How Brands Drive Cultural Impact Through Creators

Justin Levinson (00:00)‍

Hey everybody. Welcome to the agency side podcast. I'm your host Justin Levinson. Today I'm chatting with Glenn Ginsburg, president of QU media. Glenn has had a really interesting journey going from traditional media and entertainment into the creator and influencer marketing world way before people saw where things were heading. We talk about his path from Marvel, Comedy Central, and Disney to helping brands like Paramount Pictures, Hulu, and Warner Brothers connect with audiences through creators and social platforms. We also get into how influencer marketing is changing.

what brands are still getting wrong about this space and where Glenn thinks things are headed next. If you're interested in media, creator marketing, culture, and hearing a really thoughtful perspective on where the industry is going, this conversation is for you.

Hey, Glenn, thanks for being here today. I appreciate it.

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Glenn Ginsburg (00:55)

Hey Justin, glad we could make this happen. I'm excited.

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Justin Levinson (00:58)‍

Yeah, it's always nice to have a conversation with somebody that I have a little bit of a background with before loosens things up a little bit. Um, but like I always do here in the podcast, I want to just get into the origin story. Um, you have a really interesting background, you know, we kind of discussed before going from like traditional media all the way to influencer marketing. How the heck did you get here?

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Glenn Ginsburg (01:18)

Yeah. Well, first Justin, I'm glad that we're reconnecting. It's always been a pleasure working with you. So thank you so much for the support. Yeah. I mean, how far back do want me to go? Well, I mean, kind of no joke, because I was thinking a little bit about this, but I remember as a kid, my father would say, I was living in New York, grew up in New York, and he would say, go to Hollywood and make movies. Right. And reflecting back later, it's like,

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Justin Levinson (01:26)

Back to birth, Glenn.

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Glenn Ginsburg (01:45)

You know, I'm sure it was more of a projection on him of like, you know, things that he wished he did in his life. And it just so happens that, that I ended up eventually moving to Hollywood and, know, through various happenstance and, know, our first work and we work with all the major studios now, you know, but, sure, there's a lot of happenstance that I don't believe was from that, very words, but it did teach me from a very early in life to really go after the things that you enjoy. So other people I hear in their career, they've

done time doing something they don't want to do so they can get to the things they want to do. I've always been very uncompromising when it comes to, and I always feel like it's best to do the things that you're passionate about and then opportunities will come from that. just a little, we're going way back. ⁓ but you know, fast forward, I guess, and a little bit of line with that after I left school, after I left college, I went to, to BU, you know, a lot of people would say, Hey, you got to get on the career track. And instead I.

did a three year international stint, spent six months in Australia and two and a half years in Tokyo. And so it was in Tokyo that I got my first job in media. mean, after realizing I didn't enjoy teaching English. So that was a early life lesson. learn. I always say to folks in their twenties, learn what you don't like as much as you, what you like. So I got my first job in media there selling an English bit in a magazine and newspaper that served the English speaking communities in Tokyo and Yokohama.

And found that I had a, you know, it was new to me. Um, and then when I came back after, after, you know, it was time to come back multiple reasons, but, um, that's how the nefarious it wasn't. Um, but, uh, you know, I, remember then going, all right, well, what do I want to do now? And, uh, you know, the funny thing is you can cut this stuff too, if it's not as invalid, but,

I remember going to the library back when you would go to libraries and there was a huge career book and I literally went through page after page after and just, stopped at one point on executive. And it was like a picture of a guy with not kicked times, a big cell phone in a car. Like, yes, that's what I want to do. And so that's kind of been a little bit of a guiding light for me, but I ended up in my first job back in the U S was working for Marvel comics.

And it kind of dovetailed off of, ⁓ off of, you know, my experience that I had in Japan selling ads. so selling ads in the comics and newspaper in the, comics and magazines for Marvel, which was a dream for me going back to the, what you like. grew up, you know, Spider-Man and just a Marvel universe fan. So did that for a few years, had the opportunity to break into TV. So I was at USA networks and sci-fi channel. Then broke.

off and kind of did something again, back to the non-traditional. Started my first startup at a very interesting company. What I learned from that one was the difference between what's cutting edge and what's bleeding edge. But this was the early days of the internet and me and my partner, we envisioned that someday entertainment was going to be distributed online. so, know, like, like when we're talking like 1990.

