You're listening to cubicle to CEO episode 214. Our guest today is a true trailblazer in the world of media and marketing innovation. Meet Windsor Western, co founder of media giant HerCampus and its umbrella brands, including GenZology a Gen Z marketing Summit Series that's not only established HerCampus as the go to thought leader on youth marketing, but has also catapulted their brand partnership revenue growth by a jaw dropping 10,000%. GenZology is an ingenious strategy that arms HerCampus brand clients with unbeatable insights into the trendsetting. 18 To 24 demographic. What started as a response to pandemic time lock downs has blossomed into a years long strategy and revenue generating powerhouse, leading clients to spend millions of dollars on brand partnerships with HerCampus. In this case study on creative marketing campaigns, we'll uncover how this summit open doors to iconic clients like L'Oreal and Maybelline, why brand marketers are incentivized to attend these free events, and how HerCampus is landing minimum $50,000 on up to seven figure client contracts.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO the podcast. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. I quit my job without a backup plan and bootstrapped my first $300 freelance project into $2 million in revenue by age 28. On the show, you'll hear weekly case study interviews with leading entrepreneurs and CEOs who share one specific strategy that successfully grew their business revenue. Skip the expensive and time consuming learning curve of testing everything yourself by borrowing what actually works from the best and brightest mentors. You'll also get a front row seat to my founders journey through transparent income reports and behind the business solo episodes. Subscribe now so we can grow together every Monday.
Hello, hello friends. I have a wonderful person here with me today. Windsor Western who I met last year in Nashville. Well, actually, I guess it was this year. That's wild. It's only been a couple months, doesn't it?
Oh my gosh.
Yeah. It really does feel like a long time. But we met at Elevate Summit hosted by our mutual friend Alice Park. And Windsor is just such a ray of sunshine. Literally. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see exactly what I mean. A party in her yellow blazer. So Windsor, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I am so happy to be here.
Windsor, you are someone that has been part of my life in a subtle way. And I told you this when I met you because HerCampus is a brand that so many college women like myself had some sort of experience with while we were on campus. And I remember when I went to Oregon State, a friend of mine was an editor for HerCampus, Oregon State. And she profiled me for a story I remember being part of a booth that HerCampus had on campus during my college years. So I have a lot of fond memories. Thank you for co-founding such an incredible brand. For those who are not familiar with HerCampus. Can you just give a quick like 60 second, what is HerCampus? And what is your role as one of three co founders?
Yeah, absolutely. So put most simply, HerCampus is the voice of women on college campuses. We have a platform where any student at any school that wants to start her own women's focus, lifestyle, fashion publication can do so. And I say lifestyle and fashion. But really, it's the voice of women. So you can write about whatever you want, as long as it's by women on campus for women on campus. And so we have grown we launched in 2009 out of Harvard, and have grown over the last 14 years actually. September 15 is HerCampus's 14th birthday or other September 16. Sorry, I'm tired. It's HerCampus's 14th birthday. So we've been around for 14 years and life's a party or HerCampus media. So we celebrate birthdays for the company, because why not? It was my first baby. And still is something I'm so so proud of. So voice of women on college campuses, but we've grown the company that's our flagship property. We now have four other brands under the HerCampus media umbrella. And really what we are is an ecosystem of digital media brands and content creator communities that uplift support and empower the next generation of women.
That's incredible. I mean, I can only imagine how many journalists how many editors creators came out of basically the incubator that you created or allowed for them to explore while in college. So I love hearing that in your head of revenue and monetization at HerCampus, correct?
Yeah, so I'm the president of the company, my two co founders and I actually bootstrapped the company and so we own 100% of the business, which I'm super proud of. And one of the ways that we've been able to do that and growing and running a profitable business for 14 years, is by really thinking very strategically about how we're bringing in money consistently, right and with scale. And so that's my job. I'm the money person at HerCampus media. So all the dollars that come in the dollars that go out, we're thinking about, you know, what are the ways that we can really support our clients who are all brands that are very interested in gaining awareness with Next Generation women, right? So we are Gen Z focused right now, when we started, we were millennial focused, right? And then I'm sure soon will be Gen Alpha focused, but we have a laser focus on supporting women 18 to 24. And so brands that want to talk to them in a big way, come to me and I help them with their strategy. And that's, that's how we make money. And that's my job.
Well, I'm really excited to dig into today's case study, because it's really all about how you have established HerCampus media as a thought leader for those brands wanting to reach that target market. So just for a little bit of context, we're going to be talking about how one of HerCampus's summits GenZology has increased their brand partnership revenue by 10,000%. Yes, I did not fudge that zero 10,000 percent is a wild, wild case study on scale. So before we get into that, though, I realized I didn't ask you our starter question, which is what is your cubicle to CEO story? Like what was that final catalyst at Harvard that made you think I'm going to start this venture with my friends instead of applying for a job.
So I had an internship, and I was literally in a cubicle, and it was so drab, and I'm not going to mention the name of the company, because it's a lovely company, but I had this internship. And the day to day experience was depressing. And it was a fashion company and you go in, and we were required, I'm probably going to give too much away. But we were required to wear black head to toe, and everyday, even at the corporate office. And then the carpets, I just remember being maybe they were gray or some kind of like muted Brown. The cubicles were all gray or muted Brown, there weren't windows like the office is all had windows and and you just came in and everyone would just go and sit in these little dingy cubicles all day long. They wouldn't really talk to each other. And it was like, oh, no, oh, this is not this is not the life for me.
