The rise of the micro influencer and a yearning for in-person contact are two key considerations for marketers trying to find the right influencers to represent their brands.
A panel at Influencer360, an event jointly hosted by Campaign and PR Week, urged brands to look beyond the numbers and find creators who had a serious “volume of influence”. They also agreed that experiential events had the capacity to enhance – and ultimately deliver value – a brand’s relationship with its community or audience.
Micro managing: it’s the power to influence that counts
The micro influencer isn’t new; it used to be called word of mouth! “Even way back when, Pampers understood that if they got just one mum to like their products, she would influence 30 other mums to buy,” said Sordell. “We’ve now given it a name. It's not about the number of followers, it’s actually about the volume of influence that person has.”
Sordell urged brands to leverage the influence and passion of their people. “Use the CEO and founder as a distribution channel – it’s free!” she said. “People buy from people. It’s your intern, your performance marketing manager, your founder – it’s your everyone.”
Gina Deen, director of social and influencers at the Ponderosa agency, explained how one of Ponderosa’s clients, a performance nutrition brand, had partnered with Loughborough University’s renowned student athletes, building a network of micro influencers who have the opportunity to earn commission as affiliates. “It’s a perfect testing ground,” said Deen, “because they are potentially the next generation of Olympic athletes and could be our future ambassadors.”
Adebayo concluded: “Brands really underestimate the power of micro influencers – anyone’s video can go viral.”
Need an influencer? These are the boxes they should tick
“Three things: strengths, passions and values,” insisted Tiwalola Adebayo, confidence coach and author, founder of the Confident and Killing It podcast. “That is what I call your power circle. Finding other individuals with the same values is where true authenticity lies, and that’s where magic happens.”
Katie Addison, senior client manager at Boots Media Group, acknowledged that “an influencer’s values should intertwine with the brand’s values”, but warned that every campaign is different, so there’s unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all influencer.
For Amelia Sordell, personal brand strategist and founder of Klowt, authenticity can mean many different things, including “how honest you are with your goals and what you actually want to achieve out of a campaign”.
Deen urged brands to:
“Speak to their community and get an idea from them on who is resonating, who do they want to see more from, and what types of content they want to see.”
Provoke but don’t attack: how to avoid reputational damage
Aligning with influencers requires a degree of trust because, as Addison said: “There's only a certain amount of stuff that you control. It’s about developing that relationship of trust and being really confident in your decisions.”
Deen reiterated the importance of “audience sentiment” when choosing an influencer, while Sordell urged brands to “be very clear with what you will and won’t accept as a brand, and will and won’t accept from your community. Your brand should be like a magnet – it should repel who you want it to repel and attract who you want it to attract.”
Adebayo discussed the difference between being provocative in a positive, brand-safe way and doing so inappropriately. “There will always be people who like you, and those who don’t,” she said. “Sometimes you have to be provocative, and sometimes you do things differently to be remembered. But sparking conversation doesn’t mean doing it in a way that is negative towards a certain group of people, or attacks a certain group of people’s identity. Red Bull are always provocative, but they do it in a way that supports the spirit of the brand.”
Common ground: show up physically, not just digitally
“We’re the most connected but the most lonely,” was how Adebayo summed up the conundrum of audience engagement. “Feeling connected isn’t just about numbers online. It’s about being vulnerable, having authentic conversations and creating safe spaces where people can speak up and share. You’ve got to look at a multi-channel approach when you bring people together.”
Addison agreed, saying it’s vital to be “disruptive, working with influencers to create these bespoke moments – a full funnel approach through email, apps, through the retailer’s website, out-of-home, all the way into store”.
Sordell cited GymShark as an example of a brand that had successfully harnessed its community. “The definition of community is to bring people together for a common cause,” she said. “It might be a common enemy, or a common affinity. You bring people together for that one thing, but they stay for the relationships they form. You give back, serve and bring people together in a way that makes them connect with one another and stay with your brand forever.”
Deen said it was vital that real-life activations be led not by the brand but by the influencers and ambassadors.