**Evan Lee**
> [VISUAL: Evan Lee, Head of Partnerships, Motion, speaking on camera.]
The next speaker we have is Elfried Samba. This guy, I'm so excited to have my admired from afar. Uh, he was the Global Head of Social at Gymshark. Now he's the founder of Butterfly Effect, and he's gonna bless us with so many different insights on what we should be doing in 2026. So without further ado, I would love to welcome Elfried to the stage.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Split screen with Evan Lee and Elfried Samba, Founder, Butterfly Effect.]
Hello everybody. How's everyone doing?
**Evan Lee**
Amazing. Elfried, I'm gonna pop out, do your thing, and I'll see you at the end, okay?
**Elfried Samba**
Alright, amazing.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Elfried Samba speaking on camera.]
Okay, so let me share my screen so we've got something to talk through.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide titled "TRUST ECONOMY: BUILD A BRAND WORTH TALKING ABOUT". Subtitle: "Butterfly Effect - Strictly Confidential | 2025".]
I am assuming everybody can see that. Let's see some love in the comment section. Is everybody, can everyone see that? Okay, all good. So, um, what I'm gonna talk about today in this brief, uh, couple of minutes is this concept of building a brand worth talking about in the, in the trust economy. We just talked a lot about AI, and the word trust, uh, will play a key factor in, uh, uh, your informing your marketing strategies going forward, specifically on the social media platforms. So I'm gonna go straight to it.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "HI, I'M ELFRIED SAMBA".]
So as mentioned, my name is Elfried Samba. How I like to describe myself is that I scale community for brands and people.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "I scale community for brands and people".]
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a map of Africa highlighting the Democratic Republic of Congo.]
Um, I like to tell a bit of a background story about myself so you realize why you're speaking to a random guy. I'm usually wearing a fedora, uh, with my British accent. So today I'm wearing a cap, so this is the first time I'm actually doing a presentation without my fedora. So I'm sorry to, uh, uh, shortchange you, uh, on this presentation. But we'll step into my story. So, uh, for those that don't know, I was born in the Democratic of, Republic of Congo. So the center of Africa, hot, tropical. So you can imagine my shock when my family moved us to the UK and we saw snow for the first time.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a photo of a family standing in the snow.]
We knew nobody and nobody knew us, but one thing we wanted to do is make the most of our golden ticket of being in the UK.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a photo of a man in medical scrubs.]
So all my time, I, I was obviously had this pressure of becoming a doctor like my dad, because obviously if you're African, that's like the greatest honor ever. So you can imagine the disappointment when you realize that I was shit at science and had to find something else.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a photo of a woman and a photo of Elfried smiling.]
So I looked at my mom as a reference. She was an entrepreneur and a creative, and I thought that maybe that's where my path could be. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna study some of the best in the, uh, marketing and, uh, brand world to see whether I can mimic and find some idols, uh, that I could be like.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a black and white photo of Steve Jobs.]
The first person I stumbled onto was a guy called Steve Jobs. The iPhone keynote in 2007, like, blew my mind forever. The whole, uh, a thousand songs in your pocket really changed my perspective on the art of storytelling and simplifying very complicated information. And I fell in love with marketing from that day.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a black and white photo of Mark Zuckerberg.]
Uh, then heard about a guy called Mark Zuckerberg, who said no to a billion dollars from Yahoo, uh, because he was working on an app called Facebook. I don't know about you, uh, but if I told my mom that I was gonna say no to a billion dollars at the age of 21, 22, uh, she would ship me back to the Congo on the first flight. But whatever. Um, but then that was great. So I found two people that made me fall in love with marketing, so social media marketing at the time. But I needed somebody that looked like me or came from the same backgrounds that I did to be able to really give myself the permission to step into this space.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a black and white photo of Jay-Z.]
And then I heard about a guy called Jay-Z. And obviously Jay-Z, using rap lyrics to give out, uh, business news and updates, uh, uh, really started to storytell in the language that I could understand. His whole concept of women lie, men lie, numbers don't, made me fall in love with the art and science of merging creative with data and making sure that you, uh, spit facts, as we just said.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a photo of Elfried in graduation robes with an older man. Text: "Goal: 'BE THE REFERENCE'".]
