Our podcast has come quite a long way since its first episode four years ago. And today, we get to bring it full circle, by welcoming back our very first guest: Ashton Wall.
When we first spoke to Ashton in April of 2020, she was the Director of Performance Marketing at influencer-favorite cosmetics brand ColourPop. Now, Ashton has taken her expertise in all things creator economy and co-founded her own B2B company—GateMaker Community, a brand-focused, performance-driven earned media agency powering sustainable growth through community.
To start, we dive into how Ashton achieved her dream of owning her own B2B company, GateMaker Community—a brand-focused, performance-driven earned media agency built around the power of community. Ashton shares GateMaker’s greatest strength as a marketing agency, and how they’ve bridged the gap between the agency and brand teams. We then learn about Ashton’s partnership with her co-founder and “operational genius” Amelia Soohoo. Ashton reveals the biggest mistakes that brands make in their creator marketing programs, as well as the strategies she’s seen lead to success. We explore how brands are shifting their product development processes, and Ashton shares why she believes creator marketing should be everybody’s job—from finance to engineering. Switching gears, Ashton shares what it was like to build a business from the ground up, and why she recruits younger professionals to her team. To close the show, Ashton lends us some career advice, before revealing why she decided to move to Paris.
We’ve included a couple of highlights from the episode below, but be sure to check out the full video above, or tune into the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen!
The following interview has been lightly edited for concision.
“We don't use the same strategies. It's very different for every brand”: Ashton Wall’s Passion For Finding Strategies That Work
Conor Begley: You guys are blowing up brand after brand after brand. It was Elemis in the early days, getting that program off the ground, and now Milk Makeup has seen an absolute turnaround in our data. It is one of the fastest growing brands we track now, and Elemis is now the second- or third-highest ranked skincare brand. So you're walking the walk too. Is it fun to see the brands blow up like that?
Ashton Wall: Nothing lights me up more. It's to the point that Amelia and I buy t-shirts and blazers that are the colors of our brands as if they're our favorite sports teams. I have all these L'Occitane yellow tops. I'm like, “It's L'Occitane’s week. L'Occitane is going to kill it this week.” I never get tired of that. It's so funny because for every brand that we've been able to make meaningful movements in that way, it doesn't seem obvious at first. When we took on L'Occitane, I was really scared. I didn’t know how we were going to be able to do this. [We build] a different strategy for each brand. It's not a plug and play. That goes back to how we are the "anti-agency” agency. We are different. We don't use the same strategies. It's very different for every brand. So when we're able to take a different strategy and crack it, oh my God, it's just euphoric.
“Influencer marketing is absolutely incredible when you have a little spark and you want to turn it into a roaring fire”: GateMaker Community’s Ashton Wall on How to Turn a Conversation Spark into a Fire
Conor Begley: One of the [mistakes] we've talked about is brands really wanting to push [creators in a certain direction]. “We want influencers to talk about this SKU that nobody's ever talked about and nobody buys.” What are some of the other mistakes that brands are making outside of putting outrageous demands on what the content is going to be?
Ashton Wall: That’s just a matter of tailwinds and headwinds. Something Amelia and I always say is influencer marketing is absolutely incredible when you have a little spark and you want to turn it into a roaring fire. But if there's no spark there, it doesn't matter how much money or how much gifting and seeding or how many events you throw. You can't create a fire out of nothing.
For example, something that's so hot right now is this clean girl, minimal makeup aesthetic, which is very different from my days at ColourPop, when it was about artistry and “heavy beat,” as we called it.
I had a brand come to me and say, “Okay, we understand what's trending and what people want to talk about and create content around. But we have sales goals at Ulta and the product that we're pushing is X, which has nothing to do with what the conversation is.”
With earned media and building a community, it's very hard to create a conversation. It's much easier to insert yourself into a conversation that's already happening.
Keep up with new episodes of Earned by following the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, or by subscribing to our YouTube channel. To catch up on our previous episodes, featuring leaders from brands like Revolve, K18, Instagram, and Roblox, visit our Earned Podcast page.