Is the fashion industry suffering from influencer fatigue?

You don’t have to be a Kar­dashi­an to earn big mon­ey as a fash­ion influ­encer. For US design­er and blog­ger Danielle Bern­stein, a sin­gle spon­sored Insta­gram post shared with her 2.5 mil­lion style-obsessed fol­low­ers can reput­ed­ly earn her up to $20,000 (£14,700). It’s been report­ed that Mex­i­can fash­ion influ­encer Julie Sar­iñana, who reg­u­lar­ly shares images of design­er clothes and acces­sories with her 5.6 mil­lion fol­low­ers, can com­mand a six-fig­ure sum for the spon­sored con­tent she posts.

But such eye-water­ing sums have caused scep­ti­cism among some fash­ion brands as to the true return on invest­ment in social media influ­encers. Com­bined with the fact that it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly tough to mar­ket prod­ucts online – thanks to the increas­ing cost of cus­tomer acqui­si­tion and the grow­ing list of web browsers end­ing their sup­port for third-par­ty cook­ies – it’s prompt­ing ques­tions about the effec­tive­ness of influ­encer mar­ket­ing. 

Has fash­ion final­ly had its fill of influ­encer cul­ture, or is the way that brands are deal­ing with these online trend­set­ters sim­ply evolv­ing to ensure that they get their money’s worth? 

Along with cos­met­ics, fash­ion was one of the first indus­tries to recog­nise the poten­tial in influ­encer part­ner­ships. In the ear­ly 2010s, the first stars of social media were secur­ing front-row seats at fash­ion shows and hir­ing pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers for street-style shoots. In a few short years, brands were pay­ing them big mon­ey to mod­el their gar­ments. Not long after that, adver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tors began crack­ing down on influ­encers who were fail­ing to label what they were post­ing as spon­sored con­tent. 

Despite that set­back and the poor pub­lic­i­ty it gen­er­at­ed for influ­encer mar­ket­ing as a whole, the chan­nel is now worth about $10bn a year com­pared with $1.7bn in 2016, accord­ing to an esti­mate by the Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing Hub. In short, influ­encers’ posi­tion as a cor­ner­stone of mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy for many com­pa­nies, includ­ing fash­ion brands, is stronger than ever.  

Using influencer culture to generate growth

For Lounge Under­wear, a five-year-old brand based in Soli­hull, “influ­encers have always been cru­cial in our mar­ket­ing – even more so in our ear­ly days, where we could gain huge expo­sure for rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle invest­ment”, says its co-founder and CEO, Daniel Mars­den. “The social land­scape has changed mas­sive­ly over the past few years, but influ­encer mar­ket­ing still plays a huge part in our growth.”

Anoth­er young busi­ness that’s been reliant on influ­encers is With Noth­ing Under­neath. The women’s shirt brand, which has been oper­at­ing in Lon­don since 2017, con­sid­ers them “para­mount to our suc­cess so far”, accord­ing to its co-founder and CEO, Pip Durell. 

“I can’t see that chang­ing any time soon,” she says. “We don’t do any tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing or mar­ket­ing. We don’t have a PR rep. Using influ­encers is our mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.” 

That said, brands have been over­haul­ing their approach to influ­encer mar­ket­ing, giv­en that the chan­nel has become so crowd­ed and cost­ly – and that con­sumers are becom­ing increas­ing­ly wary of inau­then­tic endorse­ments. For one thing, they are mov­ing away from the biggest names and adopt­ing low­er-key rela­tion­ships with so-called micro-influ­encers – those with few­er than 10,000 fol­low­ers. 

This is a trend that PR con­sul­tant Geor­gia Gads­by expe­ri­enced at first hand while she was work­ing as a fash­ion blog­ger up until 2018. 

“I noticed that big­ger brands were start­ing to approach me for col­lab­o­ra­tions, despite my micro-influ­encer label,” she says. “With few­er than 10,000 fol­low­ers, I still man­aged to work with names such as HMV, SheIn and Neal’s Yard Reme­dies. This was tru­ly the start of their dis­cov­ery that the con­nec­tions between micro-influ­encers and their fol­low­ers are stronger than any tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing tech­nique. We were telling our audi­ence direct­ly to buy the prod­ucts we loved because we thought that they’d love them too.”

