The Lens - Ch 1: The Ascend of Influencer Marketing

Suppose you start a new business, what’s the first channel of marketing you could use to penetrate the market? Your friends & family and their word of mouth within their respective circles. The factor that leads to their contacts to believe them – trust. Now consider you have someone who people look up to, or appreciate for their work in a certain area; such people have been coined as influencers; the obvious origin being their ability to influence the decisions of people. Conventionally these people where patrons of the society, leaders of organizations, clubs or unions and even reputed leaders in respective fields. The modern day definition refers to someone who have a strong social media presence on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter.

The influencer marketing trend has changed the conceptualization of advertisements. Old fashioned advertisements are a 15-30 second clip of a fairy tale world that the product creates whereas with this new marketing channel, the product use is witnessed by the target audience in a realistic scenario and can also be structured as a testimonial from one customer to another thousands of customers. The endorsement of a middle class customer product by a celebrity living the lavish lifestyle is something with which the customer can’t relate or in cases even seems as unrealistic scenario for a celebrity to use such a product. Influencer marketing has been able to bridge this gap as now the endorser for the product is someone whose lifestyle people have been observing through social channels and can now observe first-hand use of the product. The beauty in such marketing is mostly the subtle nature of how the product is advertised by some influencers, they just use the product in a normal video clipping; e.g. Gillette has showcased their product “Venus” being used by almost every female character in the videos made by Dice Media & its sister channels, thus making the customer feel inclined towards the product. The realism behind such an advertisement makes it relatable and thus the customer is more inclined to the product. Also making the product part of a video rather than just talking about the product itself helps reach a larger audience as people who maybe sharing the video for comedic or artistic purposes are also now part of the viewership and thus a better market coverage. This goes on to challenge the creativity of the team to introduce the product in such a way that it even goes to the people who may not be actually following the brand endorser.

But the much bigger reason for using Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat for advertisement is their increasing user base. As on January 2020, Instagram alone had 80.59 Lakh active users in India alone, on a global scale that figure crossed the 100 Crore mark on June 2018 with an average daily screen time for 53 minutes. And that figure is drastically increasing every day. This increasing number is enough to incline any brand to use such channels for better market penetration. Even the bigger brands are now shifting to social media platforms to promote their services and products & is also pushing them to explore new creative boundaries for their product. A recent example of this was the launch of TATA Altroz across platforms. With the increasing number of youth customers for cars in India and the product being a premium hatchback with youth centric features, using young influencers to promote the product was a well thought marketing move for the product.

The one thing that defines the level of success of your campaign on social media is choosing the right influencer. Brands need to make sure that the promoter needs to be someone the audience can relate to using the product. An influencer with 1 Lakh followers running a photography page is way better than 10 Lakh followers with no history of interest in photography for a camera product.

Influencer marketing is dependent on the trust people put in the personality they follow on the social channel, so they hold a moral responsibility every time they promote a product; a responsibility to ensure that the product is actually what they claim to be and ensure that they don’t mislead them in any way. Without this moral fabric, this marketing network may crumble around the very people who built it, so it’s on us to ensure that the sanctity of this medium doesn’t fall or so will the marketing world built around it. This form of marketing channel has brought about a new perspective for marketing not only for the manufacturers & service providers but also to the endorser for the products to explore new boundaries as both a business and a creative standpoint and has been able to change the conventions of marketing.