Hey y’all,

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal brands and what they’re worth.

I actually joke that my personal brand is pretty strong. Basically, anyone who knows me knows I’m into anything spooky, creepy, and macabre.

My personal brand has a lot of value to me because I like curating how the world sees me.
And it occurred to me that, for influencers, a personal brand is their brand, and it’s valuable. It’s no different for creators or for ecommerce brands either.

The way others perceive your brand is what gives it worth. It’s equity.

Like if you own a home, what you’ve already paid on it is equity. It’s what you can actually put up as collateral to borrow more resources.

(In theory. Most of us out here are millennials or younger, so our wealth is probably tied up in our collections of retro video games.)

And as I’ve been going through our gifting survey, I’ve realized that a brand’s equity makes all the difference in whether gifting negotiations go well. 

Because you’re basically borrowing a creator’s labor on the collateral of your brand name/products. And depending on what your brand is worth compared to the brand equity a creator has, you have a finite amount that you can borrow. 

In a previous issue, I talked a lot about barter deals – and I want to dive deeper here, because I think there’s a point that needs to be driven home. 

A barter deal only works when both sides are happy about it. The more you want, the more you have to give. And brand equity can do a lot of heavy lifting on either side. 

Brand equity works the same way for creators. For a creator, brand equity might be tied to: 

Those are the things you ultimately find valuable. The better those things are, the more you have to align them with your own values, products, or offer. 

I like to think of it as a scale. You and an influencer might come in balanced. However, what you offer and what you ask in return might tip the scales in either direction. 

For example:

Those are things that are going to add weight on the creator’s side – because both of you perceive them as valuable. 

And if what you’re offering is a $40 product, there’s an imbalance. 

That means for barter deals to really work, you have to have brand equity. If you don’t have brand equity, you need to be ready to make up the difference:

Whatever your creator finds valuable will tip the scales in your favor, meaning you can actually ask for more. (Within reason, anyway. )

So Nike is Nike, right? We all know them. We all probably have an opinion about them. They have general brand equity. 

But a brand that’s much smaller than Nike can have a lot more brand equity when they partner with the right creator – because it’s all about perception, and that perception can shift when niching down. 

The better the match, the more valuable the equity is on both sides – because the brand and the creator are both excited to work together. 

I have the perfect example for this. I follow Mars (@yung.planet) on Instagram. She’s a goth girly who soared to popularity by making corporate goth style videos. Her ultra dark aesthetic and bubbly personality are infectious (and absolutely worth a follow). 

Recently, she did a collab with TheBlackenedTeeth, a macabre home decor brand that pioneered the skeleton lamp. Yes, that one. 

Mars mentioned in one of her videos that she’d like to style her apartment to fit her personality – and the folks at TheBlackenedTeeth answered the call.

And if I’m seeing it, that was a perfect brand/audience alignment. (See: my own strong personal brand)

TheBlackenedTeeth has a ton of brand equity in the niche of people like me – who also love things that are dark, macabre, and a bit Victorian-inspired. People like me, who follow Mars, know their products are sought after. 

Mars sits on a combined 1.25M audience between Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube – with an above-average engagement rate for creators of this size. If you’re a goth girlie on any of those platforms, you know her. 

That means both sides come to the table with a ton of brand equity. Now, I’ve done the math (she did the monster math), and I estimate that this gift probably came to about $350 USD in products that TheBlackenedTeeth gifted. 

(I have no idea if there was a payment on top of it. I don’t know what was negotiated between the two of them.)

But as a gifting collab – from the perspective of a rabid fan of both the brand and the creator – it’s a match made in heaven. 

Regardless, it’s clear that both of them matched equity at the table. 

But almost every marketer we polled said that creator response was their biggest issue with gifting. 

That means that there’s a disconnect happening somewhere – and if I had to guess, it would be the equity imbalance happening at the negotiation table. 

So if you’re finding that creators just aren’t giving you the response you want, try: 

What about you? What’s been your best tip for making it all feel fair when doing gifting? 

Hit reply and let me know. 

You already know I wore all black today, 
Whitney 🦇
Content R&D at Modash. Send hate mail to LinkedIn 

I don’t know about you, but I believe that the answer to any problem is a cat. Today I’m sharing @Rosieandtheshelterpups on Instagram.

Who they are: Kayla Lyman is a shelter volunteer and pet foster mom out of Utah. 

Why she’s worth a follow: Get ready for only feel-good stories.

Kayla posts daily content featuring her working with rescue cats at her home and helping them become more socialized to humans. Her rescues have ranged from super shut-down sweetheart cats to ultra-hissy spicy kittens – all of whom have ended up adopted thanks to her gaining popularity with her content. 

She’s got such a soft touch with these animals, and it’s so lovely to see them slowly coming out of their shells. I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with every cat I’ve seen her work with, and she shows that with enough patience, she can find them their forever homes. 

Dream collab: I think she might already use it – but a perfect gifting opportunity specifically would be Feliway. Feliway is a pheromone product that comes in a spray and a wall-plug diffuser, meant to calm cats in otherwise stressful situations (like being fostered). Not only would it look stellar for Feliway to give to someone who is ultimately a volunteer, but it would help showcase the product to other cat owners who need something to chill their kitty out a bit.