I am not going to walk into a big skyscraper. And this was the dream job. It was a fashion job in Manhattan, right. I was like, I have got it going on. I got this internship. They offered me a full time role afterwards that they created for me because they were so happy with my performance as an intern. And I was like, this is not it for me. I am not working. I don't know why it's so funny. This is called cubicle to CEO because I was I'm literally like, I hate a cubicle. I hate a cubicle. What's so funny about it as we'll get into this, but actually one of our first offices was a large cubicle that we all worked from within this like innovation space. So kind of funny, I was like, I hate a cubicle. And then we ran our company out of one for a long time. But really, it was about literally being put in a box right within within the cubicle and not having the flexibility, the freedom now I was an intern, when you're an intern, you're there to learn that is the primary role of an internship, interns need to learn a ton. Otherwise, the internship model is not working for them, right. It's not working for the companies. It's not working for the interns.
So I know I was there to learn. But I just remember this visceral reaction to the actual physical experience. But beyond that, I had this idea in college for a platform for student journalists, anyone could launch their own publication on campus, it would all be online, and thought it would be just really, really fun to do as a project. So I ran it on the side during my senior year wrote my thesis, we want a business plan competition, and got office space on campus. So we had this little office during the day, where in between class, we would go in there and work on the business. After I wrote my thesis I did basically the minimum I needed to graduate because I was really excited about about the business. And by the time we graduated, we had 25 schools that had a heart campus chapter. And our thought was, let's not get a real job would not be fun. Like that was literally our thinking, let's not get a real job. Let's just do this instead. That would be amazing. Just for a year, right just for a year.
Well joke's on me because that was 14 years ago. But really, it was about doing something that made me happy getting the flexibility to do what I wanted to bring a vision that I had to life. And that's really being an entrepreneur, and being a CEO is you get to create new realities. And what I mean by that is you have an idea for a product or a service that needs to exist in the world. And then you make it real and That, for me is so fulfilling and so exciting. So I think if you have that within you where you're like I want to create, and I want to manifest and make new things happen, then probably an entrepreneurship life is in the cards for you. I mean, for you, you have this podcast and like, look, and now it's here. And it's a thing. And it's a whole media brand. And it's amazing, but like, you made it up, and now it's real. And it's, I don't know, I love that, do you love that?
I do. And you know, I love the way you explained it, Windsor, because I feel like entrepreneurship is an art form. It is just like a musician creates songs or just like, you know, a fine artist works with their hands. It's it's the same thing. You're taking an abstract idea or concept and turning it into something like you said, that's real, that's tangible, that people can experience. And one note that I wanted to pull from your story, just to highlight to our listeners to really let this sink in is Windsor and her co founders, you know, started something incredible, but they didn't start with this idea of we've got to have a 10 year 14 year plan, right? We're going to do this No, not at all. Something something huge. I love the way that you just started with. What about just this next year? What about this, these next 12 months can we do together and make this a really fun experience. And I hope that people borrow a little bit of that joy and a little bit of that, like just like carefreeness and add that back to their business. Because I think sometimes entrepreneurs, we get so bogged down, and it can feel so serious, that we often you know, what is that you miss the forest for the trees, right? Is that the thing?
The thing I think also, as women we have this, especially when we have an idea, and this is I'm speaking in broad generalities right now. But we have this idea that things need to be perfect before it can become real, or before we can show it to anyone. Right. And that holds a lot of people back. I love saying that 'Done is better than perfect'. And just put something out and try and see how people react. And if people love it, amazing. Do more of that. And if people hate it, learn why why didn't this work?
You know, what was that you hear about all kinds of entrepreneurs like, I think it was the Kind Bar, or may I don't, let's not quote on that there's a cereal bar, some sort of cereal granola bar. And I remember reading the origin story. And it was a woman who was you know, making them at home and one of her friends tried it was like that's the best granola bar I've ever had. And she was like, Wait a second. So she started making them for her coworkers and getting feedback. And literally, she was bringing homemade granola bars to her office to her cubicle giving them to her co workers and they were writing down like I like how crunchy this one is. This one is too sticky. I like this flavor in this one. And then she started selling them at farmer's markets. And then she got some massive deal and sold right for a ton of money. But she didn't wait until she had branding and packaging and like a distribution. She was like, Can I make a granola bar that's delicious that people were really like to eat. Let me just start there and give it to my friends. Right? So it's just getting momentum. And I think it can be so intimidating to think you have to have five year 10 year plan.
Now, that being said, conversely I do one piece of advice I have is if there is a business plan competition that you find that's free to enter or you know, a nominal amount to enter that feels comfortable for you. It can be a really great catalyst to actually get your stuff together and actually get organized. Because, yes, you can say, oh, I'll just do you know this plan. But sometimes, especially if it's something new carving out the time and making it a priority can be really difficult. And so I love using a competition not necessarily to win if you win, that's great. But I say enter a competition, just because there will be deadlines, there will be structure, there will be a format that will force you to take your idea and put it into someone else into a template that someone else will understand, which will help you you understand what you're thinking better.
Interesting business hack. I don't think anyone's ever kind of framed it that way before in terms of the motivation for entering a business competition. But I love that it's forced accountability, which we all we all sometimes need as entrepreneurs, and speaking of experiments and diving into things that you're not sure how they'll perform. That really brings us to what you created in in today's case study with GenZology. So before we get into the the nitty gritty of the numbers and how this impacts your revenue, let's talk about the genesis of GenZology. Right. So how did this Gen Z marketing Summit start? What made it different in your mind than other HerCampus events? Because I know that events was something I'm assuming if I understand at least, that you were already doing so why this and what is the summit structure from an attendance point of view?
