Two Takes From the 2019 Influencer Marketing Show

At the 2019 Influencer Marketing Show held in October in London, the subject of long-term ambassador programmes underpinned the talks and discussions. The authenticity label was brandished left, right and center during the whole two days as expected (and rightly so), and two strong themes emerged as to how best achieve this.

Go Long or Go Home: Ambassador Programmes

To break away from the ‘influencers as a commodity’ vicious cycle, panellists (brands and creators alike) advocated the value of longer-term ambassador programmes. Our industry has a tainted reputation and examples of bad content and fit abound. Ongoing brand/creator collaborations allow to fine-tune relationships that fit with the creators’ own audience and narrative style – and with the brand goals.

This brilliantly simple graph (by Tailify co-founder Didrik M. Svendsen) shows the typical integration of a brand collaboration in the timeline of an influencer. If we consider that their audience has been following them by an average of 2.5 years, it is a potentially disruptive and inelegant affair for both parties. Expand the timeline to 12 months, and there’s ample time to craft a collaboration that is integrated and respects the creator’s audience.

Another advantage mentioned by SKY and Visit Britain panellists was the notion of working with the creators on a more strategic level, building on the influencers’ deep understanding of their audience and the market they operate in, to craft campaigns that really resonate. This echoes a survey of our community, where 84% of our sports content creators cited ‘long-term ambassador roles’ as preferable to short-term, one-off campaigns. The ambassador programmes we have built or run for brands like 361europe, Jaybird or Saysky certainly demonstrate higher engagement (and lower cost per engagement). We’d love to tell you more or answer your questions about your own programmes, existing or new. Just get in touch to book a free consultation.

Go Niche or Go Home: Specific is Better

Early in the morning, Kam Zulawski from generalist influencer platform CreatorIQ was the first to open the ‘niche’ discussion. As a generalist influencer marketing platform, they were surprisingly candid about the fact that nothing beats niche knowledge, deep understanding of a specific segment, for influencer marketing campaign quality. This was anecdotally confirmed when in the queue for coffees. I overhead a brand marketer talk about their experience of “receiving a list of influencers from an agency, and they all looked the same – there was no diversity, which demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the sector”.

In another talk, Tailify recommended that clients are as niche and specific when defining their audience in their influencer marketing campaign. A campaign for Rail Europe narrowed the goal and audience down from ‘raise awareness’ to ‘generate new leads from UK students of gap-year age’. This called for a different approach and different source of influencers. Our community of endurance/outdoors sports content creators can help you reach your specific audience. And our whole team of account managers is embedded in the community, too.