What is Lightricks?

Lightricks is a premier maker of video editing and photo editing mobile apps that receive tens of millions of active users monthly on their multiple apps. They are currently evolving into a creator platform and are working on launching new services and applications to address creator pain points within the creator economy. 

Today, we’re speaking with Jacob Shwirtz, who leads the content and creator team in marketing at Lightricks. 

He shares, “We recently acquired Popular Pays, a platform that connects brands and influencers, so that’s something else that will soon be tightly integrated across the Lightricks suite of services, all meant to help creators every step of their journey and really bring creators into the center of everything we do at Lightricks.” 

About a year ago, Lightricks decided to expand and become a true creator platform beyond offering photo and video editing apps. 

“The idea was, why don’t we partner with the leaders in the space, the biggest and the best that there are, because they can really bring a lot of value to the table, and that is the D’Amelio family. The first family of TikTok.”

Jacob shares that Lightricks wanted to bring real value to other creators by involving successful influencers. The D’Amelios were the perfect fit due to their huge rise to fame, knowledge of social media platforms, and the unique perspective each family member brings to the table. 

The Dixie D’Amelio Project

Lightricks works with each member of the D’Amelio family to integrate Lightrick products into their work organically and to create valuable content for other creators. 

Their most recent collab was with Dixie D’Amelio, a musician who recently released her album and is currently on tour. 

“It really came up as a great idea together to have Dixie launch this new feature within Videoleap, which is our video editing app, and this new feature is called templates. The idea is that anyone can create a template, and then anyone else without really any background in video editing can very easily create high-quality, awesome-looking videos.”

The templates feature includes transitions, filters, text overlays, lighting effects, and many other video assets that anybody can use to create incredible content.  

“The idea came up that why don’t we make Dixie’s next music video include fan content and use her to create several Videoleap templates that she can then share with her fans. Her fans get to use the templates, share them on social media, [and] Dixie was very active in commenting and engaging and dueting with her fans content.”

A few of the most outstanding fan videos will be in the final music video for the song “Somebody to Blame.” 

Jacob shares, “The submission period is over now. The final video is being edited with Dixie’s favorite user submissions.”

The campaign is currently underway, so Jacob says it’s difficult to share final numbers. However, he notes that there are hundreds and hundreds of these templates that fans shared on social media. 

“You can also see the activity around her social media posts, the millions of views that it got across all the platforms. So, we’re certainly very happy with it as a way to really organically tell the story of what Videoleap templates can do.”

A key component of this campaign was coming up with the idea with Dixie. Jacob shares that this wasn’t just tacked on at the last minute in addition to her music video. Instead, Lightricks and Dixie came together to plan the campaign and its narrative with her fans. 

As a whole, Lightricks regularly speaks with the D’Amelio family to brainstorm and bring them into the conversation. 

“We have regular conversations, regular brainstorms with each family member, thinking about the evolution of the ecosystem itself, other tools and services, offerings that Lightricks can be working on, and how to work together to tell that story.”

Jacob shares that having impactful social media leaders, like the D’Amelio family, work alongside Lightricks on strategic planning is incredibly powerful. 

The Creator Marketplace

When asked about the future of the creator marketplace, Jacob shares that many companies are feeling the current effects of inflation and changes in the stock market. 

“I hope as one bright side of that [inflation] is that there’ll maybe be more standardization around pricing and how brands work with influencers. I think a key problem in the space really is pricing transparency. Brands have a lot of the data, and then influencers don’t necessarily know what to charge or how to charge.”

Lightricks hopes the D’Amelio family can also help creators with this as they share their experiences monetizing and evolving their brand through exclusive Lightricks content. 

Influencer Marketing

One marketing trend that Jacob has noticed is the trend toward real-time marketing and hopping on viral trends. 

“Smart brands have the infrastructure in place to recognize that and capitalize on it. Whether it’s partnering with the talent maybe behind that, or doing some kind of fun spin-off of that.”

He gives the example of the recent ostrich that went viral and how some brands jumped on that trend. 

“There’s always a danger to go too far, and then it gets cheesy, or you’re trying too hard to connect your brand to what’s trending, but the companies that do it well can really benefit from that.”

When asked about the biggest mistakes in influencer marketing, Jacob shares that brands that don’t value or seek out long-term, organic, and authentic influencer relationships are missing out. 

He stresses the importance of choosing talent that genuinely loves your products and stands for similar values. In some instances, like the D’Amelio family, brands can even lean on influencers for new product feature ideas and test runs of new products. 

“Ultimately, we’re hoping to influence people through our marketing, and I think that only comes when our partners actually use the products, know about the products, and can represent it. As opposed to working on really short-term transactional type deals where we just pay someone a bunch of money for three Instagram posts and hope that their followers take the action we’re hoping for.”

Future Plans

Lightricks is excited to continue working with the D’Amelio family, especially their upcoming quarter four content around Thanksgiving and Christmas time this year. 

Jacob hints that Lightricks has many exciting things in the works, but he can’t share specifics just yet.