It was probably about that time that I started this. And we created an original show ⁓ that we developed. was called World Girl, a female superhero in the future. know, for our time, it was very successful. We ended up licensing it to Showtime networks. MTV networks took on the licensing rights and it was really, it was really coming at our height.

We had billboards for world girl over Times Square and in print. Wow. So, so that definitely gave me the startup and kind of early internet experience. But around 2000, when the crash happened, the kind of the internet bubble burst, you know, and pretty much broke at that point, I ended up getting a job at Comedy Central at Viacom and was there for seven years really during the, you know, it was after the internet burst bubble burst.

which meant now it was time to get down to real work and develop real businesses. And so helped develop that for comedy, then moved to LA and started working for Disney. It was really, so yes, my background has very much been on the traditional media and entertainment side, but even so, even in all of these, it's always about what was kind of the, I was more of the internal entrepreneur, right?

The one trying to figure out where our audience is really doing, you know, what are they, how are they really engaging and how can we build businesses around that? This has really been my strength. then I would say at Disney is when I first started working with those early creators before they were called influences, before that term was coined, those first creators on YouTube that were building audiences and they were, you know, disintermediating the traditional media companies by

forging these direct relationships with their audiences. And it was really then when that light bulb went off and it became more more apparent to me that at some point TV of course was dominant, ⁓ but that at some point that social was going to be the place where audiences aggregate and that this new set of creators were gonna be the conduits to those audiences.

And so that really, that and a few other things. I went to that first VidCon years ago and I, you know, I saw the, you know, the, screaming kids when a creator would walk by and just kind of all just kind of flashed. like, this is, this is, this is what's next. And kind of really set that kind of second part of my, my, my career. And, know, from there, it was really just helping the early MCNs, the big frame and others with their, strategy and their sales strategy.

And then it came to a point where I was pulled into Qmedia. Not doing what we are currently do, which is, you know, supporting brands, you know, on, on campaigns and, and creative marketing and creative lots of different things. But back then I was pulled in because of my, ⁓ my relationships with creators. And the idea was to license their libraries to create TV products. And that was all well and good. And I had a team that was doing that.

kind of ended up starting a little bit of a side business, right? Based on my relationship from Disney, a buddy of mine was running marketing for DreamWorks and called me up and said, hey, Glenn, I'm trying to reach the Minecraft community on YouTube for Kung Fu Panda 3. And I'm like, oh yeah, we can absolutely help with that. Campaign launched, very, very successful.

started picking up a couple more movies and, you know, fast forward to today, you know, at a certain point it was like, that other business that we started with, well, that's not the business anymore, Glenn. Now, you you came in as kind of an SVP, now you're going to run the whole thing. And so I was brought up to president at Q and have been really building our creator marketing practice since. So.

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Justin Levinson (09:25)

Yeah, no, that's very cool. I sort of have a similar, my parents always kind of taught me like don't have a backup plan. You know what I mean? Like, because it means you don't believe in your original plan if you have the backup plan. So I always sort of grew up with a similar mentality. Yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting, like, like how you just, how you got there. Maybe you could tell our viewers, I know you kind of.

Show us a little bit about QU, but maybe just for folks who might not know, can you tell us just a little bit about what you guys are doing over there? Thanks for tuning in folks. This episode is brought to you by Coming Up Creative, a relationship first boutique creative recruitment agency. We disrupt the creative ecosystem by running sophisticated multi-channel campaigns with custom video and voice outreach that actually gets responses. We actively market the agencies and brands we represent to help them stand out.

