Start-up Society #98: Cohley

Keeping the American Dream Alive

Welcome to the 98th edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.

Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!

Cohley

HQ: New York, NY

Founded: 2016

Employees: 58 (on LinkedIn)

In today’s episode of Meet the Entrepreneur #22, the Start-up Society team sits down with Tom Logan, Co-Founder & CEO and Cooper Low, Campaign Coordinator of Cohley.

Watch/Listen to learn how Cohley is changing the way brands generate and test content to help them grow their businesses.

This article provides a summary of the conversation. For the full details, tap into the podcast here!

How was Cohley founded?

Tom Logan: We started Cohley six and a half years ago to help consumer brands generate content in a way that was forward thinking and in a way that would evolve with their digital marketing needs. My co-founder, Erik Graber, and I were working at a company called Piqora. That was very early in the user-generated content space. We saw the power that authentic content could bring for consumer-facing brands in terms of telling authentic stories that really added consumer confidence, particularly right at the point-of-purchase. However, there were a variety of different challenges with the way that company was set up such as being reactive, content quality issues, legal issues, and timing issues. Right around the time when that company was acquired, we saw the influencer marketing world becoming more prevalent. Influencer-marketing became table stakes for consumer brands, and because of our perspective on content, we saw these “influencers” not for their influence, but for their ability to create really high quality, on-demand branded content that we surmised brands would need more of. It would become a lot more popular in terms of where brands would turn for content and how they would generate content for paid and emerging social channels, website and even email content. So, we were able to create an awesome marketplace full of content creators and the goal is to not only help brands generate different types of content for TikTok, Instagram, etc., but it’s to really unlock growth for them. We very much believe that content is a catalyst for growth, should be a catalyst for growth, and that the brands that are going to separate themselves over the next five years are the ones that are testing more content and using data as their collected north star around how they actually make content decisions.

Are you primarily competing with content marketplaces or marketing agencies?

Tom Logan: We occasionally compete with companies focused on influencer-marketing. We do compete with agencies as well, or they would use our platform in a white-label capacity and as an upsell lever for a larger brand-agency agreement. However, our biggest competition is the old ways of thinking about content and testing. It’s really the legacy ways of handling challenges that we are largely competing with. It’s a lot of education, it’s a lot of thought leadership, and it’s about being on top of every trend as possible so we could be a great partner. It’s not enough to just crank out content and call it a day. We have to understand the why behind what they’re looking to generate and how it’s going to actually impact their business.

What are the impacts you are seeing from the new approaches and strategies you’re taking?

Cooper Low: If you look at TikTok, for example, it’s a lot about the algorithm and what people are wanting to be entertained by. So really, content is key. There’s a saying: You want to make TikToks, not ads. So there’s definitely different content than what’s on any other social platform that we’ve seen before. Cohely plugs in so well with TikTok’s philosophy because the creators that are in our marketplace are making content that has that authentic and natural feel to it. We found that niche before the advent of TikTok. We’ve been able to plug into brands in so many ways and help them figure out different ways of telling their brand story. A lot of companies have trepidation heading into TikTok or heading into user-generated content (UGC) in general because they don’t want to let go of the creative thumb that they have on their brand image. However, what brands are realizing is that these less on-brand and more TikTok trend assets are performing so much better than what they were doing previously doing in-house. We’re opening the door for companies to test those assets and we’re making TikTok a more viable customer acquisition channel.

Tom Logan: It also comes at an important time. A couple of years ago, you could be a consumer brand and put out a lazy piece of creative on Facebook, have wide and high-level targeting, and still get 3–5X return on advertising spend on that ad. Then iOS came about and more and more brands during COVID actually benefited from the tailwinds that came with that from an e-commerce standpoint; more and more competition came with that and drove ad costs up, but with the iOS privacy changes, it drove visibility down. So Facebook, from an acquisition standpoint, is a much more complicated beast than it was a few years ago. Now, we’re back to first principles when it comes to digital advertising in the sense that great brands and savvy marketers are not reliant on one single channel to acquire customers. It’s back to fundamental testing, relying on a feedback loop, and it’s about being okay with the fact that you don’t necessarily know which asset is going to perform best in your ad. That’s okay if you have enough volume to test and you have a sufficient amount of inputs you can work with.

