In today's fast-paced digital landscape, finding the right talent can make or break a brand's success. According to Carlo Scaglia, founder of talent platform Exordi, identifying the right players isn't just about skills—it's about efficiency, reliability, and alignment with the brand's values. Read on for his recommendations on the factors marketers should consider when selecting the best talent to elevate their campaigns and enhance their brand presence.
How do you help marketers discover content creators with your platform?
It all starts with a need. Some clients, such as agencies, always have a very clear need and specific brief in mind. While with brands it’s our job to really identify the need by understanding their audience and service/product. Once we’ve understood the need, it’s relatively easy to translate the parameters on the platform such as: a Tik Tok video highlighting the best places to eat in NYC or a full commercial campaign to promote the launch of a new luxury interior design store in London. Seeing those as ingredients which we put into the mixer (Exordi) and it automatically provides the best, most relevant creators. Each creator has a portfolio on the platform which aside from content includes social links, reviews, social stats, and other stats, giving the client a full view of their capabilities. Despite the automation, Exordi is always present to support the client and its creators, ensuring a successful initiation and delivery of every campaign.
What qualities or characteristics should marketers look for when identifying content creators for short-term campaigns or projects?
There are two simple yet key elements to this: location and relevance. If it’s a short campaign, you want a fast turn-around without massive budgets. So, it’s vital to source a creator who is already based in the location, doesn’t need to scout shoot areas, and knows the industry well. This drastically reduces travel, shoot time, and costs, as well as re-dos. The relevance is important as it goes beyond industry knowledge but also channel deployment - it would be tricky to engage a portrait photographer for a social first campaign as it’s not their bread and butter.This is one of the key values that Exordi provides: 100% relevance for any shoot and exact creators in the exact locations needed.
Are there specific red flags that marketers should watch out for when selecting content creators from a global pool?
It depends. If you source from Exordi then there’s nothing to worry about since all our creators are 100% vetted and we streamline the process for clients. However, if it isn’t through Exordi, then there are some soft but important things to look out for.
For example, are they on time to the call? Do they reply quickly to emails? Is their portfolio curated and up to date? What is their equipment? What do they edit on?
These are all markers which not only show how professional they are, but also how committed they are to working as creators. People who show up late, have outdated portfolios or send emails with lots of mistakes, aren’t that committed to working and hence won’t deliver a good and timely output.
What current trends are you seeing in the industry regarding the selection of content creators for brand representation?
This also comes down to authenticity, relevance and costs. Truth is, content needs to be democratized. We’re littered with it and with such short attention spans, viewers often forget/ and move past things very fast. So, while it isn’t a ‘trend’ clients are looking for less costly solutions simply because they need so much content. This also means that creators need to be more flexible in how they work with clients. That’s why at Exordi we’ve fixed prices for various assets and provide bulk discounts. These are prices that everyone is happy with, and it makes for a very easy workflow. Secondly, authenticity and relevance. Two words which are flung out a lot but they’re so crucial which is why Exordi runs AI algorithms that truly understand the passions and affinities of our creators. Customers hate being sold to, they want to see an aspirational and relatable piece of content instead. That’s something that only a creator who truly knows that sector can do.
How do you see the role of AI evolving in the creation and management of campaigns?
Exordi works with AI a lot and has seen a great use for it during mood boarding and ideation since we can literally show the client what the creators will shoot. This is a great safety parameter for clients, and it also eliminates the re-do process. I highly doubt it’ll ever replace original content. AI content comes from past data, meaning that all of its output isn’t original - the more it’s used, the more AI content will look the same. It poses a threat to stock content for sure, but as we all know, no one really likes to use stock content. In an increasingly selective social world, people only want to see original, authentic content and AI can’t deliver that. We’ve said this a lot, AI and tech as a whole, should never be seen as the final solution. It’s a tool, a co-pilot, to make interim processes faster, cheaper and more accurate. We’ve also started feeding AI with the past performance of a campaign and using it to prompt content briefs. This is a really exciting step for us as it brings Exordi to becoming a one-stop shop platform which keeps learning and providing valuable data for future, best performing content.
