Influencer Marketing Matters, So Give Them a Gong

The democratisation of media through so many social, video and blogging platforms and channels has led to the rise of so-called social influencers. 

Way back in 2013, L’Oréal tapped into YouTube as a force for driving make-up sales.They partnered with YouTube beauty guru Michelle Phan. Unlike campaigns that had come before, this partnership wasn’t just a pay to play, and Michelle was actually part of the development of a brand new product line. It was incredibly forward thinking. Since then, we have seen a large number of brands and agencies tapping into social media stars, utilising them for their own marketing communications. 

Despite years of intriguing campaigns that have been incredibly effective, there has been no recognition in the industry for this type of work. Many of our best performing agencies and brands are measured on the recognition they receive, and ultimately the calibre of their awards. As this marcom trend for partnerships with social influencers continues to grow at rapid pace, it seems crazy that there has been no space for it to be officially recognised. At the end of the day, awards are worthless if they are not measured against an up to date, valued and varied set of criteria and categories, by the leaders of each discipline.

We at The One Show have taken the lead by creating a specific award category that will actively recognise partnerships with an established social media influencer to enhance or promote a brand through that influencer's audience and style.

Why? Quite simply, this trend is now an essential part of the advertising industry. Over the past several years, social influencers have grown followings that wield tremendous power over public opinion - often more than that of traditional celebrities.

Vine star Logan Paul, for example, has more views on his Facebook page than the live global audience of the moon landing in 1969. His page is one of the fastest-growing on Facebook, and in the past three months he’s racked up over 530m video views. One of his most viral successes was his Best Friends video, which has amassed an astonishing 253m+ views. Just to put that in perspective, that’s more than double 2015’s record-breaking Superbowl audience of 114.4m…

As a result of his success and reach, Logan has been tapped more than 50 times by the biggest brands including Pepsi, Jordan, Hanes, Disney and HBO to work on digital marketing campaigns. With social influencers pulling in such huge audiences, it’s no surprise that brands are interested. Now, an increasing number of brands and individual influencers are creating social media agencies specifically to work with brands and create unique content – and are finding great success in doing so.

Take media company and talent management firm Big Frame. Big Frame began with Sarah Penna, who Forbes dubbed ‘the first ever person to be hired to manage YouTube talent (Phil DeFranco)’. She had so much success working with Defranco, she was flooded with requests to manage other social talent. All of that led to establishing Big Frame. With 300 talent signed, who have a combined 70m + YouTube subscribers and a total social media reach of 200m + followers, Big Frame was then acquired by AwesomenessTV (a JV by DreamWorks Animation and VHMP) in April 2014.

Similarly, Epic Signal, which started out as an influencer marketing company in 2013, was acquired by a creative agency, Mekanism, in 2015. Founder Brendan Gahan was among the first, like Penna, to recognise the potential of social-video celebrities. The New York Observer called him the “Don Draper of social video” - and if that doesn’t put him at the forefront of adland, I don’t know what does! Epic Signal now work with some of the industry’s biggest global brands like Amazon, Starbucks, and PepsiCo.

Having studied these trends for some time it just seemed mad that no-one’s been shouting about this success and giving it the recognition it deserves in the advertising sphere. We’ve got the world’s biggest brands involved with huge new ventures and agencies, not to mention individuals who create original content that draws in larger audiences than some of the world’s biggest ever broadcasts.

That’s not to say social influencers are the be all and end all. The relationship between an agency and brand is far broader than just social or digital. Over the past 20 years, agencies and brands have become adept at keeping up with this fluid new age of marketing and communication we now live in - but they will need to adapt once again. This new medium and tool will be essential to remaining top of the creative game.

However, as much as agencies must be adept at recognising these trends, so must we as an industry - which is why The One Show is proud to bring social influencer marketing into the fore.