IMG latest to launch platform connecting paid influencers with brands

Talent management agency IMG has launched a new offering aimed at connecting brands to social media influencers and helping them run their campaigns.

IMG Engage is positioned as a “results driven” platform which estimates the reach, the number of impressions and views a campaign might get before the campaign goes live. IMG will boost the posts with a paid media spend if they do not meet the estimated target.

David Malina, vice president, head of talent at IMG, told Mumbrella: “It is results driven and we manage the process throughout.

“We talk through the brief in many respects, we will go through the talent selection process with [the client], make sure they’ve selected the right talent to fit the KPI’s they are setting, if they need help setting those KPI’s we will give them some advice around that.

“The differentiation for us in market is it’s really a full service agency as opposed to just an influencer selection platform, once we have gone through the KPI setting, talent selection, there is the on boarding of the talent and then there is the management of the campaign and the content when it is live in market,” Malina said.

Other influencer automated and semi-automated platforms currently in the market include Tribe, Magnum and Co’s Magnetic, One Green Bean’s Crowd Atlas and Social Soup’s Rekognition.

Tribe acts as a self-serve influencer marketing technology platform which partners influencers with brands, Magnetic assists clients to build partnerships with influencers beyond social media, Crowd Atlas is a technology platform which helps brands find a broader range of influencers by trawling the net.

Meanwhile Rekognition is an analysis tool made in partnership with Amazon which enables brands to see 2,000 different attributes and photos that influencers are taking.

IMG Engage was built utilising with Google App maker and uses influencers with a range of followers from between 15,000 to half a million.

The platform currently has more than 350 micro-influencers with 160 of those influencers exposed on the website at one time.

William Cate, senior manager of digital talent at IMG, explained IMG Engage works with both the influencers and brands to create one concise brief which suits both parties.

IMG Engage will also assist the influencer in coming up with content ideas, allowing the brand to see and approve the post before it goes live.

“We do like the creator to create of course but most brands have quite specific ideas about what they want after they have had that re-briefing process with us, they tend to traditionally just book content on platforms or directly with influencers and then hope for the best or they have some sort of strategy they have sent over. With IMG Engage we really get into this is the actual possibility conversation individually with the talent,” Cate said.

Malina added: “Part of the process is really trying to educate brands and agencies around what are some of the key outcomes they should be looking for with influencer work, subject to what their goals are. Goal setting is a really important part of this process, this acts as a briefing process but it’s also very hands on.”

IMG has also created a live dashboard which acts as a campaign measurement tool to allow brands to study the engagement, reach and organic impressions as a result of the campaign.

IMG Engage’s dashboard offering

IMG has also produced another app named ‘Real Followers’ which scans influencer profiles to work out how many followers are real, the geographical breakdown and gender breakdown of their followers.

“This isn’t a play to have some saas platform, this is just so we know we are going to recruit guys who have good engagement and real honest followers,” William Cate said.

IMG Engage is currently working with UberEats and Chobani.