Your #InfluencerMarketingUpdate 🚀
1.9.2020
Have you noticed something different? Good! We’ve migrated our Mailchimp audience over to Substack. We think it’ll make everything a little easier to digest.
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📋 Influencer Marketing 2020 Research
I’ve partnered with Dutch company JOIN and we’ve set up a survey that will hopefully allow us to understand how people with different influencer marketing experiences view various influencer marketing topics. We’ll need your help though, so if you have a few minutes to spare - please make sure to complete the survey.
We’ll also make sure to share all the findings and data with those that complete the survey, and deliver insights in this newsletter.
You can complete the survey by clicking here.
🤿 The Deep Dive
11 Honoré embraces micro-influencers
Plus-size fashion brand 11 Honoré is looking to shift their influencer marketing strategy from ad-hoc partnerships to more stable, long term relationships with influencers from their own community.
Brands including Adore me, Birchbox and Benefit Cosmetics have already brought influencer management in-house, as the trend continues.
11 Honoré is recruiting potential influencers through instagram & email blasts, asking people to apply through their company’s website in the shape of a form - asking for their Instagram @ and a reason as to why they’d want to be considered. If successful, an influencer gets to choose a free product and is provided with a promo code that can be shared, with a kick-back going to the influencer. Accepted influencers also receive a VIP discount of 25% and two free pieces per month.
The focus is on micro-influencers with more than 2,000, as the programme is currently an unpaid one.
The brand will continue existing (paid) partnerships with larger influencers outside of this programme.
“There’s a lot of transparency out there between influencers about how much they make and are getting paid, which is good for everyone,” 11 Honoré’s director of social media and communications said. “It helps them get a fair rate and it helps the brands know how much is reasonable. When I first started doing influencer marketing, it was like the Wild West. Now it’s really stabilized.”
🌡️ Our Opinion
This topic has come up quite a few times over the past few weeks, as well as the concept of outbound vs inbound influencer recruitment. We’re seeing more brands taking influencer marketing in-house, and in doing so, the landscape is slowly shifting towards a more inbound approach. It makes sense, considering the fact that the relationship between agencies and brands is often more focused on short-term results. This leads to less emphasis on long-term relationship building efforts that may not yield direct results.
I’m excited to see more and more influencer marketing coming in-house, and the idea of engaging smaller influencers that have a pre-existing relationship with a brand. Fostering long-term relationships could lead the way to some significant changes in terms of influencer relationships.
🎸 Rock the Vote enlists Instagram influencers to get young people to the polls
When Rock the Vote started in 1990, they would put a PSA on MTV and reach 90% of young people, but the media landscape has since shifted dramatically.
Utilising influencers has helped Rock the Vote double its number of Instagram followers to 125,000, in addition to generating 1.5 million eyeballs to a virtual event.
Rock the Vote is working with a company called Influential, which typically makes money by charging companies for access to its network. The work they’re doing with Rock the Vote, however, is pro bono (which roughly translates to great PR).
Various influencers have helped Knox Frost (a virtual influencer that we highlighted in one of our newsletters a few months back) to promote Rock The Vote, often doing this for free, as they want to utilise their influence for good.
🌡️ Our Opinion
As the article states, the media landscape has seen some significant changes since the early 90s, and reaching a young demographic has become increasingly more challenging, especially when it comes to topics that aren’t directly related to companies / products.
Seeing Rock the Vote work with influencers, in addition to the UK government paying influencers to generate awareness for its COVID-19 Track and Trace programme is a vote of confidence in influencer marketing as an effective marketing channel. Earlier this year, we also saw the United Nations engage content creators to spread awareness around COVID-19.
Influencers, and their ability to reach audiences effectively in a world where messages are easily lost in the cluttered social media environment, are slowly becoming the key to connecting with a generation that the likes of the UK and US governments would otherwise struggle to reach.
📰 Headlines
Takumi Introduces Takumi X: A New Influencer Marketing Division With A Creator-First Approach
TAKUMI’s new creative arm ushers in the next generation of influencer marketing to craft the future of branded content TAKUMI appoints Jim Meadows as Chief Strategy Officer to lead TAKUMI X
'Influencers as a service': How a new acquisition could supercharge Australia's influencer marketing industry
The acquisition will allow the company to better measure the “upper funnel” capacity of influencers. He gives an example: influencers marketers receive credit for directly linking their audience to a sale, but they’ll also receive credit if their audience sees their content and buy something a few days later.
HypeAuditor Has Launched Instagram Competitor Analysis Report
HypeAuditor is an AI-powered Instagram, TikTok and Youtube analytics tool that helps to get insights about the creator’s audience, increase advertisers’ ROI and safeguard authenticity in influencer marketing. It sets a standard for Instagram analytics by providing the most accurate data.
Liketoknow.it expands into video shopping
The new feature means videos will be visible in consumers’ 'following feeds', on influencers’ profiles, categorized within discovery sections of the app, and indexed in search. Additionally, shopping video performance data and analytics will be available immediately in RewardStyle’s (Liketoknow.it’s parent company) free influencer marketing management dashboard.