31. What Advocates Need to Know About the Creator Economy with guest Ashwath Narayanan

[00:00:00] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Hi, welcome to the Blueprint for California Advocates podcast. I am so thrilled today. I'm here welcoming Ashwath Narayanan, who is here from Washington, D. C. as a special guest. And before I get into it, I would love Ashwath, if you took a moment to introduce yourself and let us know where you started and where are you right now?

[00:00:21] Ashwath Narayanan: For sure. Thank you so much for having me. It's always good to have an opportunity to talk about creators and influencers and all the fun stuff we do at Social Current. But I can sort of start with our story. So I founded Social Current about three years ago with the goal of helping impact oriented nonprofits, purpose driven organizations, reach young people more effectively.

[00:00:41] Ashwath Narayanan: Because I was in a lot of spaces where decisions were being made about young people without young people. it made no sense that there were no young people there. And so I was like, I'm going to start an agency. I'm going to hire more young people and we're going to represent ourselves in these spaces.

[00:00:53] Ashwath Narayanan: And so we started doing a little bit of everything. We didn't have a ton of clients. And so we were doing a lot of cold outreach saying yes to [00:01:00] anything we could from an impact organization. And then an organization called community change reached out their DC based nonprofit. They do a lot of organizing work.

[00:01:09] Ashwath Narayanan: And they were doing a campaign around the child tax credit, which is a tax policy that the Biden administration passed in 2021 and unfortunately it's no longer there but they were trying to do some work around the child tax credit and get it outside of where it was currently being talked about, which was in traditional media in DC, behind paywalls into their communities on social media.

[00:01:30] Ashwath Narayanan: And at the same time, they were trying to figure out How do I center my communities in this approach instead of speaking to them from the outside, like an approach like ads would do and we were , Hey, why don't you find a bunch of tick tock creators from your community? And why don't you hire them to talk about their experiences?

[00:01:48] Ashwath Narayanan: And so over the next 2 weeks, we help them hire, train, or recruit about 15 creators. All of them had a lived experience around the child tax credit, and all they did was say what they use it for. Our goal with the [00:02:00] campaign was to reach about. 100, 000 people. We did four times as much and sent over 10, 000 people.

[00:02:04] Ashwath Narayanan: So the resources around the child tax credit and we really saw the power of working with creators because we did a campaign where we brought on people that had never done posts in politics to do their first post with community change. We got to pay people who are outside the progressive space to talk about the progressive space.

[00:02:21] Ashwath Narayanan: And then we also got to have fun watching really fun content doing it. And so we were like. What we're just going to do this. We're not going to do typical campaigns. We're just going to do influencer work. And over the last two years have helped tens of organizations work with thousands of creators.

[00:02:35] Ashwath Narayanan: And we've started building out tech to make it easier as well. So yeah, that's a little bit about me and the social kind of what we're building.

[00:02:42] Kristina Bas Hamilton: I love it. You are speaking my language. Even though I am not a Gen Z proud Gen X er here, but you're speaking my language, which is talking in a way that people will hear and listen and absorb and act versus being [00:03:00] lectured to and advertised to totally in ways that do not connect at all.

[00:03:07] Kristina Bas Hamilton: So I love it. I see this as the intersection between the relatively new, emerging creator economy. Which for folks who are not familiar is people who create content direct to the masses.

[00:03:24] Kristina Bas Hamilton: And that could be on multiple types of social media platforms, platforms, podcasts, YouTube. It could be long form, short form, whatever, but really what it is, is about people turning into creators and, speaking to their population, their audience. And, you know, frankly, that has turned out to be.

[00:03:46] Kristina Bas Hamilton: A huge thing and has, succeeded in launching careers and, clearly makes a lot of money for, for advertisers that are looking to, reach new audiences and the intersection between the creator economy and [00:04:00] the political and the policymaking world is something that is so exciting to me.

At least in California, there's been a lot of policy discussion around social media platforms and the negative that they do the algorithms and, specifically targeting young kids, is very concerning and something I'm very passionate about because I have.

[00:04:24] Kristina Bas Hamilton: You know, I have an 11 year old and a 14 year old and , if it was up to them, that's all they would do all day is, is be on social media, 

[00:04:30] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Let's flip the script on how social media could be a cause for good and use the algorithms to benefit society versus, making profit at the expense of the lives of people, basically. So let's take a 2nd back and talk about a particular campaign that you could reference and you don't even need to say the name of the organization or anything, but just like a case study.

