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This is gonna be a bold statement coming from me on a podcast, but most brands are not getting it right when it comes to using influencers, using creators, UGC, etcetera. And here's why. Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. That is the topic for today, and we are gonna get into it. First, I wanna just give a shout out to our creator of the week who is a newbie to the studio.
Helen:I think just over a month maybe, maybe a little bit more. But Di and Buddy, thank you Diana for putting your faith in the studio, for being so involved right away and really taking it on, and then being so vocal about how much you're enjoying it. But she has been very vocal about the fact that she has purchased so many courses and tried so many things and her only regret is that she didn't try the Mothership Studio sooner. So thank you Diana for putting your faith in the process and for really taking it on. Alright.
Helen:Let's get into the topic. Why advertisers are breaking the actual creators and influencers that they're hiring? It's horrible for me to watch, and I have a strong opinion about this. And why I'm even talking about this topic is for the benefit of brands and creators, but it is kicked off by my dear friend Lorraine who is a working profitable influencer in the business working on big projects. And she hears me talk about the whole scripting and teleprompter thing and advising creators not to use a teleprompter, etcetera.
Helen:And she's like, Helen, I have to be honest with you and tell you that a lot of the brands that I work with require me to use the make the scripts exactly word for word the way they want them. And so it brought a lot to the surface for me because I have so many things to say about this. I'm really gonna try and stay on my bullet points. But having been in the production business for forty years, I have so much history working with actors and talent, talent of all ages. So you've got seasoned talent that I've worked with who are actors professionally.
Helen:They work on Broadway. They work on movies, and then they work on commercials. Also, kids. And kids are not really actors if you think about it. There's a few who are those genius talent actors, but most kids, they don't know how to read lines and do feelings and channel into their role and portray it.
Helen:So working with kids is very similar in my book of thinking back to working with real people. And I think that that's why I'm so good at directing real people talent. Like, when I say real people, that's a term in the industry, it means non trained actors. So that could be a doctor or a salesperson or a professional that's hired to be an authentic spokesperson for a brand that isn't necessarily a trained actor that has gone to acting school and knows how to read lines and memorize a script or read a teleprompter. So the difference between real people in the industry is really what creators are now.
Helen:They are people who have just picked up a phone and started to become talent. So it's very, oh my god, the lines are so blurred at this point. But the point is I have such a long history of working on sets and seeing directors and then becoming a director who actually gets talent to feel natural when they're delivering quote lines, when they're delivering a script. But I have also worked so much with those real people actors, AKA doctors, salespeople, dentists, patients. There's people that they bring in for for like odor eaters.
Helen:We had real people who were brought in to talk about their experience with smelly feet. I mean, are all not trained actors who have been brought in to talk about a topic. And now here's where it gets interesting. They the brands want the people to do it in their own words, so it feels authentic and it feels why they you know, the reason they're hired is they're a real person and it will say, real, you know, real consumer, etcetera. But then they want the real consumer to say these exact things that they have on their storyboard or their script.
Helen:So I have seen a big shift in my industry alone on how that is how that's been treated when more real people testimonials started to come into play in TV commercials. And when that happened, then it's like, how do we get this real person to say this exact thing in these exact words? Enter the interviewer, me, who is trying to get them to say it without telling them what to say. Framing certain questions so that they're leading them down that path. And I've become really, really skilled in this.
Helen:If I have to say about myself, I mean, I'm gonna pat myself on the back for this because I have gotten real people talent to say the things that we're looking for because I steer it in a way with the questions, and I'm really, really good at it. So that being said, I'm not on every set. I'm not in every working on every project. And I see some of them. A lot of times I see them on, on the air and I'm like, oh my god, these people, oh they sound so scripted.
Helen:Or it was chopped up so much because they were trying to get them to say this exact thing. So I could go off on a tangent on that alone. But how it relates to the topic of social media is the brands are leading the problem in the first place. They're starting the problem. Okay?
