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On Wednesday, May 7, nearly 800 guests gathered at London’s spectacular Tobacco Dock to shape the future of creator marketing. These VIPs and trendsetters turned out from 29 countries, with many (including yours truly) flying thousands of miles to be there. All those miles are a testament to not only the transformative power of creators—that was, after all, the whole reason we were there—but the passion and dedication of CreatorIQ’s community. From the bottom of our (my) heart, THANK YOU for making the second edition of CreatorIQ Connect London, and our fourth overall CreatorIQ Connect, the best one yet.
I know, I know: I say that every time. But this time I really mean it (which I also say every time, because it’s true every time, but shhh). Thanks to the tireless efforts of our events team, our partners, and clients, CreatorIQ Connect is aging like a fine wine, getting better and better every time. As with anything, practice makes perfect. Take it from me: it’s harder than it looks to peel off the adhesive portion of a printed name badge and attach it to a plastic placard without making any mistakes, but one does improve with time. And while we’ll never achieve complete perfection (at least not as long as I’m handling the name badges), when I watched all the ideas and connections being made at Tobacco Dock, it was easy to believe that we had come pretty close.
In this week’s newsletter, I want to provide my own HBBIP-centric spin on the Big Day, and demonstrate my gratitude toward the people who made both the event and this newsletter so special. We’ve got plenty of recap content coming up, but for now, consider this my salute to CreatorIQ Connect Europe, as seen through a very specific lens: the people who said nice things about this newsletter.
I’ve long said that anyone who shouts out the newsletter will get a shoutout from me, and that remains true. Fortunately, that list of people with impeccable taste in newsletters also provides a handy summary of some of the day’s key themes. How convenient! So without further ado, get ready for some nostalgia and/or FOMO as we Connect once again.
The Top Creator Marketing Event of the Week, and All Time (Obviously): CreatorIQ Connect Europe
The day started bright and early at the sign-in station, where I mostly didn’t mangle people’s nametags. It was always more stressful if a guest chose to carefully watch me when I peeled the adhesive, so thank you to all those attendees who looked away.
Check-in desks at CreatorIQ Connect Europe manned by yours truly
The sign-in station was where I received my first pleasant surprise of the day, prompting our first shoutout: thank you very much to Rebecca Harris of Victoria’s Secret, who recognized me and said some very kind things about HBBIP. May this prove a pleasant surprise in your inbox, Rebecca. It’s a great honor for me to be recognized by Victoria’s Secret, given that it was my favorite brand when I was 13. More importantly, Victoria’s Secret is a true creator marketing standout—congratulations on all your success!
Check-in also saw a shoutout from Jana Kleemeier of True Botanicals, so here’s a shoutout in return. Thank you Jana, and thank you True Botanicals for so generously stocking our product gifting suite:
Credit to ASV Photography for all images
As someone who had to transport five boxes of True Botanicals goodies from New York to London, I’m a bit sad that there was no product left over for me to transport back—it was just too popular! But hey, at least my efforts went to good use.
There was another station, also done up in orange, that proved pretty popular: the Benchmarks Bar at the CreatorIQ Product Lab!
Product Lab at CreatorIQ Connect Europe
I’ll have more on benchmarks very, very soon, but for now, know that it’s where guests learned all about our new Creator Marketing Industry Benchmarks Calculator, a tool to help brands measure themselves against their competitors and set data-backed KPIs. Thank you to Michael Heaven of Butterfly Effect for both your time at the Benchmarks Bar and your praise of HBBIP. ‘Mr. Heaven’ is a very cool thing to have people obliged to call you, so congrats about that, too—you deserve it!
Even more heavenly? An afternoon with Reiss Akhtar, EMEA Customer Success Manager. I’ve teased it in this very newsletter for the last few weeks, and by gosh, it finally happened! I was blown away by the standing-room only crowd, who stayed engaged and asked thoughtful questions as Reiss and I discussed what we’re seeing in the creator marketing space. At the time of our workshop, Reiss was fresh off two major presentations in the preceding week, and was gearing up for his afternoon session with Jess Hunt: REFY Creative Director and Co-Founder, plus the proud possessor of 1.7M followers on Instagram. So yeah—busy times for Reiss.