[00:04:56] Kristina Bas Hamilton: , walking us through what would, what does it look [00:05:00] like for an advocacy org or a campaign, a  political campaign that is trying to reach a target audience that is within your purview? What, where would that conversation start?

[00:05:13] Ashwath Narayanan: For sure, before we go into case studies, I want to set some context for the audience around, general macro trends we're seeing that drive the creator economy. And so I think 1 of the main things that we've seen over the last 2 decades really is there's been a growing distrust of institutions, less people trust institutions than ever before.

[00:05:34] Ashwath Narayanan: And so when you think about communicating with audiences, they don't want to consume as much information from institutions. Which has now been replaced by people friends creators, they follow on social media to consume information. That's a really important thing to keep in mind when thinking about why the creator economy is growing because who we're consuming our information from is less.

[00:05:54] Ashwath Narayanan: The news media and more people we follow that we start to build parasocial [00:06:00] relationships with. And then the second driver has sort of been short form content. YouTube, for the longest time, has been the real driver of social media, of culture on the internet. And then when TikTok came out, TikTok started to take up a little bit of the role.

[00:06:13] Ashwath Narayanan: YouTube is still the original platform where everything is done. But there's been a shift into more short form formats of content over the long form that reach audiences. That's why YouTube is investing so much in YouTube shorts and Instagram is investing so much in realism. So I think the sort of lack of trust in institutions and the growing focus on short form is what a lot of our conversation today will be about.

[00:06:35] Ashwath Narayanan: But talking about case studies, I think the way I describe creator work to people is it can really be anything. You don't have to work with creators on a specific thing, but you're working with these people that have large audiences that have, you know, an audience that follows them for their content and an audience that trusts them.

[00:06:52] Ashwath Narayanan: And so you can work with them on a campaign. That is focused on driving petition signatures. You can work on a campaign that's [00:07:00] focused on persuasion. You can work on a campaign that's focused on lobbying for a specific bill or an action towards an audience in a specific state. You can work with them to tell stories around lived experiences.

[00:07:12] Ashwath Narayanan: That's where most of our work lies, for example, right now, we're doing a campaign on caregiving. And we're working with creators to talk about the high costs of child care. And so all of the creators that are part of the campaign are parents, and one of them had to choose between staying at home or going to work and chose to stay at home and build an online business because the cost of child care was so high.

[00:07:34] Ashwath Narayanan: And so a lot of our work can be finding the creators that have lived experiences around a non profit's issue or around a bill, and then getting them to share their, you know, stories and lived experiences. Fans on social media to convince their audience to support them around the issue. And the audience tends to trust them because of that relationship factor and because someone is sharing their story.

[00:07:54] Ashwath Narayanan: So it can, it can look a lot of different ways, but that's just one example

[00:07:58] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Let me ask [00:08:00] what does the data show or where's the evidence that that leads to people actually taking action? 

[00:08:06] Ashwath Narayanan: So we have a lot of examples where we did one campaign around urging Republican members of Congress to not shut down the government

[00:08:14] Ashwath Narayanan: and so we work with creators to promote it through Instagram stories and. We got over 20, 000 petitions with the cost per petition being under $5 in partnership with creators. So that's a real tangible example where if you're spending money on ads or if your cost per petition is typically in the like $6, 7, 8 mark, but this was, $5 or less.

[00:08:34] Ashwath Narayanan: with creators. And so that's an example of measuring it. You can also run content through message testing platforms like road progress and swayable to see persuasion dumps. So you can see if someone watched this video, how much more likely are they able to support this issue versus another?

[00:08:51] Ashwath Narayanan: So that's another way we measure sort of impact for clients as well. The real impact that is really hard to measure is the investment in that creator. A [00:09:00] lot of the organizations are spending tens and millions on ads that go back to the same companies and the same people.

[00:09:05] Ashwath Narayanan: And this is taking a little bit of that budget and spending it in our communities with people that are sort of driving culture. And so that impact is harder to measure, but it is an important thing to keep in the back of your head.

[00:09:17] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Absolutely. Can you speak to, in terms of voters and electoral outcomes,

[00:09:25] Ashwath Narayanan: There's so many examples of creators putting links to register to vote in their stories. The most common example, and this is a celebrity creator, but Taylor Swift on, National Voter Registration Day drove tens of thousands of voter registrations, but we're trying to do sort of a mini version of that with creators that, don't have such a large presence as Taylor Swift, but do have, concentrated audiences in college.

