whole game. Brands search far and wide for the right way to position themselves to come in contact with their desired audience, spend a fortune on different forms of online marketing to “test try” what works, and at the end of the day are still left largely puzzled as to what the recipe needs to be in order to become a winner in the digital marketplace.
Well, one advertising shop- the boutique New York agency T1 Advertising (www.t1advertising.com) led byMillennial Venture Capitalist Thomas Herd believes they have found the solution.
T1 has created a proprietary campaign mapping algorithm – which they call EGF’s (short for Explosive Growth Formulas) – that gives brands command of the digital marketplace for the first time ever and enables them to spread virally at explosive speed.
T1’s EGF’s are designed and applied on a custom, case-by-case basis at the behest of each of its brand partners. After conducting an initial consultation with a new client, T1’s EGF algorithm will plug in the full array of factors associated with a brand’s current market performance and its future objectives, and compute out a well-rounded growth formula consisting of the precise recipe of the digital players (influencers, media channel articles, online syndicate feeds) needed to ignite an explosive buying trend around that that brand and propel them virally across culture. Not just sexy in theory, it also holds water in reality.
T1’s custom EGF’s have ignited exponential sales and brand presence growth for numerous partners. It’s campaigns – the end products of the EGF process – have catapulted young brands such as Valdez Panama Hats to both mainstream prominence and sales success by leveraging the celebrity eminence of stars such as CaraDelevingne. At the same time, such EGF’s have also enabled many of the world’s highest profile brands such as L’Oreal, Primark, French Connection, and LVMH to penetrate untapped markets through carefully devised influencer and media packages that dictate the buying behavior of those new markets.
Since T1’s rapid ascent to the top of the influencer marketing space and break through into the public spotlight, the question that’s been on most people’s minds is just where did this wonder agency come from and where are they taking the influencer marketing space?
The Formation
T1 all started with an epiphany moment. CEO and Founder Thomas Herd, fresh from incubating start ups in the modeling and magazine space – was early to recognize the sweeping paradigm shift that was taking place in consumer buying behavior.
“Everywhere you looked,” Thomas said, “you found traditional forms of media such as print magazines, TV, and radio playing less and less a role in informing culture.
Instead, America – a largely, celebrity obsessed, top down culture – now began to focus its attention and construct its beliefs on the basis of what a select few on the top of society – influencers- were talking about digitally on their own channels. Given their heightened relevance, these influencers now held the power to generate movements behind brands and determine which companies would be the new success stories.”
Being an avid enthusiast in consumer psychology, Thomas’ first important realization was that stacking the influencers who were pivotal for shaping the perception of a specific audience could – out of thin air – make a new, unheard of brand relevant and popular, just as it could also provide an industry leading brand the competitive edge it needed to outperform rivals for fiercely contested market share.
So as the paradigm shift from print to digital took place at the turn of 2014, Thomas devoted his full attention towards T1 and began to develop an extensive network of celebrity and influencer contacts to pair with brands and help them capture new markets. Early T1 campaigns, however, such as Sara Sampaio X Zenith Watches, Bryana Holly X Fancy, and Erin Heatherton X Giorgio Visconti turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg as far as what could be achieved. There was clearly something that had not yet been tapped.
What was missing? What was the ingredient that would differentiate T1 from the many other influencer marketing agencies had popped up, seemingly everywhere.
Thomas thought he had the answer: “Consumers are smart and can see through isolated efforts immediately.” When looking back at T1’s challenge, Thomas determined that the issue with simple influencer endorsements was that they lacked the authenticity and consistency needed to catapult a brand into a position of dominance. He could see that in order to ‘switch’ on such a buying trend, he needed to start a real movement that could be reflected along many important digital channels co-extensively and hence become visible from all sides. Such a unified movement rolled out with the right momentum was the only force capable of breaking through the digital clutter and painting a compelling storyline that hooked real consumer interest.
To build consumer interest to a tipping point, T1 soon began to supplement its influencer endorsements with pivotal media coverage and online syndication of campaign content across trending key feeds. The influencers now were no longer looked at as the ‘be all and end all’ source of a brand’s ROI, but rather as the starting point for a brand’s trend; the media coverage validated the movement taking place, and the online syndication amplified the movement to an exponentially greater audience.
The net result was that T1 began to start real movements behind brands that cornered their target audiences from all sides and ignited explosive buying trends. Recent campaigns, such as T1’s Primark, Me Undies, and French Connection campaigns rely on this integrated approach, producing powerful consumer movements that give these brands a clear command of their target audience.
Through this process, T1’s EGF methodology came to be the first ever algorithm to generate sweeping movements for brands within the digital marketplace.
The Evolution of Influential Movements
Thomas and his staff at T1 Advertising are right now in the process of automating their EGF algorithm into a digital tool that can be instantly accessible to thousands of brands seeking instant sales and brand presence growth in the digital marketplace. They believe the switch to automation would give their EGF’s the scale they need to realize their inherent potential…disrupting the market on a macro level.
Thomas admits this is a lofty ambition. But he believes he’s on cusp of launching a game changing tool that will re-shape the advertising world as we know it.
