Your Weekly Influencer Marketing Update 🚀
05.10.2020 / #48
☀️ Happy Monday! ☀️
Welcome to this week’s edition of Your Weekly Influencer Marketing Update.
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🏊 The Deep Dive
‘Wildly under-utilized’: What influencer marketing looks like for the 2020 election
Digiday looks at how influencers are being used within the upcoming presidential election in the U.S.
We all read about Michael Bloomberg’s campaign with meme accounts as part of an awareness play, and that the “buzz from Bloomberg” raised interest in paid influencer marketing strategies. However, one month out - it’s clear that influencer marketing has not played as big of a role as some would have expected.
The Biden campaign has apparently hired some influencer marketing agencies (unconfirmed), and the presidential hopeful has appeared on several “influencer interviews”, working from an unpaid angle and talking about his concerns and policies.
“There’s campaigns in progress and some already launched,” said Brendan Gahan, chief social officer at Mekanism. “However, I think [influencer marketing is] wildly under-utilized. What other medium can you get young voters to listen and pay attention to for hours on end? It’s not TV. It’s not print. Influencers are the medium that can accomplish that.”
When it comes to Trump, several influencer marketing experts noted that they haven’t heard of the campaign seeking out influencers.
The article notes that using a paid approach could be dicey, as it could come across as inauthentic, which is why some advocate for more of an organic partnership strategy. Either way, influencer work can be difficult considering influencers more often than not don’t wish to alienate the 50% of their audience that votes the other way.
Having said that, the article closes by noting that influencers have a certain role to play.
“Even if they’re not being paid there’s more pressure than ever before for influencers and creators to pick a side,” said the exec. “There’s no way you can be an influencer today and be on the sidelines of this conversation — your audience just won’t let you. We saw it with Black Lives Matter and we’re seeing it now with the election.”
🌡️ Our Opinion:
I posted about this article the other day on LinkedIn, after watching “Whose Vote Counts” on Netflix - and the header drives it home for me.
As the article notes, influencers are an incredibly powerful way to reach a young audience that is alienated from traditional media - and honestly, I’m not seeing a solid, well structured influencer marketing campaign being put in place to rally around advocacy and influence. Too much is still focused on (traditional) advertising. We’ve seen The Rock endorse Biden recently, and even alienate a few of his followers, but at least he is part of the conversation and is willing to take a stand even if it means losing followers. (In fact, it appears he may have gained followers.) I’m expecting to see more celebrities and influencers endorse candidates, and I’m surprised Biden hasn’t commented on the post himself, nor decided to amplify it or do anything at all with this endorsement.
Building communities around influencers, building relationships with (more) influencers, and involving creators in campaigns in other ways is something I was hoping to see more of in this election cycle.
Move over, Instagram influencers: The magic of TikTok is authenticity
This CNET article looks at (the changing) influencer behaviour across the various platforms in 2020.
In an ironic twist, creators are satirising influencer content and mocking their routines and tutorials. Erik Priscilla (TikTok) has managed to generate 260,000 followers through focusing on parody content.
TikTok’s future in the U.S. is everything but certain, but the app has made way for less filtered and more humorous content than what we’ve been seeing on Instagram, with an apparent focus on authenticity and relatability versus reach.
"There's a shift in the culture around not wanting to project an inauthentic version of yourself, because people have gotten a little tired of that," says Kudzi Chikumbu, creator community director at TikTok. "Especially in this year, that is kind of interesting and wild, people are coming back to themselves and wanting to share their authenticity."
TikTok has been under fire lately for not showcasing the diversity of its creators, with some of their most popular ones being young white females. One researcher observed that the for you system only suggests creators with similar physical traits, which could lead to content and creator bubbles.
The call for more authenticity is something that has been going on for a while, but the pandemic has effectively changed the way we want to experience content, with the majority of it being created in the comfort of people’s homes.
Instagram has since jumped on the bandwagon and launched its own Reels function, and many TikTok creators are linking their Instagram profiles on TikTok following a potential ban.
"It's early, but we're excited by the range of content our global community has shared on Reels," a Facebook Company representative said in a statement. "We're continuing to build and improve the experience."
🌡️ Our Opinion:
There have been a lot of articles on the authenticity debate, and that in itself is not particularly “newsworthy” - what is, however, is that this change provides the overall influencer ecosystem with the opportunity to (finally) let creators lead.
I get it, being on-brand is important - a brand has certain values to uphold, and any message that is affiliated is often required to carry those same values. The more consumers demand authenticity, the more we will have to adjust and provide influencers with the (necessary) creative freedom and content liberties. This needs to be done in order to prevent alienating audiences that aren’t interested in a sales-heavy pitch designed to force a (corporate) message into their already busy feeds. I’m not saying turn everything on its head, but try (slowly) stepping away from seeing 100% of your influencer potential as “rented” space that is only there to acquire new audiences. Instead, collaborate with a few influencers for the long term - build a relationship, pay them fairly, and provide them with the means that will allow them to make their audience fall in love with your brand.
📰 Headlines
Three-quarters of brands have upped influencer spend despite pandemic
“73% of marketers have allocated more resources to influencer marketing this year, with spending most pronounced in the retail, legal and manufacturing sectors according to a new report from influencer marketing agency Takumi. Over August, 3,500 consumers, marketers and influencers were quizzed for the survey, which found that marketers are proving surprisingly upbeat amid the economic headwinds of Covid-19.”
Midway-2020, Influencer Marketing is the Brightest Spot in Brand Promotion
“Community and competition: These are the two end-points of the new cultures to model influencer marketing strategies. Branded content marketing rulebooks are rewritten all over the world. The COVID-19 has completely disrupted the way marketers create content to engage and influence audience. Brands are leveraging influencers to croon their sentiments and connect with the audience through emotion-based engagements. This is the norm across Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and every other popular content sharing and social media platform. “
Consumers Are Most Influenced by Word of Mouth: Here’s How Brands Can Capitalize
“Word of mouth is the one category that brands have no direct control over, presenting a real challenge for businesses. In short, companies must rely on their customers to be advocates for the brand. If it’s done effectively, this creates influential messaging at no additional cost; if done insufficiently, the business risks losing out on a large swath of their potential customer base.”
Latinx influencers are pushing for inclusion: ‘It’s important that we start casting the people in the gray zones’
“But as the influencer industry has grappled with heightened calls for inclusivity in recent months, U.S.-based Latinx influencers say they have faced obstacles when working with brands. Like other BIPOC influencers and models, they have experienced tokenization in hiring. In addition, influencers with Spanish-language social media accounts have been classified by influencer tracking firms as “non-U.S.” despite living in the U.S.”
ByteDance’s US TikTok deal likely to drag past November election
“ByteDance Ltd. is working with U.S. regulators to resolve outstanding security concerns over its planned sale of a stake in music-video app TikTok, and the companies involved are bracing for the approval process to drag on past the November election, according to people familiar with the matter.”
TikTok competitor Triller found allegedly inflating its user numbers
“In the last month Triller — a short-form video app that has attracted a number of TikTok stars, including the most popular person on the platform, Charli D’Amelio — announced that it had more than 100 million monthly active users. Speaking to Business Insider, six former employees dispute those numbers, and they told reporter Dan Whateley that Triller’s numbers were shady, based on their experience with the company. “
They Watched the Debate … on Twitch
“Hundreds of thousands watched the debate in the digital company of popular Twitch streamers like Mizkif and xQcOW. Wearing headsets equipped with microphones as usual, the hosts positioned themselves in front of screens showing the 90-minute matchup between President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., rather than League of Legends.”