As social media marketing often prioritizes transactions over relationships, Scott Willson is introducing a fresh approach with co-founders Steve Hancock (Napster) and Simon Mitchell (Bidstack). Their platform, Gifted Social, enhances collaboration between hotels, restaurants, and cafes with content creators by emphasizing genuine partnerships and creator autonomy.

From Video Platform Pioneer to Hospitality Innovation

Scott’s entry into hospitality marketing began with Wotch, an early video-sharing platform founded in 2017. 

“We were like a ‘Netflix for influencers,’” Scott explains. “We were doing micro subscriptions when Patreon was still pretty small.”

His venture into the creator economy wasn’t planned. “When I was 18, I co-founded an E-Learning company which was later acquired by St John Ambulance… so after that, obviously being two young 20ish guys, we were looking for a new challenge,” Scott recalls. “I was always big into influencers – the person who stands out by far is Casey Neistat. I watched every video that Casey did.”

The catalyst emerged during YouTube’s 2018 demonetization crisis. 

“You just couldn’t open YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram without everyone talking about it because it caused such a disruption,” Scott shares. “We were like, maybe we can do something about this. We had this concept for basically creating a platform that actually put the influencers first. We were blown away by the demand at launch, reaching the Top 11 on the App Store in Europe.”

A Fresh Perspective on Creator Partnerships

Gifted Social stands out through its creator-first approach. 

“Most of the market is brands-to-influencer, where often platforms commoditize influencers,” Scott explains. “These platforms are just giving tools to spam influencers with emails. Whereas we’re actually like, ‘We are opt-in first.'”

The platform functions as a discovery tool rather than a traditional marketplace. “The premise when creating Gifted was basically to create like a Google Maps for influencers,” Scott shares. 

“Effectively, just as simply as you look for a nice restaurant on Google Maps around your area, influencers can use Gifted to spontaneously find an amazing restaurant, hotel, or whatever, and also be able to plan ahead,” he adds.

Major hospitality brands have taken notice. 

“We work a lot with the big hotel groups – Marriott, IHG, Accor Group,” Scott notes. “They have their properties on there, and there’s an approval process for all collabs.” 

The platform offers sophisticated tools for partnership decisions. 

“We have a very sophisticated influencer analysis feature set which goes as far as things like adverse media checks,” Scott explains. “It looks at all the different stats and deliverables across their profiles to give  brands all the tools they need to decide whether that influencer is the right match for them.”

Streamlined Process for Creators and Brands

For creators, joining the platform involves careful evaluation. 

“Once an influencer joins, they’re evaluated and checked by the team,” Scott details. “We also assist them with polishing their influencer profile because we have a more detailed replacement for media kits with all their stats. It shows a portfolio of different collaborations they’ve done.”

The platform uses AI-powered matching to create successful partnerships. 

“When a collaboration comes through, it gives you a match score based upon the influencer and your brand,” Scott explains. “It looks at both entities – how much of a match is this content-wise, how much of a match is it audience-wise, all that type of thing to help the brand make decisions.”

This systematic approach benefits both parties. 

“Usually, it’s not necessarily that an influencer is a bad influencer; it’s just whether they’re a right match for that brand,” Scott points out. “We want to give them the tools to do that.” The results show improved content quality while creators maintain creative independence and audience connections.

The platform’s communication system promotes professional interaction. 

“We have a lot of AI features set around analyzing the chat between the brand and the influencer,” Scott shares. “For example, if a message is particularly vague, [the AI] spots that, jumps in and assists, flags things up to our team, and ensures everything stays on track.”

Supporting Creator Wellbeing Through Community

Gifted Social extends beyond business metrics to support creator wellness. 

“I feel very passionate about putting the influencer back into the driver’s seat in a way that also benefits the brand,” Scott shares. “We’re also helping them deal with things like mental health issues as well, which is important. We’ve got a partnership we will release soon with a really big mental health organization.”

This focus stems from Scott’s understanding of content creator challenges. “It can be difficult to relate with friends when they’ve got perhaps a job in insurance or whatever, and you’re talking about [content creation],” he explains. “There are legitimate struggles of being an influencer, for sure, and they want people to talk about things they can relate to.”

Events have become an important part of their offering. “We had an event with Soho House a couple of weeks ago, which was a female empowerment brunch,” Scott says. “We also had another one in Toronto last month for a brand launch. These events are popular because we often hear that influencers are looking for community, and they’re also a great opportunity for brands to generate exposure.”

The platform considers hospitality brands’ needs, particularly post-pandemic. 

“Hospitality brands, particularly after Covid, have struggled financially. The margins are thin,” Scott notes. “I want to create a fair solution that genuinely helps out hospitality brands which are often struggling financially but are incredible places that ultimately should be talked about. They need to be broadcasted more, and I want Gifted to be  a tool that makes it as simple as possible to do that.”

Measuring Partnership Success

The platform employs comprehensive analytics for campaign tracking. 

“We have the standard pixel tracking, all that type of stuff,” Scott explains. “One of the things that we do more of now is also a lot around code tracking because often that is a good way of incentivizing that fan to use that code, and if that code is used, then that can be attributed to the performance.”

Their system adapts to various brand requirements. “Some brands have their own different voucher code systems, and we can integrate them with that,” Scott notes, “but we also have our own system we can use if they don’t have that type of functionality.”

AI-powered engagement analysis sets their analytics apart. 

“We focus on analyzing all the comments on any deliverables, any content, for example, to spot any evidence specifically of intent to purchase,” Scott reveals. “Quite often, you’ll see it in comments from some of our hotels or restaurants. We analyze sentiment scores to be able to show generally those kinds of signals in terms of intent to purchase.”

The platform has uncovered unexpected patterns in different sectors. 

“Interestingly, we found that, in some of our relationships with cafes, smaller influencers perform better with coffee chains than larger ones, which is quite surprising,” Scott shares. “I’m sure there are outliers to that, but our experience has been that it’s because of its real authenticity and the relatability of those smaller influencers that often perform better for coffee chains.”

Creator-Brand Partnerships Predictions

Scott sees significant shifts in creator marketing. 

“Niches are going to continue to be enormous as a growth area,” he predicts. “I think it will move more and more away from generic categories. It’s not just going to be, ‘I’m just going to work with a gamer.’ That will become less and less of a thing.”

For brands entering this space, Scott highlights creating memorable experiences. 

“Look at what type of brand you are and what unique experience you can offer to an influencer that they just cannot help but post about because it was so unique and amazing,” he advises. 

“One of the cool ones we’ve seen recently from our Gifted hotels is them getting the influencer’s photo from Instagram and having it printed on a cake and left in the hotel room as a surprise for the influencer when they first arrive. The influencer always posts about it because it’s like, ‘Wow, they cared about me coming,'” he adds.

“Because of the volume of influencers that want to stay at hotels, there’s going to be a need for hospitality brands to utilize a system like ours,” Scott explains. “If they don’t use a system like ours, they’ll ultimately make mistakes, things will be missed, or they might make the wrong decisions.”