Paris Hilton, Live Shopping and X's Real Social Commerce Opportunity

The Headline:

X, fka Twitter, has officially signed Paris Hilton in a media deal to kick off Live Shopping and commerce on the platform as reported by The Information.

As smart as the team at X is, I believe a fast forward on how this deal plays out lands X some buzzy headlines with little to no consumer purchases. While the deal was likely very lucrative for Paris’s 11:11 media company, landing X’s objective of launching shopping in a meaningful way requires a different approach with equal potential for big upside. Let’s Unpack.

What they got right:

The insight they are spot on about is in watching the world love all things nostalgia. Nostalgia continues to pop everywhere and is working very well, just ask Uggs, Stanley Cup, Super Mario Brothers, Barbie, etc. Paris IS nostalgia for many of us Millennials and Gen-Xers. During her first “moment” in the early 2000’s, this deal would have made a ton of sense. Von Dutch, Flip Phones, Juicy Couture- all brands built off the back of her personal brand.

Fast forward to today, partnering with someone like Paris represents a very different opportunity and objective in the media.

Social Commerce 101:

This is a pyramid that we use with our clients to break down the different types of creators and outlines when they make sense and for what purpose. Paris is what we call a Brand Catalyst creator. She is at the top of the pyramid and is someone who stands for your brand’s values and represents who you are as a brand to your potential new audience you reach with the partnership. Signing Paris today makes sense in a brand campaign if you want your brand to align with what she historically stands for (trend, bad girl, alt culture, party-loving, early adopter, etc.) and as a creator she will generate a halo effect and build buzz for your brand undoubtedly (note: her recent Mugler runway appearance). However, what these creators don’t do is influence you to press buy on a product online which is what Live Shopping is all about. Time will tell if this is effective, but my guess is she is in more of this Catalyst zone vs a Social Commerce creator.

If X wanted to build a meaningful Social Commerce business, they would focus on native Social Commerce creators. The primary characteristic of these types of creators is that they have built their audiences from day one by sharing their everyday lives and most importantly they have provided affiliate links and made commerce an active part of their content so their audiences are there to actively shop from their lifestyles vs purely watch the media they create.

The Billion(s) Dollar Social Commerce Plan

So if we were tasked with building out a ground up commerce strategy on X with the goal of hitting $Billions in GMV quickly, here’s a few things we’d consider in the approach to their Go to Market.

1. Play Off the Knowledge Economy:

   X’s purpose today is for knowledge sharing online, public discourse, debate and learning. It’s the town square for thoughts. I would start commerce with selling adjacent digital goods to the core behavior- think Premium Courses, Paid Consulting Calls, Newsletter subscriptions, etc. Things that people buy today that are aligned with what knowledge workers are selling would be the starting point and a partnership model gets this off the ground immediately. If Miss Excel can build a $5M+ ARR business teaching people how to use Excel, anyone can teach anyone, anything and reach scale through X’s distribution. As a platform at scale, incentivizing creators to launch these on X will quickly validate the potential of each feature and provide guidance on whether to buy or build in this space.

2. Build the Next Million Wirecutters / Customer Reviews are the Gateway to X Commerce

   A key consumer insight: no one likes writing into the black box of customer service which today is the only place to share feedback on a product, good or bad. Historically people come to X to rant about bad customer experiences, eg public brand shaming, but what if this action shifted? I’d set a goal to transition behavior on X to a more modern, two-way conversation with brands which is the back bone of all social media. I would start by seeding the behavior of sharing consumer reviews of products with posts and videos on X. This behavior happens in a nascent way today, but by offering more views on posts, eg what users care about, for this type of content via the algo, it will drive more product review videos and posts and start the flywheel. To seal the deal, building out the affiliate network to pay creators when others click and buy what they post would light this behavior on fire.

   The rationale here is that If you follow someone for their thoughts, they’ve already built trust with their audience and have legitimized their recommendations. When these same people provide real feedback on products and share this on X in the same place they can have a dialogue with the brand and founders of that product, etc it makes all consumers feel seen and heard.

   If successful, the goal here would be to build the next million Wirecutters, not on a blog or newsletter, but directly on X. X could help these reviewers monetize even further by providing paid Ads in their comments and align it with their existing creator pay out strategy.

   

3. The $Billion Listicle/UGC Review Commerce Stack

   You can imagine as more product reviews are created, attaching these to a user’s profiles is an easy way to drive rabbit hole behavior into a full commerce experience. This would lend itself to launching a shopping tab on the main nav that forms the largest listicle-driven database on earth, using the data aggregated by all of the ratings and reviews of these products on X. When users click into this tab, they see Trending: Top 5 garden sheers, Top 20 Snow boots, etc. based on what categories are getting the most posts and searches and when users click in to each list and product, the PDP itself uses the top viewed posts with their UGC video/review comment as the hero image to each product that brings to life how real consumers are using the products which you can now buy too by clicking on this link. 😜

   Good reviews are one of the top three reasons why Gen Z buys a product online and no one is incentivizing this behavior on their platforms in the social media world yet but it’s one of the most critical features on Amazon in driving real conversions.

Follow the Money (and Existing Consumer Behavior)

While chasing Live Streams with Paris Hilton sounds sexy and we can all imagine someone requesting this as the solution to shopping in a meeting, the reality here is- Paris doesn’t sling shoes, she sells dreams and live shopping is nascent and unproven in the US with a long road ahead to be effective in commerce outside of the collectibles space.

Instead, I recommend appealing to what your existing users (eg primarily men) that are on X already do everyday in an adjacent next step that can drive trust and ultimately conversions.

- Michelle