How Lifestyle Bloggers @dipyourtoes Worked with the London Eye and Were Asked Back

We interviewed Eulanda & Omo Osagiede, husband and wife content creation and award-winning social influencers who run the popular travel, food, and lifestyle blog HDYTI (Hey! Dip your toes in)

What was the last brand or company you worked for?

Pre-covid, we worked with Lastminute.com London Eye to cover their 20th anniversary celebration early March. We were paid to post on Instagram (in-feed & stories).

Tell us about the work, How did it start?

Last year, Coca-Cola London Eye hired us as ambassadors to try a range of luxury experiences they offer. We then created an ecosystem of content to drive brand awareness.

Despite changing ownership (licensing rights) from Coca-Cola to Lastminute.com, they came back to us a few weeks ago saying they enjoyed working with us so much that they wanted to bring us back this year for select events.

What prompted you to work with them? What resulted from it?

As brands, Coca-Cola and Lastminute.com have large footprints in the consumer marketplace. Our brand values align in both the lifestyle and travel sectors. We like working with community-focused, inclusive, and collaborative brands.

The content they were asking for tapped into our strengths as content creators (creative and fun storytelling through photography, copy, and videography). We also were keen to introduce more London based content to our followers.

As a result, we’ve built a great relationship with both the creative agency and the client. Our audience is so familiar with our relationship with the London Eye that they now ask us about cool events and happenings well before they’ve even launched.

What motivated you to get started?

I grew up in a family of self-starters and entrepreneurs. I started my first business at the age of twelve. I've witnessed the rise and fall of many businesses within my family.

I then encountered my own fall. The recession of 2009 decimated my dance studio business in the US. I lost 70% of my customer base within 30 days.

After moving to the UK and completing graduate school in 2013, I knew that I wanted to step back into the world of business ownership. So, in March 2015, my husband and I launched Hey! Dip Your Toes In.

How have you attracted followers and grown your social media presence?

We've focused on amplifying the voices of our community through creative programming like: Community Sundays, School Daze, and others.

We also consistently produce high-quality content that seeks to inspire, educate, and entertain our audience. If any content doesn't fall into those categories, we typically won't share it.

This has helped us to attract, retain, and grow our community of followers.

What are the biggest challenges you've faced?

The biggest challenge I've faced was receiving a deportation order last July after the UK immigration office rejected my application for permanent residency.

My entire life was in limbo for the next six months. During that time I was unable to travel (especially since I'm a travel content creator), and two of my grandfathers passed away. It was devastating. It was as if my life was spiraling out of control.

In an effort to find my feet, I channeled my anger, frustration, and sadness into my work, and began to create stop motion videos for social media. In the captions, I talked transparently about my current struggles.

Our community was so incredibly supportive. I received countless DMs from our followers sharing their own immigration stories and the challenges they faced.

In some instances, their experiences touched on the systemic racism and classism they encountered. Their stories blew me away and were a source of encouragement to this day.

I finally won the court battle and received the immigration status I originally applied for three weeks before Covid-19 shut everything down.

What are your goals for the future?

International property investing. We plan to launch a residency program for creatives that is run in several locations around the world.

In the next month, we'll be launching our first online course and ebook. I'm also partnering with someone on a restaurant venture in one of my favourite areas in London.

We're currently house hunting, with the hopes to move in the next two and a half months. I'm really excited to design my own work studio, host small workshops, and continue to build upon our community ethos.

Overall, we want to fully transition HDYTI into a creative lifestyle brand. Storytelling will always be at the heart of what we do, but the brand has been expanding beyond our main veins of travel and food for some time now.

I’m also currently defining the D&I consulting leg of our business after taking on various contracts over the last two years which involved providing the brands we work with guidance on how best to approach D&I internally and externally.

What’s a dream brand project for you?

I ’d love to work with Adobe on a series of educational messaging tools for creatives. Adobe products have enriched my creative process so much. I can't imagine a world without Adobe!

Find Eulanda and Omo everywhere online @dipyourtoesin

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