Talk
Likes Don’t Pay Invoices: How Creator-Led Social Turns Attention Into Revenue
Brands are spending more on social than ever, and most of them still can’t answer one simple question: what did it sell? Reach looks great in a report. It doesn’t show up in the bank account.
In this talk, Pedram Parsaian, CEO of FOLLOW, Austria’s #1 social media agency, shows how creator-led social stops being a branding expense and becomes a measurable sales channel. Drawing on several hundred influencer campaigns a year and his own background running nine e-commerce brands, he breaks down what actually moves people from scroll to checkout, and what is just expensive noise.
Attendees will leave with:
- why creators outsell ads when they’re briefed as salespeople, not billboards
- how to connect social campaigns to real sales, leads and CRM data
- the metrics that predict revenue, and the vanity numbers to stop reporting
No theory, no buzzwords. Just what works when every like has to pay its way.
About
Pedram Parsaian started in commerce, not in agencies: he built and ran nine FMCG brands with their own online shops, from product and pricing to performance marketing and conversion. That taught him the one rule he still works by: attention only matters if it ends up in the checkout. Eight years ago he co-founded FOLLOW on exactly that principle and grew it from two founders to a team of 35, with 30 to 40% growth every year, ranked Austria’s #1 social media agency in 2026. FOLLOW runs several hundred social media- & influencer marketing campaigns a year for retail brands like Five Guys, Universal Pictures and fintechs like Trade Republic, manages 50+ creators, and links every campaign directly to clients’ sales and HR data, measuring real leads, purchases and hires instead of likes. Pedram lectures at FH Wien and is known on stage for a blunt, data-backed message: social-first brands win, everyone else is renting attention they will never own.