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Glenn Ginsburg (10:32)‍

Yeah,

sure. I mean, think the easiest way to describe is we're an influencer marketing agency. I don't want to minimize it we do a lot more than that. You know, we help brands with creators, creative strategy to really make a cultural impact on social platforms for a variety of their initiatives. You know, I just say from the onset,

Especially with my media background, it's really always been about trying to build the best mousetrap, right? What is the best way to leverage creators and social platforms to create the most impact campaigns and efforts to reach those audiences in impactful ways? ⁓

We work with some leading brands. You know, I mentioned already, we work with, most of the major theatrical studios, but our business has really expanded throughout all of entertainment from streaming to broadcast to, to, to, and still heavily doing features. We do that domestically. We do it for our partners on a global basis, but we've expanded out heavily into gaming, which is also a great category as well as beauty, CPG, automotive.

So while we're heavily wedded in entertainment, the mindset has always been Q can help brands reach and deliver in the most effective way. Any brand that needs to reach an existing community on a social platform. So that's been our mindset. So it's really great to see that our business is expanding into lots of different key categories.

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Justin Levinson (12:15)‍

How do you do it? How do you, how do you do this whole campaign and connect all these people and make something that resonates with culture and is successful? What the whole campaign sort of looks like, like in my imagination, I see like either you've reached out to a brand or a brand reaches out to you. And it's like, we want to, we want to, ⁓ like you had mentioned about the Kung Fu Panda thing, like you're, you're trying to like, you know, connect to an audience. And I imagine that you were like, okay.

And we're going to go, you go to a creator and you're like trying to, like, just curious of like what it sort of looks like, you know, in like, if I'm looking at a funnel and how the client goes from, you know, their idea to working with you to whenever the, you know, like, like the analytics and how it looks at the end, I guess, and, and, and what measures success is sort of what I'm curious about.

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Glenn Ginsburg (13:08)

Yeah. So I guess, I guess I'll answer this way is that, you know, first of all, ⁓ you know, Q has built, you know, ⁓ our expertise really around four areas that are designed to basically be able to handle everything in as part of a campaign. Right. So very strong strategy team that is working with the brand from the beginning.

understanding what their KPIs and deliverables are and translating that into a strategy to reach those audiences with the impact and effect that they're looking for. We have a, we'll talk a little bit more about this. One very important, and I call it a differentiator with Q is that we built a very strong creative studio team within the organization that sits between the brand and the creator that really

you know, ensures that on the brand side, all across the creative process that the brand messaging is there, that the brand ethos is captured throughout the whole process, as well on the creator side, really working with them on a much deeper level than other agencies work with them. Really it's a hands-on partnership on the creative side to ensure that their content and what they're putting forth is one, both elevated and two, still authentic to their audience. And so that's been a very important step. Of course.

creator identification, licensing, all of that, that contracting, all of that component, finding the right creators. And then media, media, which has become a really important component of creator marketing. So we really offer this as kind of an integrated basis, right? Cause some shops may just offer, you know, talent identification or others might, you know, but really what we have found, especially in the early phases of creator marketing, I think it's changed.

Right in the early phases when it was way more experimental and maybe it was just one person in an organization who kind of is tackling this. We really gave them the kind of the full service to, we can go to Q and they're going to deliver everything to us from the vision all the way through. And now where it's, you know, where creator marketing is much bigger and more institutionalized within a lot of big brands, you know.

I think that the same team and as we've grown has really served to become this white glove partner that they can just plug into. And it just feels like their team and we're handling, you know, all of that heavy lifting and all that complexity while still giving them their, you know, their, meaningful input as the, as the brand stakeholders.

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Justin Levinson (15:45)

Do you think, do think there's things that the brands still don't understand about this creator space and the value it can add?

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Glenn Ginsburg (15:51)

I that

the, I think this is the year, you know, that, that really has been the watershed year for creator marketing. It really has moved from the, experimental phase to the, to a fully functioning institutionalized process for big brands. There is a recognition of the, you know, importance and impact that this brings into reaching these very large audiences on social platforms. Right. We're talking, you know,

If we just look at, uh, you know, meta, know, 250 million monthly active users, pick talk, you know, 180 million, uh, and then the YouTube properties also, you know, in a quarter million. So these are big, big audiences. So, so everyone is doing it. It's not, it's no longer a question. There's still a lot of flavors of it. Some, some brands look at it from a PR perspective.

