Influncer_Marketing_2020_watermark

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American department store chain Macys.com also took a new direction with its influencer marketing strategy this year by recruiting its own store employees and personal stylists as brand ambassadors, within Macy’s Style Crew program. Staff across the US can apply to take part and share promotional posts and short videos on their own social media feeds featuring Macy’s products and services. The programme currently includes more than 300 Macy’s employees, and participants receive commission on the sales their segments produce. According to Tongal, the company powering the Macy’s initiative through its platform and creative community, one participant produced a total of $15,000 of handbag sales in a week.05

“The big rub on outside influencer marketing is they don’t ‘get’ the brand. It’s like renting an audience when you can own one,” said Tongal president James DeJulio. “[With Macy’s], you’re taking your own people, and it’s good for them to build their own footprint. But you are also taking people who have Macy’s authority and Macy’s voice. You’re starting to own the asset that you can grow and get behind.”06

The desire for authenticity is having a knockon effect on influencer engagement models. As Fig. 9 below illustrates, contract terms are changing to reflect the gradual rise in longer-term, organic and more meaningful partnerships that are being forged between brands and influencers. While currently just

23% of respondents say they are engaging influencers in long-term partnerships, this is a step in the right direction. A year ago, one-off posts were rife within influencer marketing, but a mere 8% of survey respondents claim that they are now engaging influencers on this basis.

Figure 9

What engagement model have you seen most success with this year?

Every influencer campaign is different

A long-term partnership with a group or squad of influencers

A layered-campaign approach involving a tiered group of influencers

A campaign-specific contract with one individual

A long-term partnership with one individual

one-off posts with multiple influencers

other

24%

23%

20%

13%

11%

8%

1%

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E UD Y	JEWELLERY
AS ST	BRAND ANANYA
C	FINDS SUCCESS

WITH AUTHENTIC, UNPAID INFLUENCER COLLABORATIONS

CHA LLENGE

Luxury jewellery brand Ananya launched in India two years ago, and soft launched in the UK less than 12 months ago. Dee Mehta, Marketing Manager at Ananya explains that fine jewellery sales in India happen quite differently to in the UK, often privately and behind closed doors, and for that reason the brand had decided against working with Indian influencers. However, in the

UK where sales tend to happen more in person,

Ananya was keen to build organic relationships with key jewellery influencers, alongside the press.

STRA

TEGY

Mehta explains, “we did a lot of research into influencers within the broad fashion, jewellery and art sectors, but learnt quickly that jewellery influencers worked the best for us. People buy jewellery in a very different way to fashion, and the influencers we work with are well established within the jewellery media industry and their followers are after their knowledge, more than their aesthetics. They also have a strong network of contacts within the industry.” What sets Ananya apart from most influencer campaigns is that it has never paid for influencer content. “All our collaborations are based on organic relationship building, where no money ever exchanges hands,” Mehta explains.

EXE

CUTION

Over the past few months approximately 10 carefully curated mid to top-tier jewellery influencers have been invited by appointment to Ananya’s showroom in Kensington, London, where the collections are painstakingly laid out for them to view. The influencers can pick up items they like and try them on, and learn how each item has been made and the precious materials it contains, such as the gold and gem content.

They are permitted to take as many photos as they like. Influencers will be briefed on the collection hashtags, and Ananya will ensure they have all the accurate facts to hand, which Mehta says is always done very informally. “Since the relationships are unpaid, we leave the decision on hashtags entirely up to the influencer,” Mehta explains. “If it is just one post, the influencer has complete creative freedom. If they are writing an article we will usually request copy approval first.

OUT

COME

The forging of organic influencer relationships has proved very successful for Ananya, and not only have these influencers supported the brand’s soft launch in the UK, but they have also become deeply engrained in the business.

“Our jewellery influencers are so knowledgeable and the excitement that builds between them and our brand is infectious. In this industry, it requires a lot of passion to be successful. We love to hear their opinions, see what gemstones they love, hear what pieces really work for them, and this in turn helps us to really understand the market,” Mehta shares. The brand claims it sees more customer interest in its jewellery pieces that are posted by influencers and is able to see a clear correlation between the timing of an influencer’s post and click-throughs to its website, and new followers to its profile on Instagram which is a core channel for the brand.

“We decided that we wanted to do everything organically and at a slow pace, and it is an approach that requires a lot of patience,” explains Mehta. “If in the future we decide to enter sponsored partnerships, it will be off the back of already existing organic relationships with influencers.”

