Bye, Bye, Billboards: Regev Gur is taking tech advertising to the influencers
As startups look for new ways to make themselves known to the public, Narrative Group is shaping their stories on social media platforms
12:3026.11.21
Walking in the streets of Israel’s Tel Aviv, it would be hard-pressed not to see a billboard at a bus stop or a busy corner paid for by a tech company promoting its products or celebrating its employees. As the sector battles an ongoing talent shortage, companies are doing everything they can to make themselves known.
While the influencer marketing space is conventionally full of fashion, food, or beauty products, the tech world has increasingly been gravitating towards the trendy world of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to help spread their messages. For Regev Gur, it’s a space he understands well.
Regev Gur. Credit: Dor David Malka “People like to connect to people and not brands,” Gur tells CTech. After founding The Narrative Group, the Israel-born marketer now helps tech companies with their exposure on popular influencer channels hosted by personalities who discuss or promote his clients. “If back in the day it was legit to sponsor or advertise using influencers with consumer-based stuff like fashion, beauty, and food, now every tech company is on the way to working with influencers.”
His company works with 30 different companies from a myriad of tech verticals. Usually B2C companies looking for app downloads or registrations, Gur says that his company is responsible for all aspects of their influencer marketing campaigns: the research, planning, creatives, and legal aspects of promoting content online. Each month, his clients are put in front of 20 million people.
One example Gur references is Mine, a startup that helps internet users reclaim their online data. Ahead of the call with CTech, Gur shared a YouTube video from British influencer Mrwhosetheboss, who films himself reviewing tech to an audience of more than 9 million subscribers. At the end of one video that has 2.8 million views at the time of writing, he turns to the camera and promotes the Israeli company - all thanks to Gur and Narrative Group.
“Mine is doing amazing because they’re pretty much a small startup, it’s not a huge tech company with a huge budget for marketing, but they still understood a long time ago the power of working with influencers,” he said. Since the video went live earlier this month, Gur claims that the company saw more than 50,000 signups to its service. “It’s forever - this is why if you ask me my favorite platform, it’s YouTube,” he explained, stressing the perennial power of advertising within videos as opposed to adverts in front of them.
Narrative Group has helped tech companies with influencer marketing campaigns in more than 30 countries, most of which are English-speaking regions but also foreign language countries such as France, Belgium, and Brazil where TikTok is “super powerful.” Each month, the agency manages more than $2 million for influencers with campaigns costing no less than $10,000.
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According to Gur, the efforts are paying off not just for him but his clients, too. “I care about our clients so much,” he tells CTech. “We are the most outsourced in-house vendor that you could ever have, and clients like it. They like not to be at a regular agency. They want you to take care of them. Imagine... a startup, let’s say three founders and a few employees, this is what they have in life. This is their life, their baby. We need to be the best babysitter out there. We cannot leave the baby like that, we care about it very much, even more than I care about my brand.”
Gur, who is always looking for talent to help grow his firm, says he looks for “people that have soft skills and amazing talent.” He himself wakes up every day at 6am and keeps to a strict productivity routine, holding meetings no longer than 20 minutes and not allowing himself to waste other people’s time or energy. In the future, plans for the firm include building an avatar influencer for the blockchain and NFT sectors. “We understand the value of being loud and this is why my company is called Narrative, we want to determine the narratives,” he said.
Influencer marketing has quickly become one of the biggest ways for companies to get themselves heard. The days of static billboards on streets no longer cut it for startups that measure KPIs in downloads, viral impact, or registrations. “You need to see in your eyes how you affect people’s lives,” he concludes. “The only thing I care about eventually is why I do business - because my goal is to be a philanthropist and to help people massively. I want to help people as much as I can. I believe that if we have the power to do something, it’s mandatory to do so.”
