NEW YORK — When Amber Atherton hit celebrity status as the co-creator and star of of British reality TV show “Made in Chelsea” in 2012, companies making everything from cream cheese to leggings wanted to pay her big bucks to promote their products.

That happened despite the fact that she didn’t even use most of the stuff.

That experience ended up being a teaching moment for Atherton, now 28. She also struggled to figure out who her influential customers were at her online jewelry company called My Flash Trash, which she sold in 2016. That inspired her to start a software company called Zyper a year later that connects brands like Kellogg, Nestle and cosmetics maker Rituals with “super fans,” instead of paid professional influencers.

Zyper, which relocated to San Francisco from London in 2018, identifies the top 1% of a label’s fans by analyzing data from public social media. Brands can then chat with those fans and can enlist them to serve as brand ambassadors on social sites in exchange for new products and access to events. So far, Atherton is seeing these “super fans” drive twice the average order value than other traffic sources for many brands.

Zyper has raised $8 million in financial backing, and Atherton is looking at expanding her clients — primarily consumer goods companies — to include automobiles and banks.

Atherton’s message comes as the influencer economy has been increasingly fraught with deceit and fraud. Influencers have been criticized for inflating the number of their followers or not even using the products they endorse. HyperAuditor, an analytics firm, investigated nearly 2 million Instagram accounts and discovered that more than half fraudulently pumped up the number of followers. Such influencer deception cost advertisers an estimated $1.3 billion last year, according to Roberto Cavazos, a statistics professor at the University of Baltimore. Cavazos predicts that figure will increase to up to $1.7 billion this year.

During an interview with The Associated Press, Atherton talked about why there’s distrust in influential marketing and how brands are starting to look at niche-based communities to find their fans. The questions and answers are edited for clarity and length.

Q: How does Zyper technology work?

A. Most brands know who their top customers are and their top influencer customers are but almost none of them know who their top fans are — everyday fans of the brand that have influence on a peer-to-peer level. Zyper uses a combination of computer vision and natural language processing to identify very granular indicators of influence. We have never looked at how many followers somebody has. We ingest public data from social networks and customer data and then run complex queries to identify people that have a strong affinity towards the brand.

Q. Then what?

A. Once we have identified the top 1% we reach out to consumers and invite them to join the brands or an interest-based community, which is hosted on our software. This might be a dark community — a chat-based focus group with the brand or a public one where fans co-create content and amplify content with the brand. But the best bit is connecting fans to each other to hang out in real life, swap skills — real friendships form through these brand communities.

Q. Describe the influencer market right now.

A. I started to see it go sour in 2017 which is when we launched Zyper with this anti-influencer message. As the barriers to entry are so low, you can buy 10,000 followers in 10 minutes and use any free editing app to easily create great content. Anyone can be a billboard and anyone is willing to make some easy money by posting a photo of toothpaste or leggings. But brands are waking up to the fact that what looked like a quick fix to ever rising Facebook acquisition costs is really just a sham that generates zero return on investment.

Q. What do you see as the future for influencers?

A. The future for influencers is going to be tough. Brands are getting savvier and demanding real return on investment. My advice would be for influencers to focus on becoming experts in a specific niche and to build their community.

Anne D’Innocenzio, The Associated Press

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As world leaders prepare to wrap up global climate policy discussions at COP26, here in the United States we’re focused on the next step for federal climate action: passing the Build Back Better Act, which includes $555 billion in climate investments.

While the bipartisan infrastructure bill’s passage late last week was a major step forward, the U.S. must do more to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement and demonstrate leadership in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises. With unprecedented levels of support for a transition to a clean energy economy, advancements in environmental justice and deep investments in community resilience and natural climate solutions, the Build Back Better Act represents a rare opportunity for the transformational change we need to create a more sustainable future.  

Learn more about Build Back Better

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“For too long, our nation has dragged its feet on a response to the climate crisis… We must ensure these investments not only lead to meaningful progress on addressing climate change now but also lead to future steps we will take to respond to the crisis of our time.”

