Why Brands & Agencies Continue to Use Influencers

It's no secret that industry professionals work with influencers in some capacity - because social media content creators are in fact the most popular and active members on the platform, ahead of musicians, sports stars, actors and models.

YouTube is the preferred platform for influencer-lead initiatives. Over half of the 500 creatives interviewed in a study conducted by app Takumi, had inked deals with vloggers on YouTube with some of the most popular creators in the game. Twitter, meanwhile, was the number two choice with 51.8 percent of those questioned saying they’ve collaborated with influencers on the microblogging site, while four in 10 said they hosted similar promotions on Instagram.

At this point, if you're thinking ‘so what?’, you’ve obviously never tried to strike a deal with a social influencer. If you had, you’d know that social rising stars are managed by agents who often command eye-watering fees on behalf of their clients to discuss a brand on video or to post a visual endorsement on Instagram. 

In late 2013, the going rate for a branded Vine that got three million loops was a mere $400. Nowadays, a branded Vine with that kind of exposure goes for between $10,000 and $15,000. 

Today, if a brand wants to align itself to the likes of a Tanya Burr (below), PewDiePie or KSI, it’ll most likely need to stump up around £143,000 for a YouTube video, £75,000 for an Instagram post or £30,000 for just one tweet. 

As Social Circle has been working with influencers for years, we’ve been here watching the price these influencers charge escalate higher and higher. Interestingly, we’ve noticed that these prices increase with the number of subscribers an influencer receives. We are keen to introduce a more effective metric to measure engagements. Simply pinning prices on subscriber numbers isn’t a fair reflection on how an influencer’s work delivers and how they should be paid. The same way when buying media, a brand or agency needs to understand ROI – this can simply be done by the talent agents and influencers effectively measuring and valuing their audiences. 

Another important thing is that agencies and influencers understand ASA regulations. Many also regularly violate consumer protection laws by failing to disclose paid-for endorsements. The most high-profile recent violations came from everyone’s favourite dysfunctional family, the Kardashians. 

Kim Kardashian West, along with her sisters Khloe and Kourtney and half-sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, have a combined 100 Instagram posts in violation of the rules according to US consumer group, Truth In Advertising (TINA). 

Since TINA threatened to file a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, Kim Kardashian West has published an Instagram post promoting Sugar Bear Hair (above), one of the brands cited by the group as being in violation of the rules, and badged it with the hashtag #ad. 

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is also clamping down on undisclosed endorsements. However, despite the costs and the minefield of coming a cropper with advertising standards, influencer marketing isn’t going to disappear anytime soon so the creative opportunities wont’ either. 

When Zoella (below) did a recent spontaneous and unpaid review of the latest offering from The Body Shop, sales of the product doubled during the following four weeks. And while 44 percent of internet users watch vloggers each month and beauty reviewers such as EnjoyPhoenix command 2.5 million channel subscribers, brands such as L’Oréal’s Maybelline will always want them on side. 

Ok, so influencer marketing is a bit of a wild-west landscape currently. But changes are afoot and creatives should be prepared to work with social celebrities on shared creative ideas. 

Earlier this month, the ISBA, the body representing UK advertisers, launched a contract template for brands wishing to formalise their relationships with vloggers and social influencers. 

The contract, which was drafted by law firm Lewis Silkin with input from Zoella’s talent agency Gleam Futures and other talent agents, will help brands ‘seal the deal’ after negotiating a fair price with influencers on these often unquantifiable relationships, and finally lets both sides know what is expected of them, including who has creative control. 

What we need to do next, is to open this sector up to the full gamut of influencers posting and vlogging, in even niche sectors, by implementing a more recognised and widespread Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE) model to effectively manage influencers and influencer marketing campaigns. That way, it doesn’t matter if you’re a big dog like PewDiePie or a micro influencer that just happens to have a highly targeted following, you can be rewarded on a post-by-post, video-by-video basis. 

Once more structured relationships are in place between brand, creatives and influencers and everyone finally understands the rules surrounding the disclosure of paid-for content, organizing successful influencer marketing campaigns will become far easier and will swiftly become a standard part of marketing. 

This sector is continuing to rapidly grow and we need to tame the beast whilst we still can. Budgets are getting bigger and we need to ensure we help the agency to get better at influencer marketing by fixing the problems it currently facing.