Nov 23, 2022 · 58m · we-live-to-build
Her Fans Looked Male On Instagram But Her Shopee Data Said Otherwise
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the We Live To Build podcast, host Sean Weisbrot and Scarlett International co-founder Chris Wong explore how proprietary MarTech, radical agency transparency, and empirical audience analytics are modernizing influencer monetization across Asia.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Sean holds 30.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Sean as informed peer 3.2 Guest teaching 5.1 Guest disagreement 1.6 Sean pushing back 2.0
speaking balance: gold is Sean, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 24:21 Guest teases host about sounding communist
The guest humorously pushes back against the host's impassioned monologue about collective profit-sharing, mocking him by saying he spent too much time in China and is spouting communist rhetoric.
Hardest push from Sean ▶ 40:03 Host reframes female fashion psychologyThe host directly counters the guest's surprise over female engagement on Shopee, challenging the guest's male perspective by arguing women dress primarily for female peer appreciation rather than male attraction.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 42:45 Guest dismantles unified dashboard proposalThe guest schools the host on why a single cross-platform dashboard fails in Asia, citing systemic issues with purchased bot metrics, volatile TikTok algorithms, and spam-heavy Twitter practices.
Sean holds their own ▶ 20:00 Host recounts being cut out of commission deals in ChinaThe host demonstrates deep firsthand business expertise in Asia by detailing a real-life situation where an opaque partner lost long-term value by sneakily withholding an earned commission.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Sean as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Sean pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Navigating Stigma and Non-Adult Monetization Strategies | 2 | 5 | 1 | 2 | The host admits his initial skepticism after seeing the OnlyFans logo on the agency's website. The guest educates the host on how Scarlett monetizes non-adult, mainstream creator content through subscription platforms without violating regulations. | |
| Roster Diversity and Brand Demand for LGBTQ+ KOLs | 2 | 6 | 1 | 2 | The host assumes male KOLs command higher pay in Asia and wonders if creators fake their identity. The guest corrects him by detailing the unique commercial value of LGBTQ+ creators in Taiwan following marriage equality and the importance of genuine fan engagement. | |
| Contrasting Influencer Marketing Culture in Asia and the West | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | The guest contrasts North American influencer branding with the short-term, gambling-heavy sponsorship culture in Asia. The host corroborates this with observations of fitness creators during his time in Vietnam. | |
| Managing Expat Creators and Ensuring Talent Safety | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | The guest shares success stories of Western expats transitioning into Asian entertainment media and emphasizes strict safety protocols prohibiting offline fan meetups. The host clarifies a joke when the guest playfully suggests putting him on OnlyFans. | |
| Founding Scarlett to Eliminate Exploitative Talent Agencies | 1 | 6 | 2 | 0 | The host asks what motivated the agency's founding. The guest delivers an educational breakdown of exploitative non-exclusive talent agents in Taiwan who take massive cuts without developing talent. | |
| Confronting Middleman Exploitation and Short-Term Mindsets | 6 | 2 | 3 | 4 | The host shares extensive personal anecdotes about being financially cheated by short-sighted middlemen in China. When the guest jokingly remarks that the host sounds communist, the host firmly defends his principles of transparent business and long-term value. | |
| Building Long-Term Agency Trust Through Business Transparency | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | The guest outlines how radical transparency allowed Scarlett to disrupt legacy agencies. The host attributes this mindset to Western education, which the guest affirms while reflecting on generational business practices. | |
| Leveraging Proprietary MarTech and Trend Analysis Tools | 1 | 7 | 1 | 0 | The guest explains Scarlett's MarTech stack, detailing how proprietary link tracking, heat maps, and granular data scraping (such as FIFA hashtag analytics) drive targeted marketing campaigns. | |
| Data-Driven Audience Discovery and the Shopee Case Study | 6 | 6 | 2 | 5 | The guest illustrates data-driven audience discovery using a case where an Instagram glamour model actually generated high Shopee sales from straight women. The host challenges the guest's surprise, explaining female psychology regarding fashion and peer validation. | |
| Managing Segmented Dashboards Amid Asian Platform Anomalies | 3 | 8 | 3 | 3 | The host asks why data is not combined into a single master dashboard. The guest thoroughly refutes the feasibility of this, educating the host on Asian market anomalies like fake engagement buying, erratic TikTok spikes, and dysfunctional Twitter usage. | |
| Weathering Economic Recessions and Spinning Out Software | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | The guest discusses navigating a revenue dip and spinning out internal software products. The host draws on software spinout models from peers to suggest licensing tools to competitors, prompting the guest to clarify the balance between productization and protecting core competencies. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Scarlett International contractually bars creators from producing adult content
“And what I'm very proud to say is that as Scarlett, nobody that works with us does adult content, not just because of regulation, but actually within our contracts itself, we definitely don't allow any sort of this kind of behavior.”
