When it comes to influencer relationships, it’s complicated.
Keith Weed
Chair & Independent Director on Boards inc @WPP @Sainsbury’s. President & Chair Royal Horticultural Society, Chair UN Women Unstereotype Alliance, Director BITC, Trustee Leverhulme, Advisor AlixPartners. Ex-CMO @Unilever
In just a few short years, influencer marketing has grown from a nascent, test-and-learn approach to an established way for marketers to create authentic relationships with consumers. Though as with any new channel, whilst we’ve been busy unlocking the opportunities and the benefits of a broader digital ecosystem, bad habits have sprung up and it’s all become a little complicated. It’s this state of flux where an eruption of poor practices such as fake followers, bots, fraud or dishonest business models have developed; practices which are eroding trust in the whole system.
For brands and companies across the world, the idea of endorsement isn’t new. Building a network of advocates for our brands who enrich the brands with ideas, content and buzz is still part of how we create better experiences for consumers. However, now, with the rise of creators on social media, we’ve placed that endorsement in the context of online platforms.
At Unilever, we believe working with creators is an important way to create engaging content to reach and build trust with our audiences, and so we strive to establish mutually beneficial partnerships. In this sense, influencer marketing is so much more than just paying people or groups to post content with #ad or #spon. Fundamentally, it’s always been about creating and nurturing authentic and credible relationships with people who understand and are close to the brand.
It’s this authenticity and credibility that is under threat from bad practices. That’s why at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last month, I announced three commitments to increase visibility and transparency within influencer marketing:
Transparency from Influencers: We will not work with influencers who buy followers.
Transparency from Brands: Our brands will never buy followers.
Transparency from Platforms: We will prioritise partners who increase transparency and help eradicate bad practices throughout the whole ecosystem.
Fake followers and bots have been a silent issue on the minds of many in the industry - the elephant in the room. Having an artificially-inflated follower count made up of bots and redundant accounts is at best deceiving and at worst, fraud. It serves no one and undermines trust in the entire system.
We now have an opportunity to reset. And the good news is, I’m already seeing progress – just last week, Twitter committed to cleaning up the digital space by removing fake and redundant accounts from its platform globally. This is a big step for the industry and shows the market is moving in the right direction.
Greater transparency leads to greater authenticity, which in turn builds trust. Only through working collectively to push for greater transparency and collaboration across the digital supply chain will we deliver better results for brands – and ultimately better serve the needs of our consumers. So, we’re not breaking up with influencer marketing, and we don’t intend to. Instead, we are looking forward to continuing to work with our partners over the coming months to ensure that collectively we rebuild trust before it’s lost forever.
"BRITAIN SHOULD LEAD THE CLEAN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION"
5 年It is unsurprising in such a rapidly changing environment that the dash to cash motivated some influencers and agencies to artificially inflate their followers and likes. Gradually regulation catches up and an increased level of transparency becomes possible. Keith’s initiatives are welcomed by everyone and lead the way in creating a level of self-regulation within the influencer industry. The lack of transparency in the industry and the increasing commercialisation (aka lack of authenticity) among the biggest influencers has made the brands turn to first to the micro influencer and now increasing to nano-influencers. The brands believe that these men and women are more connected to their ‘followers’ and more believed by them. The rationale is that the smaller the number of followers - 50,000 or 5,000 or better still 500 – the stronger the relationship is. At the lowest level these followers are genuinely “friends” or “good acquaintances” of the nano-influencer. The brands quite rightly see endorsements given in the context of such a strong relationship as a compelling way to influence consumer behaviour. What does this tell us? The brands, in their search for authentic recommendations for their products, are coming closer and closer to the truth we all know. People buy products their friends recommend to them and the nano-influencer can be considered almost a “friend”. Here we come to the real crux of the matter. Our friends are the people we meet during our daily lives or speak to on the phone. These are the people that really influence our behaviour and they do it face to face (or human to human as Iris put it). 91% of conversations about brands are happening offline in the real World. These conversations and recommendations are authentic and convincing as they come from someone we know personally in the real world. From a recent review of surveys carried out during campaigns for brands in various different fmcg categories with more than 3000 respondents we know that the main driver for brand purchase is personal face to face word of mouth recommendation which remains the most important influence for 40% of consumers. Brands should consider going back to their roots and concentrating on generating genuine real-life face to face advocacy from happy customers to their friends – in this situation there would be no need to worry about authenticity at all.
Ghostwriter | Editor | Author
5 年Very inspiring read, and I agree ... to do away with this fakery, undermining trust, I loooong suggested (or preached actually ;)) to transform marketing to a H2H model (and boy do I love that term) 'Human 2 Human', but what this means is, that marketers need to learn or look at their own influencer persona ... and ask some deep and maybe scary questions about themselves and the business: Are they trustworthy? Do they personally have integrity? Are they transparent? ... It is the proverbial cliche of learning to 'walk ones talk'. Also an exercise in Emotional Intelligence. For me, these are intrinsically linked to brand trust, as the minute you have a personal interaction, these factors (or lack of) determine success in relationships. So the industry needs marketeers to be (or become) more authentic, transparent, integrity based themselves ... that causes the right ripple effect. A H2H Strategy has an inner and outer aspect that must be synergistic to be successful and sustainable. And the new personalisation trend we see in marketing everywhere is the perfect tool to do just that: ?build sustainable brand trust on the outside and more authenticity and integrity on the inside. Keeping It Real will be the win-win ????
Corporate Spokesperson, Nestlé S.A
5 年Great to read this line, something we also adhere by Greater transparency leads to greater authenticity, which in turn builds trust.
Demand Generation & Revenue Acceleration Strategist B2B Podcaster | Professor Digital Marketing @NSU | Speaker
5 年If you're looking to invest in an influencer marketing strategy, try leveraging Rand Fishkin, Sparktoro.com influencer platform, this helps with Keith's suggestions on which influencers have real followers and not bots. Transparency is key and with it comes trust and buy in from your prospective customers. Good post!
Keith, it's great that Unilever is being so vigilant about not paying for fake followers and bots. Clearly, not all followers of an influencer account are authentic followers. But you also talk about influencer marketing as a way for marketers to create authentic relationships with consumers and this seems as though it needs unpacking. In what respect does a marketer have an authentic relationship with a consumer? They never meet, they don't know each other's names, the former is solely interested in taking the other one's money and the latter may never realise they are being marketed to. Is this a relationship and in what way is it authentic? I am concerned that we marketers may be kidding ourselves. I'm now interested in the semiotics of authenticity, though, and why we care about it so much, so thanks for prompting me to do some thinking and writing about it.