Yeah, so our main business so you have to think about different customers that you have for us we have a media business And so we have three different customer groups or client groups or people that we need to take care of. One is our readers, right? Anyone who's reading any of our websites, you would think of those as your consumers, right? So we need to make sure that they're happy that they have great content that the websites work really well. So that's one group. We also have our creators, so anyone who's writing for HerCampus outcome, anyone who's part of the college fashionista community, anyone who is a member of the influencer collective, so those are our creators, right? And then we have our clients, right? So we have our customers, our creators, and our clients, and our clients are the ones who pay the bills. They're the ones who fund the business, right? So that's for our business.
Now, other businesses, obviously, if you're selling products, directly your customers, as the, you know, the consumers are going to be buying your soap or whatever it is that you're selling. We have these three different groups are the consumers, the creators and the clients. We have always done events for the creators and the consumers so that people reading our websites, they people producing content for our websites, we put on college fashion week for a long time, knowing that college students are dying to go to Fashion Week, but they're not invited. So how do we create a Fashion Week specifically for them? We did HerConference, which is a campus to career conference that you need to speak out, by the way, that would be amazing to have you there. More on that later, we were doing HerConference. And these events were very good at events, and they were fantastic. And what we realized is anytime our clients who again are the ones behind the brands, brand marketers would come to those events, they would say I get it, I understand who you are and what you do. And now I'm going to be a customer for life. Right? Like now I am going to say I know HerCampus media, I know what they do I get it, I've met them, I've seen it, I've touched it, I can think about this brand as a real living thing. And they then become more passionate advocates and stay with us, even when they would move companies like a marketing director, one brand leaves and goes to another and she will bring us with her right and spend with us there.
So we thought about this and like how do we expose more clients to our team in person? And how do we get them excited? How do we create an event for them? And also, how do we create something that's really going to serve a need for them? So the question was, what do they want from us in its youth marketing expertise. So the first time we did this event, we called it the college marketing Summit. And we did it twice. We did it in Manhattan, because that's where the majority of our clients are either based or their advertising and media agencies are based in New York. So Coca Cola is a client, they're based in Atlanta, but their agencies are based in New York, right? So the money funnels through New York. So we hosted these events in New York, and they were fantastic. And it was really fun. Because we were just thinking, how big are they going to be and I don't remember the exact numbers, but maybe we had, you know, 100 people come but these are 100 potential or current clients. And we were able to share insights and do a panel with you know, real consumers are members of Gen Z or college students.
So we did this a few times before COVID. And it was great. And we were going to make it once a year we'll do this little thing, maybe 100 people, and that'll be good. And we were getting a few deals from it, which was great, right? People would meet us, and it was a small part of our marketing mix. Well, COVID happened. And if you're in sales and business development, relationships are everything, right? You need people to know who you are, you need people to trust you. Right? You need people to know that you're an expert in whatever it is that you're selling, right? You have to be the best at that thing, making that thing right providing that service. And when COVID happened, not only was our world turned upside down, because our events business went away overnight, it was just completely gone. But my sales team couldn't go have meetings with anyone. No one was meeting with anyone. And we were like, How in the world? Are we going to meet new customers, right? How are we going to meet new clients and meet new brand marketers and not only meet them get their attention and get their trust? So we came up with this idea for GenZology which is a completely made up word.
As the best things are
All the best things are, but I was like Gen Z, the science of Gen Z. What is it that and then this like biology Gen Z ology concept came about. So GenZology is the science of Gen Z. And it's a Gen Z marketing Summit. So we started doing it during COVID. And this thing just snowballed. And what the biggest unlock for me and the biggest realization is, if you're trying to sell somebody something, unless they really know that they need what you're selling, they're not going to make it a priority. They're not cuz they're not going to sit down and listen to you, you have to like incentivize them, the people that tried to sell timeshares, right, they have to like pay you to get in the room, because nobody wants to be sold to. And it's an uncomfortable feeling. But everybody wants to be good at their job and everybody wants to learn. So if you can help marketers be good at their job, so that they know a lot, you can help them learn a lot. So they're on top of trends, and then they can impress their boss and they can be the best at their job, you really support them in their role and in their career journey. They will come in droves, right, because you're providing a service, you're teaching them something. And it's something that only you can teach them. Right. And it's something that's super original to you.
So I know there's a big business of like online courses is massive right for creators, and they're teaching people how to do things, and I love that. But if you sell something else, and you can teach your potential clients something, it's a great way to get their attention. So we started doing GenZology, and these events have been so successful, they have opened so many doors. I was trying to get in front of Maybelline for years, right? How do I get in front of Maybelline? How do I meet the right people at Maybelline? How do I make this happen? I have these GenZology presentations, which are based on original insights, original research, right? So it's only our research, we put them together, we make them really fun, make them really beautiful. And it's all current of the moment trends. So I had a woman that I went to college with who works at Maybelline and I sent her a little teaser deck and I said, Do you think this is interesting? And do you think this is something that the team at Maybelline might want to know about? And she said, Yes, absolutely. Put me in touch with someone else on the team. And that person said, you know, we've actually been trying to figure out the metaverse.