Workshop hosted by Reiss Akhtar & yours truly
Can you blame the guy for sitting? (I know what I said about standing-room only, but that was about guests. We were going to sit, naturally.)
Reiss, it was an honor to be your second-most famous and accomplished co-host that day. Top two isn’t too shabby! Keep crushing it, my friend.
Speaking of friends, here’s to a few new ones, both of whom were kind enough to attend my session with Reiss: Mitun Thaker and Tom Molyneux, co-founders of KRPT, an extremely cool agency that helps brands analyze and tap into the trends accelerating culture. Mitun and Tom are positively bursting with ideas, energy, and innovation—brands take note! Plus, Mitun gets to claim arguably the day’s best tagline: husband of Pia Thaker, Customer Success Manager right here at CIQ.
Notable audience members at CreatorIQ Connect Europe
Thanks so much for stopping by, gentlemen! Looking forward to future conversations and collaborations.
Thank you also to Feline Lieben and Mirjam Van Kleef of OONA/BAAS, two wonderful guests who made a point of coming up to me and praising HBBIP. As promised, ladies, here is your photo in the very next edition! Apologies for the poor image quality—sadly, I couldn’t rope in any of the pros from ASV Photography. Feline and Marjam, I truly appreciate your enthusiasm and partnership. It’s extra special to me because OONA/BAAS was my favorite Belgian communications agency when I was 13.
Feline Lieben and Mirjam Van Kleef of OONA/BAAS
Believe it or not, I managed to make even more new friends at Connect—or rather, I put faces and physical bodies to friends I already had. In this case, I was fortunate enough to meet Tom Davis and Rivneet Mann of Sapio, the do-it-all research firm behind last year’s CreatorIQ State of Creator Marketing Report, in person. Having previously existed to me as floating heads in digital boxes, it was a real trip, in the best possible way, to meet Tom and Rivneet, both of whom are not only extremely kind, but extremely tall. I don’t know what they’re feeding folks over at Sapio, but if you want to work there, you better have eaten your Wheaties as a kid.
The Sapio team was kind enough to not only attend CreatorIQ Connect Europe, but to invite SCM Report writer Cherline Bazile and me to their office the day afterwards. In addition to the office tour, we took a stroll around the neighborhood, taking in plenty of local history thanks to Tom’s not-so-hidden skills as a tour guide. Since I didn’t get a picture of Tom and Rivneet, here’s the pirate ship they took us to:
Image of pirate ship
Anytime you can walk out your office door and stroll down to a pirate ship, you must be doing something right. Tom and Rivneet, thank you so much for all your hard work on last year’s State of Creator Marketing Report—I can’t wait to see your floating heads again soon as we plan for the next one.
Alas, while l did make some new friends, I sadly wasn’t able to get face-time with every last old friend. For example, total mensch Ayal Pascal—primarily a Vice President of Marketing at Allies of Skinm, and secondarily an Ally of HBBIP. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for hundreds of adoring fans, Ayal was too busy with session prep for us to catch up, but we’ll link up next time, Ayal. Until then, congrats!
Ayal Pascal
But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest stars of all: the CreatorIQ Marketing Team. After all, they (we) were the ones who made the whole thing possible in the first place. This might be sappy, but it’s my newsletter and I’ll be sappy if I want to: thank you all for being such wonderful, inspiring people to work with. For everything else that’s so exciting about CreatorIQ Connect Europe—insights, networking, free stuff—it’s also proof of the incredible things that we can accomplish together. Here’s to proving it all again in another five months.
Some of the CreatorIQ Marketing team
A huge shoutout not only to the guests named here, but everyone who came to CreatorIQ Connect Europe: you are a hero, and you deserve plenty of HBBIP love. So here it is. Thank you so much for coming, thank you so much for reading, and make sure to catch us at another Connect near you.
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