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100% of marketers agree that ‘relevance’ is the most sought-after attribute in an influencer

Industry marketers agree unanimously (100%) on the importance of collaborating with influencers whose following is relevant to the brand, with

65% citing this as a “critical” requirement (see Fig.

10 below).

More specifically, 76% of industry respondents say influencers should already be a fan or loyal supporter of the brand to prove their relevance.

Many of the experts interviewed for the report championed the concept of brands supporting influencers who are already embedded with the brand and have been loyal followers for some time and have maybe written about the brand organically already. This, experts claim, will ensure that the influencer is proud and passionate about the content that they create on behalf of the brand.

“You can’t throw a brief at someone and expect them to execute it, just because they have a large number of followers or celebrity status,” says

Joseph Harper, Social Media Manager, UK & Ireland, at Kellogg’s. “They need to be passionate about the brand already and there must be inbuilt relevance, so that they will really understand the brief to the point where you can give them the freedom to put their own personal spin on it.”

It is revealing that just 8% of respondents say it is critical for an influencer to have global recognition or celebrity status, showing that relevance is clearly trumping the desire to be associated with A-list talent.

Figure 10

Which attributes must a celebrity/influencer you are looking to work with most have?

An audience/following that is relevant to my brand

Strong ethics, with a history of championing good causes

An expert in their field i.e. accomplished artist, musician, sports person

A track record of delivering quantifiable ROI for brand

Already a loyal supporter of my brand / has written about my brand organically

Commoner/business/product

insight and experience

Popularity - global recognition or celebrity status

65%	31%	4%	0%
23%	32%	35%	10%
20%	35%	29%	16%
13%	28%	43%	16%
10%	23%	43%	24%
8%	23%	43%	25%
8%	24%	40%	28%
Critical	Very	Quite	Not important
	important	important	at all

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84% of industry respondents also see ‘expertise in their field’ as being an important attribute in an influencer. This is a view supported by 32% of consumers. ‘Expertise’ has become a fluid concept within the world of social influence and today is less about intelligence or genius in a particular field, and more about having relevance along with a clear passion and interest, i.e. they could be a curator of sneakers, but not necessarily a sneaker maker. As Bexy Cameron, Head of Insight at Amplify, also explains: “It is important to consider what the influencer’s audience would consider as expertise e.g. if they’ve been part of a pocket of sub culture for five years, their following would see that as expertise.” The Young Blood 2 report, published by Amplify, found that more than half of young people are much more likely to do/ buy something if it is endorsed by an expert.

For any brand wishing to capitalise on an influencer’s ‘expertise’, they must first make sure that they have a justified right to be there and play in that space. The past 12 months have seen a rise in cross-category activity within influencer marketing, with brands seeking to leverage the expertise of an influencer to aid their move into a new space or culture.

For example, as the Young Blood 2 report found,

“brands are becoming more involved with music as a way to connect with their audiences, and in a country where 81% of young people think life without music is uninteresting, it is a good strategy”. But ensuring relevance at every stage is critical and the study also found that over half of respondents felt that brands were guilty of cultural appropriation. Finding and supporting cultural movements is a value exchange. “Brands must be cautious when associating themselves with any type of cultural movement but can be more informed by getting a more diverse and representative mix of people working brand side, to show real appreciation and understanding,” Bexy Cameron, Head of Insight at Amplify, advises within the report.07

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54% of marketers say audience insight data is an essential part of influencer identification

As Fig. 11 below reveals, just over half of marketers

BELLA HADID

(54%) say audience insights are the most useful

TOTAL REACH: 19M

information in identifying relevant influencers

CELEBRITY EQUITY SCORE: 52

to work with. Within this, a talent’s social media

APPEAL: 56% | AWARENESS: 77%

engagement rate is the most critical metric,

say 53%. Suri Singh, Influencer Expert at ITB

Worldwide, champions the need for data insights

combined with human interaction. He shares:

“we have a finger in every pie and make sure

we are speaking to managers, publicists, agents,

SERENA WILLIAMS

Instagram directly and other social platforms. We

TOTAL REACH: 25M

70

can be having a meeting with an agent in our

CELEBRITY EQUITY SCORE:

APPEAL: 77% | AWARENESS:

68%

offices discussing new, emerging, off the radar

Influencers and then the very same day, receive a

brief for which the talent we had been discussing

fits perfectly, and therefore before anyone brand

has engaged with individual we have the prime

opportunity to put them on the radar. Alongside

this, databases and specialist tools are important

as they can provide a deeper layer of insight and

information, to help with our decision making. At

ITB, we have designed and created a proprietary

Influencer reporting suite and dashboard, enabling

our clients the option of real-time analytics and

reporting to best measure the success and impact

KENDRICK LAMAR

of each Influencer campaign we are running.”