This is last year, right when before AI everything was the metaverse. We've actually been trying to figure out the metaverse Could you do a presentation on the metaverse? Now at the time, I did not already have a presentation on the metaverse right but I've been dying to get in front of Maybelline in a big way for years. So I said absolutely. I can do a presentation on the metaverse no problem. So I read a book on the metaverse. I did a survey to my audience on the metaverse, I came up with this whole presentation on Gen Z and the metaverse and I got in front of 120 Maybelline executives on Zoom, including the president of the brand and the CMO. Were both on this meeting, right? Because they care about the metaverse, they care about Gen Z. And now everyone in the marketing division at Maybelline knows who I am and listened to me talk for an hour, and then make really open wide up for us. Right? So thinking about how do I open these doors in ways that are going to be really meaningful? Without saying give me money, give me money, right? Because that's very uncomfortable. And ultimately, I'm not asking for money, I'm saying I can provide a valuable service to you. Right, that's what I can provide. And that's the mindset shift, that I think is really key to scaling a sales organization.
I just love that distinction. I want to pull it out again, for our listeners, the fact that you said you're right, nobody likes to be sold to but everyone likes to experience something. Right? So the fact that you think about, okay, who's the decision maker, so in your case with HerCampus media, the people who are on the marketing team, the marketing leaders who are deciding where their budget gets spent, and saying, Okay, how can I make you look good? I love that concept that you shared? How can it make you look good in front of your boss by giving you these original insights about the exact demographic that you're trying to sell more of your products to?
So I understand like, you know, the separate private presentation you did to Maybelline's team, for example, but for GenZology for the summit itself? What types of data were you presenting there? And did you know ahead of time, what these brand marketers what these company leaders were looking for? Had you received feedback on like, hey, we want to know, for example, Gen Z's buying behavior when it comes to online shopping? Or was it kind of just based on you doing surveys to your own community of creators and consumers and then really testing different ways of presenting that data until you found one that worked really well?
Yeah, that's a great question. So we just did a present or most recent GenZology happened last week. It was during fashion week, it was at our big activation that we did called craters loft during fashion week, which was Gen Z creators, homebase during fashion week. It was so fun, but for that we have some consistent data that we do year over year, right, that we know brands are always going to be interested in. They want to know how young people are using the internet, right? How young people are using social media, which social media apps are using, what they're using them for. Right and they want to know what's influencing their product discovery path. How are they finding out about new Pro products, and then what influences their purchase decision? So there's those are two different buckets, how do you discover new products? And then how do you decide I'm actually going to buy this thing? Right. So those are the consistent things that we always talk about social media, internet usage, product discovery, purchase intent, then we do different focuses that are based on either timing. So we'll do you know, in the spring, we talked about back to college planning, getting ready to go back to school, you have to plan obviously, six months in advance, or we'll talk about so either something that's coming up that's on the horizon, or something that's thematic for the time. So we did a big fashion focus, right? This year, during fashion week. Last year, we were in New York, and we did a big beauty focus. And we really see a lot of beauty data.
So it's a combo of consistent data and trends, which also having that consistency allows us to track year over year, which means then we can print no one can tell the future, right. But we can say with authority, here's what we're seeing historically. And if these trends continue, that's what that means for next year. So that's really great. And then the other is we say this is what we're going to be talking about. And then the people that are the most interested in that will attend. The other piece that we do is I always do a live Gen Z panel, because I am turning 35 next month, I am not Gen Z. I'm running this company for 14 years. And so I can say things all day long. And I can say them, these are based on original research. And I had 18-21 college age women fill out the survey, and it's three weeks old, this is super fresh data, right. But then you have a 20 year old back me up on stage and agree with me and add her own color and her own context. And it really just drives the message home that I'm an expert. And I know what I'm saying because you hear it from me based on data, you've got that qualitative data and then or that quantitative data rather based on the research. And then you have the qualitative stories that are coming in from live members of the demographic.
Of course, three people can't speak for an entire generation, but they provide their own perspectives. I love it when they disagree on the stage as well, because Gen Z, no generation is a monolith. Right? And so you want them to say, actually, no, I don't think that that's true. We had this happened last week where someone asked do you read comments on reels or tiktoks? Right. When influencers I don't read the comments, I just watch the content. And then I go from there. I don't even really read the captions. And the other ones I know I love a comment section like I'm always like, what's this video? Now? Let me see what people are saying about it, you know? So there's no like, oh, yeah, Gen Z reads comments or doesn't read comments. It depends on the person, you know, and that is really beautiful when you see those kinds of disagreements come to life. But in terms of yes, the storytelling. So the last one that we did, we talked about AI, we talked about fashion. And then we talked about those social media and shopping trends, which are consistent.
That's incredible. I'm really curious, because obviously, you are offering really, really valuable insights to these brands that they can then base their marketing strategies off of. But if we zoom out, and we think about, okay, there's a lot of data research companies that study consumer behavior, right? They release annual reports, they may even sell the data, and that's their primary business model for you, to my understanding, you're basically offering this information for free to these brands, how then do you incentivize that next action, what I mean by that is, if a brand comes to GenZology, or attends a private presentation of yours, and they're given all this valuable data, they take that data, they run back to the marketing team, they go, Okay, we've got to adjust this, that or the other in our upcoming campaigns, what then makes them want to return to you and say, you know, what, actually, we also want to allocate a portion of our marketing budget to spending with HerCampus. How do you connect the dots there?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. So for smaller brands, we don't we say, you know, we have a minimum and it goes up, year over year. So right now, unless you have $50,000, you just cannot do a campaign with us whatsoever. My goal is to increase that to 100,000 in the new year, and I do that on purpose. I'm not saying if you have a marketing budget under $100,000, a year for Gen Z, that you're not worthy of my time, I'm not saying that that's not amazing. I'm just saying for my business and where I'm focused, I really need to be with major players that are prioritizing this audience in a big way. So that's the minimum right?
