Influencer marketing is just marketing
After a barrage of think pieces and LinkedIn posts decrying influencer marketing as ‘fake’ marketing, Cassandra Demasi makes the case for why separating old and new isn’t the way forward.
When people ask me what I do for work, I struggle to come up with a simple response. I often start with “Oh, I’m in marketing,” Continued with “but not traditional marketing, I do online marketing – you know how there’s those ‘insta famous’ people? Well I find, manage and strategise with them on how to promote the brand.”
This is then met with either a blank stare or their eyes would light up and I’d receive an excitable “So, you Instagram all day?” Not exactly…
I once worked with a girl who told me she was in the food and fashion industry. Then I realised that she was paid to wear clothes, taste food and sleep in hotels, in exchange for posting pics on Instagram.
What a senseless, fabulous life.
I wonder how many businesses with 17 staff employ marketing and influencer managers at a global level.
I guess I should change my title of my business. I’m tossing up between Galactic CEO and Universal CEO.
Very true Cassandra. A key goal of marketing is to make more people aware of your brand. So much marketing and media discussion can be over intellectualised. But the consumer isn’t concerned with how they heard about the product or brand.
I might want to add two things, some of my friends are what you refer to as instafamous and haven’t shopped for apparel in a long time and only every now and then actually pay for hotels
They chose to become one on purpose and they don’t care a bit about the products they advertise
They chose to go after a certain audience that marketers want and build their followers up accordingly, they were in marketing prior to this
That said, for the average customer the average product might very well be advertised on those people
The issue will be, sometime soon in my opinion, that people do understand that they are not following actual people but an advertising page, for commodity brands this might still be a good way to promote themselves but not for anybody else