TOTAL REACH: 30M

Additionally, agents from Hollywood, London,

CELEBRITY EQUITY SCORE: 43

APPEAL: 60% | AWARENESS: 88%

and through to Bollywood are all recognising the

CHIARA FERRAGNI

An example of the data, insights

and social metrics

need to represent digital talent, nowadays. Many

INFLUENCER EQUITY SCORE: 62

TOTAL REACH: 15M

have a team of people who are constantly looking

available on the Influencer Intelligence platform

and searching for newly emerging influencers.

Lucy Lendrem, Head of Talent UK at Gleam

Futures, also adds that this year she has observed

more brands invest in building influencer teams

Figure 11

internally. “We are seeing more and more brands

take this in house and away from an agency,” she

When you are identifying talent to work

explains. “The amount of influencer marketing jobs

with, what information has proved most

on the market now versus 12 months ago is huge.”

useful in finding the right fit?

However, whatever the size of the influencer team,

Audience insights (demographic

54%

or the tools and data available, the sheer scale of

and psychographic information

on talent’s audience)

the influencer landscape means it is important for

brands to be filtering and narrowing down their

Talent’s social media

53%

search at an early point in their research journey.

engagement

International model agency, IMG Models, takes an

Content themes and

interesting approach with its “We Love Your Genes”

40%

campaign, which helps it scout for upcoming talent

areas of expertise

on Instagram. Aspiring models can post a photo

Talent’s skills and interests

33%

with the #WLYG hashtag, which will put it in front

of the agency’s scouting and development team.

Value and attributes (such as

29%

“Instagram allows us to see potential models’

activist, creative, brave)

natural beauty in their everyday lives. They no

Previous endorsement history

22%

longer have to spend lots of money on photo shoots

or portfolios,” says Jeni Rose, the VP of scouting

Rates

17%

for IMG, in an interview with Fashionista. The

#WLYG campaign helps IMG to refine its search

Social media handles

16%

and removes the need for scouts to be in the

and followers

right place at the right time. “We’ve been scouting

Gifting policy

2%

via social for a while now and have developed

proprietary methods to help us identify the best

Other

2%

possible talent,” Rose adds. “Those methods are

now informing special tools we’re building in-house

that will help us move quickly and decisively while

tracking thousands of accounts.”08

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ENGES

More than half of brands are searching for influencers manually

Brands have come to realise that the success of any influencer marketing campaign depends on a brand’s ability to identify the right talent to partner with to deliver its message. Yet despite this, ‘identifying relevant talent’ is cited by marketers as one of the biggest challenges in influencer marketing, currently (see Fig. 12 below). Researching and selecting talent has been an ongoing challenge for marketers for quite some time, and the influencer marketing landscape is expanding at such a phenomenal rate that it is only likely to get harder to navigate.

Figure 12

What has been the biggest challenge in working with influencers, over the past 12 months?

Proving ROI of individual influencers

Identifying talent who are relevant to our goals and target market

Finding a happy balance between setting a brief, and granting creative freedom

Understanding the impact of influencers collaborations on sales, to a granular product level

Getting their attention and being able to engage them

Seeking out influencers who share the same ethics and values

Understanding the growth of dark social (content shared on private channels) and how we track it

Ensuring sponsorship disclosure laws are adhered to across platforms and specific to countries

Knowing their previous endorsement history

Other

22%

22%

15%

13%

12%

7%

3%

3%

2%

3%

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One of the main reasons for the difficulty brands are having in identifying relevant talent is that 54% of respondents say they are continuing to search for influencers manually, via social media platforms and forums (see Fig. 13 below). A further 38% are also continuing to rely on recommendations from friends and contacts within the industry, indicating that there remains a very ‘human’ element to the influencer selection process. The fact that 86% of the industry is failing to make use of specialist talent engagement tools available is a missed opportunity.

Experts interviewed for the report stressed the need for the influencer identification process to include a 360-degree analysis of individuals.

This should include going far beyond follower numbers, benchmarking them against other relevant influencers, reviewing their audience demographics, their personality architype, their previous endorsement history, ethical causes that they champion, etc.