So with that, I went into the academic world, and, um, I wrote about it in my dissertation about the fact that I felt that large, uh, small to medium-sized businesses will take on their larger competitors using social. And it was marked down because of lack of Harvard references. Uh, and I said I was gonna be that reference. You can clearly tell that my doctor dad was excited about the fact that his, um, failed doctor son was gonna be tweeting for a living. But took that into the, um, the business world.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a black and white photo of Gary Vaynerchuk.]
Uh, heard about this guy called Gary Vaynerchuk, who made, was the first person to not make me feel crazy. His whole jab, jab, jab, right hook, the whole concept of giving in advance before asking, uh, was the whole blueprint to my marketing and social media approach that I use today.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a black and white photo of Ben Francis and Lewis Morgan (Gymshark founders).]
I actually used it to get my first real big job in the social media space. Uh, I heard about these two, uh, 19-year-olds in Birmingham, UK, driving Audi R8s, uh, who owned a company called Gymshark that I was a big fan of. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna add everybody at Gymshark on LinkedIn. I'm gonna do my jabs, send them information that I think will be valuable to them. And lo and behold, I got invited for a job interview and I spent seven years there, right?
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a photo of people at a festival/event. Text: "7 YEARS".]
So just to give you, uh, the ROI of my seven years at Gymshark in numbers and what we were able to achieve, uh, scaling community for the brand.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "24 > 1000 Employees".]
So, uh, we went from 24 employees to 1,000 employees.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "1M > 20M Followers".]
We went from, uh, 1 million followers to 20 million followers.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "£8M > £1.4B Valuation".]
And then we went from an 8 million pound business to a 1.4 billion pound business, all quarter-backed through social media.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a photo of Elfried and two other men in front of a Gymshark building.]
Now, that's all great. We were able to do that for a B2C brand. A lot of people asked me, does this apply, um, in other areas? So I said, you know what, I'm gonna do it. So my dad was obviously very proud of the fact that, uh, of my achievements. That's the biggest ROI, of course. And he didn't have just one Samba working for the company, he had two. So we were the talk of the town. Two failures, now two heroes, which is amazing.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a photo of Elfried and another man (Michael) looking serious. Inset photo of a group of people.]
Uh, I left Gymshark to set up my company called Butterfly Effect, where we wanted to test the theory of whether community marketing applies to different industries. So, uh, that was great. So me and my co-founder Michael decided to leave and start that.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Collage of photos showing people at various events, networking, and a race car.]
Uh, we started building a community within our own brand. So not only do we help other brands scale community, which is great, we also do that for our agency itself, proving that this also works in the B2B space, uh, which has been phenomenal.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide titled "Trusted By" with logos of various companies including Nike, Meta, Netflix, Bumble, Gymshark, FIFA, Google, Amazon, Santander, Square, McDonald's, YouTube, ASOS, Sprout Social, eToro, MTV, Vodafone, Virgin Active, Barclays, EY, The Premier League, Pangaia, Red Bull Racing, Formula E, Pitch, Thirdweb, Xpeng, Wickes, Ziina, and Born.]
And we've worked with some really great brands along this time, which has been great. So trusted by some brands you, you don't know at all.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide showing a LinkedIn profile for Elfried Samba, ranked #2 Top 200 Creators Worldwide by Favikon.]
Um, and also, I don't like to be a hypocrite, so I create it myself. So I create it on LinkedIn, and in 2024, I was ranked by Favikon as the second most engaged, uh, creator on LinkedIn globally, which is phenomenal. My mom's WhatsApp chat was buzzing that I wasn't a failure.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide showing a podcast cover for "The Bottleneck Podcast" with Elfried Samba and Rory Sutherland.]
Uh, I also started a podcast with Rory Sutherland, which has been great. He kicks my ass every week, uh, talking about creativity and marketing, which is phenomenal.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide showing a list of top creators, with Elfried Samba ranked #5.]
And, and also, I was ranked, uh, uh, fifth, uh, most engaged person or influential person in social by Favikon. Too bad my bank account is nowhere near the guys that I was listed with, but again, um, uh, uh, I had to let down a few family members that came asking me for money, uh, uh, which I didn't have, because I'm a brokie. But whatever.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "THAT'S GREAT FOR ME. HOW IS THIS RELEVANT TO YOU?".]