Wong: Asian KOL fans will pay for standard Instagram-style content
“And when we typically find content creators in Asia, especially in Taiwan, Malaysia, or even Korea, a lot of these KOLs, you know, what we typically see is that their fans are more than willing to pay for their content. And this kind of content is typically wh…”
Scarlett International has 118 signed KOLs, roughly 90 female
“Currently our company at this very moment has 118 KLL signed with us and roughly 90 of them are female.”
LGBTQ content creators are an extremely hot commodity for brands in Taiwan
“Any content creator who identifies themselves as LGBTQ is an extremely hot commodity. It doesn't matter if they're male. It doesn't matter if they're female, as long as they're able to connect and actually promote a really good social image. Typically a lot of…”
Asian corporations prioritize creator name recognition over audience demographics
“Typically we do see that corporations really want to, especially in Asia, they want to work with a brand name content creator. Not necessarily caring about their target audience, not necessarily caring about the male female share or what kind of industries tha…”
KOLs genuine about sexual orientation see far higher fan engagement
“When the KOLs are very genuine about their sexual orientation and not, you know, put on the face or just pretend and all that kind of stuff. Typically they see a far higher fan engagement than if they tried something that was a little bit more shady per se.”
Wong: Asian influencers prioritize short-term payouts over long-term brand integrity
“In Asia, it would be gambling websites. And that's just terrible because Gambling websites overall in Asia are largely banned. And so it really hurts their image and they just care about the initial short-term gains of the financial aspect. And they don't care…”
Scarlett rebranded a Taipei Hooters employee into a TV cast member in two months
“So we worked on her brand imaging for a little bit and lo and behold, within two months after, you know, we convinced her to stop working at Hooters, she was picked up to be a regular cast member for a TV show.”
Scarlett International contracts forbid creators from meeting fans offline
“As for our contents, our contract state is that we do not allow them to do any sort of this behavior. We do not allow them to meet their fans offline because of security sake.”
Wong: Taiwanese talent agents act merely as non-exclusive job brokers
“In Taiwan, especially in Taiwan, actually, I think a lot of these KOLs have so-and-so called agents. And the reason why it's plural is because there is not one single agent that binds them. And these agents are essentially just job referrers and these job refe…”
Chris Wong: Linktree Has a Low Barrier to Entry with Asian Knockoffs
“Linktree has a very low technological barrier to entry. I mean, you can see tons of Asian knockoffs even today. Every single region has somehow their own version.”
Wong: Natural-Looking Asian KOLs Drive More Engagement Than Creators With Plastic Surgery
“One of the trends that we were able to observe is that people that were, you know, more natural looking per se, They were able to get a lot more fan engagement and traffic without posting any kind of explicit content.”
Scarlett International Pulls Direct Creator Data from OnlyFans and Fansly
“Because we work directly with OnlyFans and Fansly, we're able to pull the data from each content creator. So we can see immediately what kind of content sells better, which dates sell better, and what kind of events that we do not want to clash with.”
Wong: Scarlett International's marketing and data teams are entirely female
“I am one of the few males in my company, everyone on our marketing team to our data analytics team, they're all female.”
Wong: Asian KOLs frequently purchase likes, comments, and followers
“A lot of them boost particular posts that they have. Not in the traditional sense of Instagram or Facebook posting their posts. I think that's the biggest issue here. They purchase likes, they purchase comments, they purchase followers.”
Wong: Twitter's Recommendation Algorithm in Taiwan Pushes Pornography Within Four Clicks
“If you look up Twitter in Taiwan and you start this kind of a, you just go down that rabbit hole, you'll get to porn in about three or four clicks in the recommendations.”
Cross-Platform Social Analytics Fail for Asian Creators Compared to North America
“If you told me that we're working with a North American content creator who has statistics on, let's say Twitch on Twitter and YouTube. I think, yeah, that's should be collated because all of those three platforms can be directly linked together to look at cer…”
Wong: Scarlett Experienced a 20% Revenue Drop in September 2022
“So in September, from August to September, we had a 20% revenue drop.”