The Watson Weekend hosts Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky discuss recent retail headlines, including Amazon's $2.5 billion lawsuit over alleged Prime subscription deception, Walmart's significant referral traffic from ChatGPT, Sephora's new affiliate program aimed at beauty creators, and Meta's talks with Google to enhance ad targeting using AI. 

They then interview Kristen Wiley, founder and CEO of Statusphere, a platform that enables brands to generate thousands of influencer posts efficiently by focusing on micro-influencers. Kristen shares her background as a creator and marketer, the slow and strategic growth of Statusphere, and the importance of providing a strong creator experience with human support alongside AI tools. 

She highlights how Statusphere helps brands achieve brand-safe content at scale, integrates influencer marketing across various campaign types, and addresses challenges like attribution and product-market fit. 

Kristen also discusses the evolving role of AI in marketing, the value of authentic human-generated content, and the potential for influencer data to influence AI models. The episode highlights the increasing importance of creator-driven marketing and the necessity for brands to cultivate communities and employ multi-channel strategies.

Welcome to The Watson Weekend - 00:00

Headline Hangover 02:56

Introducing Kristen Wiley 15:47

The importance of solving the creator experience 23:40

Human touch in a post-AI world 25:33

Using micro-influencers vs celebrities 28:25

Generating ROI 30:52

Attribution and its influencer challenge 35:00

Nightmare situations 38:15

Product Market fit to validate the need for 42:20 

Statusphere community and content 43:40

#watsonweekend #creators #microinfluencer #community

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