Celebrity 2.0

The Role of Social Media Influencer Marketing in Building Brands

Stacy Landreth Grau

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781637422090
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Publicité

Social media influencers rule the world!

Gone are the days of worshipping movie stars and athletes only for their talent. Everyday people are fast becoming the new celebrities and thus influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. In the past few years, social media influencers dominate pop culture and brands are eager to work with them to build their brands. From music to gaming; from fashion to sports; from wellness to lifestyle branding there are more than 50 million people calling themselves "creators" and many are influencers amassing a highly engaged community. For brands, what are the most effective ways to identify and cultivate influencers and support content creation?

This book is for anyone who wants to understand the landscape of influencer marketing with an eye for collaborations between influencers and companies. Perfect for brand managers and agency professionals, up and coming influencers, and students wanting to enter this exciting field of marketing, this book combines practical advice and examples with an overview of the academic insights to date. Topics include creators and the creator economy, typology of influencers, how to work with them, considerations for campaign design and implementation.

Celebrity 2.0: The Role of Social Media Influencer Marketing to Build Brands is a great primer to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationship framework to learn how content marketing, native advertising and content marketing all come together.

CHAPTER 1

The Influencer Marketing Relationship Framework

NFL Engages Generation Z

The powerhouse brand, the National Football League (NFL), is a mature brand but a dominate brand. However, about three years ago, the organization noticed that it was beginning to see a slow loss of young fans. “The brand began to feel a bit stale and overly conservative. I like to look at brands like people and the NFL was starting to seem like a cranky old man,” said Tim Ellis, executive vice president and chief marketing officer in a session during AdWeek’s Social Media Week LA in June 2021. “We needed to manage it now or we would regret it later.” So, they begin a targeted effort to connect with the youth segment and embrace youth culture and a huge piece of this was engaging with the players outside of football. This made sense since this is who the players are. The NFL’s strategy was based on connecting passion points for Generation Z, including fashion, music, wellness, and gaming. This was particularly important in 2020 as the NFL was looking to connect to fans and create a new experience since there would be no fans at games. The NFL did this using an influencer relationship marketing framework (discussed as follows) that included elements of content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing. For content, they focused on several things but one of the most visible was the Showtime Cam. Since there were no fans in the stadium, the game environment lacked energy. In collaboration with Bud Light, the Showtime Cams were installed in stadiums so that fans and players could celebrate touchdowns together. On Twitter, NFL fans can tag their tweets with #ShowtimeCam and #BudLightSweepstakes to participate in the Showtime Cam during a regular season game. This allowed both Bud Light and the NFL teams to partner to engage fans in different ways given the pandemic constraints. The NFL was also able to use the content across all social media platforms. In order to celebrate the ProBowl, the NFL partnered with Verzuz, which is an online series by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, that pitted players on their 10 best on field highlights (even going back to high school and Pop Warner days). This was a great way to increase the excitement around the ProBowl and really highlight the players. In terms of influencers, the TikTok tailgate was a collaboration with TikTok and Miley Cyrus for a Superbowl pregame show held for health care heroes. Cyrus ended up posted about the event as well as other guests at the event. The NFL supports players by providing content and media support with everything from gaming to fashion, including supporting product collaborations. The NFL also supported players and causes such as Carl Nassib and the Trevor Project to support LGBTG+ teens and ways to remember and support victims of social justice all of which are important to players and younger fans. NFL, in this case, reached out to new influencers, used new platforms, and other platforms in new ways and found better ways to support the creative efforts of its players. As such, it found new ways to connect with Generation Z.¹

How Has Marketing Changed?

Marketing has changed dramatically. And it continues to change as the pace of technology increases and audiences continue to adapt their media habits and consumption patterns. For years, marketing and advertising were dominated by personal sales forces, television advertising, newspaper and magazine advertising, and direct mail. Audiences were considered primarily from demographic perspectives. Descriptions like women 18 to 24 with a household income of $40,000 would dictate the marketing mix. Most people got their news from the evening new shows or from the many newspapers that existed in large cities and small communities.

Over the past several years, marketers have shifted marketing budgets from traditional advertising (such as television ads and newspaper ads) to digital advertising (such as search and display ads). In 2020, marketers spent $121 billion on digital advertising in the United States, representing 54 percent of total advertising spent. This is expected to increase to an estimated $153 billion by 2024. The retail industry is the biggest spender in the digital advertising categories. Facebook is the social media platform that gets the most as social media spending represented $37.9 billion in 2020. Programmatic digital display advertising is a use of technology that allows brands to put display ads on publisher websites and represented $63.36 in 2020 with search advertising a close second at $62 billion. Digital video advertising, the placement of ads online based on keywords, represented almost $10 billion in 2020.² Indeed, a 2018 CMO Survey reported that social media spending (of all types) represents 13.8 percent of brand’s total marketing budget.³ Overall, marketers have shifted their budget to digital and social media platforms and away from traditional platforms like television and print media.

There are several reasons for this shift in strategy. First, traditional marketing strategies are “push” strategies meaning that the advertising messages are designed and placed to interrupt audiences as they are consuming media such as television shows or newspapers. As consumers have gained more control of their time and media access, push marketing has fallen out of favor relative to pull marketing strategies. The American Marketing Association defines pull marking as a brand’s attempt to attract customers via providing valuable content, usually delivered via social media. It is the heart of content marketing, which is described later. Increasingly pull marketing on social media allows for more transparency between consumers and brands, creating a deeper opportunity for relationship building between people and brands. Communication becomes more akin to a conversation since the communication is no longer just one way. Additionally, pull marketing provides a solution to ad blocking technology and the general increase in advertising clutter over the past few years. All are trying to gain attention from consumers, but as consumers gain more control, push marketing is ignored.

