{"id":1149,"date":"2019-01-31T10:18:46","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T10:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2019-01-31T10:18:46","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T10:18:46","slug":"stanley-the-influencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/stanley-the-influencer\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley the Influencer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call me a dinosaur, someone so out of touch with today\u2019s media world as to be but a distant spot in the rear-view mirror of today\u2019s electrically-powered, driverless transportation module, but I really don\u2019t get the fuss about online influencers.<\/p>\n

First off \u2013 why is this new? There have been celebrities in advertising since Stanley Matthews told us in 1952 how he smoked Craven \u2018A\u2019s before destroying the opposition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And no doubt long before then too.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been hundreds of celebrities in ads, from Morecambe and Wise for Texaco, through to George Clooney for Nespresso.<\/p>\n

And who could forget Pepsi and Kendall Jenner (Pepsi<\/a> would no doubt like the answer to that question to be \u2018everyone, please\u2019)?<\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t online influencers the modern-day equivalents of good old Stan?<\/p>\n

What are advertisers buying with influencers? Authenticity. Awareness. Newsworthiness. Plus influencers come with their own online audience, whereas celebs in ads build an audience from those provided by the channel.<\/p>\n

\u2018Influencer marketing\u2019 is in itself a triumph of marketing. If something is going to work in today\u2019s marketing and agency worlds, it has to appear to be new and shiny.<\/p>\n

As with \u2018native\u2019 or as us old gits would have it: \u2018advertorials\u2019. By the way, hasn\u2019t the fuss around native died down a bit recently? Or am I just filtering it out?<\/p>\n

In 2018 Kantar Media released a study called Dimension. It was the second in the series; the third will be launched this Spring.<\/p>\n

KM asked connected consumers (these are people who use multiple devices to access the internet) in 5 countries: \u2018Which of the following do you use to get information about brands and services?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Celebrity endorsements\u2019 was the worst-scoring option named by 9%. Even blogs scored 15%.<\/p>\n

Except in China where celebrities scored 26%. And beat bloggers (18%).<\/p>\n

There are more detailed studies on how using celebrities can add a great deal, but as the KM work suggests this does seem to be a lot of fuss about not much.<\/p>\n

Yes of course having a celebrity promote your product, especially if he or she provides an audience of adoring followers can be a good thing. It can drive awareness and add a degree of credibility amongst those in the intersection between loving the celebrity and being in the market for the brand.<\/p>\n

But influencers need to be selected and then used in a way designed to use their strengths as an integrated part of an overall marketing campaign, not in a manner that has nothing to do with the brand\u2019s strategic communication goals.<\/p>\n

My social media feeds regularly fill with posts ridiculing so-bad-they\u2019re-laughable uses of the influencer channel.<\/p>\n

Which only goes to show, as with so much online advertising, that once we start caring more about un-verified numbers (fake followers, bots, fraud and the rest) than we do about ensuring that what we say informs, intrigues and entertains then we\u2019re screwed.<\/p>\n

If those hiring the influencers could remember that fit, creativity and authenticity are far more important than meaningless numbers, then everyone would benefit.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m a media guy for goodness sake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Call me a dinosaur, someone so out of touch with today\u2019s media world as to be but a distant spot in the rear-view mirror of today\u2019s electrically-powered, driverless transportation module, but I really don\u2019t get the fuss about online influencers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1150,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions\/1150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}