Some from a media perspective, some from an affiliate, there's lots of different ways to tackle it. But I think that our methodology is such in our practice where we really marry the creative aspect of it with a media mentality. So it's got to look great. It's got to have the right creators to write and mix the right messaging. But on the other hand, it's got to perform.

Right? If you're going to take that investment and put it into working with us, we want to show that it is as effective, if not more effective than if they put that investment elsewhere. so measurement and applying ⁓ media models to it, bringing those together really makes it kind of the art and science piece of it.

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Justin Levinson (17:41)

What kind of metrics are tracked typically to kind of know if it's success and if a client gets an ROI on the campaign?

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Glenn Ginsburg (17:50)

Yeah, I mean, it could range based on the needs of the brand, you know, at the base levels, how many people are viewing it, you know, but sometimes it's really about, and often it's usually many metrics, but social sentiment has really risen as a really key indicator. So really measuring what the communities are saying based off of the campaign is key. But, you know, if it's a conversion campaign.

It may look like more media metrics of, you know, return on ad spend, ROAS or lower CPA. So everything from, it could be brand lift. It really depends on what the goals are for any particular brand and campaign. And there's various sets of metrics that we measure based on those needs.

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Justin Levinson (18:36)

Great. Any big wins that you'd be interested in sharing? Any stayed out campaigns in your career or anything that on that front you'd be interested in sharing?

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Glenn Ginsburg (18:46)

I mean, good question. mean, we do so many. We do so many campaigns. It's crazy. And again, we try and make sure each and every one is effective. I mentioned that we guarantee, do things, we make guarantees on every campaign, just to ensure that it's going to be as efficient and effective as somewhere else. And knock on wood, now that we've done this for 11 years, we've never under-delivered on a campaign.

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Justin Levinson (19:14)

Wow, that's amazing. What is the guarantee if I can ask her what, or maybe it's different for different clients?

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Glenn Ginsburg (19:19)

I usually look on the media side of it, at the very least, you know, we look at what a CPM or cost per view would be if they invested in ad units, you know, on YouTube. And, you know, so we can compare the efficiency and impact of what we do and we can say, all right, for this investment, you'll get a minimum of 3 million, 5 million, 20 million views. So whenever we've put that kind of put that plan forth, we've always delivered.

on that. But obviously there's. And just want answer another thing to your question is kind of like. We started out in feature films. I think we've probably ⁓ worked on over probably 100 feature films in our time, but I'm really proud that that ⁓ I'd say that with Scream 7, we just came out and then ⁓ weapons with the last two big

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Justin Levinson (19:49)

I love that.

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Glenn Ginsburg (20:17)

movies that both hit number one at the box office, but I think we're up to 31 or 32 number one box offices that we've supported. And so that's a, that's a real accomplishment. I'll say too, that not only I'd say that have we been commercially successful, but it's also nice that we've had a lot of success too on the award side.

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Justin Levinson (20:39)

Yeah.

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Glenn Ginsburg (20:42)

Last year we were up for 12 awards and brought home nine industry awards. And then this year, we're already up to four industry awards. And it's just kind of like talking about kind of what I'm proud of. A lot of the awards last year was for, and I've talked about having this studio team that sits between the brand and the creator.

to ensure that the creative is on point. But the natural kind of evolvement of ⁓ that team has been developing new ways that brands through storytelling can reach audiences. We've created, I could call it a product, but an offering, something that we call digital stunts, ⁓ which won, I believe, all of our awards last year.

⁓ for, ⁓ for companies like Paramount and Hulu. But what that is is it's a type of storytelling where we are leveraging multiple creators to tell a narrative over multiple posts in a given time. And so when the audience experiences it, they'll see a creator doing their thing, right? It's still authentic to them, but

There's another story that's happening that leads to another channel and another creator and how they interact. And what we have found is that in creating these narratives that live above the creator posts and these, these creators coming together to tell this broader story really leads to just scaled engagement and excitement. And the creators love it being in themselves because it's kind of more of a high, highly, a higher produced type of content. they're talking about it. So it really creates.

a lot of cultural buzz. so I'm proud of those types of things that our creative teams really coming up with innovative ways to tell stories.

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Justin Levinson (22:43)

Yeah, that sounds really cool. What are some of the challenges in the industry right now? Are there any things that you find that are different now or more difficult than they have been in the past?