[00:09:49] Ashwath Narayanan: So we're trying colleges, or they have concentrated audiences in specific swing states. And so that's another example of working with creators to drive action in this action, specifically registering [00:10:00] a vote. One of the examples for a campaign we did is we worked with a creator about 2 weeks before the election to change the narrative around voting specifically.

[00:10:10] Ashwath Narayanan: Around signaling that voting is not that hard and because a lot of the messaging around voting is to make a plan. You have so much work you have to prepare. And while it is important to prepare, we also wanted to show younger audiences that, like, it can be a part of your day. And so we had a creator who does day in my life videos.

[00:10:29] Ashwath Narayanan: taking care of his grandma. And all he did was create a typical video, but part of that video was him sending in his ballot. And then at the end of the video was go, vote. And the goal with that wasn't to get someone to click on a, you know, link. The goal of that was to reach as many people as possible.

[00:10:45] Ashwath Narayanan: And the video reached over a million people telling them that they could have voting be a part of their day. And so that's another example of sort of voting focused content in partnership with creators.

[00:10:55] Kristina Bas Hamilton: How do you all find the influencers that you [00:11:00] think are the right messengers?

[00:11:02] Ashwath Narayanan: So, for us, we use a very straightforward model around how we're sourcing our creators. We think through the communities our clients are trying to reach, and then go try to find a creator from that community. That's a lot of manual work. That's going on TikTok, going on YouTube, searching through hashtags, searching through location tags, asking a bunch of creators what they care about, why they care about it, what live experiences they have, what they're comfortable sharing.

[00:11:28] Ashwath Narayanan: identifying creators that are creating good content and then consistently asking them what they care about so that we can find the right non-profit. But for us it's become a little easier over the years because now, we have a network in Wisconsin. We can go ask that network if they can recommend us to someone else and things of that sort.

[00:11:44] Ashwath Narayanan: So it becomes easier over time, but the easiest thing to do is go to TikTok, look up specific hashtags around your cause. See who's creating content or look up, go to TikTok, look up specific personas. For the child tax credit campaign, we obviously knew [00:12:00] that parents are using it. So we didn't have to look specifically for parents talking about it.

[00:12:04] Ashwath Narayanan: We could just look for any parents and then ask them. And then we sort of came down to our list. So it's a lot of searching, scrolling, which can be fun to do.

[00:12:11] Kristina Bas Hamilton: So that's the value that you provide to your clients is that you've done all that work

[00:12:17] Ashwath Narayanan: Exactly.

[00:12:18] Kristina Bas Hamilton: to vet the right people who don't have, I mean, here's the question that pops up is , making sure that there's not some skeleton in the closet. Right? You know, turns out they're running away from something. Totally. so let's walk through the steps then. So you identify. Okay. Your person, I assume you, you negotiate with the client, you know, what are they trying to do? How long, how much budget they have, et cetera. And then what would be the next step?

[00:12:45] Ashwath Narayanan: For sure. So typically sort of. How our average campaign is week one, you know, the client will come to us, they'll set a budget, they'll set their goal. So they'll talk through ‘is our goal narrative change? Is our goal petition [00:13:00] signatures? Is our goal just getting content that we can then boost in ads?

[00:13:04] Ashwath Narayanan: Talking through their goal, talking through their budget, talking through like who their audience they're trying to reach is? Week 2 is typically, we'll go then find the creators, we'll present the client a list of, you know, 10, 20, 100 creators, depending on what they're looking for. The client will then go through the creators, they'll make sure to vet them, make sure internally as well as an additional vet, they'll make sure they fit in with their values and their policies, all of that.

[00:13:27] Ashwath Narayanan: Then they'll select the creators. We'll then negotiate with them. So we'll tell the creators to typically send us the rates they have. We'll then match those rates against our database of what rates should typically be. We'll then sort of come up with a rate, say a thousand dollars for an Instagram and TikTok.

[00:13:43] Ashwath Narayanan: And then we'll see, okay, this creator we're paying a thousand dollars because they have X followers. The other creator, we're paying 3000 because they have X. So we'll sort of match the budget to make sure we have, you know, the right amount of creators with the right amount of deliverables with the right amount of budget we'll send them [00:14:00] contracts, they'll sign it.

