TRIBE, a self-serve marketplace that connects brands with micro-influencers, has raised an impressive US$7.5 million in Series A funding.
Founded in Australia in 2015 by TV and radio host, Jules Lund, the startup was created in response to the growing “demand for branded content.”
“Brands are desperate for content,” Lund told TechCrunch. “When you have a hundred customer profiles and the ability to be hyper personalised and targeted and social, you now need 100 beautiful pieces of content. Creative agencies can’t supply that at the right cost and the right turnaround, and stock images are the antithesis of personalisation, because they don’t feature your brand.”
When it comes to differing from all the other influencing marketing companies, Lund said TRIBE's process is purely self-serve. Brands can post their requests, either for an “influencer campaign,” where influencers create content and promote it to their followers, or a “content campaign,” which only involves creating the content. Users then put forward their work and get paid only if the brand decides to use it.
Additionally, brands are not sending free products to influencers who might not be an ideal fit – TRIBE is instead connecting them to influencers who already own (and most likely enjoy) their products.
The company is already working with brands such as L’Oréal, Unilever and Marvel and it is producing more than US$250,000 worth of branded content each day. The U.K. is currently its largest market, but the U.S. accounts for 20 per cent of the 50,000 plus influencers on the platform.
Thanks to the new funding, TRIBE will also be launching in the U.S. and opening an office at One World Trade Center, Manhattan.
“With TRIBE we’re finally seeing influencer marketing done right,” Burch Creative Capital founder and CEO, Chris Burch, said in a statement. "The U.S. market has been waiting for a tech platform like this for years and as soon as we heard they were launching stateside, we knew we needed to be a part of it."
