Navigating the new era of brand partnerships

[00:00:01] Canned Intro Welcome to The Partnership Economy. This podcast explores the power of partnerships through candid conversations with industry leaders. Join our hosts Dave Yovanno, CEO, and Todd Crawford, co-founder of Impact.com as they unpack the future of partnerships as a lever for scale and an opportunity to put the consumer first.

[00:00:23] Dave Yovanno Welcome back to The Partnership Economy podcast. This is your host, Dave Yovanno, and I’m excited for you to listen to my conversation with today’s guest, Jackie Pimental. Jackie recently transitioned from senior global marketing director of Creators and Threads to senior global director of Core Ads Product Marketing at Meta. She’s a true meta OG, having worked at the company for an impressive 14 years, including when it was called the Facebook.com. Jackie is a trailblazer in the tech world with a remarkable journey from an associate at PwC to a global leader at Meta, from pioneering and reviewing systems to playing a pivotal role in the launch of Threads. She’s been at the forefront of transforming how we engage with digital content. In this episode, we discuss the launch of Threads, the evolution of Meta’s advertising model and the inside scoop on how brands and creators can succeed on the platform. Jackie also shares her insight into how to grow your career, including a great Sheryl Sandberg story and future innovations that we should keep an eye out for. I highly recommend staying tuned for this one. Welcome back to this episode of The Partnership Economy Podcast. I’m excited to introduce today’s guest, Jackie Pimental, senior global director of Ads Product Marketing, former director of Threads and Creative Marketing at Meta. Jackie, how are you doing today?

[00:01:50] Jackie Pimentel Doing great. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:53] Dave Yovanno All right. To kick us off, we have to talk about the fact that you’ve been at Meta for 14 years, a true meta OG, some would say. Can you tell us a little bit about how you even got started at Meta and what your journey has been like at the company all these years?

[00:02:08] Jackie Pimentel Many years ago I was actually at PricewaterhouseCoopers. I wanted to be a CFO, and so I was pursuing my CPA and working at Lucasfilm actually as an auditor. And I just was really wanted to be more on growing the business. I loved what I learned as an auditor is great out of college job, but there was this company and product. I was constantly using the Facebook.com. It was all I spending all of my time on that desktop website, if you can believe it. Back then, messaging my friends, talking about college and my sister at the time was growing a social media arm of razorfish and she’s like, Hey, I think you should check out Facebook. They’re starting to build an ads business. And I was like, I have no idea what ads are. I have no idea what this is. And a leap of faith. I took an entry level job. I made $20 an hour, actually, and answered advertiser questions all day long. And it was a great way to build a ton of empathy for our advertisers. And starting entry level 2, I see one entry level, and now being a senior global director really bringing a lot of our strategies to life. I have still that deep empathy of what our core people on the ground as well as advertisers and businesses go through. So the perfect way to enter, but it was definitely a complete pivot in my career, but I have never looked back. I am so grateful for the opportunities and some of the things that I’ve gotten to do is just how do you build a need of ads business? How do you especially on mobile, there’s no right hand rail. So what does native content advertising look like? And then I’ve also had done I’ve now had the opportunity to great things like launching Threads, working on creators, and now I’m actually back on the ad side. So it’s been almost 15 years now growing the business, and I have a true passion for growing a business that helps all businesses. And that too was something that when I joined Facebook, I was like, why, why is why are we doing insertion orders? Why can’t anyone who has an idea or a business just come and build their business and be an advertiser? And so my vision is that Meta continues to be a place where anyone with an idea can build a thriving business or a creator can be a creator, a person can be a creator. So I’ve I’ve loved my career so far and excited for the next 15 years.

[00:04:34] Dave Yovanno What does your current role entail?

