Sorry Keith, but fake followers are NOT a major issue for influencer marketing
Cannes Lions is not only a great platform for celebrating advertising’s greatest work, but also a chance for the big names to lay down their initiatives for the coming year.
2018 was no different. Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Unilever made an announcement around how they would now be approaching influencer marketing and what they wanted to see from it.
‘Transparency from Influencers: We will not work with influencers who buy followers.
Transparency from Brands: Our brands will never buy followers.
Transparency from Platforms: We will prioritise partners who increase transparency and help eradicate bad practices throughout the whole ecosystem.’*
Firstly, it’s great to see a large brand shine the light on what is fast becoming an incredibly murky industry.
That said, I’d argue that this belief and initiative comes from a place of fundamentally misunderstanding how to approach influencer marketing.
Fake followers are an issue. However, in reality it’s only an issue if you’re selecting creators based on their following.
This is one of the industries’ biggest mistakes when it comes to influencer marketing. When brands and agencies select creators in this way, they are not doing their due diligence. What they are actually doing is something incredibly counter intuitive and that’s adding fuel to the fire by encouraging them to buy fake followers.
If brands are throwing money around in this way, then it is a no brainer for people to buy followers to get a piece of that pie.
In truth there really is no issue with fake followers. The problem is one of how we’re approaching influencer marketing as a whole. Of course these bots cause a problem, but size of following isn’t where we should be looking.
What we should be focusing on is the actual influence these creators have from a performance perspective (revenue, click through, website traffic increase etc). If we do this, fake followers becomes an almost redundant problem.
Example;
£25k spent per creator
Creator 1–2 million followers, 40% bots / sales driven = £55,000
Creator 2–2 million followers, 0 bots / sales driven = £10,000
Which would you rather have?
The point is two fold.
- Brands & agencies need to be selecting creators on their actual influence and stop focusing on follower count.
- and where I agree with Keith Weed — brands & agencies need to force creators and platforms to be more transparent with data and about actual influence.
So what’s the solution?
As Keith Weed and Unilever made clear, transparency is key. By all means, platforms should focus time on the issue of bots. This information can be of help, whether fake followers or paid-for engagement. That said, if you believe engagement is success, you’ve more than likely missed the point of why you’re doing influencer marketing in the first place. They do need to do that at some point, but the burning need is to provide data and insight that proves actual influence and ROI.
Along with that, brands need to step up their game when it comes to transparency also. Their unwillingness to share key data from campaigns (such as sales figures) with creators and management is also a huge barrier to the success of influencer marketing and one of the main reasons there is currently a lack of transparency.
Transparency works both ways and in this case brands take an equal share of blame for the mess this industry has become.
Along with transparency, brands & agencies can also force the hand by only working with creators who can show proof that they can drive performance based results, not just vanity metrics. This in turn will/should put pressure on and encourage creators to think differently about how they sell themselves (this is a living for many, which to date they’ve been stealing).
This approach will be a benefit to all. Those who can prove they are effective in driving results will be in higher demand with brands willing to invest more money in these creators, which we discuss the importance of here.
Our focus should be on greater transparency from all parties. That includes platforms, creators and brands (however big or small), a better way of working and improved understanding of what influencer marketing is and how powerful it can be for your brand when leveraged the right way.
Sorry Keith, fake followers are not a major issue for influencer marketing. A lack of focus on ROI is.
