Gary Osborne, Strategic Insights and Planning, Bord Bia – Irish Food Board
Avid viewers of a recent Netflix documentary will know that ‘Fyre’ was a high profile, heavily influencer-marketed music festival that didn’t quite hit the mark. It’s reported that Kendall Jenner received up to $250,000 to promote her association with the event and encourage her followers to attend. Many were very disappointed and felt misled.
In spite of this it seems that marketers are still investing heavily in this new form of endorsement. Mediakik suggests that total investment in influencer marketing could reach $2.3BN by 2020 and certainly in some high involvement, niche categories, such as sports nutrition there is some evidence of effectiveness. So what’s really going on here?
Instagram’s recent decision to create a standardised format that should make it clearer to everyone when a post has been paid for by an advertiser may be seen as evidence of change. These aren’t for ads that businesses buy directly from the platform, but rather for influencer marketing, where brands pay famous people with a significant online following to promote their products. It’s an area that lots of brands are interested in, but it’s also creating questions around disclosure and transparency which are becoming more and more difficult to answer. Hashtags such as #advertisement and #sponsored are more likely to now appear with such posts in the future.
Some Irish influencers with significant numbers of Instagram followers as of March 2019 include James Kavanagh (125K) Roz Purcell(259K) Rob Lipsett (499K) and Vogue Williams (573K) some of whom have endorsed food and drinks products in the past but the question becomes do they really still influence purchase at all or has this phenomenon already had its day? In the US, it’s estimated that mid-range influencers with 50,000 – 500,000 followers can charge anywhere from $400 to $2,500 for a post and influencers with a following in the millions can charge up to $187,500. Can this really good value for money particularly when figures from the ASAI last year showed there were 107 complaints about bloggers here in Ireland?
Return on investment for social influencer marketing is notoriously difficult to assess and according to the recent Dealspotr report ‘How Social Media Influencers Impact Purchasing Decisions’ the balance has now tipped with 52% of millennials now trusting influencers less than they’ve done in the past If the digital natives have already started to move on Irish food and drink manufacturers should probably consider the top recommendation from the recent Warc report on ‘How to work with Influencers’ to consider the ‘3 Core Components of Influence’ before committing to a new relationship.
- Reach: How big is the audience they can speak to?
- Authority: What areas are they genuinely expert in?
- Accessibility: How personally relatable are they to their audience (and to yours?)
There’s no doubt that some brands have successfully navigated these treacherous waters but the best advice would seem to be proceed with caution.
If you are a member of Bord Bia’s Brand Forum you may be interested in attending an Influencer workshop Tuesday 30th April, for further details contact Niamh.MacHale@BordBia.IE
References
Bord Bia. (2018) Performance Nutrition Insight Study.https://www.bordbia.ie/industry/events/SpeakerPresentations/2018/Performance%20Nutrition2018/Performance%20Nutrition%20-%20February%202018.pdf
Dealspotr. (2017) Millennial Shopper Survey How Social Media Influencers Impact Purchasing Decisions. https://dealspotr.com/reports
Kelleher, Lynne. (2019) Dozens of complaints made against influencers for flouting advert rules. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/dozens-of-complaints-made-against-influencers-for-flouting-advert-rules-37794888.html
Mediakix. (2017) Instagram Influencer Marketing is A 1.7 Billion Dollar Industry http://mediakix.com/2017/03/instagram-influencer-marketing-industry-size-how-big/#gs.1qvepk
Tanzer, Myles. (2017) Here’s What The Luxury Fyre Festival Was Really Like. https://www.thefader.com/2017/04/28/fyre-festival-bahamas-cancelled-report
WARC. (2017) ‘How to work with influencers’ WARC Best Practice.