[00:04:37] Jackie Pimentel My current role is I lead a global ads product marketing team to build our core ads business, which I did many years ago, and back doing it again. But now with this creator context, which has been crucial to bring in because it’s just the new way the businesses is growing and our businesses are building. So my current role is overseeing all the ads products that our businesses and advertisers use to build a presence, get a build their, create their message, get it out to the right customer, see the performance of it. And the thing that I love a lot about it as well is it taps a lot into AI and machine learning too, to help advertisers reach their goals. And that’s something that’s also a hot topic and excited to see us continue to invest there, to make ads perform and also make them make them match the expectations and the objectives of our advertisers. So everything from our models to the ad formats and solutions, there’s a lot on there. If you go to our metaphor business website, pretty much every product and there is the products that are the products that my team is working on and growing.

[00:05:45] Dave Yovanno It sounds like a lot of responsibility. Obviously you’re crushing it, otherwise you wouldn’t have been there as long and continuing to grow your scope of responsibility responsible for quite a bit. Could you tell us a little bit about that journey a little bit, like maybe a specific story that you can share about how you were able to grow so much in over so many years within such a successful organization, like Meta.

[00:06:03] Jackie Pimentel I think the arc of going from entry level, earning $20 an hour, stealing peanut butter and bread from the micro kitchen, literally, because I couldn’t feed myself on the weekends, to now where I am, I like to I actually just I found my old paycheck and I keep it in my office. It’s in a frame, my first paycheck and it’s a reminder of a couple of core principles is, you know, when I was earning $20 an hour, I had a slide that was actually printed on Sheryl Sandberg’s desk because it showed one of the first projects I worked on was how do we create an ad review system for all of this. These influx of advertisers who are creating ads, and how do we review all those in mass and and quickly? And it was a problem that I had never been approached with. And I think that we solved it. And we had a chart that showed ad volume and then our investment in headcount to cover that ad volume. And it was a leverage chart and she printed it. She’s like, this is these are the kinds of problems. This is the kind of is the kind of solutions we need to have. And I remember that as being like a really big part of like, God, I really love tech. I love being I love this kind of stuff because it’s like, how do you figure out these hard problems. And here I am, no experience in it, but just, you know, working with a great set of people and excited about the opportunity. And I think that story is really how I’ve had such a long journey is a couple of core things. One, humility, like you want to learn, you’re willing to learn anything. Flexibility, you’re willing to fall in love with the problem, not necessarily a solution. So you’re you’re willing to try new things and then positivity. You you’re okay if you fail because you want to get back up. And also you see a future. You see, okay, we can get through this and get to the end. And then accountability, like who ultimately, at the end of the day, like, I think what’s really helped me too is just being accountable for something, even if it’s not my job to say I’m going to figure this out to solve it. And those kind of core tenets have really helped in that trajectory. And that story, I think, shows that you can take anything and make it into you can take anything, any problem that maybe some people would be like not important. But it really did change the trajectory of core part of our business. And I was I’ve been blessed with a lot of those kinds of examples. So that that’s really what’s helped me grow within an organization.