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Glenn Ginsburg (22:55)

You know, you would think after 10 years that it gets easier, 11 years that it gets easier and it's not and it's okay because it's, you know, it's constantly changing and you know, it's always been a very quick, know, quickly growing, innovating industry. Literally the playbook from the quarter before is different in the next quarter. Yeah. But I'd say, look, from where I'm sitting right now and I, you know, I think that, look, and where Q sits,

is that we're really good at, you know, the stuff that we've been talking about, you know, identifying communities and finding the right creators and the right content and bringing it all together to create this compelling campaigns, right? Where the market is moving and with so much more investment, right? The challenge I have as president at Q is how do I scale this to that next level, right?

This is, and while maintaining the quality, you know, an impact that we do. And so, you know, this is the year, and I think I'm saying, is it going to be a $37 billion market? And that's when I say that I'm just talking about just what we do, which is brands collaborating with creators. ⁓ Brands collaborating with creators and amplifying that content. That alone is going to be, it's a bigger.

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Justin Levinson (24:12)

annoying

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Glenn Ginsburg (24:21)

ad business than what the cable television network had at its peak. so, so, so, you know, so for me, it's like, okay, we've got the units, we are so good at this and we have got great partners from, you know, Kraft Heinz to Disney to Paramount to, you know, Activision to bunch of other really great, great, great brand partners. And we're doing so much great work with them. But the question is, how do we scale with the market and maintain that quality?

Still a wide open, there's other agencies out there, a lot of them, there's a lot of competition, but it's really a wide open field. So my challenge right now is, is how do I become, how do I strategically, you know, serve more and, you know, take more share.

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Justin Levinson (25:05)

Yeah. What do you look for in people that you bring onto your team?

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Glenn Ginsburg (25:10)

question.

Well, you know, we've got a lot of different, you know, groups within the org. I kind of mapped it out from everything from strategy to creative. You know, they all have to be passionate and they all have to believe in the Q story and what we're trying to accomplish. know, devotion to that and hard work is probably it's an old principle, but one that we really value.

I would say that the teammates are extraordinary. They're smart, they're young, they're dedicated. know, especially in this business, the old Hollywood term of the show must go on, you know, is alive and true. We have to get something done and we have a big campaign launch.

Everyone is, you know, rolls up their sleeves. If we have to burn the midnight oil, we do, but it's that can do attitude, openness for innovation, knowing that the things are going to be changing, you know, not have too much rigidity and to, to, to go with the flow. And those are some attributes, I think.

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Justin Levinson (26:14)

Yeah. Do you feel like there's any specific like roles in the creative? I'm just always curious from a recruiter standpoint, are there any positions that you see are going to be in really high demand in this space in the future?

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Glenn Ginsburg (26:26)

me just think about that for a second. We've got several people who play, you know, we definitely have our experts in certain areas, but the ones who can play across teams and not necessarily be a jack of all trades, but can really see what the other teams need and bridge those gaps are really, really helpful. And I guess the person that pops in my head is our head of product.

Right. And this is one that's going to be really important to his name is Jay Sparks thrown out there. Jayce he's he's our chief product officer and he's the one that's currently tackling the platform, the technology side of Q. He's built this beautiful platform that initially was, Hey, you know, our, our, our clients need an active dashboard where they can go and see their campaigns. But it has, you know, along with kind of the influx of, of, of AI, you know, he's really been spearheading.

How does this work organizationally? How does AI and data play into what Q does to not only provide our clients the best experience, but to also bring all of these powerful new tools available to us to make our business more efficient and more effective. So someone who can do their work, but also look to see how the entire organization can grow from.

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Justin Levinson (27:53)

What's your favorite part of the gig? What do you like doing the most?

