For the last month we’ve been putting aside real content gems to provide you all with an industry round up of what’s been going on throughout the month of October, adding our two cents.
From campaign screw ups and virtual influencers to some of the top influencer marketing guides, this month’s edition is a great one.
Man City’s agency PHD Manchester, used influencer marketing platform TRIBE to attract fan’s video and photo content of them ‘enjoying themselves’ at games. Where they hit problems, was that they described the rival teams as ‘relatively unknown’ and the campaign was aimed solely at men. Add on top of this the resulting perception that the Champions of the world’s top sporting league are having to pay people to come to their matches to pretend to have a good time – so cue lots of online ridicule and scorn. Man City themselves denied any knowledge of the campaign and subsequently sacked their agency who apologised publicly for running the campaign.
As if the world of influencer marketing and the rules regarding disclosure and compliance wasn’t already murky enough, the added complication of how this all applies to ‘virtual’ influencers is a growing problem. The most famous ‘virtual’ influencer, Lil Miquela, has been used by Prada, Calvin Klein, Outdoor Voices and Samsung for campaigns, all wanting to reach her 1.7m Instagram followers. SK-II, the skincare brand, have created their own AI-powered virtual influencer, YUMI, who can have customised conversations with consumers based on analysis of their data. But do ‘virtual’ influencers need to disclose when they are in a paid partnership with a brand in the same way that your standard ‘influencer’ does? Or is it implicit that ‘virtual’ influencers’ content can never truly be ‘organic’?
LinkedIn have unveiled the results of a survey of B2B Marketers focusing on ROI. As LinkedIn is a key channel for B2B Influencer Marketing, it’s important to consider LinkedIn’s survey findings when it comes to how you measure B2B influencer programs on LinkedIn – and other channels too! The key issues that the report focuses on are:
1) Measuring ROI too soon (measuring results in 1 month when sales cycles are 3 months)
2) Mixing metrics (confusing KPIs with ROI)
3) Measuring under pressure (the rush to demonstrate ROI to justify budgets)
4) https://www.futureproofingcomms.co.uk/we-are-all-influencers-now
FutureProofingComms have published a very useful guide to influencer marketing governance for public relations. The guide, co-written by Scott Guthrie @sabguthrie and Stephen Waddington @wadds with guest contributions from other, covers a lot of really useful information on various aspect of the law and governance in relation to influencer marketing. The guide includes sections such as: governane for influencer marketing, legal considerations by Andrew Terry, governing authorities and legal rulings.
We have just published an updated Complete Guide to Industry & B2B Influencer Marketing, with guidance, tools and frameworks to help both B2B & B2C Marketers kick-start their influencer marketing programs in a way that has thought leadership and storytelling at its core, to deliver maximum results. We consulted over 250 marketers to include their experiences, perspectives and tips. Key sections include: Influencer selection, How to engage influencers, Employee advocacy and influencers, Influencer Marketing and SEO, Which department owns influencer marketing and how to measure the success of a program.
Hope you all had a great month!