The goal is multimillion dollar clients like each brand spending multiple millions of dollars with me every single year. That's how I scale the business. That's how I really am able to provide the best service to those brands. So first off, if someone wants to come and just learn if you have a startup if you have a small business, if you are just growing and just getting started, or even if you're a small to medium sized business, and you're dabbling in Gen Z and you're not sure there are a priority market I want you to come, I want you to learn. Because at the end of the day, I've established that I'm the expert that my company is the best in class for this demo. And I love it. If someone's like, I can't afford to work with you, that's fine. I want you to dream about the day when you can, I want that to be a goal for you right? Now, that's great. That's a big thing for me, too, is I can't have everyone be a client of HerCampus media, I want to be the premium solution. So I do not compete on price which we can also get into.
But when it comes to saying, this is a big brand, what I want is also able to weave in case studies of the work that we do that is based on these insights, because in addition to sharing these insights, sharing these strategies, I'm saying I can do this for you at scale, and from an informed and educated perspective. So here's a great example. Influencer marketing is a huge portion of my business. Some brands do that in house, and I say more power to you, right? Absolutely. You can anyone can go on social media and send a bunch of DMS to people right, or you can use one of their a million influencer marketplace app. So you can go in and put out an opportunity and people will apply. And if people want to do that heavy lifting on their own, or they have the resources on their team to do that. I say, more power to go do that. If you want to scale.
And you want a Gen Z influencer strategy that's completely separate from your other influencer strategy, which by the way, is what you need. My research shows Gen Z wants to be taught to you by Gen Z, they want to see the adult in your content, right? They want someone like them, telling them why they should buy the product, right? That's who they're gonna listen to. So you need your own strategy. And so what the brands realize is they need a Gen Z influencer strategy. And that's a team and either they staff that team out an entire team within their marketing department, or they can just hire me, and I will do it for them. What's nice about hiring me is I'm scalable, you can do a little bit, you can do a lot, you can go up and down, you can test if you hire and staff up the team, and then you change strategies, you have to either lay them off, or retrain them or move them elsewhere within the organization, it's actually a much longer lead time to get going on that right. So we want to be the Gen Z extension.
Again, again, I talked about Gen Z right now in five years will be the Gen alpha, the Gen Z alphas if you will, but we're the youth marketing extension for these brands. So I'm not scared about giving away valuable information and gatekeeping that information because other people are presenting it as well. Right? You can find a lot of things online, and I think it's better to use it to leverage for my expertise. I also say, if you want a custom survey now that Metaverse one that I did custom for I didn't tell them I was doing a custom survey for them. Right. I already had this information, and then I used it for other presentations too. But Kate Spade just commissioned a survey to know what Gen Z thinks about Kate Spade. I'm not publishing that, right. I'm not publishing who their main competitors are, what price point young women would pay for a Kate Spade purse, how they think about certain designs of recent Kate Spade collections, that is private information. And based on my expertise with general information, Kate Spade hired me to do that for them. Right. So it's also other things like that.
Yeah. So okay, so from what I'm understanding, some brands are coming to you for general insights. And some, like you said, with Kate Spade, they are wanting you to create and deliver a survey to your community, getting specific insights just about their brand. Okay, yes, what I find so awesome is that you're in this really cool position where not only are you like the originator of the data that you're presenting to these brands. And then you know, like you said, you are able to be a very scalable marketing add on to their existing team. But you also are like the supplier because you have that entire community of creators and consumers that you've built through your other brands under the HerCampus media umbrella. So I find that to be such a unique position, and I can see why it's so appealing for brands to want to work with you.
I do want to get into some of those numbers that you talked about, like, you know, the 50,000, hopefully $100,000 minimums, what those packages look like. But I did have one more question about the summit. Before we get into that. The Summit, you said is free for brands to attend small to big the first one that you did and now moving every year forward. Are you just making a general invitation to your existing network? Are you sending private invitations? Is it a public event that you're advertising? How are you getting the word out there and seeing people come?
Yeah, it's a great question. So I have a 10 member sales team. And each one of those sellers has an account list. The account list is broken out into clients that they have great relationships with, like, these are my friends. And most of those friendships have come through the work. So one thing if you're listening to this, and you are super social and you love making friends, and you can talk to anybody, you might want to look at a career in sales, because sales people are like life of the party. Everyone loves them. It's it's fun. It's fun to hang out with salespeople. So you have those, like great clients, I have a great relationship with them. They know me, they trust me. And we're spending consistently together, then you have your kind of warm clients were like, they know who I am, they haven't spent with me yet, or maybe they spent with me a year ago, but it's been a while. And we're gonna hopefully get something going pretty soon. And then you've got your cold leads.
I've been trying to talk to Ellen Yin for forever, I've sent her 35 different emails, she has ignored every single one, I've reached out to her on LinkedIn, she declined like Ellen Yin will not talk to me. I even like sent a card to her office, she never responded like Ellen Yin, might as well like not know that I exist or definitely doesn't want to talk to me. Usually, it's just that they're too busy, right? They're too busy. And I don't fault anyone for not responding or opening, people have to prioritize their time. So that's the big thing in sales. If Rejection hurts your feelings, and you take it personally do not go into sales. Because the job is rejection you are bad is your job, your job is to get rejected a million times a day of stand back up and go, that's fine, because one person responded right like that. That's it.