How does the content creator vetting process look like?

Tom Logan: Earlier on, during pre-launch, we had over 200 creators give us a written confirmation that they would love to be a part of the platform. We sent out a big announcement when the product went live to have the creators set up their profiles. A grand total of 2 of them created profiles. But what finally put us over the edge was we got a couple of beta brands that a lot of creators wanted to work with. They brought on their own creator base and migrated them over to our platform. We were able to start off from there. Now, we have the good fortune of being able to be very selective in the types of creators we say yes to and bring onto the platform. It’s really a function of whether the individual is going to add value to one or many of our brands. What we do to verify that is a qualitative eyeball test. Is their content offensive? Is it overly branded? Are they basically just a promotional page? Or do they have really authentic communities where they’re providing real value? Great influencers or great content creators are adding some form of value to the individuals that are choosing to follow them. There needs to be a value exchange there. So those are the sorts of things we’re looking for from a creator community. Because we’ve been less focused on their influence, we’ve had a broader eye to the up and coming creators that may not have large followings but are doing something really unique with their content. For creators who may not have the ability to create great branded content just yet, we offer great product reviews they can do to get started.

Is Cohley looking into the Metaverse?

Tom Logan: We don’t have anything in the direct pipeline that directly ties into the Metaverse, but what I think you’re going to see in the Metaverse is what you already see in digital marketing today, such as hyper-personalization. You’re going to see very curated experiences that reflect the actual desires of the individuals that are within those experiences. Brands will capitalize on that data for sure. TBD on how it will all play out. There’s still a lot of uncertainty around Metaverse, but I believe in its value and long-term utility. I actually thought that Meta’s most recent ads were really well thought out in the sense that they were taking it beyond fitness and going to a concert with your friends. They were applying it to medical research and showing its ability to have individuals slice someone’s aorta open in a way that actually verifies them before performing a real life surgery. It’s almost like flight simulation, but for any job. You can use the Metaverse to train people, shorten that training time, and lessen rookie mistakes.

Cooper Low: With UGC, it’s really about creating that experience for the consumer in a digital way. With videos, it can help people feel like they’re there and see themselves using the product via another person. I think we’ll be able to evolve easily and lean into some of the things the Metaverse can provide because of the essence of who Cohley is and what kinds of content we can provide brands in the first place.

How can AI impact the marketing industry and Cohley as a whole?

Tom Logan: What AI and machine learning can do to support our overall mission is take out the guess work from marketing decisions, specifically content decisions. If you can look at millions of different data points and distill key trends and undeniable commonalities amongst performance, it can go a long way to help marketers pull the strings and better understand where to start with their testing and what content most likely to resonates to specific target audiences. You’re going to be able to use machine learning to bucket individuals to different groups based on demonstrated interests and overlay that amongst millions of data points to make a much more educated guess. Marketing is heading towards more hyper-personalization and testing. Data has to be the north star.

Any final parting messages or founder tips?

Cooper Low: Over the last two years, we have all experienced the need to evolve and adapt. At Cohley, we are providing a catalyst for brands to test what works and stay on top of the latest opportunities.

For those interested, I am holding TikTok consultative sessions over here.

Tom Logan: One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard was “Run towards the pain.” Deep down, you know what you’re avoiding and what you need to do. So just run towards it, or else, that’s when you’ll feel the real pain, the real angst, the real darkness. Use fear more as a tailwind to direct your energy as opposed to as a headwind and running away from it. Secondly, you need to remember that you’re not your company. You need to make sure you maintain your own identity as a human being. Don’t make your identity solely as the founder of your company because what that ends up doing is that you ride the highs a little too high and you ride the lows a little bit too low. This is very much a marathon, not necessarily a sprint. You have to keep an even keel.

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Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, Elham Chowdhury, & Julian Ramcharan