Detch Singh is the founder of Hypetap, a company setting industry standards through technology and strategic innovation. As CEO, he has transformed Hypetap from a simple brand-influencer connection platform into a comprehensive, tech-driven agency capturing the attention of major brands and marketers alike. 

With an impressive 80% brief closure rate, the company’s success is built on a foundation of data-driven insights and a deep understanding of the creator economy. 

Detch’s vision extends beyond mere campaign execution, emphasizing the critical shift from measuring efficiency to effectiveness in influencer partnerships. As influencer marketing continues reaching new heights, with creators themselves becoming formidable brands, Detch’s insights and Hypetap’s approach offer a glimpse into the future of the digital industry.

Identifying the Gap: How Misaligned Partnerships Sparked an Idea

With a background in investment banking, Detch’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2013 when he noticed a gap in the market. “My partner had a popular social account, and she received many different products, services, and event invitations from different brands, and many of them just didn’t align with her,” he recalls. 

This observation led to the creation of Hypetap, initially conceived as a simple platform to connect brands with influencers.

As the industry grew more complex, Hypetap progressed. In 2016, the company pivoted to a full-service model driven by proprietary technology. Detch explains, “We found many self-service clients just didn’t have the expertise in this category, and they didn’t want to run influencer campaigns themselves.”

Today, Hypetap operates as a full-service, technology-driven influencer marketing agency. “We plan, execute and report on influencer marketing programs for our clients,” Detch states. The company serves a diverse clientele, including government agencies, FMCG brands, and global marketing agencies.

Detch defines Hypetap’s approach as “intelligent influence,” with a clear mission: “To be the most effective influencer marketing partner for our clients.” 

He emphasizes the importance of driving tangible results, saying, “It’s one thing to have great content and put it on social, but it’s about the kind of business outcomes we’re driving for our clients.”

Hypetap’s Comprehensive Approach to Influencer Marketing

Hypetap’s services span four distinct divisions, each addressing a different aspect of the influencer marketing ecosystem. Detch outlines these divisions:

1. Hypetap Influence
2. Hypetap Intelligence
3. Hypetap Content
4. Hypetap Media

“Hypetap Influence is all about influencer marketing programs. It’s consulting, strategy, planning, execution, and reporting on those influencer marketing programs,” the founder explains. This core offering covers traditional influencer marketing activities.

Hypetap Intelligence—the company’s intelligence arm focuses on data science, market research, and insights. Detch notes, “We can do peer sentiment benchmarking as an intelligence exercise [to determine] the sentiment your competitors received on influencer marketing compared to you.” This division also conducts deep sentiment analysis, attention analysis, and brand lift studies to measure campaign effectiveness.

Hypetap Content produces content for brands, utilizing user-generated content (UGC) creators and AI-assisted content. The fourth division, Hypetap Media, takes a broader approach to content distribution. “We like to step away and think about how we can plug influencer marketing into a broader media ecosystem, whether that’s TV, out-of-home, programmatic, or physical,” emphasizes Detch. “All of those kinds of things need to be considered.”

Differentiating in a Competitive Industry

In a crowded market, Hypetap stands out through data enrichment and expert execution. Detch states, “It’s all about how we enrich data to make better recommendations that drive better outcomes.” 

He adds, “You’ve got these experts that can produce and execute world-leading strategy for you. One of our clients said it nicely. They said, ‘Well, you’ve built the Ferrari with the technology, but you’ve also got racecar drivers that know how to drive it.'”

Shaping Industry Standards

As the Deputy Chair of the Australian Influencer Marketing Council (AiMCO), Detch played a key role in launching the world’s first Best Practice Guide for influencer marketing. He explains the motivation behind this initiative: “We always wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing by our clients to run campaigns effectively, but we also wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing by consumers.”

The guide addresses critical issues such as disclosure practices, adherence to industry-specific contracting regulations, and effective campaign execution. 

Detch emphasizes, “It was important that we had a collective voice as an industry to respond to industry challenges. But also to ensure no bad actors, to champion best practice, and to proliferate that through the industry.”