Um, but then that's all great for me. What does this mean for you? One, it tells you that I have the credentials. I always like to make sure that who the information comes from is somebody that you trust. If I'm gonna talk about trust marketing, you have to trust me. You have to know who I am, uh, before I give you any information. And we're gonna step into how we actually made this happen.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "WORLD BUILDING".]
It's this concept of world building, uh, that myself and my co-founder talk about. And it's this whole art of building a brand that people don't want to just buy from. They want to feel like they belong to, be a part of, and help shape, uh, where it goes, right?
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "Building a brand that people don't just buy from. They belong, take part and help shape what the brand stands for."]
And I think the simpler way to say this is community. But then how actually do you do this? And how do you leverage social in the best way possible in 2026 to make this happen?
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "HOW WAS THIS ACHIEVED?".]
First and foremost, um, I talk about this concept of IQ, EQ, and FQ.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "IQ + EQ + FQ".]
So IQ is very clear. It's all about intelligence and making sure that you're utilizing the platforms, doing research, etc., etc. But now with AI, when IQ is becoming democratized and everybody has access to the same stuff, you need to be able to leverage EQ. That's emotional intelligence. Can you get people to stop scrolling? And can you make it worth their time? And that's all great. So IQ and EQ is enough to make you stand out from the pack. But the real people that want to start this world building community approach are also focusing on FQ, which is all about focus intelligence. What does that actually mean?
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "Mindset shift: BEING: 'EVERYTHING' TO 'EVERYONE'".]
So it's about a mindset shift. Going from trying to be everything to everyone, to being everything to someone, right?
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "Instead MEANING: 'EVERYTHING' TO 'SOMEONE'".]
So this whole mass approach of just like reaching as many people as possible is great, but then if you really want to scale in 2026 going forward, you're gonna focus on a, on a, all your efforts on a small group that they are gonna tell everybody else about you. That's a thing that everybody talks about.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "COMMUNITY = TRUST".]
Because community equals trust. And trust is the metric that matters the most, especially in the world where everyone's distrusting of everything. As soon as you see a piece of content, as soon as somebody sends you something, something talks about something, you don't trust it automatically. The current state of leadership is nowhere it needs to be right now, and people need receipts before they can make decisions or before they can give that trust away. And, um, that's what brands need to focus on this year going forward.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "88% of people trust 'WORD OF MOUTH' (PURCHASE DECISIONS - Nielsen study)".]
And how do you actually start to build trust? So a Nielsen study talked about the fact that 88% of people trust word of mouth from people that they actually care about. And when you start to break that down a little bit more, who are those people?
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text detailing trust levels: Friends & Family (83-88%), Online Reviews (70-83%), Creators (70%), Brands (30%).]
So 83 to 88% trust, um, uh, recommendations from friends and family. Online reviews is at 70 to 83%. Creators is 70%. That's actually a little bit downer because some creators are working with brands that they don't align with because times are hard, you know. But then really what is really shocking here is that only, uh, uh, brands only have 30% of the trust, right? So, and a lot of executives, 90% of executives still believe that they hold the trust, right? So there's an imbalance there. So the, the simple insight there is that it's important to get other people to talk about you instead of you talking about yourself.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with an illustration of Elfried holding a microphone. Text: "I'm a nice guy".]
It's like me coming here and saying I'm a nice guy. Really, it only works if everybody else says I'm a nice guy. It's effectively the, uh, the humor in that.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds an illustration of a group of people pointing at Elfried. Text: "He is a nice guy", "He's great", "He's a good guy", "He's real".]
But most brands are walking around just saying that they're a nice guy and people should buy from them. It's not gonna work.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "CONVERSATION DRIVES COMMERCE. 'Most people learn about Gymshark from everyone other than Gymshark'".]
So just to give you in a simple phrase, we always talk about the fact that the reason why Gymshark grew the way that it did is because more people talked about Gymshark than Gymshark itself, right? And I can use a visual, um, triangle like this.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a red triangle pointing left. The left section is labeled "BRAND", the right section is labeled "NON-BRAND". The "BRAND" section is much larger.]
Most brands, this is what they do. If you, if you can envision this as being like a share of voice or a share of conversation about the brand. Usually they're the dictator of their own narrative, and the brand hijacks most of the conversation about itself, and they leave only a small amount of noise for people that are not related to the brand.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a green triangle pointing right. The left section is labeled "BRAND", the right section is labeled "NON-BRAND". The "NON-BRAND" section is much larger.]