[00:14:01] Ashwath Narayanan: And then at the same time as us sort of building all this, we'll work with the client to build a messaging brief. Here's the facts of the campaign. Here's sample trends. Here's the logistics. Here's the deadlines. Because I think an important thing to keep in mind here is the client is still the expert around the policy.

[00:14:17] Ashwath Narayanan: And while the creators, the expert around the distribution and live experience, the client plays a really important role. And so we want to make sure we reflect that in the messaging brief. We send them, send the creators the messaging brief and then, you know they film, they send it for approval to the client, client approves it, they go live, but the process is pretty collaborative around the creator sort of owning the lane of how it's getting distributed.

[00:14:41] Ashwath Narayanan: And the client owning the lane of sort of, here's the expert information that's the research backed based on our sort of knowledge, our work.

Kristina Bas Hamilton: Imagining, you know, a more grassroots budget, what would you say is or  should you anticipate to spend at least this much money.

[00:15:00] Ashwath Narayanan: What I always tell organizations that are smaller to midsize organizations is you don't have to work with 1000 creators. You don't have to work with even 10 creators. It could actually be more beneficial to build a deeper relationship with 1 creator in your state. Then maybe like 10 creators all over the place because that one creator you could do consistent videos with them.

[00:15:20] Ashwath Narayanan: You could invite them to be a part of your advisory council. You could invite them to, you know, give you advice on your social media. You could build a deeper relationship with a few creators that could be, you know, $500 a month, $1,000, $2,000 a month, but all on one instead of “Hey, let me work with as many as possible.”

[00:15:38] Ashwath Narayanan: But on the other hand, if you do have the budget, you could build deep relationships with an ambassador list of like five creators, 10 creators, 25 creators. So it really depends on goals, but don't push yourself to do as many creators. Cause that might not make sense. And I think you know, I think it's going deeper with a few might make sense.

[00:15:55] Ashwath Narayanan: You could also start by building relationships with creators and, like, giving them value in [00:16:00] other ways, if you're doing a gala or an event, you could invite a creator to be a part of it and think of it very much like when you're asking funders for money, you could also include sort of creators could volunteer views or volunteer their, you know, support and so that could be the

[00:16:15] Kristina Bas Hamilton: ways I'm not even thinking about. Yeah.

[00:16:18] Ashwath Narayanan: But I think it's important to think through; how you can also give value to the creators.

[00:16:22] Ashwath Narayanan: If you know you have expertise around a specific issue, and you have research, and, you know, a creator is doing content around that issue, maybe you can reach out and say, Hey, we would love to serve as an extension of your research team. Maybe we can get our research into your video. Or if you know a creator is looking for something, you can be helpful along with paying creators for content.

[00:16:43] Ashwath Narayanan: It's important to think through how you can drive value to them very much. Like you would engage a volunteer as well, but it is important to pay creators as well.

[00:16:52] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Oh, obviously. Yeah. Right. I'm, I'm very big fan of paying people for their work. Can you give me a dollar amount [00:17:00] ballpark, or do you feel it's just depending on so many variables?

[00:17:03] Ashwath Narayanan: It depends on so many variables. If you're doing a creator campaign with three to five creators that are between 25, 000 followers and 50, 000 followers on Instagram. The typical rates we see are 5, 000 for the total campaign. So that's an example of where you could start.

[00:17:21] Ashwath Narayanan: Right.

[00:17:22] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Compared to traditional ads and, you know, mailing and all the stuff, right? That's super reasonable.

[00:17:30] Ashwath Narayanan: Right. And you could start small and scale up over time as well.

[00:17:34] Kristina Bas Hamilton: I love it. So, I assume that this is true in DC, but maybe I'm wrong. You know, you, you certainly can correct me, but, you know, 1 of my observations Having been an advocate for a while here in Sacramento is, you know, so much of this world is at least as it relates to lobbying.

[00:17:56] Kristina Bas Hamilton: A lot of it is still super analog and [00:18:00] when I say that, I mean, you have a few organizations and lawmakers that have taken the plunge into creating content. On these sort of more, you know, Gen Z ish platforms or whatever. But there's still there, there is still the ultimate value of making a phone call, right?

[00:18:20] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Like there's still like, I'm mobilizing people to make phone calls and to do lobby visits, et cetera. But I, putting that aside, I think in terms of communications, there's just a hesitancy to really embrace new media and to invest in things that maybe haven't been proven before. We have examples of candidates that have done it and I've done it super successfully, but it still feels like the outlier and not the mainstream.