So basically, each seller has an account list. And that account is broken out into cold, warm, hot accounts, right? They then are going to say who do I think would get the most value out of this generally, those hot accounts, those clients that know us and love us, we want to treat them the best. And we want to keep those relationships going. So we allocate if it's a digital presentation, the beautiful thing about that Zoom will let us have with our current subscription of 500 Live attendees at any point in time, and it's easy to upgrade right to 1000. So that's kind of unlimited anybody and everybody is invited to come to that.
From an in person experience, usually there's a cocktail hour, we've got passed hors d'oeuvres, like it's more of a reception feel. And we have a limited number of seats. So we assign per seller based on their quota, a certain number of tickets, and then they are able to invite whoever they want. Usually they start with the top and invite their their hottest accounts, first, their current spenders, their best relationships, you want to get from friend to bestie status, basically with everyone, and then they go down the line. So I can be a strategic door opener to this person will not respond, I really want to show them what we have. So it can be a great way to bring someone from warm to hot as well, or even from cold to warm.
So each seller gets a certain number of tickets, they're able to distribute them get those invites. Anytime you have a free event, you're always going to have dropped off, people are gonna get busy, they get pulled into a meeting at work, whatever. So we always oversubscribed, by a certain amount anticipating drop off. There's a whole art form to that as well. But yeah, so it's limited in person and more open online. That being said, you know, we do go and look at who's attending. And we make sure there are people that we want to be there because we're giving all this valuable information away. So people sign up and we remove people from the list actually, that have signed up because we're providing a valuable service and we want someone that is going to get value and maybe come back and be a client on Wednesday.
What percentage of the people who attend these GenZology summits and events? would you estimate end up spending with you within the following 12 months?
Oh my gosh, that's so hard to say we're trying to track it actually it says exercise because there's so many reasons that someone would attend so many reasons that someone would get excited about this data. Sometimes brands attend because they're trying to convince their boss that Gen Z is important. And they need more ammo, right? Yeah, they're not gonna say it's good. That's gonna be a two year timeline. Because the boss isn't even thinking about this generation. And they're on a mission to say like, no, no, no, we have to like refocus the company. They're not going to spend with me the next year.
Then you have some people who come in and again if you have our last virtual Summit, we had 560 brand marketers RSVP, right. I'm not going through every, it's not worth my time to go through every one of those brands and make sure they have $100 million marketing budget. That's not worth my time. I can go and say brands I recognize these are small companies. Okay. It's like a general sweep of the list. Um, so certainly people that come and then some brands come that are already spending with us. So if they renew is that because of GenZology or did we just do a really good job? Right some brands that are already have a proposal out? Was it the GenZology that pushed the proposal across the board or not? Right and then others were we wound up with an email the next week In the person, sometimes they say, I was so impressed by GenZology, now I want to work with you. That's easy. But sometimes they're thinking about you again. And then they reply to that email that they've been meaning to reply to for weeks. So it's actually been very hard to track the specific number.
And this is kind of where we go into not having a 10 year plan or a 20 year plan. If I needed to prove the ROI down to the penny, I absolutely could. But it would take me weeks of culling through and looking at past emails, and when did they decide to email me back? And when did this happen? Sales is is a relationship building process, right. And so I think of it as networking at scale for my sales team. And I asked each one individually, what came out of GenZology for you. And they can say, oh, my gosh, I did these three deals, I did these five things, these five people replied to me, and like, that's all I needed to know, there is ROI. For me as a business owner, they don't cost me a lot of money to put on, the virtual ones are free, except for zoom, right? It's my time, which obviously is the most valuable commodity, and my team's time to put together the insights.
But we are using those insights for so many different things. We're using them for the presentation, but we're also using them for our strategies that we're doing for our current clients. So it's not an expensive thing. I'm not spending $100,000 putting on these events, right. And so if I know this is opening doors, if I know, this is getting people to take us more seriously, if I know that this is getting brands to spend at scale, I as a business owner don't need to know 10% of them come back and spend in the next year. So I'm very long winded way of saying, I don't know. And I'm okay with it.
No and I think that discernment is actually so wise because I think sometimes we get bogged down in the details. And we want to have like a black and white answer for everything. But like you said, because relationship building is a constant, there is no like start or I mean, there's a start, but there's really no end to that relationship, nurture it, I kind of almost think of it as like every interaction you have with that person. It's like depositing into like a savings account, you know, and that builds over time, and you don't really know at what point they're going to, you know, take action on something. But to your point, there's no loss in the deposit of your time and your goodwill there. So love that answer.
And I know in our pre interview prep for this, you had talked about how amazing GenZology has been for just opening doors, like you said to execs that you would spend maybe years trying to chase down and never got in front of. Is there one particular client that comes to mind that, like you said, Never was responding to anything, but then did eventually come to an in person GenZology event and how did you get them to show up and give their time? Like, what was that catalyst that made them go? Oh, okay. Like, yes, that's great to have insights, but like, what made them go, Yeah, I have to be there.
So I'm trying to think... I have a good example that is related and is a really good story. I'm not going to answer that exact question, but I'm gonna give you a story that is very similar, and I promise will help illustrate a point. We were working with L'Oreal HR. And L'Oreal has 39 brands, across various beauty divisions. And we're working with L'Oreal HR for some different recruiting campaigns that they were doing. They had this really amazing innovation challenge called Brand Storm, and we were helping them drive interest in that innovation challenge. And through that, we got connected with the head of HR for L'Oreal. She was at a GenZology beauty event that we did in New York, right? And looked around and realize that of the people that were there, a lot of independent L'Oreal, execs from various brands, we had invited and they had come.
