Do influencers really influence?

Everybody’s envious of the life of an influencer. You get to have your own audience, travel the world, and have a large fanbase that’s ready to buy anything you sell. Influencers drive a lot of the engagement on social media platforms, as their content is shared, liked, commented and re-tweeted.

Brands may see them as an attractive marketing channel, but the question is clear – do these influencers have fans that listen to their recommendation? The question involves ‘trust’. Do fans trust what influencers are selling them?

In recent memory, one example comes to mind where Sania Mirza had to delete her tweet with regards to a promotion of the One Plus 3T, because she tweeted it out from her iPhone. After facing multiple days of backlash, people went on about their business. However, the phone did quiet well with over 30% of the orders not being fulfilled due to stock outs. Does this mean that influencers didn’t detract consumers from buying the phone?

Rajiv Dingra, CEO and founder, WATConsult, believes that the influencer should blend-in with the brand and its ethos. The message must be crafted accordingly, as it needs to create a uniform experience for the customer.

“Influencer marketing is very powerful if done right and that’s true for any channel of media marketing. Done right is a complicated answer and based on the permutation and combination, who is the audience, what’s the creative, thought and hook and how well it is executed.”

An interesting point of view is offered by Kalyan Kumar, who runs an influencer marketing agency called Social Catalyzers. According to Kalyan, influencers provide a depth that no other medium can.

“A celebrity could get you reach, but the ability to get depth is a question mark. Influencer marketing works well to get the depth. According to the objective, decide what kind of influencers you want to get. One can choose among high reach influencers, medium reach and more depth influencers and low reach, high depth influencers.”

In other words, if you advertise on TV and print, you can’t really tap into the emotional bend of the consumer. If they already trust an influencer like Mumbaikar Nikhil, or Shireen Sikka, then reaching audiences through their medium makes more sense. You enter the influencer’s family of followers who click on your product integration by curiosity or by taste.

Integrations must appear natural and shouldn’t stand out as being distasteful or artificial. An interesting example of this is “Fit Tea” which is a detoxifying tea brand sponsoring posts via Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Ashley Benson and others. These influencers would post a picture with the detox tea and share their story behind using it. The problem was that these influencers didn’t disclose the fact that it was a sponsored post, and were breaking FTC guidelines. The backlash spun into a PR nightmare for the brand, as it finally conceded to asking its influencers to either delete posts or add a note in front of their posts (#ad).

The recent Kendall Jenner debacle with the Pepsi brand integration failed miserably as well, as the brand’s vision couldn’t be fully explored through Kendall’s personal image. When Pepsi released the commercial, it wanted people to focus on the positive change that these movements can make. However, most people online saw this ad as distasteful and hurting the sentiments of those who were behind the Black Lives Matter movement. Many Hollywood movie stars and celebrities came out against the ad publicly and criticized it heavily. Pepsi decide to pull the spot out of commission and released a statement –

"Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologise for putting Kendall Jenner in this position."

Did this hurt Kendall Jenner’s personal brand? Not in the slightest, as her audience continues to positively interact with her social media posts after the incident. This was probably the greatest influencer marketing blunder of 2017, and Pepsi had to apologize for not being sensitive to the context of the situation.

The problem wasn’t that it was in bad taste. The problem was that it had three elements that didn’t fit the narrative. Kendall Jenner wasn’t perceived as an activist, Pepsi wasn’t perceived as a brand that took a stand, and the ad wasn’t cut to shine a light to the movement.

Brands need to be genuine about influencer marketing because the backlash can be deteriorating to its equity.

On the flip-side, when KFC wanted to play it cool with their audiences they worked with Baba Sehgal and Mallika Dua to create a campaign around their Chilli Chizza Pizza. It worked well for the brand as the influencers were known to be funny and beloved by their audiences, and the campaign proved to be fruitful for the brand.

After the campaign launched, Lluis Ruiz Ribot, CMO, KFC India, said smilingly – “We are currently the talk of the town.”

TRUST FACTOR

• Influencers drive a lot of the engagement on social media platforms, as their content is shared, liked, commented upon and re-tweeted
   
• The message must be crafted accordingly, as it needs to create a uniform experience for the customer