Following the raising of a $5.3 million Series A round last September, social influencer startup Tribe has this week announced its launch into UK market, having secured a lineup of initial British clients.
Three major brands have joined up, including department store Selfridges – which partnered with fellow Australian startup Mon Purse last year – alcohol brand Moët Hennessy, and personal health company Burt’s Bees. The brands have purchased over 100 pieces of content from content creators in the UK.
Moët Hennessey’s UK Digital Marketing Manager, Greg McCann, said after hearing the success the brand’s Australian base has had with Tribe, they were quick to set up their own local campaign.
“The results have been great, having received 99 submissions from talented content creators in just over a week,” he said.
Launched by television personality Jules Lund in late 2015, Tribe helps connect brands to “micro-influencers” or personalities on social media platforms such as Instagram, and pay them for bespoke marketing campaigns.
Tribe’s CEO, Anthony Svirskis, said at the time of the raise that business had grown rapidly in the Australia despite only a short time in market, and felt ready to begin expanding overseas.
“We reached a point pretty quickly since launch, and we’re not yet 12 months in the market, where we felt that our trajectory and the core numbers on the platform in the local market, were really strong, and understanding the space we’re in moves very quickly, we wanted to take what we have in Australia and go into new markets,” he said.
Since launch, the startup stated it has connected over 2000 brands with 10,000 different influences, who have generated roughly 75,000 pieces of branded content across social media platforms.
Speaking about the UK launch, Lund said the app’s time-saving potential and ability to harness a digital form of “word of mouth” marketing has been key to its success.
“Word of mouth recommendations have always been the holy grail of marketing, and technology enables us to democratise the influencer marketplace. With the Tribe app, brands can now manage 100 micro influencers in the time it took to manually manage one,” he said.
The startup’s success comes as it works through a crowded space.
Also looking to harness the power of ‘word of mouth’ marketing, last year saw social media influencer startups HooZu and HypeTap enter the market.
Helmed by former Wallaby Lote Tuqiri, HooZu focuses on scouting out influencers for brands to market their product through. Meanwhile, Melbourne competitor HypeTap allows brands to search for influences and create briefs for them to work from.
Another competitor is Visual Amplifiers (VAMP), which last year brought on Todd Sampson as a non-executive director. Having opened offices in Singapore and Hong Kong earlier this year, VAMP is now seeking out an IPO.
Image: Anthony Svirskis and Jules Lund. Source: Supplied.
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