But top brands that are community-centric, they actually speak the least about themselves and create catalysts for conversations around the brand. And if you can get to a space where you can leverage creators and work with, uh, uh, your audience to be able to like increase the noise about the brand, you're more likely to win and you're more likely to be trusted.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a red triangle divided into three sections: "PAID MEDIA" at the top, "ORGANIC" at the bottom left, and "INFLUENCER" at the bottom right.]
And what you can do with that once you've got it is about leveraging the three pillars. I like to call them the, the holy grail, if you will, of leveraging influencers, organic, and paid to really create that flywheel. What we did at Gymshark was, instead of seeing these as separate organ, um, departments, we actually made them work together like a band, right? They're just playing different instruments as opposed to being like individual singers yelling on top of each other. We would use creators to create content and test market. We would then put that content on organic, and the best performing content we'll put on paid. That flywheel allowed us to make sure that we're only, uh, expanding content that created more conversation around the brand that people actually cared about, and therefore created more and more conversations around the brand as opposed to just trying to convert people, uh, with ads, uh, at first interaction.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide titled "AD-FREE SOCIAL". Shows a screenshot of an article: "Facebook and Instagram to Offer Subscription for No Ads in the UK".]
So another thing that's really interesting that's happening around the world right now, if you look at what's just recently happening in Meta. I don't know whether this is in the UK, in the US, but in the UK, you can actually opt out of ads, which therefore means that people, if they are gonna keep their ads on, if you're still gonna be paying for ads, you need to make sure that they're great. You need to make sure that it's things that people don't want to opt out from. So we've already seen that on, with YouTube, uh, they've seen that actually like a lot of people have, have started to opt out of their ads from that perspective.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "PROVEN MODEL: 33% US Adults use YouTube Premium, 68% Opted for Ad-Free Netflix, 40% of Spotify Users Ad-Free. THE REST WILL FOLLOW: X, TikTok, Snapchat will follow: Blue ticks payments, Messaging (Dark Social), Stories".]
We can start to see that happening a little bit on Meta, but still, I've been speaking to a bunch of people that love their ads if they're worth it. So if you're gonna be one of those brands that are gonna be leveraging paid, if you're gonna be one of those brands that are gonna be creating on socials, you gotta make it worth people's time. You gotta make sure that you're increasing those trust and connection with your brand. Otherwise, people are just gonna opt out and not want to see you, and it's gonna be messy out there for everybody.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide titled "FOCUS ON THE RIGHT METRICS". Lists various metrics like Visibility, Engagement, Advocacy, Conversation Quality, Creator ROI, Influence Velocity, Community Health, and Conversion.]
Uh, we're gonna go. So there's some other metrics that we're gonna be looking at now in 2026, but I'm not gonna bore you too much.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a table of metrics. Columns: Metric, Meaning, Question. Rows include SOV, ER, UGC, Creator ROI, Conversion.]
Really you have to be asking yourself five questions. Are we being talked about? Do people care enough to interact with us? Are fans proud to talk about us? Are we fueling the right storytellers? But then also, are we converting belief into action? That's super, super important. Instead of just asking, have we converted, you should be asking a little bit more than just transactional, uh, almost like, uh, focus on your audience. It's about world building. It's about connecting. It's about making sure that people are not just coming to you to buy, but to interact, to be entertained, to, to feel like they're part of something. It's super, super important.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "HOW DO YOU EARN TRUST?".]
So how do you earn trust? I'm gonna fly through this. I don't want to take up too much more time.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "IT TAKES STEPS".]
Really, it takes steps, right? You, you can't just like wake up one day and have everybody trusting you.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "BE KNOWN".]
You have to make sure that you're known, first and foremost, because how can you trust somebody that you don't know?
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "BE LIKED".]
Then you have to be liked, which is super important right now, especially in the social era.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "BE ACTION-LED".]
But most importantly, you have to be action-led to be able to earn trust, right? People don't trust your words, they trust your actions. And brands that lead with actions are the ones that win and kick off the world building flywheel.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "BE KNOWN".]
And I'm gonna go really quickly on like examples of how to do that.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a meme with four photos of Dolly Parton labeled LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Tinder. Text: "PLATFORM".]
