Robert Steele, CEO of Thumzup Media Corporation TZUP, was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access.
Thumzup offers people the ability to get paid to post about their favorite products on social media. By connecting brands to consumers through trusted friends, Thumzup has created a way to bypass the traditional model, allowing anyone to earn.
Mr. Steele spoke about his "flywheel" approach to marketing the platform. After a successful launch in Los Angeles, the company is launching in Miami.
Thumzup offers people the ability to get paid to post about their favorite products on social media. By connecting brands to consumers through trusted friends, Thumzup has created a way to bypass the traditional model, allowing anyone to earn.
Mr. Steele spoke about his "flywheel" approach to marketing the platform. After a successful launch in Los Angeles, the company is launching in Miami.
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00:00And it is my pleasure to welcome in the CEO of Thumbs Up Media Corporation, Robert Steele.
00:09Great to be with you today, Robert.
00:11Hey, Dan.
00:12Thanks for having me on.
00:13Hey, the pleasure and honor is all mine.
00:15Listen, Robert, let's talk about your fascinating company, Thumbs Up.
00:19Give us an overview of it.
00:20Sure.
00:21Well, we think of Thumbs Up as Uber for advertising.
00:25So similar to how Uber created tens of billions of dollars in value by democratizing ride
00:29sharing, meaning using technology and building a community to open up an industry so everybody
00:34could participate and get paid.
00:36We believe we're in the process of doing that with the $200 billion social media marketing
00:40and advertising industry.
00:41And the way I explain it to my mother is I say that Thumbs Up is the only platform that
00:45we know of that makes it really easy for any brand or business to pay people cash to post
00:51about the brand or business to their friends on their personal social media.
00:56I love it.
00:57You mentioned, you know, that you're democratizing the multibillion dollar social media branding
01:01and marketing industry.
01:02Let's kind of dive into more how you're going to do that.
01:05Yeah.
01:06So, for instance, we have Meta was just talked about on the piece before I appeared.
01:14And so Meta, you know, trillion dollar company plus has eight million advertisers.
01:19OK, so most of their advertisers are small businesses.
01:22So in the beginning for Thumbs Up, that's what we're really focused on.
01:25We're really focused on our solution for small businesses that makes it really easy
01:30for them to get new customers.
01:32Nielsen says that 92 percent of people trust recommendations from friends and family above
01:36advertising.
01:38So if digital advertising like Meta is a 200 billion dollar space, how big is the space,
01:43the market for scalable recommendations from friends and family?
01:46So we launched in January of 2023 in Venice, California, similar to Uber.
01:52We got market dominance in a small area.
01:55Hundreds of advertisers in a small area demonstrated the flywheel effect that people learn about
02:00Thumbs Up, tell their friends, the advertisers, neighbors, sign up.
02:05Now we're launching it in Miami.
02:07So similar to Uber, we'll do a city by city strategy could be in five cities or more,
02:12you know, by the summer.
02:13You got to love that buzzy word about that really makes a huge difference in what kind
02:17of growth have you seen in your users, Robert?
02:20Yeah.
02:21We really track advertiser growth is what we are keeping our investors and followers
02:28actively following with us.
02:31So we recently put out a PR that advertisers had more than doubled in 10 months ending
02:38October 31st.
02:40So we also put out a PR that people can expect that advertiser growth could go 10x from here
02:46over the next year.
02:48And then what we see with users is that users follow the advertisers.
02:52So in Los Angeles, within an hour of us adding a new advertiser to Thumbs Up in Los Angeles,
02:58a Thumbs Up user comes by and posts about that advertiser.
03:02So with our business model, it's really about advertiser acquisition, advertiser growth,
03:07and the users follow that.
03:08I love that.
03:09Let's talk about the effectiveness of brand campaigns and has this increased for you guys
03:13over time as you fine tune the platform?
03:18Yeah.
03:19So we're really excited about the fact that the Harley-Davidson dealership in Venice,
03:24California is a happy customer.