So in this beauty breakfast we're doing this one was small, this one was about 30 executives. Maybe a third of them were from various brands owned by L'Oreal. And the head of HR was there and they didn't all they were like, Oh, you're here. Oh, my gosh, you're here. Oh, my gosh, this is so fun, right? They hadn't all decided to come. They've got so many employees. They're in so many different teams and different brands. And so she said, You know, I'm supposed to do these education seminars for our team and for our staff, and teach them things. And I think they'd all love to learn about Gen Z, would you come to L'Oreal's headquarters and do a presentation? And I was like, Yeah, of course.
And L'Oreal has an East Coast headquarters in New York and West Coast headquarters in LA. And so we already had some events in LA that we were doing and so I said, Yeah, let's let's do it. Got a date, and put together a lot of the beauty data that we had a lot of the Gen Z data that we had. And I didn't know who was going to get invited. But because it was HR, they invited the entire campus, everyone that worked at L'Oreal in LA, got invited, wow, as they were filling up the room was the biggest auditorium they had on campus, they were adding chairs to the back, they max out all the chairs, and then it was standing room only it was packed, it was the most well attended event that they have put on from an education and employee development perspective. And it wasn't just marketers. It was also you know, people building the brands and people behind the packaging, right of the brands, the scientists that are behind the innovation with these products. And for me to have that opportunity, right? If I said, Hey, can I come to a sales pitch, they wouldn't put me in front of the entire campus, right? Everyone that works at L'Oreal west coast, but because there was value, and everyone needs to know about the next generation, and everyone needs a future proof their brands and their strategies and really think about what's next.
This was an employee learning and engagement opportunity that HR brought in, right. And that has opened so many doors at L'Oreal, right. Also the images of me presenting it L'Oreal's corporate headquarters, the President was sitting on the front row, right? That is something that that I can leverage and say, I'm legit. Look at me look at who listens to me, you know, and I know that sounds silly, and like, you have to say I'm legit. But when you're growing a business, or when you're growing yourself as an executive, your brand, the opportunities that you are given lead to more opportunities, right. So that was one where she came, she saw, Oh, all these people are interested in all these different brands, right? And then that led to a few months later, we were speaking with one executive at one of the brands. And he said, I have never met with a vendor who has penetrated more brands at L'Oreal than you have like, how is everyone working with you? That's wonderful. That's great. I was like, Well, everyone knows who I am. And this is why.
I mean, I think that's such a great lesson. And the the ripple effect, it reminds me of this interview that I had with someone else on our podcast, she was talking about launching her brand and the press storm that came from that and how they crowdfunded, like millions of dollars and afternoon, but it all came from everybody saying no, no, no, like, we're not interested in covering the story. And she got like one big fish, I think it was like Refinery 29, to do an exclusive on it. And then once they were in, she just went back to everyone who said no, and said, Look, they're covering the story. We don't want you to miss out. Are you sure you don't want to be part of this? And then of course, everybody said yes. And so I love that you were able to kind of model in a totally obviously different realm. But I think the practice still apply. So thank you for sharing that story that is really helpful.
In our final minutes of this case study Windsor, I would love to get a little bit deeper into some of the numbers that we've been talking about today. So the packages for example, you mentioned your minimum startup $50,000, going on up to $100,000. After these GenZology summits, I know you said some some brands are inbound sharing, hey, we loved our experience, we'd love to work with you. For those who are not initiating conversation, or are not existing clients looking to renew. What is the process that your sales team follows after each Summit? Are they sending customized pitch decks? Are they just following up via email? Are they calling? Do they set meetings at the event for later? And then what is a typical, let's say let's just make an even simpler say what a typical $100,000 package look like? What might that include?
Yeah, so $100,000 is going to be our new minimum, right? The average campaign that we're going to be working with brands is and where our sweet spot is, and our happiest clients are going to be spending anywhere from $250,000 to over a million dollars with us. Because the reason that the audience is so valuable is women influence 85% of all consumer spending, right? So they're either making those purchases, or they're influencing them within the household. So women are an incredibly important audience for brands to get in front of young women have an openness, right, they maybe don't have a lot of their established brand preferences. They know what their mom might have used within the home, right or what they've been exposed to from their friends, but especially in the college age. They're these brand new adults that are establishing a lot of their buying preferences on their own. And it's very important for brands to show those young women who they are the brands to say this is who I am as brand, that's what I stand for. This is what I want you to know about me, right?
Because you cannot just be kind of on your back foot and like oh, yeah, everybody knows about me. Well, maybe all the moms know about you, but to their daughters. And then if the daughters don't know about you, are they going to think of you as just a mom brand and then therefore you're not cool? Right? Like how are you going to think about this? There are literally products called Not Your Mother's blah blah blah, right like you I mean, I'm a mom now I'm like, No, but I have great taste. And I know all the good stuff, you know, but there's the, you don't want to buy what your mom has, right?
So yeah, but with those packages, we have really two buckets of services that you can get. We bucket them into digital services, and then community based services. So one digital example might be, we will create a custom article for you on HerCampus.com Talking about your product launch or an event that's coming up, you know, IKEA is doing a cat a bunch of campus events right now. So we did a whole article on all their campus pop up events with a schedule, right and getting people really excited about it to spread awareness about the events that they're doing. We then will do ads on Tik Tok, Instagram and Snapchat about the event driving back to our landing page that tells the story of the event and tells everyone you know, how they can get involved and where they can find it. So that would be an example of a digital package. That would be digital advertising and promotion for an event that's happening or a sale that's happening, you know, like the Ulta Beauty sale might do a whole digital campaign. That's a combination of ads on our websites, ads on social that we create and buy for them. And then sponsored content on the websites and sponsored newsletters, right? So that's our digital packages.