So being known, you have to make sure that you know the platform that you're on. So there's this Dolly Parton meme that talked about the fact that she's four different people on four different platforms. If one person has four different characteristics on four different platforms, then a one-size-fits-all strategy is not gonna work.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of creators running with a giant Lunchly box. Text: "CREATORS".]
Then you have to make sure that you leverage creators. Knowing the creators that already have the trust of the audience you want to interact with is super key to make sure that you can rent that trust and then eventually create that follower crossover so that their followers become your followers.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a screenshot of an Instagram profile for "Pubity". Text: "PUBLISHERS".]
Then leveraging publishers. Like, a lot of people just talk about, uh, creators, but then what about publishers? There's new publishers like Pubity and other publishers we can mention that also have high trust. Why not use them as a new canvas for your brand?
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "BE LIKED".]
And when it comes to being liked, find a, a community that's underrepresented and be their uniform, right?
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of a female mountain biker. Text: "REPRESENT THE NON-REPRESENTED".]
You've seen that with Vans and skateboarders. You've seen that with, um, uh, with Red Bull and extreme sports. You've seen that with Nike and athletes. Who is that for your brand and how do you make sure that you get that affinity from them?
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of a large crowd of people. Text: "UNITE ON A COMMON CAUSE / NEMESIS".]
Uh, unite them on a common cause and nemesis.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of a young man talking to the camera. Text: "DOCUMENT THE JOURNEY".]
Uh, document your journey as you go along because people like authenticity.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a screenshot of a Twitter interaction between Ryanair and a user. Text: "ENCOURAGE TWO-WAY CONVERSATION".]
But then also make sure you have a two-way conversation. Not just a dictatorship conversation. Listen to your audience and respond back to them.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "BE ACTION-LED".]
And then when it comes to being action, listen.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of a man talking about Whoop. Text: "LISTEN".]
I love Whoop. They showcase that actually one of the, the fans were screaming out for a feature. How they launched the feature was getting the CEO to read out mean comments about them and then announcing the fact that they launched the feature finally.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of a burnt car interior with an intact Stanley cup. Text: "SHOW THEM THAT YOU CARE".]
Everybody knows about this with Stanley, the cup that survived. They, a girl got her car blown up. The only thing that survived was the Stanley cup, and the CEO responded saying they're gonna give her a new car and, uh, obviously shouted out the Stanley.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video showing knives being melted down and turned into gym equipment. Text: "SUPPORT CAUSES THAT MATTER, TODAY".]
This is a Gymshark example. Getting involved in what matters. Obviously, for those that are in London, they know that knife crime is on the high. What they did is they used confiscated knives and turned them into gym equipment in sponsorship with a, with a charity called Steel Warriors, which is phenomenal.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds a video of people at a pop-up event. Text: "CREATE EXPERIENCES THEY WILL REMEMBER".]
But then also just create experiences worth remembering. So using IRL to disrupt URL. Real world experience, which talked about demonstrating real efforts, is really important to be able to win in 2026 going forward.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with text "LET'S WRAP UP".]
And so to wrap up, I spoke really, really quickly.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "MEAN SOMETHING TO EVERYONE < MEAN EVERYTHING TO SOMEONE".]
It's important to make sure that you go away from trying to mean something to everyone to meaning everything to someone. Super important.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "GET EVERYONE ELSE TO TALK ABOUT YOU".]
Get everyone else to talk about you instead of you being the main character of your own narrative. You don't want to be calling yourself a nice guy.
> [VISUAL: Slide adds text: "BE KNOWN, LIKED AND ACTION-LED".]
And also remember it's important to not just be known, be liked, and be action-led.
**Elfried Samba**
> [VISUAL: Slide with a blurred background and the Butterfly Effect logo. Text: "Butterfly Effect - Strictly Confidential | 2025".]
Uh, thank you. Sorry I sped through that.
**Evan Lee**
> [VISUAL: Split screen with Elfried Samba and Evan Lee.]
Elf, Elf, you crushed it, man. You crushed it. Show love in the chat. This is one where it's like people in the recording or people in the chat are like, I need the recording. And I'm like, yep, everyone needs to watch this back. Everyone needs to watch this back. You are the man, my friend. Thank you so much. I need to catch you another time with a fedora on, like that's the next version. But you're the best. I appreciate you. I appreciate you a ton.
**Elfried Samba**
Thank you. See you in a bit.
**Evan Lee**
> [VISUAL: Evan Lee waves goodbye.]