Helen:And so I'm not out here to blame creators. Actually, creators are the victim of this circumstance now. They're trying to get real people who they hire for their realness, for their influence, for their content, and then they're telling her exactly what to say. I think we see this in so many things in in life when people are hired for their expertise. I'm not blaming any creator because brands are requiring exact scripting in a lot of cases.
Helen:So what I'd like to do is first start by saying if you are a brand and you are listening to this by maybe some kind of chance, if you could really know the value of an authentic thought coming out of a creator's mouth versus a scripted thought. So that that's what I'd like to appeal to. Like, maybe you provide the North Star goal. Like, what's the goal of this content? What are the points you have to say for sure about the product?
Helen:It has this. It does that, etcetera, etcetera. You press this, it does that. Whatever the requirements are, you list those. But then you let the creator kind of come up with their own verbiage for how it's gonna come out.
Helen:And I think that because my dear lovely Lorraine has said most of the time, she doesn't even have that option to do that for a brand. They want what they want, period, the end. That's it. But the brands, you're hiring people and you're not maximizing them for the who they are. Such a bummer.
Helen:So for creators, what I might suggest, the following few things. I'm gonna have a hard time saying this one because I really am so passionately against recommending it, but it's not a bad skill to be able to read a teleprompter and sound normal. So if you have time to just practice and record one, and then practice and record something without a teleprompter, and check and see if you sound similar. Do your own due diligence. Like try and read a script and then try and do one in your own words and see does the voice sound the same?
Helen:I would almost beg you to do a topic that you know you can talk about. So if it was me, let's say I was gonna talk about this topic. Okay? I would challenge myself to sit down and talk about the difference between using a teleprompter versus not using a teleprompter, blah blah blah. But then I would challenge myself to sit down and write down a note of exactly what I wanna say exactly the way I wanna say it about a teleprompter, and then read it off a teleprompter.
Helen:And see if I have the same tone, the same cadence, if I can get the same vibe going. So it's not like, which happens on a teleprompter. Okay? So that that's one thing. So challenge yourself to learn how to use a teleprompter if you can.
Helen:If you can. And then I secondly would say if you are working with a brand, do your own due diligence for yourself and record something that is in your own words to have as a backup. So this way, you can even provide them if they want you to provide them with an alternate edit, which you don't have to do. Obviously, you don't wanna put more work on your plate. But you could potentially then have a piece of content for your own page that isn't necessarily if it's something that, for UGC, they want you to do it their way.
Helen:Okay, fine. You deliver that. But let's say you want to put some UGC, some of your, work on your reel, some of your work on your own feed for example even. Then you have the more natural one that sounds better. If you are a UGC creator, you can do this alternate version and put it on your feed because that's not what they're paying you for.
Helen:They're not paying you for your audience. Okay? They're paying you for to to give it to them. So this is for creators who don't aren't getting paid for their own audience. Okay?
Helen:So I have to make that differentiation. That's really important. So if you are in contract with a brand and you have to post it on your feed, then you have to post the exact version that they that was approved. Okay? You can't go off and make an alternate version.
Helen:This is just if it's a UGC and you want to have another version for yourself. So that's what I'm gonna leave it at with this week. Thank you so much for listening, because this was a tough one. This was a tough one for me to tackle because I have, too much history, I think, And I've seen too many things. And now I'm seeing this wave of script reading that is torture.
Helen:I hate to say it, but it is. So this is why I'm trying to help people not do it. And I don't know that there's a solution because not everyone's going be able to hop on a teleprompter and sound like they are reading, and sound like they're normal. They're going to sound like they're reading scripts. So maybe what we'll do coming up in the studio in the future is do a little teleprompter challenge just for fun.
Helen:And let's see who can read the teleprompter without looking like they're reading the teleprompter. But there has to be some kind of proof that you're actually reading a teleprompter. So we're going to have to figure out how to judge this. But it could be fun. What do you think?
Helen:Alright. Have a great week, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening and at least understanding there's multiple sides to the story. As always. Right?
Helen:Take care.