This is some­thing that Mars­den has learnt in his time devel­op­ing Lounge Under­wear. “Where­as it used to almost be a case of ‘the big­ger, the bet­ter’, we’ve since found that micro-influ­encers hold a lot more weight with their fol­low­ers, as they are more relat­able,” he says. 

Mars­den adds that his busi­ness prefers to enter long-term con­tracts with micro-influ­encers to lock in the val­ue they offer. “We don’t want a mean­ing­less and shal­low work­ing rela­tion­ship. We try to part­ner with them so that they can tru­ly buy into our brand. Their pro­mo­tion of it is more gen­uine as a result.”

Building authentic partnerships 

Trust is gold­en in influ­encer mar­ket­ing. Accord­ing to a sur­vey by Blue Foun­tain Media, 35% of social media users start doubt­ing influ­encers’ authen­tic­i­ty when they spot the hash­tags ‘#ad’ or ‘#spon­sored’ on their posts. Efforts to over­come this prob­lem mean that influ­encer part­ner­ships have, as with Lounge Under­wear, become far deep­er than they used to be. In some cas­es, influ­encers are even get­ting involved in the devel­op­ment of col­lec­tions. 

“The dynam­ic between brand and influ­encer has evolved,” says Mary Keane-Daw­son, group CEO at Taku­mi, an influ­encer mar­ket­ing agency. “Influ­encers start­ed as an adver­tis­ing chan­nel for brands to show­case new col­lec­tions. Now they’re pro­vid­ing cre­ative direc­tion and giv­ing brands a real insight into what con­sumers want from them.” 

In 2019, for instance, Aimee Song became one of the first fash­ion influ­encers to part­ner a high-end online retail­er, work­ing with Revolve to start her own line. We’ve since seen a num­ber of col­lab­o­ra­tions, rang­ing from the Miss­Pap label’s col­lec­tion with Love Island win­ner Amber Gill to Hol­land Cooper’s lim­it­ed edi­tion of blaz­ers and dress­es with Vic­to­ria Magrath, edi­tor of the InThe­Frow lifestyle blog.

Care­ful­ly curat­ed, influ­encer part­ner­ships can even help brands seek­ing to improve their rep­u­ta­tion on mat­ters such as diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. 

Julie Bran­der is a senior account direc­tor spe­cial­is­ing in influ­encer mar­ket­ing at PR firm Weber Shand­wick. She says that influ­encers who are “will­ing to step out and talk about real-life issues that tru­ly mat­ter to them are those who real­ly res­onate with con­sumers. The more authen­tic and well-round­ed the influ­encer and their con­tent are, the bet­ter the results.” 

Gads­by recalls that “the more I shared my queer­ness on social media – by using hash­tags such as “#Les­bian­Vis­i­bil­i­ty­Day”, for instance – the more offers for brand col­lab­o­ra­tions I seemed to receive. I could see the true rise of com­pa­nies want­i­ng to diver­si­fy their adver­tis­ing. I gen­uine­ly believe that the ease of find­ing influ­encers from dif­fer­ent back­grounds on social media means that brands no longer have an excuse not to be inclu­sive.”

Turning social into sales

The growth in social media tools that aid the buy­ing process has cre­at­ed a far clear­er path between influ­encers and sales. 

“It’s def­i­nite­ly impor­tant that brands co-cre­ate con­tent with influ­encers that max­imis­es the technology’s poten­tial,” Bran­der says. “You only have to look at the inte­gra­tion of swipe-ups, Insta­gram Shop­ping, Shopi­fy and Shop­Style to see how the two can be paired to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly valu­able.”

Keane-Daw­son agrees. “Shop­pable fea­tures are chang­ing social media and the buy­er jour­ney for fash­ion brands. These plat­forms are chang­ing from a place where users post, rem­i­nisce and browse to a place where they’re always win­dow shop­ping. You can now get items in your shop­ping bas­ket direct­ly from posts on most social chan­nels. It’s a seam­less retail expe­ri­ence.”

It’s clear that, although fash­ion brands and retail­ers are more cir­cum­spect than they were about form­ing rela­tion­ships with influ­encers, this chan­nel has become a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed mar­ket­ing tool for those ready to wield it to its full poten­tial.

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