Sarah Evans, Head of Digital at Bottle PR, shares:

“Audience following is only one piece of the puzzle; we look at engagement rate which is the total engagement (likes, comments and shares) divided by following or reach, multiplied by 100. We then benchmark this figure against other influencers in the running and that helps us to decide. In addition, we can manually screen them by looking through comments, analysing the sentiment and making sure they seem like comments from real people, and from that we can see how much influence this individual has with their following. Are people asking them for their opinions, for example, or requesting information on where they bought specific items of clothing from, and how readily does that influencer respond to those queries? Are they regularly getting engaged in two-way conversation with their audience? These are all important questions that we ask.”

However, Lucy Lendrem, Head of Talent UK at Gleam Futures, is confident that brands are doing a much better job of keeping themselves up-to-date on relevant and emerging talent within their sector, than they were a couple of years ago. “Quite a lot of the time, brands know already who they want to work with,” she shares. “This is a reflection of how savvy brands are now and how much they are investing in knowing who all of the key influencers in their sector are,” she explains. “We used to have to do a lot more educating on who the roster was, but now they know everyone already.”

Figure 13

Which tools or methods do you currently use to identify talent (influencers and/or celebrities) when using them as part of your marketing strategy?

Manually searching social										54%
media platforms and forums
Recommendations from										38%
friends, colleagues or peers
in the industry
We use a specialist talent										36%
or social media agency to
identify influencers for us
Free social media										32%
monitoring tools
Paid for social media										29%
monitoring tools
Physically attending										20%
specialist events and
conferences
Specialist talent										14%
engagement tools e.g.
Influencer Intelligence
Other										4%

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Confusion continues to plague disclosure guidelines

When it comes to the transparency of influencer collaborations, 65% of marketers admit there is a blurry line between advertisements and genuine, organic recommendations (see Fig. 14). This lack of transparency is creating audience scepticism, with

66% of consumers claiming paid-for influencer content is no different to advertising.

Brands are fully aware that consumer trust in sponsored influencer content is eroding, and

64% of marketers feel that drastic action to prove transparency is critical (see Fig. 23 below). As Lucy Lendrem, Head of Talent UK at Gleam Futures, asserts: “There is so much content, it is quite ungoverned, and the wider the landscape gets the harder it is to navigate”. A third of marketer respondents, for example, admit they regularly avoid disclosers where they can.

Currently guidelines set by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK (ASA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US are just that: guidelines. Historically they have taken a reactive approach, tightening up guidelines as and when needed, and dealing with reported breaches on a case by case basis. Experts interviewed for this report agreed that the guidelines are too open to interpretation, and particularly where influencers are involved as they don’t necessarily have a legal team advising and supporting them.

Recently, however, the regulatory bodies have begun to take a harder line on individuals who are not properly disclosing their commercial brand relationships. In August, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a major investigation into some of Britain’s biggest celebrities and influencers who it thought may be endorsing goods or services without declaring their commercial interests properly,

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and potentially misleading members of the public.

This came after the FTC sent out 90 letters in the US to well-known celebrities and digital talent including supermodel Naomi Campbell and actress Lindsay Lohan, asking if they had been paid to endorse brands and products on Instagram. Some of the letters addressed some disclosures that are not sufficiently clear, pointing out that many consumers will not understand a disclosure like “#sp,” “Thanks [Brand],” or “#partner” in an Instagram post to mean that the post is sponsored.09 Lucy Lendrem, Head of Talent UK at Gleam Futures, argues: “Anyone creating content with a brand they love should be proud to make it clear that they are working with that brand and being compensated. If anyone is ashamed of using #ad at this point, given how many people are doing it, then they probably shouldn’t be working with that brand.”

Indeed, within the consumer survey, 54% say sponsorship disclosure such as #spon and #ad does not take away from the credibility of a post providing the partnership is genuine. However, to balance this, Emma Usher, Company Director of RunRagged Media, a talent booking agency, warns that “for brands who have failed to profile their influencer carefully, #ad can be extremely damaging, so it is really important to profile and then find out who is a genuine fan of your brand and then #ad will not dilute the impact of what your brand is trying to do.”

Industry experts interviewed say there is a strong case for more clearly defined rules that are not so open to interpretation. For example, under the ASA’s rules, for an influencer’s post to be classified as an advert they must have been paid in some form and the brand must also have had some sort of ‘control’ over the content.