Nationwide and here in Washington state, we’ve been urging our partners in the business community especially to speak up in favor of the climate provisions in Build Back Better. Two of our volunteer trustees, Doug Reed and Maud Daudon, recently wrote an opinion column in the Puget Sound Business Journal calling on their fellow business and community leaders in the Seattle area to “walk the talk” on their own corporate climate commitments by advocating for this rare opportunity directly with policymakers.

Your voice matters, too! Take a moment to tell your senators and representative in Congress that there’s no time to wait on the Build Back Better Act by clicking the button below.

Speak Up for Build Back Better

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Banner photo by Carolyn Adams.

by Courtney Baxter, Program and Communications Specialist

“Why is stormwater runoff a problem?”

That is the first line from “Solving Stormwater”, a film produced by The Nature Conservancy, and a question asked by Mark Grey, a local business and property owner in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle and founder of the non-profit Clean Lake Union.

As a developer of property under the Aurora Bridge, Grey was very aware of the massive amounts of polluted water coming off the bridge when it rained. He could see it pouring down the sides and coming out of the downspouts and going directly into the Ship Canal below. He knew raingardens could clean and filter that water and wondered if he could incorporate rain gardens into his new building’s landscaping design to help? He and his development company, Stephen Grey and Associates, decided to construct a rain garden to catch and clean this water before it headed out to the canal, but it turned out to be a bigger lift than they thought. He needed help.

He connected with Ellen Southard, with Salmon Safe, who then connected him to The Nature Conservancy. Together, these three organizations plus a multitude of partners were able to leverage their own individual skills to put a plan in place. Salmon Safe managed the project on the ground while TNC lobbied for public funding to complement the private contributions from Grey’s company and Clean Lake Union, and navigated relationships with various governmental agencies.

The contractor for the Aurora Bridge Bioswale was Turner Construction, which provided a substantial amount of pro-bono services to bring the project to fruition. They had a long history working with Southard and Salmon-Safe since 2008 as the first contractor to pilot the Salmon-Safe Contractor Standards. This meant a commitment to zero sediment runoff during the construction. Despite its proximity to the ship canal, a project of this scale does not trigger a construction stormwater permit, but Turner committed to the beyond code Salmon-Safe guidelines to ensure the site development was safe for water quality and salmon habitat. (To learn more about these standards visit Salmon-Safe’s website)

For such a straightforward project, there were a lot of agencies to work with: the State owns the bridge, the City owns the downspouts, but the State owns the water in the downspouts, until it’s a foot off the ground, then it’s in the City’s regulatory authority. This project was a complex puzzle from the start, and no one knew it. Why did no one know this? Because it was the first of its kind – this was completely new territory.

How do you take public stormwater and treat it on mostly private land, with private dollars, with a private company? That became the new question for this now herculean effort. Hundreds of what-if scenarios could have stopped the team’s forward momentum, but ultimately the status quo of untreated water going into the canal and killing salmon was deemed worse. And thus, an unprecedented private-public partnership was born. The three planned phases of the Aurora Bridge Bioswale Project were completed and a pathway was laid for future projects.

A typical roadside rain garden may treat a few thousand gallons of toxic stormwater a year. With all 3 phases of the Aurora Bridge Bioswale Project complete, the project is treating almost 2 million gallons of stormwater a year. The next project? With the help of Washington State Department of Commerce and legislative champions like Senator Reuven Carlyle, a feasibility study has kicked off for the Interstate 5 Ship Canal Bridge — potentially a 98-million-gallon opportunity.

The prospect of scaling and replicating projects like these is not only feasible, it’s necessary. As our population grows throughout the Puget Sound region, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to tackle stormwater issues that threaten our salmon and orca.

“We can’t go back. But we can do what must be done now to go forward.”

Learn More About Our Stormwater Work

Banner photo © TNC/Courtney Baxter

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President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act last week on a blustery afternoon in the other Washington. We’ve been digging into what this big, bipartisan infrastructure package means for this Washington since the bill was making its way through the Senate over the summer, and our staff and partners are busily planning for putting the incoming funding to good use on the ground – and in the water – for healthier, more resilient communities.