[00:08:26] Dave Yovanno So, you know, the title of this podcast is The Partnership Economy. Obviously partnerships do factor into your work. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:08:35] Jackie Pimentel Couple of years ago, let’s see, three years ago I was working on a COVID, a lot of stuff with around COVID in small businesses. Maybe it’s actually now four years ago. From that, I started to hear a lot more about creators and partners and then was tapped to start leading a lot of our creator marketing and product work and and reels. And that was my first exposure where I was like, wow, creators are fueling so much of just content creation, how people are engaging, how brands are building. And I had already kind of knew that, especially going on YouTube with all my makeup tutorials of how to actually like do my hair and what foundation I should really be using. But how it factors in my work now, the story there is that like today, like now been the last three years I’ve had, they’ve been so core to all the work. So for example Threads. Threads when we created when we started the thought on Threads. Threads is a, it’s a more text, photo and some video sharing platform. And it’s a place where really anyone who has an idea or a thought can can put it out into the world and start a conversation. So it’s a great place for global conversation, and but threads was this interesting problem where it’s like, how do we launch an app where nothing’s in it yet? And who wants to go to a party with no music and no one there? And so the way we solved that was we were like, okay, we need to get partners involved. And not just get partners involved, we need specific sets of partners that are going to build the community with this. They’re going to be the first people there with the content and also they’re going to build this product with us. So that was that’s one really kind of big way partners, partners, partnerships have factored into the work. It’s not just, Hey, we want to do this one deal. It’s like we had lots and lots of partners and we still and we’ve engaged those communities, whether it’s NBA threads or book threads, and we still build with those communities. So it started with who do we want at launch to help us launch this thing and get their communities over into now who are building with. And even at Olympics, we see now that that has now we’ve all the partners that we had been building for the last other partnerships for the last year, now we see Olympics and Olympics on Threads was thriving and it’s great to see that come Threads is now a year and it’s great to see that partners are really at the beginning. We really were scoping out who’s this product for. We thought about the partners first and the communities they would bring. So that’s one really big way that I think partners have factored into the work. Think the next, which is now we’re core to what I’m doing now is ads and ads, businesses, brands and partners of how do we a lot of creators and partners, they themselves have their own brands, their own celebrity, and how do we help brands work with them? How do they leverage our platforms? We’re seeing a lot of people like an athlete who’s creating their own brand or even like Mr. Beast, you know, has like Feastables, you know, and it’s like and people are so how do we help creators who are building their own businesses? How do we help those businesses work with creators and keep building their businesses. So we’re seeing a lot of the changing landscape of just the partnership model. It’s not just, hey, sign up a partner and have them create a video for you. It’s now these like very deep partnerships or very high scale partnerships with thousands and thousands of nano creators. So now my job is building all of the tools and the things that creators, people, brands can all use, and that’s all centered around the partnership model.

[00:12:15] Dave Yovanno Now the core Meta business model, I’ve seen, as you know, ads, right. Basically inserting ads in the stream of content within the feed. I’m sure I would love at some point you kind of go back the switch from, you know, basically pages to the news feed because I was at a company called Gigya, dealing with social API. Sometimes I remember that vividly when when Facebook at the time kind of came out with that innovation. You got to credit Facebook, I think, to that innovation. I personally think it was Facebook that created the newsfeed. And as you get more insight on that, but but what I’ve always seen as the role is, okay, users are generating their own content and then we’ll just, you know, insert ads essentially in between that content. And I have to imagine that Meta is evolving to where they’re also trying to help brands partner directly with creators. Can you talk about that, if there’s any anything that folks should be aware of that’s that’s kind of in motion or in play currently?

[00:13:15] Jackie Pimentel I think people for a long time across the Internet, we’re used to seeing ads pop up or on the right side. And then with things like the newsfeed, it created an advent of juxtaposing ads right in the middle of content from people you know or pages you follow. And it it want and it wants to do it seamlessly. Like our our whole goal in putting ads and feed was how do you do it in a way that’s not disruptive but also actually addictive. And that kind of leads to personalized ads as well as ad units that look like organic content. And so even like when you’re scrolling through reels, we want you to scroll through reels or you’re loving reels. And when you see an ad, it should have the same kind of value to you that something else before it or behind it does. And so when you know, our role in your question about, you know, what’s our role in kind of helping build, you know, help brands and with the content piece? Well, one role is helping create more and more content. So it’s helping creators continue to create content. And what we’re seeing are a lot of people love creator content much. They love content from their friends and family. They also just love content that’s relevant to them, funny, maybe part they’re part of a community and it’s part of part of an interest of theirs. So that’s one way. And brands are in on that too. We see a lot of great content coming out of brands and brands that do this well, invest a lot in their content strategy, not just their ad strategy. It’s all of it. So that’s one way is is really helping with the content creation part of it. And then the other is the community building aspect of it. There’s many products and tools we have that help expand your reach of community, whether it’s through reals or deep in it, whether it’s through broadcast channels. And then on the ads part, there’s the connection of brands and creators. So your brand, how do you find creator who is, you know, has the right kind of audience that you want? You know, maybe it’s male, 18 to 24, and you want to like, there’s this one, one brand I love. Yeah. Dr. Squatch And they do email like skin care, deodorant, and they have a very clear audience base. And so they want to talk. They want creators who are going to help them reach their core customer. And so there’s a matchmaking need there. And that’s, that’s a place that we play with Creator Marketplace, which is a product that we have that helps that matchmaking. And then the last is helping turn those into ads, helping that content go further, helping it achieve the goals of brand. And we’re seeing creator that partnership drive sales, we’re seeing better conversions through that kind of partnership. And so all of those ways are ways that we have products and are investing in tools to help with content creation, the matchmaking, how it ends up as an ad to help with achieving a brand’s goals. And it’s it’s exciting. It’s exciting to see now. I think a lot of those platforms now are helping more creators and more types of brands tap into this powerful part of creator, the creator economy.