Measuring Impact: The Shift from Efficiency to Effectiveness

Detch identifies two significant trends reshaping influencer marketing. First, it’s no longer a tactical or experimental category but an integral part of the media plan. “The shift for a lot of marketers needs to [be] how to integrate influencer marketing into this broader ecosystem more intelligently rather than having it as a standalone thing,” the industry veteran explains.

The second trend is a growing focus on measuring effectiveness rather than just efficiency. Detch elaborates, “We want to measure effectiveness rather than just efficiency. And we want to know if this content is cutting through. How is the audience responding to it? What actions are they taking? What kind of business outcome is that driving?”

Looking to the future, the entrepreneur sees AI and machine learning playing a crucial role in influencer marketing. Hypetap has been leveraging these technologies since 2016, using visual recognition AI to tag creative content and natural language processing to analyze influencers’ communication styles as well as audience reactions.

“We use AI, natural language processing to see what influencers have been talking about, how they’ve been talking about it, the tone with which they talk about things,” Detch notes. He predicts AI will further streamline campaign management and enable more sophisticated analysis.

Detch stresses the importance of platform-specific AI models, stating, “People speak very uniquely on different platforms. TikTok’s a world of its own. We had to build a separate AI for how people talk about TikTok.” 

As AI continues to break ground, Detch sees potential for pricing, influencer communication, and project management applications, making it a major focus for Hypetap in the coming years.

Ethics and Data Privacy in Influencer Marketing

Detch heavily focuses on ethical considerations and data privacy in Hypetap’s approach to influencer marketing. “Ten years ago, no one was thinking about this stuff. And, for us, the ethical side was very, very important. When there’s no regulation, you’ve got to take the ethics approach,” he explains.

Hypetap pioneered brand safety measures in the industry, developing the first global brand safety suite for influencer marketing. This suite includes competitive checks to avoid conflicts of interest and screens for profanity and hate speech. Detch notes, “We have very smooth processes for checking content before it goes live, making sure it’s compliant, making sure that we’re following all the regulations.”

Regarding data privacy, “It’s just about making sure we’re GDPR compliant, that regulation exists and compliance is important,” Detch states. He stresses the importance of due diligence in data storage and processing to meet both GDPR and Australian compliance standards.

Hypetap’s chief also addresses the industry’s perception, advocating for a shift in how influencers are viewed. “There’s an unfortunate stigma that comes with influencers. Creators aren’t just the people that people see as influencers. They are really creative people doing clever brand integrations through entertaining content,” he argues. 

He adds that influencers typically promote products they genuinely support, countering the misconception that influencer marketing is untrustworthy or superficial.

Scaling Success Amid Industry Developments

Hypetap’s Long-Term Vision

Detch outlines Hypetap’s strategic approach to growth, emphasizing patience and quality over quick expansion. “We’ve spent a long time being very patient and getting the model right,” Detch explains. This careful approach has yielded impressive results, with the CEO reporting that Hypetap is closing 80% of received briefs and growing client influencer budgets significantly.

With this proven model, Detch is now focusing on scaling the business. The company’s expansion into the UK market marks the first step in this direction. “Over the next three years, we’re going to be focused on scale, but always balancing it with making sure that we never neglect clients and client outcomes,” Detch states.

Creator Economy Predictions

Detch predicts that while the core principles of influencer marketing will remain stable, the platforms and content formats will evolve. He notes, “Creators are here to stay. And I think the major difference will be where they are. What platforms are they creating on? And what kind of content are they creating?”

A significant trend Detch identifies is creators becoming brands themselves. “I don’t think it’s any secret that the commercial creators will become and are already becoming big advocates for their own brands,” he observes. This shift will create new competitive dynamics in the market, with established brands potentially competing against creator-led brands.

Key Lessons and Advice

Drawing from his experience, Detch emphasizes the complexity of the influencer marketing industry. “It’s so much more complex than it looks on the surface,” he warns, cautioning against underestimating the sophistication required to achieve and measure results.

For brands, the seasoned entrepreneur advises against treating influencer marketing as a standalone or test category. Instead, he recommends integrating it into broader creative and media strategies. “Consider a serious investment that’s going to move the needle so you can see how effective it is,” he suggests.

Detch advises creators to prioritize authenticity and audience engagement. “Be entertaining to your audiences,” he urges, encouraging them to stay true to their style and be willing to decline briefs that don’t align with their audience’s interests.