Now that it’s been signed into law, how might the infrastructure funding show up in your neighborhood?

A healthier Puget Sound, cleaner waters and help for salmon

The Environmental Protection Agency’s National Estuary Program protects and restores 28 estuaries around the country, including the Puget Sound and Columbia River Basin. The infrastructure bill includes $89 million for the Puget Sound Geographic Program and $79 million for the Columbia River Basin Geographic Program.

Rep. Derek Kilmer, whose district includes Washington’s Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas, said that federal investments in recovering and restoring Puget Sound are critical to the environmental and economic future of our region.

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“Having the federal government step up and help in this effort is absolutely vital if we’re going to recover our salmon populations, ensure future generations can dig for clams, and respect tribal treaty rights. As Chair of the Puget Sound Recovery Caucus, I’m proud this bill will help advance a number of initiatives I’ve fought for to restore the Sound – which is important to our environment, to local jobs, and to our local economy.”

Senator Cantwell and Rep. Kilmer led the effort to create the National Culvert Removal, Replacement and Restoration Grant Program, included and funded at $1 billion in the infrastructure bill to help transportation agencies fix fish passage barriers that impact salmon. This is an especially big deal for Washington state, where addressing the culvert issue and improving salmon habitat are urgent needs. A bipartisan group of Pacific Northwest members supported the creation of this new program to help recover salmon in our region.

The bill also includes $172 million for NOAA’s Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund for states and Tribes to protect, conserve, and restore salmon.  

More climate-resilient communities and ecosystems

Healthier estuaries and other ecosystems are more resilient to climate-change-related extreme weather events like floods, king tides, drought and wildfire. In addition to the benefits to people that come with cleaner water and the better functioning ecosystems covered above, the bill includes $491 million for Habitat Restoration and Community Resilience Grants and $492 million for the National Ocean and Coastal Security Fund Grants, according to Sen. Cantwell’s office.

AN Even bigger Deal for climate is on the way

The Build Back Better Act passed the House of Representatives just a few days after President Biden signed the Infrastructure package into law. Learn more about Build Back Better and its $555 billion in climate investments as the bill heads to the Senate for consideration.

Also included is nearly $7.5 billion in investments for agencies including the USDA Forest Service and Department of Interior to help Washington and other fire-prone states prepare for and become more resilient to wildfires, including several new funding programs to accelerate forest restoration, improve watershed conditions, implement prescribed fire, and increase reforestation. Thanks to Rep. Kim Schrier’s leadership, the bill funds the Legacy Roads and Trails Program at $250 million, a big boost for maintaining and decommissioning roads to improve watershed health.

Cleaner air and more transportation options

The infrastructure law includes $1.79 billion in funding for public transit in Washington, expanding your options for cleaner, more energy efficient ways to get where you need to go.

cleaning up Washington’s transportation sector

There’s still a lot of work to do on transportation in Washington state as we look for cleaner, healthier ways to get around and protecting our air, water and habitat in a growing region. With funding from the 2021 Climate Commitment Act designated for carbon emissions reduction and no time to waste to recover our iconic salmon, we’ll be advocating for smart transportation policy in this Washington during the upcoming 2022 legislative session.

You may remember, from the multi-year effort to join our West Coast neighbors and enact a Clean Fuel Standard, that transportation is the most significant source of climate-changing emissions in our state. We expect more than $70 million in infrastructure funding to go toward expanding the electric vehicle charging network in Washington, and billions more to go into grant programs like the Low-No Emission Grant program, which supports projects like electrifying municipal bus fleets (like King County Metro’s), and the Capital Investment Grant program, which funds other low- and no-emissions transit projects like the Link Light Rail. All of this adds up to more options for cleaner ways to get around and less polluted, more breathable air.

What’s next?

As big as the infrastructure bill is, the climate crisis is bigger: there’s still a lot more we need to do to ensure a livable future for generations to come – and a lot more we can do at the national level. That’s why we’re continuing to advocate for Build Back Better as it awaits consideration in the Senate, which includes even more substantial investments in addressing and adapting to climate change.

Learn more about Build Back Better

Banner photo by Morgan Heim.

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