Building Buzz for Brands

Mae Karwowski ’04 was in a staff meeting when the idea for her influencer marketing agency crystalized. It was 2012, and her then boss was updating the group on what various members of the marketing agency staff were working on. When he got to Karwowski, he said, “And Mae is obviously doing social media.” And she thought, “Obviously Social; what a great name.”

 

After starting a blog by that name, Karwowski came to realize the niche business she was developing — influencer marketing, a form of word-of-mouth online marketing amplified by social media — had merit. Lots of merit.

 

“It became obvious how essential social media is to a brand’s presence,” she says. The following year, she launched Obviously Social with a small staff and without raising any capital — a unique path for start-ups, she says, because it means growing at a slower pace than competitors who may have a huge investor financial base to support their early-stage growth. Since then, the influencer agency has grown to 50 employees, increased revenue 50 percent a year for the last several years, and dropped “Social” from its name. Headquartered in New York, Obviously has offices in San Francisco and Paris. Karwowski serves as the company’s founder and CEO.

 

“Most of our clients are really large brands, like Google, Amazon, Ulta, and Hasbro,” Karwowski says. “We’ve built strong relationships with them for years, and those brands stick with us year after year.” A full-service agency, Obviously handles all aspects of a brand’s influencer campaign. If a brand wants to work with 100 TikTokers, Karwowski’s group finds the right people, connects them with the product, and handles such things as pricing, content rights, using the appropriate music, and performance reporting. Her sales team acquires new clients through outreach and referrals —and by leveraging the company’s own considerable marketing and PR prowess.

 

Karwowski attributes much of Obviously’s success to being focused. “There are so many shiny things going on in social media all the time,” she says. “Focus really helps us. It’s how we created an awesome client base. When I started, friends said, ‘Are you really going to focus on this small niche?’ And I said yes.”

 

Big or small, Karwowski says, the key is to position yourself as an expert. More than 1,000 influencers a week sign up on Obviously’s platform looking for help analyzing and categorizing their expertise and connecting them with brand campaigns.. Today the influencer market is a $10 billion industry. A few years ago, she says, it was $2 billion.

 

“I think a lot of people are shocked at just how viable an influencer career can be,” Karwowski says. “You don’t have to be a hot girl from LA; you can as easily be a vegan chef and make a healthy income from that.”

 

Karwowski sees her purpose as creating opportunity, whether it’s for women who want to be influencers or for the State of Nebraska — an Obviously client. “We set a very unique course that shows you don’t need money to be a successful influencer,” she says. “You can build your business on your own terms in your own market. Creating opportunity for others is my passion.”

 

In addition to Obviously’s brand clients, the company has more than 150,000 individuals who have signed up to be on their platform. Those creators are the first influencers to be considered when a brand comes to Obviously for a campaign. Beyond that, the influencer agency can reach out to more than 40 million influencers across different platforms. The success of that combined approach to reach and find clients is beyond proven. It’s, well — obvious.