[00:16:17] Dave Yovanno What are the the typical deliverables then from that call a collaboration between a brand and a creator? It sounds like, is it is it turn into like UGC that the brand will then run as like a sponsor, an ad essentially, or are there other forms that come from that, that sort of collaboration between a brand and a creator?

[00:16:37] Jackie Pimentel I think we’ve moved beyond just UGC, which is which is good. I think a lot of brands will approach creator and just say, Hey, here’s a brief, make a 15 second reel and be done with it. I think the best brands are ones that develop long term deep partnerships with creators. And not even big creators, like there’s a Topical skin brand and they have thousands or hundreds of thousands, thousands of creators that they’re working with and they’re getting creators to give them feedback on product, like even Elf Cosmetics, they just did Elf Cosmetics. Kory, their CMO was amazing and they listen their community. So the core part of their product strategy. And so [00:17:17]in a lot of that [0.5s] is creators telling them about their products, telling them products they should build, telling them products that are working, that are not working. So I think it’s not just UGC, it’s product development. It’s it definitely then is UGC is really important. Content is important. And then it’s and it’s also ads obviously, of how to turn that into something that’s going to go further than just UGC. But the we’re seeing is a lot of that deep product kind of partnership is really important for big step changes for a lot of brands.

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[00:18:32] Dave Yovanno So a couple of things that you just outlined, Jackie, are not ads. So it begs the question, you know, and I think a lot of people are very interested in this, what is the compensation side of things when you talk about some of these types of collaborations here? Just do a 15 second rail and be done with it. For example, the one that you started off with. And then, you know, just other things like maybe just give us a sense of the different different ways in which creators are getting paid on the platform.

[00:18:57] Jackie Pimentel Yeah, I mean, creators deserve to be paid first and foremost so creators can get paid through their fans gifting subscriptions. We actually just passed two million active subscriptions on Instagram, which is huge. Gifting continues to grow where you can send gifts to creators you follow on both Instagram and Facebook. So those are ways from fans and continue to grow and are growing really well. And then the brands and creator connections with creators can get paid through brands and through vehicles like Creator Marketplace. It’s a great place for creators to to build brand connections and get paid through those kinds of partnerships. So those are the two main ways is through fans with that with those set of products and then through brands and excited that both those areas have tons of have self-serve products they’re growing and we’re seeing growth in both those areas for creators to continue to get paid.

[00:19:56] Dave Yovanno Any other examples that might be following some of those pro tips that you outline for us?

[00:20:01] Jackie Pimentel Absolutely. I mean, I’m going to plug my husband’s company just because, yeah, he he’s he founded a company called Chubbies. And I think they continue to be.

[00:20:11] Dave Yovanno What’s the point of its name? You got to give us.