[00:18:50] Kristina Bas Hamilton: And, you know, 1 of the things that I talk a lot about with my audience is. That as advocates, you know, we, we come [00:19:00] to these campaigns because we, we want to do the right thing. We want to do good for society, right? We want to see positive change in the world. but we have to kind of, at some point, move a little bit past that to the point of, thinking in a very marketing sense that, you know, the idea that we're trying to promote here is actually a product.

[00:19:23] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Like anything else. Lawmakers are inundated with every other product under the sun you know, other ideas and it's a marketplace. And how do we think in a much more strategic and innovative way around reaching our target audience?

[00:19:41] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Our audience could be a lawmaker. So where are they spending their time and where are they seeing things, but also the target audiences, the people, it's the impacted communities who then we're activating to reach out to their lawmakers, which is extremely effective. But, but my, my [00:20:00] point overall is, you know, and, and I think it's just something.

[00:20:05] Kristina Bas Hamilton: That when you're operating as a little bit of a purist, it sounds almost offensive, I'm not marketing a product, you know, I'm. I'm doing the right thing, I'm fighting the good fight and there's the reality that we live in a certain kind of world, right? People are consumers, unfortunately, before there are a lot of things and, stealing the, the, the tactics and strategies of, you know, McDonald's and all of these corporations that literally invest billions in , Psychology and market research and all the things so that they can sell you more hamburgers.

[00:20:42] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Let's learn from that, right? Let's steal some of that to do actually the opposite of selling people hamburgers. I would love it if you talked about that because I feel like it's very much a philosophical question. 

[00:20:54] Ashwath Narayanan: Yeah, Typically, we see the non profit advocacy in the political [00:21:00] space follow the for profit space by 5, 10 years, maybe a little more on some stuff, maybe a little more.

[00:21:07] Kristina Bas Hamilton: years. Wow. Yeah.

[00:21:09] Ashwath Narayanan: and we've seen sort of like that happened in the digital ad space with, digital ads being a very common part of political campaigns now and advocacy, like, 10 billion dollars will be spent next cycle on Facebook and Google and streaming and all these platforms.

[00:21:23] Ashwath Narayanan: We're slowly starting to see that with creator work. The career economy as an industry is. Fairly new. But in the brand space, brands in the U. S. Are spending, you know, 56 billion dollars on influencers. Influencer marketing and the creator industry is growing and has become normalized.

[00:21:40] Ashwath Narayanan: I think Goldman Sachs said it's a 250 billion dollar industry now, which was non-existent 10 years ago. The more we see normalizing this as a tactic, the more political organizations will adapt it. But I also think in politics, there's deeper ties to TV [00:22:00] and there's deeper ties to ad firms and that might have a little bit of a role with creative work because it is an investment. It is sort of like a distribution of the money and sort of it all going back to the same platforms and the same firm. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.

[00:22:15] Ashwath Narayanan: But I think, we're seeing it more for us. A year ago, the question was always like, do we need to pay creators? And now it's more like, how much do we need to pay creators? So I think we're seeing it shift. We're seeing more organizations understand that this is just a new tactic.

[00:22:31] Ashwath Narayanan: It's not, it's not something wildly different. It's just a new way things are being done to reach people where they are and more people are adapting. So I think in 2024. Our hope is that we'll see it be a big creator election. We'll see a lot, the biggest investment creators we've seen so far. And you know, based on what we're hearing, it does seem like it will be, but nowhere near ads, but I think , you know, we're slowly starting to see that trend and we will over the next four or five years.

[00:22:57] Kristina Bas Hamilton: I'm chuckling as you're, as you're talking , because [00:23:00] I realized, as you were saying, it's just a new way of doing things that it's actually an old way of doing things in the sense of trusted members of the community being, you know, people going to them for advice. What should I do?

[00:23:15] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Should I vote for it? It goes back to the town square and who are the community leaders? And in fact, yeah. When you think about mobilizing communities, that is something people have always done is like, who do people trust? Let's go to them, let's talk to them and, and when their support on what we're trying to do it's, it's, it's building on the trusting messenger and, and using these new platforms to elevate those voices.

[00:23:41] Kristina Bas Hamilton: We know how to win these things. We just, you know, sometimes we don't know how to keep up with how people are talking to each other. The other thing too, is that, at least I'm sure as it relates to political campaigns, you know, you have a lot of the folks who've been doing the same thing every [00:24:00] year for a long time, not looking to change it up, they're making money just fine as it is and, have a, maybe even a prejudice against new technology in general. And, you know, there's that reality too, that you have people in decision making.