Sponsorship arrangements, where there hasn’t been any sort of ‘control’ by the brand, isn’t covered by the ASA’s code of practice. This in itself, experts claim, is a grey area which some influencers are failing to understand properly.10

“People are very confused and out of this confusion new hashtags are appearing, having been created by influencers, but these are not recognised by the ASA,” says Emma Usher, Company Director of RunRagged Media. “There are so many grey areas now and brands and influencers alike are unsure of best practice and this uncertainty around disclosure guidelines needs clearer boundaries setting.”

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Figure 14

How would you rate your organisation’s efforts to be transparent in paid-for influencer endorsements, regarding the statements below?

We would refuse to work with an influencer who was not dearly complying with ASA/FTC guidance

We are fully aware, and up-to-date with the advertising codes relevance to our country

We insist our influencers use the hashtag relevant to the location for sponsored content i.e. #ad or #spoon

We only work with influencers who are careful to disclose their relationship with brands

There is a blurry line between advertisement and genuine, organic recommendations

We avoid disclosures where we can as they diminish consumers trust, and we instead find creative alternatives

We are aware that we regularly circumvent the rules

34%	35%	24%	5%	2%
34%	43%	18%	4%	1%
30%	35%	25%	7%	3%
25%	42%	25%	6%	2%
17%	48%	23%	10%	2%
7%	26%	30%	23%	14%
3%	11%	22%	27%	37%
Strongly	Agree	Neither agree	Disagree	Strongly
agree		nor disagree		disagree

“I think it would be great if there were some clear laws,” says Lucy Lendrem, Head of Talent UK at Gleam Futures. “The ASA guidelines are formed as things go wrong, and open to interpretation in some part, and it’s hard for everyone to keep up with the ever-evolving space. I think we will soon see more stringent rules which will help bring some clarity to influencer marketing.”

Lendrem cites Instagram paid partnership feature as a good example, claiming the industry has limited guidance on what the ASA thinks of it.

“This is where a lot of confusion is coming from at present, and everyone seems to be doing something different,” she explains. “Additionally, not everyone can use Instagram paid partnerships, so how is there supposed to be parity if influencers don’t have access to the same tools?”

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‘Fake followers’ ranks as number one concern within influencer marketing

Earlier this year, Keith Weed, Unilever’s CMO, took the stage at Cannes to expose the current state of influencer marketing, which he argued is plagued with transparency and authenticity issues. He claimed the industry should take a stand against fake or bought followers and refuse to work with influencers adopting such practices. “We need to take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever,” he said.

It is therefore unsurprising that a few months on, 42% of industry respondents rank ‘fake followers and bots’ as their number one concern with influencer marketing. Experts interviewed for this confirmed that since Weeds’ statement, they have seen sharp spike in industry concern around influencer fraud, and this is particularly noticeable brand-side.

Figure 15

“It has been a problem for years, but we are being asked more and more what safeguards we are putting in place, to make sure that our talent don’t have fake followers,” shares Lucy Lendrem, Head of Talent UK at Gleam Futures. “It surprises me so much that brands aren’t spending just minutes

– that is all the time it takes – to look at who they are paying to work with and endorse their brand, to check for erratic behaviour, and levels of genuine engagement. It doesn’t need to be complicated and no special tools or expertise are required – it is really simple, providing there is some due diligence.”

Suri Singh, Influencer Expert at ITB Worldwide agrees, saying: “If you simply hover over likes and comments it is easy to see when there is a discrepancy. When we are casting we are happy to request screenshots from the influencer/agent showing a deeper level of analytics for their social profiles, before we agree to work together. If a person is reluctant to do so that is one way to answer our question. Well before the Keith Weed Unilever statement, we had included language within our agreements that referred to fake followers, stipulating that our clients would have the option to terminate their agreement should that situation ever arise.”

What are your greatest concerns relating to influencer marketing, at present?

The question of fake followers/bots and ensuring followers have not been bought:

How to differentiate in an increasingly saturated market:

Knowing if an influencer has real “influence” i.e. the ability to change behaviour, an attitude or an action:

Trusting influencers with our brand reputation:

The dilemma of promoting authenticity when content has been paid for:

Justifying the cost of influencer engagement:

Understanding true viewability figures on influencer content:

Protecting our social responsibility towards our younger audience:

42%	9%	7%
17%	15%	15%
14%	25%	26%
14%	17%	12%
12%	20%	14%
12%	16%	19%
11%	15%	17%
1%	6%	4%
Ranked 1st	Ranked 2nd	Ranked 3rd

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