And then from a community standpoint, we do either content creator program, so those are going to be your more nano influencers. It's really like high quality UGC, somebody who might have one to 5000 followers, right? You wouldn't consider them like an influencer. But they have a following. It's not easy to get 1000 people to listen to you on Instagram, right? And they're just telling their friends or like, I'm telling my friends about this product. And you know what I think about it. So that's one group. And then we also have our influencers in the influencer collective. So we do micro so 10 to 100,000 followers roughly, those we would do, it's a little bit more polished, right, they've got a little bit more experience. If you have 10,000 followers, you've been doing this for a while you know what you're doing right, you've probably done some brand deals before. And so they'll do more finished assets that might be able to be turned into ads on Tik Tok, Snapchat and Instagram and distributed at scale that way. So you know, it's a combination, we also do events, and we do sampling programs.
So what we love doing is a brand comes to us and they say, This is my goal. This is the product or the service that I want Gen Z to know about, or the feature of my product or service, I want Gen Z to know about this is how I want them to think about me as a brand. This is how I want to show up in the world. This is my budget, this is my timeframe. And then we bring them a custom mix of elements, the pricing goes up and down depending on demand, obviously supply and demand and the time of the year, right, the CPMs that we're paying on social vary as well. And then the product category and the goal. So every program that we create is custom. And it's really built around the goals and the timeline and the budget of our clients.
That makes a lot of sense. I do have a clarification question on the media buying side. So on the digital activations, if you're creating original ad content, and then like you said, buying the social ads, managing the social ads on the brand's behalf? Are you running those ads through HerCampus owned channels? Okay, so it's coming from the voice of HerCampus? Not from Ulta, per se.
Exactly. So if we did an Ulta Beauty ad campaign, we would conceptualize the campaign. So how are we going to tell this story, they'll say, this is the sale or this is the product or this is what it is? we conceptualize the campaign, the messaging, we create the actual ads themselves, and then we deliver the ads from HerCampus or college fashionistas handles that click through rates and the engagement that you get if it comes from an editorial handle. It's even just that little tag at the top, it's editorialized and there's that inherent trust that comes through from that, and then engagement is higher and click through rates are higher, so you get better results.
That makes complete sense. And the spend on that. So like let's say, again, I'm just making up numbers for easy understanding. Let's say you were like, Okay, I'm going to spend $10,000 on meta ads between Facebook and Instagram for this particular campaign. Is that built into the cost of the proposal that you give to the brand? Or are you telling the brand, hey, our fee is 250,000. And then we also need a separate ads budget of X amount.
It's included brands love to know how much things are gonna cost in total, so they can budget at the beginning of the year, right getting surprises at the end or variable costs is not generally the way that brands like to operate. So it's an all inclusive, this is the whole thing. And we'll make that work. Sometimes the CPMs go up on us on social and then our margin is a little bit lower. Sometimes it really efficiency PMS and their margin is a little bit bigger. So it really varies and it depends. And then we also don't charge for our creative services by the hour that is built in to the CPM rate that We have, right so it's all inclusive. It's bundled a lot of in in that way, we're like an agency, but we are project based or campaign based rather than hourly, based, right,
which I love too
it's much easier for everyone. And then you're like, Well, why did that take you three hours? And you're like, it just does. No one's asking those kinds of questions, you know, and you're like, should it have taken longer or shorter? Like, there's a lot of ways you can interpret that question. So I think a project basically is better.
Yeah. 100%. Also, you don't want to be punished for being more efficient at your job. So Exactly.
Or for being more detailed. You don't want people to be like, spend less time you know, don't do as good of a job. So either way...
Exactly a project should take as long as a project takes. I'm with you, Windsor, thank you so much for your time, I think you've brought so many new insights and just like a fresh perspective to our podcast on a subject that we almost never cover on the show. So any of you who are listening, whether you're in media, like Windsor like Cubicle to CEO and HerCampus are or whether you're in a totally different business niche, I think the big takeaway here is, rather than directly selling someone through like, hey, let's get on a sales call. What are ways that you can provide value upfront and create a service that then makes it almost inevitable that someone would want to hire you for your expertise to complete said things. So thank you, Windsor. You're amazing.
Thank you, Ellen. You're amazing, too. This was so much fun. And I love seeing you grow from HerCampus experience. And now your own media maven, I love it.
Thank you. Thank you. Where can people continue to connect with you and HerCampus?
Yeah, so HerCampus you can find us at hercampus.com or collegefashionista.com, Spoonuniversity.com as well that is our food brands. So definitely check those out. Um, as far as me you can find me I'm most active on Instagram and I'm @windsorwestern at Windsor Western on Instagram.
Amazing. We'll drop all those links below for you in the show notes. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, bye.
Hey, Ellen here. Thank you again for tuning in to Cubicle to CEO. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow our show on Instagram @cubicletoCEO for more bonus content and hop on the last Tuesday of each month to watch our live after show with recent guests. If you want to support our podcast, text this episode linked to a friend, leave a positive review on Apple podcasts or rate our show wherever you're listening right now. Please make sure you also hit the Follow button on Apple it looks like a plus sign. Or click Subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss out on our new episodes every Monday. And friends until next time, keep dreaming big!
