Your Weekly Influencer Marketing Update 🚀

09.08.2021

☀️ Happy Monday! ☀️

Welcome to your weekly #influencermarketingupdate

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🧭 Navigating the creator economy gold rush

What’s it about?

The industry is moving on from the days of paid-ads and product placement. Fuelling the next stage of growth are investors, who say that surging viewership and an increasing supply of creators has led to a gold rush in the creator economy start-up space.

Headline Quote

“The biggest change creators are facing is that gradually they won’t need to rely as much on brands, as they shift to become direct-to-consumer businesses. Instead of being linked to a brand through a sponsored post or product placement, they have the opportunity to sell directly to their customers”

Our Take

I’ve been active in the influencer industry since 2013 - and every year since, we’ve seen articles both prepping us for the end of influencer marketing as we know it, as well as the inevitable gold rush. With over $2 billion dollars invested in more than 50 creator-focused start ups in 2021 alone - the time for creators is there.

For creators, there is a heavy dependancy on the infrastructure that platforms provide - and which direction they move into. This dependency is valid in terms of growth, distribution, monetisation, and building own IP (stepping away from the concept of simply renting their audiences to brands) and becoming more “direct to consumer” or perhaps direct to audience in this context.

Platforms have a huge influence over creators, and for a long time - they were not nearly as “creator friendly” as they are now. Things are moving into the right direction though, and there are positive signals in the shape of ramping up e-commerce capabilities, the introduction of subscription/membership based income for creators, as well as creator funds models. This should, overall - decrease the the reliance on smash-and-grab based structures.

It’s also important to note that for the most part - the majority of keyword based influencer tech very much spits out the same list of creators based on rankings; allowing for a small group of creators to become almost “over-utilised” by brands This also means that there has been an 80/20 principle in place in terms of “wealth distribution”, with the smaller creators seeing much less money coming their way. Platforms have the ability to showcase relevant creators to brands, and play a much more important role to the “small guys” - I hope they take this chance.

For brands, there is is an increasing urgency to stay relevant - as creators will become less reliant on brands for income, value added (long-term) relationships will become increasingly important. and costs will without a doubt go up. What do you have to offer creators apart from a quick cash-injection, are you able to help with distribution - what about production? If you're not there to add value - and you’re only there for the quick and easy hit reach/click fix - the (future) influencer economy may not be for you.

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🚗 EV Makers in China Turn to Social Media Influencers for an Edge

What’s it about?

carmakers are increasingly using influencers to cut through the clutter. Their preferred messengers: media-savvy young people who use social platforms to talk about and review EVs to legions of followers that stretch into the hundreds of thousands. That makes sense because, rather than dealing solely with a dealership, many EV buyers in China browse online, interact with an influencer, or perhaps go to a high-end mall to view the finished product in a boutique-like setting—all before visiting a dealer lot or ever getting behind a wheel.

Headline Quote

“Traditional media can hardly meet the need, and that’s where we come in.”

Our Take

The Chinese market is always one to look at from developments in terms of influencer marketing - and moving away slightly from the EV topic, I want to highlight that the concept and realisation of something called the “dcar talent initiative” is an incredibly intriguing one.

This initiative sits within Bytedance’s “car infotainment” team. The thought behind this talent initiative is that they will nurture and develop creators specifically for their platform(s).

Dcar will provide creators with tools and products they need to grow with the automotive category in to become more relevant. Below highlights the power it has to “create” influence and build distribution networks.

”Dcar also facilitates the lending of cars from automakers for influencers to test-drive and review. Perhaps more important, it will direct traffic to the influencers’ car videos from the parent company’s popular video platforms.”