In this week’s episode of Earned, Conor Begley sits down with Ukonwa Ojo, CEO of Zaia Ventures—a company that builds and scales businesses that serve underrepresented and marginalized communities. Ukonwa’s vision is to showcase the beauty, complexity, and diversity of African culture to a global audience.
To start, we dive into Ukonwa’s career as former Global Chief Marketing Officer for major brands like Cody Consumer Beauty, MAC Cosmetics, and Amazon Prime Video. Ukonwa shares how she shifted from the executive suite to establishing her own ventures, fueled by a family legacy of innovation. She introduces us to Zaia Ventures, a holding company that encompasses her unique platform, Zaia, and then Ada & Edith, a fashion brand dedicated to empowering modern women. Ukonwa reveals key themes in authentic creator partnerships, like thinking of creators like friends of your brand rather than an advertising channel. We learn about Ukonwa’s mission to create meaningful connections and bridge fragmented communities, demonstrating how fulfilling work can harmonize with personal priorities. To close the show, Ukonwa shares about her love of travel and her goals to continue seeing the world.
Check out highlights from the episode below, or or tune into the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen!
The following interview has been lightly edited for concision.
Ukonwa Ojo on Authentic Partnerships: “As a customer, you can tell when an influencer is doing something that they don't actually really care about, and in that situation they're actually not as influential.”
Conor Begley: We're in this world of influencers and social media, and you got to see that right when you started.
You know, MAC was the number one brand in the world we tracked in influencers and makeup. Amazon Prime Video is number two in its category. So you've seen what really good looks like. Talk to me about your journey, seeing this whole social media influencer thing rise; and then from your perspective, what does good look like there? What's the approach of these brands that have become the best in the world when it comes to working with influencers and social media?
Ukonwa Ojo: At the end of the day, I see influencers for your brand as friends of the brand. [Creator marketing] gives you a structure and an infrastructure around friends of the brand. As a customer, you can tell when an influencer is doing something that they don't actually really care about, and in that situation they're actually not as influential. If you look at the influencer just for the number of followers they have, that's not helpful, because part of them following that influencer, they know everything about this person. They know the intonations in their voice when they really care about something and they know when they're just doing a paid gig. It's very, very clear to them, because they've spent a lot of hours with this person following them over a long time. Especially for big brands that were making the transition in the beginning, they almost saw influencers as just another media channel. We're advertising on TV, we're advertising on radio, and now we're just going to advertise using influencers. That’s how it started for a lot of bigger brands. You were seeing a lot of paid engagements and you wanted to make sure that you had the KPI. They were looking at it like it was a media channel like everything else.
The evolution that we've seen in the marketplace, and some brands still haven't learned [that creators are] friends who build communities out of people who genuinely love their content. The consumers that follow those people are able to see when there’s a genuine relationship and a friendship with a brand.
The more that community grew, the more that we were able to get more people to be aware of the brands and of the businesses.
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