Why brands rely on influencer marketing

The cur­rent cli­mate calls for brands to demon­strate trans­paren­cy and authen­tic­i­ty in every­thing they do, so it is no won­der influ­encer mar­ket­ing is com­ing in for increased scruti­ny.

At Lions, we’ve had a ring­side seat on cre­ativ­i­ty for 67 years. Our archive of data allows us to under­stand what works and why, giv­ing us a heli­copter view of the indus­try land­scape. We’ve recent­ly mined that data for insight about what’s hap­pen­ing in brand­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions. 

And despite the back­lash against influ­encer mar­ket­ing over its lack of authen­tic­i­ty and ques­tion­able return on invest­ment, we’ve actu­al­ly seen an emerg­ing reliance on influ­encers. The space seems to be matur­ing and is active­ly dri­ving brand loy­al­ty and engage­ment. 

Disrupting traditional influencer marketing

Influ­encers have long been a use­ful way for brands to bet­ter con­nect with audi­ences. In 2019, 45 per cent of work entered into the PR Lions awards used celebri­ties, influ­encers or key opin­ion lead­ers, up from 20 per cent in 2017. Quite the shift. We’ve iden­ti­fied two recent trends that are dis­rupt­ing the tra­di­tion­al influ­encer mod­el to deliv­er vis­i­ble brand val­ue: super­fans and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry sto­ry­telling. 

On the first trend, we are see­ing cre­ative com­pa­nies crack­ing influ­encer brand engage­ment by unlock­ing access to a brand’s super­fans. Last year, I caught up with Chipo­tle chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer Chris Brandt for our Progress Through Cre­ativ­i­ty pod­cast. He said Chipo­tle “took the shack­les off their dig­i­tal agency part­ners”, sig­nalling the begin­ning of a much more engag­ing tone that embraced fan­dom and used influ­encers who were already huge Chipo­tle fans.

Their Tik­Tok strat­e­gy has seen thou­sands of Chipo­tle fans organ­i­cal­ly advo­cate the brand and led to the birth of the #Chipotle­Spon­sorMe cam­paign. The series, which received more than two bil­lion views, suc­cess­ful­ly fun­nelled that super­fan ener­gy into fur­ther reach.  

Droga5’s Bagel­gate cam­paign for Kraft Heinz, which won three Lions, is anoth­er great exam­ple. Its Twit­ter poll and Change.org peti­tion ask­ing Apple to change its #Sad­Bagel emo­ji to include a smear of Philadel­phia cream cheese active­ly engaged with con­sumers and result­ed in more than sev­en mil­lion social impres­sions. 

The immersion of participatory storytelling

Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry sto­ry­telling, mean­while, draws on this move to immer­sion and is prov­ing to be an effec­tive way to engage. In a study of Cre­ative Effec­tive­ness Cannes Lions entries, car­ried out by WARC, 50 per cent of work cit­ed active con­sumer par­tic­i­pa­tion as a key cre­ative strat­e­gy.

Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ele­ments can work well when they feed into nat­ur­al human curios­i­ty, as in the case of Budweiser’s Tag­words where the brand asked peo­ple to dis­cov­er the end­ing of the sto­ry them­selves, or in Westworld’s The Maze where fans were asked to “choose their own adven­ture” via an inter­ac­tion with Ama­zon Alexa.

The Unit­ed Nation’s People’s Seat cam­paign is anoth­er good exam­ple. Along­side seats rep­re­sent­ing indi­vid­ual nations, they cre­at­ed a phys­i­cal seat – the people’s seat – to high­light the impor­tance of every­day indi­vid­u­als in the fight against cli­mate change. In addi­tion, they shared the People’s Address, a speech writ­ten from raw tes­ti­mo­ni­als crowd­sourced from peo­ple around the world. 

Over the past six months, we’ve seen a body of best-in-class work emerge from Europe, Asia and the Mid­dle East. The learn­ings and insights com­ing from the work make a very pow­er­ful state­ment about the chang­ing shape of cre­ativ­i­ty in the cur­rent cli­mate. If brands are smart, they’ll choose tal­ent that nat­u­ral­ly advo­cates for them while har­mo­nious­ly telling the cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty sto­ry at the same time.

We look for­ward to see­ing what else emerges from the work, at the Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of Cre­ativ­i­ty in June, and whether we’ll con­tin­ue to see the rise and rise of the new influ­encer.