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Hosted by:

Katya Allison

Director of Marketing
Content at GRIN

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GRIN Gets Real

About GRIN Gets Real

Welcome to the GRIN gets real podcast, the show for people who want to maximize their marketing potential. From influencer marketing to eCommerce strategy and everything in between, each episode will feature industry experts that share their insights and provide actionable tips to help you achieve your marketing goals. Subscribe and stay tuned!

Subscribe Podcast Customer Spotlight w/ Dimitri O portrait feature image

Power Your Marketing Strategy with the Help of Creators

In this episode:

Dimitri O

Co-Founder of Loop Earplugs

Discover how Loop Earplugs collaborates with content creators to gain actionable insights. 

Loop is a Belgian scaleup that makes it possible to “live life at your volume” with smart, reusable earplugs that give users control over excess sound. Antwerp natives Maarten Bodewes and Dimitri O founded the company in 2016. The New York Times has named Loop “the best earplugs for concerts,” and the company’s explosive growth has translated into 1 million earplugs sold worldwide.

Loop has 45 full-time employees, with a majority working in Antwerp and others at hubs in Amsterdam, New York, and Shenzhen, China.

Podcast Customer Spotlight w/ Dimitri O portrait feature image

Full episode details

Influencer marketing is ineffective if you ask creators to ignore their usual style.

In fact, inauthenticity thrives when a branded post seems drastically different from a creator’s usual content. Dimitri shared a story of how this exact scenario played out when Loop Earplugs partnered with an account dedicated to motorcycles to post about their product. The result left much to be desired.  Fortunately, they were able to take this lesson and evolve their program to allow creators to have freedom when creating their posts for more authentic results. 
“We need people that are generally enthusiastic about our brand and our product that have a way of telling their own experience and have an audience that is used to having this kind of content shared with them. And that’s where the magic happens.” 

Brands can—and should—incorporate results from their influencer program into all areas of marketing. 

In this episode, Dimitri and Katya discuss how Loop Earplugs uses information from influencer marketing efforts to feed their overall marketing flywheel. 
“It’s good to have ownership over a couple of specific areas of marketing, but let’s not keep it siloed because it’s not a silo; it is the customer journey that goes through all of these different phases.” 
Dimitri shares that the team reviews comments and engagements on creators’ posts to see how their audience speaks. They then use this language across their landing page, emails, ads, social posts, and more to create a stronger connection with potential customers.  Listeners will also learn: 
  • How Loop Earplugs pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic 
  • How the team works with their successful creators to find more prospects 
  • How creators can help brands develop communities 
  • And much more! 

Quotes from this episode

Dimitri O quote and portrait “And then there was this other challenge that the category as a whole was suffering in a sense that it’s just not cool to wear earplugs. And there also, we saw other categories like, for example, helmets being used on the ski slope. Well, 20 years ago, virtually no one was wearing these helmets, and it was only these very dull and ugly fluorescent sorts of pots that people used to wear on their heads, being forced by their parents. GoPro, Red Bull, and brands like that actually make it very exciting, and today it’s like a status symbol. The guys wearing helmets on the ski slope are the ones that go fastest, or highest, or hardest, or whatever, so they completely changed that image of protective gear. And I think that’s also what needs to happen to the earplug category in order for people to really adopt them, and use them on a daily basis, and prevent suffering from hearing damage.”  “Protecting your ears in a nightlife environment was just not relevant, so very drastically in a week’s time, we lost about 80% of our revenue, just like that. And back then, we basically turned to our customers and asked them, ‘If not for nightlife, what else do you use your earbuds for?’”  “A second strategy that we also apply is just asking our successful creators, like, ‘Who do you look up to? Who do you follow? Who do you think would be a good creator for us?’ And you would be amazed by what kind of input you get from that. Not only just because of the content they share, it’s also a warm referral because you can say to the new guy, ‘Hey, this or that person thinks we should have a collaboration together. Shall we start talking?’ So already that helps facilitate a lot of making the connection with them.”

 

 
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