Influencer
Pretty Basic – Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz’s Influencer Podcast
One of the most popular youth and pop culture podcasts today is Pretty Basic. But what is it all about?
Pretty Basic is a podcast hosted by Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz, two Youtubers and digital creators. The official category of the podcast is lifestyle, advice, and culture. The target audience for this podcast is young adults, specifically young girls, from the age ranges 16-25. The podcast is hosted by Ramble network in collaboration with Candence13, which hosts other Influencer podcasts such as Dixie and Charli D’amelio, Tyler Oakley, the Try Guys Pod, amongst others.
Who are the hosts?
Alisha Marie is a beauty, fashion, and lifestyle vlogger who has been creating content on Youtube for over five years. She gained a following for her fashion and beauty content, as well as being friends with other popular Youtubers at the time, including LauraDIY and Remi Cruz, the other host of the show. Remi Cruz often creates story times, cooking, and vlogging videos, along with her boyfriend, and their life living in LA. Both girls created DIY content and vlogs during 2018-2019, and now focus more on their Instagram and podcast.
How was Pretty Basic started?
Pretty Basic was created in October of 2018 and has since released over 140 episodes and is going into their 5th season of weekly episodes. During the first episode of the podcast, the two hosts described their idea of creating a podcast as a way to express themselves outside of just Youtube videos. They also wanted to give their viewers an inside look on what the life of an influencer is like – from having an agent, sponsorships, the dark side of hate comments, and more. Since the majority of their viewers are not influencers, this gives an interesting insight on a career path so many aspire to have.
What topics does Pretty Basic cover?
Pretty Basic has covered a lot of topics in the past four years. From dating advice to giving in the inside scoop on Influencer trips (even when they’re not good), Alisha and Remi make sure to tell all the details, even if it’s not pretty.
In an episode posted in October of 2022, Alisha and Remi sat down with Chris Olsen, a popular TikTok star to discuss his rise to TikTok fame. Olsen originally blew up on TikTok with his longtime boyfriend, but in January 2022 the pair split ways.
Throughout the episode, Olsen discussed how he has dealt with feeling as though he couldn’t break away from what people originally knew him as, in this case as part of a couple, and how he dealt with strangers online invading his personal life during and after the relationship. This is not only reaching to the young audience who cares about Olsen, but also a reminder to the audience that just because creators make content online, does not give everyone access to their private lives.
In another episode from October 2022, Remi and Alisha dive into the controversial topic – is influencing harder than a 9-5 job? Although this is a controversial episode, the pair are open and honest with their viewers, many of whom are not influencers themselves, and give a real take about the downsides and upsides of being an influencer. This type of honesty is important to share with your audience for transparency sake – oftentimes, your audience may feel like they trust you like a friend, so it is important to handle that trust
What is Pretty Basic’s reach?
Alisha Marie has 3.6 million followers on Instagram, 8 million subscribers on Youtube, and 598 thousand followers on TikTok. Remi Cruz has a million Instagram followers, 2.3 million subscribers on Youtube, and 411 thousand followers on TikTok. The Pretty Basic instagram account has 152 thousand subscribers, while the Instagram account has 124 thousand followers.
On youtube, where view statistics are readily available it appears that the average podcast receives between 160,000 views and 80,000 views per episode. These views will significantly go up depending on the guest star of the episode. For example, an episode with Brittany Broski has 460,000 views.
As of January 2023, in the charts United States of America : Personal Journal, Pretty Basic was ranked as #22 on Apple Podcasts.
Based on this analysis we estimated that Pretty Basic receives approximately 200,000 listens each time an episode goes out across Apple, Google, Youtube and Spotify podcast networks.
What is the format of Pretty Basic?
At the start of nearly every podcast, Remi and Alisha start with an advertisement read. The most frequent sponsorships have been apartment.com, Doordash, and Grammarly. After the advertisement is read, the two will discuss their lives for the past week, catching both the friends up and for the viewers. About twenty minutes in, the pair will get into the real topic, or start interviewing the guest.
The “interview” segment with the guest has a casual tone and mood, and on the visual set on Youtube, you can see they are all laughing and enjoying themselves, giving off the impression that you are watching friends hanging out, not just a typical interview. Oftentimes, the guests, or the hosts themselves, are sitting on couches to give off a more relaxed view, unlike other podcasts in which the hosts are sitting at desks. Clearly, this is not trying to give off a professional interview, but a more fun, relaxed, casual listening experience.
Who has been a guest star on the podcast?
In the past year, Pretty Basic has had many big guest stars. From Chris Olsen to Niki DeMar, and even Ashley Tisdale, the majority of these guest stars are other social media influencers.
One of the most frequent topics with these guest stars is the price of fame, how they gained their success, how they deal with being an influencer, and other lifestyle topics.
What is Pretty Basic’s impact?
Due to the extreme popularity of both Remi and Alisha Marie, the podcast has made a large reach to a younger audience. One of the reviews in the past few months have stated, ““I grew up watching these girlies on YouTube and being able to listen to them talk about adult content as an adult is sooo fun. Feels like I grew up together with them!”
Pretty Basic has over 33 thousand ratings on Apple Podcasts, with an average rating of 4.8 stars. According to Tube Filter, in 2020, Pretty Basic passed 50 million downloads. Nearly two years later, it can only be assumed that they have well passed that mark now.
This is incredibly important. When you have an audience that has grown with you, you can easily switch from content that may have been made for a younger audience, such as school life hacks, to now speaking about building a home, sexual experiences, and other adult topics. In 2021, Pretty Basic won the People’s Voice Winner for the Webby Awards.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can listen to Pretty Basic on every Podcast platform below.
What other influencer podcasts do you listen to? Is there another one you would like us to cover? Let us know down below.