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Glenn Ginsburg (27:56)

I mean,

my job has changed so much too, over the years, right? Before, again, when I started this, I was doing everything, you know, every part of the process. ⁓ And there was a brief period where I felt like I had a really good beat on all the careers out there and what they were doing. But now I've got teams that do that. For me, it's the challenge of really kind of what I was talking about, about how do we take cue?

and all of the success and all of our strengths and bring it to a broader, wider base of clients. And so, you know, what that means to me is a lot more strategy work, you know, also hiring and, who are the right, right players out there that can come and add value. A lot more higher level meeting with kind of brand leaders. So, you know, I talk a lot more to kind of C-suites than I've ever had before, you know, working more on the ⁓

know, PR side of business, you know, how are we going to get the message out wider and broader? So it's, ⁓ it keeps it very interesting and exciting for me because challenges are there to, and the opportunity, there's such opportunity to grow this business in a, very frothy marketplace.

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Justin Levinson (29:13)

Did your experience selling media in Japan? it, do you think it paid off? Did it feel like that set you up for success here?

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Glenn Ginsburg (29:20)

Well, I mean, it's essentially the same thing. I mean, if you really boil it down, it's what really sparked my career path. It's that place between audiences and brands and how do you connect them in the most effective way. And that has been the core of what we do and what I do and the mission. How do we make that the best possible connection? that's, yes. So the answer is yes.

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Justin Levinson (29:48)

Yeah, sounded very, yeah, lot of parallels to what you're doing early on to what you're doing today. Um, a couple, I guess, what, what kind of final, uh, question is what, what do like to do just personally outside of, you know, doing the QU stuff?

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Glenn Ginsburg (30:03)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, first I would say number one is my daughter, right? Sophie, she's 16. You know, last week I was at the possible conference in Miami, but then before coming back here, she was in a tennis tournament in Austin. So I flew there. You know, the truth is that she's been a big, you know, guiding light for me for, you know, part of the reason why when, you know, when she was four or five years old, I was doing a lot of animated movies is because

I wanted to be cool with her, right? Now that she's 16, I'm doing more beauty. know, so I'm not saying that I'm directly, you know, picking my clients from her, I definitely, dovetail. So I spend a lot of time, um, you know, uh, staying connected with, with her and, know, my, my, my immediate family, it's really important. You know, I think something which is maybe notable for all audiences for anyone who's listening to the pod health really matters.

I can definitely fall into the pattern of overwork, you know, and, you know, wake you up, start working, go to bed, you know, and I've been working the whole time, but I've been really forcing myself to go out and, and make sure that I'm active at least some time every day. I have a kind of a weird sport that I've picked up over the last few years. love, sport, every of disc golf.

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Justin Levinson (31:26)

I've seen it, yeah, I've seen it around. Yeah, that's for free. I've never played, but that's cool.

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Glenn Ginsburg (31:31)

Well come there's a, there's a course right here in Culver city. So I try and break out there and it's a, it's great. know, things like that.

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Justin Levinson (31:35)

Wait.

Let's go do you have a young daughter, younger daughter to keep you hip and with the times and all that stuff.

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Glenn Ginsburg (31:50)

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and my partner has two sons and so it's great to have kids. They do. They keep you, they keep you relevant. Right. And they, I've learned so much from them on what they watch and, know, how they interact and how they speak and apply that to my work each and every day.

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Justin Levinson (32:09)

Totally. kids are, I have young, young three and seven, but they're, I'm definitely cued in to, to that age group and what they're watching, what they like and all that stuff. It's just kind of, it's kind of cool.

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Glenn Ginsburg (32:22)

3-7 such fun years. Yeah

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Justin Levinson (32:24)

Yeah, it's intense sometimes, but it's really cool. I want to give a shout out to, Elisa Newton, who actually introduced us Glenn. So I know she's a colleague of mine, former colleague of yours. And, ⁓ was great that she was able to make this connection.

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Glenn Ginsburg (32:27)

Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, awesome. Love her. Yeah, we worked with her. We were both at Disney at the same time. yeah, and she's maintained great relationships. So I'm glad she brought us together.

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Justin Levinson (32:48)

Yeah, real nice person and thank her for that. But cool, Glenn. I really appreciate you coming on and chatting and offer some value to the community. And we'd love to have you on here again sometime in the future.

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Glenn Ginsburg (32:58)

Great, Justin. Awesome, man. Appreciate it.

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Justin Levinson (33:01)

Alright man, take care, peace.