Your Weekly Influencer Marketing Update 🚀
26.10.2020 / #51
☀️ Happy Monday! ☀️
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🤿 This week’s Deep Dives 🤿
🤔 Quibi: Did Celebrity Influencers Kill the App?
Well that was short lived wasn’t it? Quibi officially launched in April and had raised close to $2 billion. Six months later, the app is no more.
I read this piece through the Morningbrew newsletter and thought it would be worth discussing it briefly in the newsletter. Their hot take:
Quibi's celebrity-dependent marketing strategy did little to prevent its demise.
Quibi followed a tried-and-tested traditional TV marketing plan ($63.7M spent on TV advertising) with the majority of impressions coming from high-viewership programmes such as the NBA, the Super Bowl, and the Oscars.
The app then shifted to focusing more on its star-studded talent roster, in the hope that the celebs would drive subscriptions.
According to Morningbrew, influencer marketers could probably have told Quibi that betting heavily on big celebs is becoming a no-go, citing a few stats:
“The smaller the follower size (nano-influencers with 5,000 or fewer followers being the exception), the more likely respondents are to see future engagement,” a December 2019 survey of almost 200 marketers across industries found, per RetailWire.
The same survey found that 77% of marketers wanted to work with micro-influencers, followed by macro influencers.
But the type of influencer that marketers showed the least interest in working with was celebrity influencers (only 22%).
In conclusion: there were a lot of reasons why Quibi didn’t make it, but relying on Hollywood influencers can be considered a misstep that could have been easily avoided.
💡 Our Opinion
While over-relying on a singular tier is an influencer marketing approach I would never suggest, I could make an argument for the heavy use of celeb-tier influencers.
They’re the tier that generate the level of impact that allows them to set up their own brand. As we mentioned last week, Chiara Ferragni is about to put the influencer model to the test with an IPO, and the sheer impact that celebrities can have still blows my mind. Instagram has “changed” royal fashion (paywall) and Kate & Meghan are known to instantly sell out clothes, and what to think of the impact of Joe Wicks & Marcus Rashford?
But back to my original point; over-indexing on a specific tier rarely makes for a solid strategy. We have always been advocates for harnessing the power of the entire influencer pyramid (see image below) from everyday consumers all the way up to the top tier. We would all love an army of micro-influencers, but the reality is that (paid) relationships are incredibly hard to scale.
But let’s try to stay away from influencer tier shaming, shall we?
🛍️ Influencers Are the Retailers of the 2020s
Initially, people expected influencers to replace editors. This hasn’t happened. Instead, retailers should be more worried.
Come 2020, moving product and sales are skills that the most successful influencers must possess. Influencers are the modern day take on a catalogue.
According to the article, the key to authenticity is to be selective in your partnerships.
“Influencer partnerships at Lunya have generally been born organically, with us leaning into relationships grounded in true fandom,” she says. “We want authenticity in our ambassador crew. Typically, these relationships start with an influencer posting about us, and then us building on that relationship.”
Some influencers are taking it further by launching their own brands (Chloé Harrouche, Arielle Charnas, Blair Eadie), and others are focusing more on the “solve for curation” i.e in the shape of a pop-up shop filled with influencers’ favourite brands / items.
💡 Our Opinion
Ten years into Instagram and influencers have become so embedded into the platform that they’re even mentioned in Borat’s new release (Although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing..) Influencers operate in most categories, but fashion has always been one of the early adopters, with a heavy focus on imagery, doing product and generating sales. While important, I’d like to make a case for influencers as an extension of your brand - a way to build credibility and trust by proxy with a focus on purpose vs selling. The most interesting thing in this article though, is the quote from Lunya where they explain that they build influencer relationships on the back of the influencers who have already mentioned them. Slowly, I’m noticing more articles mentioning their inbound influencer identification process vs only focusing on the traditional outbound keyword search approach. A positive development.
❤️ Instagram rolls out fan badges for live videos, expands IGTV ads test
Instagram is introducing a new way for creators to earn money through badges as part of Instagram Live. This will allow people watching to purchase badges and stand out / show support.
Instagram is (as they did with Stories and Reels) looking at its competition, with Twitch and YouTube having similar systems in place.
Instagram will temporarily match creator earnings from badges, too, starting in November with 50,000 global creators.
“Creators push culture forward. Many of them dedicate their life to this, and it’s so important to us that they have easy ways to make money from their content,” said Instagram COO Justin Osofsky, in a statement. “These are additional steps in our work to make Instagram the single best place for creators to tell their story, grow their audience, and make a living,” she added.
💡 Our Opinion
It is clear that platforms are putting more effort into making the creator lifestyle more viable. Delivering methods that allow influencers to monetise their own audience without having to rely fully on brand partnerships is a great way forward for the professional influencer industry. It has the potential to tighten up partnerships, increase authenticity, and grow the pool of professional content creators.
📰 Headlines
‘One of many stages of maturity’: Ad industry welcomes Instagram influencer marketing labeling changes
Many of the issues within the influencer marketing space are often through lack of knowledge and education rather than creators deliberately attempting to flout the rules, said Phil Smith, director general of U.K. advertiser trade association ISBA.
Influencer discounting: Needs must
Consumers’ response appears positive. Bernstein posted a survey in her Stories last week, asking followers whether they would be interested in “discount codes for her larger partnerships” — an overwhelming 93 per cent of respondents voted yes. Hadfield’s followers often ask if she has a discount for certain brands she can share. Discount codes have been so popular, says Suyapa Lucy Hernandez, who has over 250,000 followers on her Instagram account @LucysWhims, that she has a dedicated Highlights gallery on Instagram to make it easier for fans to keep track of her codes.
How TikTok is proving beauty is more than skin deep
The Ordinary was a hit skincare brand long before TikTok, but skinfluencers have affected sales, says Nicola Kilne, co-founder and CEO of Deciem, The Ordinary’s parent company. “The TikTok audience is truly global in a way that we haven’t seen before,” she says. The brand is a skinfluencer favourite, and only started its own TikTok account in February. “Our first video had almost one million views – #TheOrdinary alone has 229.1 million views.”
James Charles’ ‘Instant Influencer’ gives beauty brands a direct line to Gen Z
“TV is really moving to YouTube,” said Caroline Shin, the director of influencer relations at Morphe parent company Forma Brands. “We’re such a socially driven brand. We’re going to explore every content platform to really promote this. Ashley has a strong platform, as well, so we’ll be collaborating with her on tons of content.”
NFL Turns to Digital Influencers in Fight to Win Over Young Fans
To continue drawing young fans, the NFL is increasingly using influencer marketing, although the league’s strategy extends far beyond the simple sponsored post. Influencers are not paid for the “vast majority” of NFL-related content they create, said Ian Trombetta, NFL senior vp of social and influencer marketing. “The last thing we want to do is come off as paying someone to represent a club or the league.”