03:26They've bought the service and renewed several times.
03:28So the CEO has an interview on our website where he talks about how they use Thumbs Up
03:34to have the most attendance that they'd ever had in their 40-year history at Venice.
03:40And that was a $650 ad spend to give a Harley-Davidson dealership the most attendance they ever had.
03:46We have other advertisers that have told us that the Thumbs Up's paid for itself within
03:49the first two weeks.
03:51We have another advertiser that says that their sales grew 40% for the five months after
03:55they started using Thumbs Up versus the prior five months.
03:58That's pretty exciting.
03:59Listen, something else that's exciting, it's happening all over the place, you know, Bitcoin.
04:03Your board just approved Bitcoin as a treasury asset.
04:06How much do you plan to add to the books?
04:08Well, the main thing that's going on there is that we are growing.
04:13We're a gig economy company, okay?
04:15We believe that there is a trend where people don't want to have traditional office jobs.
04:20They want to have multiple forms of income, and we fit right into that.
04:24So one of the multiple forms of income that Thumbs Up provides is in Los Angeles and Miami
04:29right now, you can be paid $100 to sign up new advertisers on Thumbs Up.
04:35And we have people that we have one rep who's made more than $20,000 in the last 90 days.
04:41Anybody listening that's interested in that, email us at ASP at ThumbsUpMedia.com.
04:45So that's the first community that's going to get paid in Bitcoin is our gig economy
04:51sales force.
04:52I'm already emailing you right now about that, by the way.
04:55Tell us more, Robert, about the recent integration with Instagram, Reels, and I know you also
04:59have a planned strategic integration with Axe Formula Notice Twitter as well.
05:03Absolutely.
05:04Yeah, we're super excited about that.
05:06So anybody can just search hashtag Thumbs Up on Google and see more than 25,000 Instagram
05:13posts that have been made through Thumbs Up.
05:15And over the last couple of weeks, you're going to start seeing Reels videos.
05:19So for instance, one popped up yesterday at Dulcinero Gelato here in Santa Monica, and
05:25it's a great, exciting video that shows, you know, who doesn't like a gelato?
05:31So it's a great video of one of our advertisers that shows the tasty treats, and just the
05:39video pops far more than photos.
05:43So we're very excited about that.
05:44We get higher engagement from the Reels feature.
05:48And then on the TwitterX integration, so I'm pretty sure Joe Rogan, who may be the leading
05:55podcaster in the world, recently said that TwitterX is the way that the world is getting
06:01their news right now.
06:02So I think there's a transformation taking place, and we want to be, you know, right
06:06on top of that transformation.
06:08So we announced we're very close to being able to have advertisers pay people to post
06:14not only on Instagram's posts and Reels, but should be on TwitterX coming up real shortly.
06:21That's fantastic news.
06:22And now I'm very hungry for gelato.
06:23I wanted to ask you about the biggest shifts you're seeing in consumer engagement that,
06:28you know, are going on with Thumbs Up.
06:30Yes, well, we really think that authenticity is very, very important.
06:34So people are, they're tuning out advertising that's too slick, that's too polished.
06:39And we believe that Thumbs Up makes that scalable for small businesses and for major brands
06:45that they can leverage the authenticity.
06:47So when you tell your friends that you like a product or a service or a brand, that is
06:52the most powerful form of advertising there is.
06:54But without Thumbs Up, there's no easy way for a brand to scale that the way they can
06:58scale Facebook ads or whatnot.
07:01So we think we're capitalizing on that trend where people are tuning out highly polished,
07:07traditional advertising, and they want to rely more on what their friends are recommending.
07:12That's absolutely fascinating stuff.
07:14Big times ahead for you guys.
07:16I know at Thumbs Up, you know, Media Corporation, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you
07:20today, Robert.
07:21Thank you so much for your time.
07:22Thanks, Dan.
07:23Thanks, Dan.