Second, more people are using social media in general ($4.14 billion globally)⁴ and people are spending a lot of time on social media. While there are many ways to look at social media, Appel and colleagues define social media as “a technology centric—but not entirely technological—ecosystem in which a diverse and complex set of behaviors, interactions, and exchanges involving various kinds of interconnected actors (individuals and firms, organizations and institutions) can occur. Social media is pervasive, widely used and culturally relevant.”⁵ They further argue that social media has essentially “become almost anything—content, information, behaviors, people, organizations, institutions—that can exist in an interconnected, networked digital environment where interactivity is possible” (p. 80). In the United States, the average adult spends two hours and three minutes on social media each day. Also, note that this probably does not accurately count younger audiences as 13 is the official age for an account. It’s estimated that younger audiences spend more than three hours each day on social media, primarily on their mobile devices.⁶ While Facebook is still the largest social media platform (with 1.79 billion daily active users), there have been several other options gaining attention. Instagram is the photo- and video-based social platform where the average user spends an average of 27 minutes daily. More than 64 percent of users of Instagram are between 18 and 29, great for engaging Millennials and Generation Z audiences. The average U.S. adult spends, on average, 24 minutes each day with YouTube (the most visited social media website in the United States) and the site is seeing an increase in the time spent by younger audiences.

New (and nearly new) platforms are gaining attention especially from young audiences. Snapchat, once thought to be dead, has made a major comeback with 46 million monthly active users. Users spend an average of 28 minutes daily on Snapchat, and it is one of the most popular social media platforms with Generation Z. Snapchat was also named the most innovative company of 2020 by Fast Company. TikTok is one of the stickiest platforms for younger audiences. TikTok is a video sharing platform specializing in short 15-second videos. More than 32 percent of users are aged 10 to 19 and another almost 30 percent are aged 20 to 29. Users spend an average of 46 minutes on TikTok each day. TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2020 with more than 100 million U.S. users (TikTok is based on China and was merged with Music.ly in 2018).⁷ Twitch is a live streaming platform for video games. The average user spends more than 95 minutes daily on the platform, and the platform is particularly popular with younger (and male) audiences.⁸

Third, given the explosion of social media platforms, there are many more opportunities for smaller, more niche products and audiences. The concept of the long tail explains how many products can be sold in small quantities, rather than only relying on the most popular products.⁹ Technology, such as that which powers Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify, allows people to have access to millions of different products easily and cheaply. This idea has also enabled many people—not just celebrities—to influence the attitudes and behaviors of others. Influencers with small numbers of followers but with higher engagement have been found to be very successful for many brands using influencer marketing.

Fourth, given the ubiquity of digital marketing and, more specifically, the usage of smartphones, brands think about digital and mobile strategies first as opposed to adapting traditional marketing messages to these newer formats. Research shows that people are spending more time on their smartphones or other mobile devices (3 hours and 10 minutes on average in 2019) and are also multitasking more than ever.¹⁰ Taken together with the decline in push marketing, more consumers are searching, buying, and being influenced online. But privacy is also a bigger issue. Users are pushing back on how their data are shared and ad blocking technology is increasing, making it harder to target and retarget advertising to them.

Last, despite (or because of) the lack of trust in organizations and institutions, people trust people.¹¹ Research from Nielsen says that 92 percent of people are likely to trust a recommendation from a friend.¹² This is much higher than trust levels with brands or companies. And despite U.S. obsession with celebrities in all forms, this trust does not necessarily translate to them. Increasingly, Millennials and Generation Z are turning to influencers and their recommendations. One survey stated that 82 percent said they were likely to follow the recommendation of influencers.¹³ All these trends have led to brands pursing a mobile first strategy and the explosion content and social media influencers.

Categorizing Digital Marketing Efforts: Paid, Owned, and Earned Media

From the perspective of a brand, what is content and how (and by who) is it distributed? Brand communications in social media are defined as any “piece of brand-related communication distributed via social media that enables internet users to access, share, engage with, add to and co-create.”¹⁴ In an effort to build out integrated marketing communication strategies, many brands have categorized their marketing efforts, especially their digital marketing strategy as paid, owned, or earned media. Paid media is purchased advertising space, whether as paid search advertising on Google or sponsored posts on Facebook. This includes pay per click, display advertising, retargeted advertising, paid sponsorships, and paid social media advertising. Brands purchase space to display their message, and it is used to boost social media content. Additionally, traditional media is considered paid media, such as radio, magazine, newspaper, and television advertising, all of which has fallen out of favor. Owned media is simply content that is created by the brand and which is then disseminated on brand websites and social media platforms. This includes videos, articles, webinars, and a host of other tactics. This also includes brand-specific web development. Owned media also includes efforts at search engine optimization (SEO) that allows audiences to find quality content without the brand using paid media. Earned media, with roots in PR, happens when content is shared and talked about. This includes online and offline mentions, shares, reposts, and retweets of content about the brand (both positive and negative). Much of paid, owned, and earned media is manifested as content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing.

Dunkin Donuts Goes Local

How does a legacy brand like Dunkin Donuts get renewed attention among new audiences? Even though everyone loves coffee and donuts, right? Dunkin Donuts wanted to target a young, digitally centric audience. As a major player in the food and beverage industry, the co...