August 14, 2013
Former NFL Player Gerome Sapp On His Journey from Athlete to Tech Founder
As a former NFL athlete that played three years for the Baltimore Ravens, and two years for the Indianapolis Colts, Gerome Sapp was always inundated with endorsement deals from various brands. But he knew that he wasn’t the only one who had influence over what people bought.
“There are millions of individuals in the world that have a favorite brand and/or charity initiative but have no way to connect with that brand or initiative to prove how influential they can be to them,†says Sapp, 32, who started the company with money he saved from his NFL years. “Every day, people talk about a brand, wear a brand’s product and share social content around a brand but have no way to get recognized and rewarded by that brand for being ambassadors.â€
To solve that problem Sapp created Fluencr, a marketplace that gives individuals the same access to their favorite brands and initiatives that athletes and celebrities have, and get rewarded for their influence.
Sapp spoke to Black Enterprise about what makes Fluencr unique, the challenges he faced starting the platform, and how he plans to profit off his innovative idea .
What does Fluencr allow users to do?
Fluencr is a user-facing, discovery-based platform that allows brands the ability to create social media campaigns, monitor the analytics and data around the campaign and its participants while tracking the influence of the ambassadors that are joined into that campaign. I also knew that with the powerful rise and impact of social media, everyone now has a platform to amplify a brand’s marketing message.
Who will benefit from it the most? How so?
Fluencr allows both brands and consumers the ability to equally benefit from the platform.
For consumers: It gives individuals the ability to connect with their favorite brands as social ambassadors, prove how socially influential they are to that brand, then get real recognition and rewards from that brand for their brand specific social influence.
For brands: They realize that influencer marketing is a powerful approach to getting their marketing initiatives out in a genuine, credible and often viral way. But they are all looking for the individuals that are truly influential to their specific brand, not just brand agnostically socially popular. So we allow them the ability to create and monitor a social media campaign, allow anyone the ability to join into that campaign (or they can invite individuals into that campaign) to prove their influence. Fluencr then tracks, measures and scores the social impact or influence each campaign participant generated for that brand. This includes the ability to track sales generated from their campaign and identify the ambassador responsible for generating those sales. We provide a brand’s true social media ROI (rate on investment) and a transparent look at the ambassadors that are driving that ROI.