[00:20:13] Jackie Pimentel I think I can give you the real I can give you the real real talk on that. We were newly dating and he’s like, I’m quitting my job as a PM because I have this passion for starting this for a men’s shorts apparel brand. And I remember being like, gosh, well, is this the time where I exit? He’s like, I’m going to sleep on a sleeping bag. This is my passion. I’m going to spend my all day in the Marina in San Francisco, built creating content for my new brand. And I think what they did right and a lot of brands are doing this is they just realize that their community of people who like what differentiates cotton shorts from another cotton shorts provider. They built a brand and they built it through, they use only user generated content. So they were really big about building their community. And and they now also they invest a lot in creators. And I think brands like that, they’re just like at the end of the day, if you’re selling content shorts. Your creators are going to help differentiate. What does your brand stand for? You know, is it the weekend? Is it, is it something else? And I think that’s that is an example where, you know, they’ve they’ve been doing it right. Yes. In the early days, I had to help them a lot with them. Actually, from the very early days, I remember this. But you know, Facebook, right, when we launch pages, I got them up on pages. One of the first actually, pages users is Kanye West. He was writing out a friend requests. He was like tapping out. And so we needed like pages was a lot of that. And Chubbies was facebook.com/thechubstore. It was their vanity handle. And I was like, this is never going to work, like what it also what is Chubbies? So anyway, it’s interesting that they’ve been able to build a brand with that name, but they’re doing quite well. So but they have definitely invested hard and user generated content creators and brands like that. I think the other one I mentioned too is like Topicals, which is a skincare brand. They do so much about just working with the set of creators, listening to them, investing in them. You know, they are their community builders too. And gen-z, millennials like we care a lot about the brands, what they stand for, but it just we don’t want to hear it from the brand themselves. And I think you already said this. You want to hear the brand, you want to hear it from the brand themselves. You want to hear it from people who you relate to.

[00:22:27] Dave Yovanno Yeah. And I would argue that it seems more important now with the younger generations, with the spending power. There is a lot of choice out there of things to buy. A people want that association. It sounds like with your husband’s company they want to have fun and enjoy it. And there’s other companies, you know, you know, Patagonia is the easiest one to call out. You know, like people want to buy from companies that have like deep values that align with theirs. And it’s really hard sometimes to get those points across in your traditional advertising format. Like you need creators and other partners that can tell that story in a longer form and a fun form, right, And more creative ways.

[00:23:07] Jackie Pimentel And build that community, you know, build that community. And I think that’s people that belong to something, too. And I think, you know, even I love them. So Chappell Roan, she performed at Outside Lands this last weekend. She tells her community there’s dress code, there’s dress themes for each of her concerts. You know, like a new theme. People want to be part of a community. And I think if you’re a brand, you’re using creators to build your community. And it’s like hokey to tell them, Hey, like I’m XX brand. This is what I stand for. But if the creators and the people you’re building community with are part of that and they’re helping you build that, then there’s a lot more authenticity.

[00:23:41] Dave Yovanno One thing I wanted to call out a I heard you mentioned something about the desire for longer term partnerships between brands and creators and vice versa. And we’ve actually, as a company, in fact, that company done some research that basically found the same, came to the same conclusions. And in any context maybe to share about the trends that we’re seeing here on on platforms like Meta.

[00:24:03] Jackie Pimentel Well, people spend over two trillion minutes a year with creator content and that was our last year’s stat. So that’s going to be a lot more for 2024. So there are definitely a lot of opportunities for people to spend time with creator content. So there’s opportunities out there. And that is the nature of having an algorithm is, you know, there’s. We want to make sure that content is served to people in a way where they can discover new creators, new brands. And we and we see that with them. Recent studies have shown that people want to they want to discover new brands and new creators. So like, we need to we need to fulfill that one. The best way for creators to to build their following is through reels and through feeds, because then you’re going to get in the unconnected content areas. And then from there getting people to follow you and getting people then to join your broadcast channel or see your stories because they follow you, that’s the way to keep deepening that engagement. And then we did launch a notification button so that when you do get those followers, you can tell them, Hey, get notified when I post new content. And that’s a great way for creators to make sure that their stuff is seen.

