When Popping Champagne Becomes An Ad Campaign

Yesterday's Influencer

An article on the Sunday Times is published on Monday morning, a man scans through an advert for a new skincare product for women. His teenage son back home gets ready for school with the TV on and a clientele life insurance advert comes on. Nationwide brands are communicating their products to audiences on TV, radio and print media. The year is 2015. 

Fast forward to present day and a teenage girl opens her Instagram app and sees a video of her favorite RNB singer using a new makeup brand meanwhile her younger brother on the app as well, sees a video of his favorite rapper lacing up a new Reebok sneaker. The year is 2024.

Today's Influencer

What you’ve just read is a picture of what was traditional brand journalism and what it looks like now and it has a new name...Influencer Marketing. An influencer is a public figure or online personality with a sizeable and loyal following, of which can be “influenced” by this figure to behave in a certain way. The concept is derived from a simple yet timeless truth; people buy from who they trust. Influencers do not need to have millions of followers but rather a consistent community, a niche crowd that niche brands can advertise their niche products to. 

The Good News

The opportunity this provides is that influencer marketing is so much of a bullseye. It targets a specific person followed by a specific group of people for a specific product just like in the analogy in the intro of this entry. The financial nature of it is encouraging as well as a typical influencer campaign runs on social media platforms that offer inexpensive promotional offers (unlike TV channels that can charge millions for airtime) and influencers are freelancers and are therefore hired on a contract basis and are not a permanent cost to the company. Furthermore, an influencer campaign almost always bears fruits as research shows that an influencer campaign can improve brand engagement by up to 16.6% (according to Lauren Kirschman) making it an avenue hard to ignore.

The Bad News

However, the challenge that comes with hiring influencers to aid brand communication is the method’s age. Influencing is a new phenomenon that companies and influencers themselves are still trying to figure out. This could lead to a waste of resources and unmet objectives if both parties don’t understand what influencing entails. Another challenge is the level of professionalism that influencers have as since it's not a formal profession, one may not know how to interact with and unpack a corporate brief as they may only view influencing as a creative outlet. Alot of influencers are winging it and though this leads to innovation, it’s very hard to wing effective communication and one mistake or offensive word from an influencer can destroy an organisation’s brand.

The Way Out

My two cents of advice? When working with influencers you need to have a clear idea of what the campaign should do and never make the mistake of making the influencer strategise for you as they don’t know your organisation’s objectives; you do! Influencers are merely digital billboards advertising to online traffic, you decide what's on the billboard. 

Stay sharp PR doctors, till next time!