[00:24:17] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Positions who aren't even open to the idea of trying something new 

[00:24:22] Ashwath Narayanan: right. And I think there's also a little bit of fear of going first, because if you do make the first large investment and it doesn't work for another reason,

[00:24:32] Kristina Bas Hamilton: hmm.

[00:24:33] Ashwath Narayanan: Still get blamed. The creator's work gets blamed, even though it may be a fully separate factor. And so I think we're slowly starting to see organizations build larger programs that invest millions of dollars and creators in their communities.

[00:24:47] Ashwath Narayanan: It's just a matter of time before creator work is at the sort of forefront as a tactic as ads is and

[00:24:53] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Yeah. Well, it goes. So then what you're pointing to is that now is a fantastic opportunity. To get in at the [00:25:00] ground floor, really, if you think about it

[00:25:02] Ashwath Narayanan: percent and build relationships with creators and start sort of doing the early work so that you can be at the forefront of

[00:25:08] Kristina Bas Hamilton: probably at a level you'll never pay again in another year or 2 or 3. Yeah, a hundred percent, you know, I think, especially when you, when you think about narrative change as a campaign in and of itself, it's this very, kind of conceptual, how do you measure narrative change? And it's this kind of blob, but, you know, it's the concept of driving culture and where, where culture goes. And, you know, the reality is that people are doing it all the time. It's not like you're creating a new mechanism, it's happening.

[00:25:47] Kristina Bas Hamilton: And. You know, we can be the drivers. We can help drive the culture too. That's what excites me that excites me so much. Yeah.

[00:25:56] Ashwath Narayanan: And when I'm talking to folks, I also sort of mentioned that . By not [00:26:00] investing in this tactic, the culture doesn't like it, we don't stay at the same place. We actually moved back. So investing is not just a nice to have, it's a need to have because the right has invested in media 

[00:26:11] Ashwath Narayanan: , they've been investing in TV and in their

[00:26:15] Kristina Bas Hamilton: radio. Oh,

[00:26:17] Ashwath Narayanan: exactly. And so we're already behind, but we can't afford to get any more behind.

[00:26:22] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Right so every funder who's listening to this episode needs to start funding organizations to do this work. 

[00:26:29] Ashwath Narayanan: And , by investing in creators from the communities that aren't being invested in to show them how they can, they're part of this and how they can sort of engage with different issues.

[00:26:39] Kristina Bas Hamilton: YoU're pointing out the other facet, which is supporting. People from marginalized communities who are the creators themselves, and, supporting the work of telling their stories and, you know, centering the voice of the person with the lived experience, and yeah, I, I think there's just so much good that can come out of it.

[00:26:59] Kristina Bas Hamilton: So that's why I was so [00:27:00] excited when you agreed to come on, because I want to highlight these tools that are out there and maybe that's something to consider. So Ashwath, if folks want to learn about social current or they want to reach out to you or find you or anything, what, what are your deeds? What do they need to know?

[00:27:20] Ashwath Narayanan: You can follow us on any platform at Social Current or go to our website, socialcurrent. co and if you fill out the form, I will respond and I would love to talk about creators. Thank you so much for having me again.

[00:27:32] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Absolutely. And I'd love for creators in California to come and find you. And introduce themselves and let, you know, that they're out there and they're producing good content. And especially in communities that have not traditionally had a voice in politics and in, in policymaking and thank you so much.

[00:27:51] Kristina Bas Hamilton: I will put all the information in the show notes, any final words of. Advice, so what I'd like to end my episodes is, [00:28:00] what is 1 thing an advocacy organization can start doing right away after listening to this episode.

[00:28:09] Ashwath Narayanan: I would say the best thing to do is, find a creator in our community and figure out a small way to work with them because the most impactful thing we've seen for funders, for organizations around wanting to work with creators is actually working with creators, seeing a video go live, and then we don't have to do any convincing anymore.

[00:28:27] Ashwath Narayanan: Just seeing that impact is the best way to do it. And so like reach out to create an inner community. See if you could do a small collaboration and go from there.

[00:28:37] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to have you on. Thank you.

[00:28:41] Ashwath Narayanan: Thank you for having me. So excited to chat creators with you.

[00:28:45] Kristina Bas Hamilton: Thank you.