[00:25:13] Dave Yovanno Any other new innovations that are that are coming out that might be fun to hear about?

[00:25:18] Jackie Pimentel We’re always innovating. Innovations, name of the game. I think, you know, on the creator, on the creator side, so many new things. So one is I think we continue to invest in partnership ads. So we’re seeing like 20 percent efficiencies in CPAs and cost per acquisition and sales just from using partnership ads. We’re continuing to make partnership ads more performant, easier to create. So that’s one thing. On the innovation side, the other thing is, like I said, to have just new formats and ways for people to connect with creators. Like if you remember nothing else from all this, it’s like feed in reels is like bigger audience, stories, broadcast channels, subscriptions, deeper, go deeper with your audience. And then on the kind of innovation side, so many new camera features and tools. So our cameras kind of gone through a complete overhaul on across our apps where so many better editing features, adding fun new stickers and things and more audio. So a lot of new stuff on the first on our camera tools that people should check out. And then, you know, I can’t not say anything about AI. So we launched a AI studio a couple of weeks ago, and it allows creators, creators can go and do a couple of things that are really interesting. I’m actually tinkering with some of this now. When you can create your own AI, like without coding experience, you can. Let’s say that, you know, I love this podcast. Let’s say you want to do like an AI about like building out a podcast show. Like you could create any AI like this, and other people could build out a similar podcasting show just like how to how to format your podcast, how to build your voice like you could, you could create that, or you can create an extension of yourself. Like, I mean, for me, I’ve got a lot of unread messages. I probably need this. You can create an extension of yourself to engage with your community. So if you’re not, you’re not up 24/7. And a lot of creators tell us burnout is a real thing. They want to take a vacation, well, great, create your avatar, create your, create, extend yourself and so you can engage with your community that way. And then generative AI. So many, we’ve launched some new generative AI tools which are continuing to grow and are really interesting. You can put upload photos of yourself and create your own, you know, make yourself into I think I made myself into an Olympic sprinter. I looked very tired though, so I was at the end of the race. But it was very exciting. And I think that is, you know, with innovation like AI, with the other pieces, great. But with this kind of innovation, we’re continuing to balance innovation with also originality in authenticity. I think a lot of the no brainers for AI are obviously things that make the workload easier for creators and brands. But we, you know, obviously originality and authenticity is at the core of it to make sure we’re preserving that.

[00:28:09] Dave Yovanno I have to imagine that Meta is just at the beginnings of, you know, absolutely crushing gen AI. You know, just, you know, kind of protip on other podcast, a lot of Silicon Valley podcasts like [00:28:21]BG2 [0.0s] is a good one, and I listen to, but it’s really seems like Meta is innovating a lot in the gen AI space with an open source strategy. What is it Llama? Llama? For now that that’s out? You know, just, you know, the access to data that that strategy is, is adopting. It’s it’s only a matter of time before it’s it’s the dominant player. I think gen AI so encourage folks to look out, and I would imagine that’s going to be woven into everything that, so be excited to see. Have to invite you back, you know as things progressed next month.

[00:28:54] Jackie Pimentel Would love that. Would love that.

[00:28:56] Dave Yovanno Yeah. So when you think about that, there’s there’s got to be a question in there about gen AI, in terms of, you know, what you’re hearing from creators, are they embracing it or are they freaked out? You have to imagine that people who interface with creators want authenticity. They want the straight scoop at the end of the day. You know, what’s your gut feeling about where where that goes from a from a from a creator point of view?

[00:29:18] Jackie Pimentel I mean, maybe it goes back to my core principles. I’m an optimist at heart. I believe in the good of things. I’m a fourth generation Bay Area native, so I’ve seen innovation is like it’s in my blood. I think from a creator point of view, I think I think our responsibility as a platform is to is to ensure full transparency around AI, especially as it’s newer, is making sure that people understand what is AI and especially the content that they’re seeing. And I think that that is one of our responsibilities. I think as for creators, real, realness is going to win, always. You know, like people want human connection, interaction and people know and that and that is real. And I know that that will always went out. So I have full faith that AI will have its place. It will have its place, but it can never replace what is true and real, which is the authentic human condition and human connection. And I think that that is going to always be that’s something that is irreplaceable, that creators definitely have a will have an edge on any AI product, any day of the week. Is that at the end of the day, they are themselves and they are who they are and no one can replace that.

[00:30:27] Dave Yovanno Yeah, excellent. So obviously the gen AI piece is a big one, but maybe just as we look to wrap up, any other trends that you’re focusing on for 2024.

[00:30:36] Jackie Pimentel Absolutely. Things I’m excited about for 2024, the rest of 2024 is one, more time on reels and content people are sharing. There’s two billion reels shared a day. So if you think about that. Two, content is going further than ever before. And Adam Mosseri actually did a great talk on just how important shares are for content and reels is one of the top shared formats, so more people spending time on reels and sharing it. The second is on partnership ads and its effect on all parts of the marketing funnel for a brand. So helping drive awareness, ad recall, all the way down to core sales and and we see that the conversions are boosted by 30 percent using partnership ads. And that is formed from a creator in a brand coming together. And so I think that is going to continue to be a big trend. And then the last is just the legitimacy of the creator economy. And and when I say that too, it kind of reminds me of social, like 15 years ago. We were trying to explain social to CMO’s. Like now like CMO, get it now in mobile advertising. Well now it’s creators and CMO’s and agencies. Everyone’s like, Hey, how do we keep leveraging this? And we’re seeing, one, it’s going to be data driven. And the great news is we have great measurement solutions and also it is data driven. Like we know that creator marketing drives sales, we know that it builds brand. So that’s great. And the legitimacy of that too is further strengthened by seeing things like the creator track it can. So like its creator economy is not going anywhere. It’s now just business as usual. It’s part of the core business of any brand. And I think, two, I was excited to see Ryan’s company, Influential be bought by Publicis and I think that’s another signal of it’s here, it’s here to stay. And legitimacy is its core to any business on the platform. So excited to see the creator economy keep growing.

[00:32:31] Dave Yovanno Excellent excellent and that’s a wrap. Jackie, thank you so much for joining me in this jam packed episode. Sorry to take you back in the wayback machine a couple of times, but I couldn’t help myself.

[00:32:40] Jackie Pimentel I love it. I love it.

[00:32:42] Dave Yovanno You’ve been an amazing guest on The Partnership Economy podcast, and to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We’ll see you next time. Wow, what an incredible conversation. We touched on a lot of topics, but one thing is clear brands need to be comfortable with relinquishing some control. As Jackie put it, letting creators be a vehicle for their brand and messaging. This will allow brands to tap into genuine and innovative content and will resonate better with savvy audiences. Elf Cosmetics and Chubbies are great examples of brands who have seen success by leveraging creators and UGC content. It was also fascinating to reflect on how Meta’s advertising approach has transformed over the years from static ads to dynamic integrated content strategies. Initially, ads appeared in sidebars and later within newsfeeds. But today, Meta helps creators weave brand messaging directly into their content, effectively enhancing engagement. Jackie also shared many tips on how brands and creators should leverage Mata’s evolving tools, including ways to deepen community engagement strategies to implement advanced ad formats, and how to utilize AI driven content creation. These tools can help players in the partnership economy stay one step ahead and get the most out of the platform. Finally, I love Jackie’s advice and advancing your career through humility, flexibility, positivity and accountability. It’s always inspiring to hear stories of people who took a risk in their career, stayed open for opportunities, and achieved success through following their passions and instincts. Thank you to Jackie for joining us on The Partnership Economy Podcast, and to our listeners thank you for tuning in.