5 things Love Island has told us about Influencer Marketing
So, it’s over and you’ve got your evenings back… at least for another six months. This years final was a ratings smash, with 3.8 million tuning in to watch the final. A record for the programme. Love Island, a show that puts tanned and toned twenty-somethings in the Balearic sun and under the TV microscope, has formed a formidable reputation for sending new batches of influencers into the world. Now in its fifth season, audiences are used to understanding the incentives for contestants and the endorsements that inevitably come from winning. The commercialisation of the show is as obvious as the fake eyelashes.
But in a wider environment where influencer marketing is changing, how does Love Island affect our understanding of influencer marketing as a valid channel, and can the show tell us anything new? Here are five things we learned about how Love Island is changing the influencer marketing space:
1. You must already have a strong social following if you want to be on TV.
The days of going from an unknown to a household name are over. This is simply because if a contestant has some degree of “influence” established already, then producers can estimate how they will help increase ratings. 2019 contestants came under some heat for this, when marketing specialists Takumi found that 50% of their followers were fake. It also emerged that most of the contestants already had some degree of ‘management’ before being picked to be on the show. The fact remains that having an established social following is now a pre-requisite for going on a reality TV show.
2. Authenticity is all about Aesthetic for Love Island contestants.
When influencer marketing was embryonic, authenticity was maintained by influencers not appearing to influence at all. But the days where a popular Instagram user simply promotes what they like are over. Influencers are a mainstream marketing channel, and Love Island contestants embrace this change. From the main format sponsors like Uber Eats, the wardrobe updates from I Saw It First, to the post-show deals with contestants, authenticity means something else entirely. This is not the same with every reality TV show, and the commercial nature of some shows can turn some audiences off. But in the case of Love Island, the more a contestant adopts the show’s aesthetic, and embraces the commercial nature of the programme, the more authenticity they have.
3. Love Island is about chemistry between brands as much as other contestants.
It’s not only the public at large who are glued to the TV during the show. Brands are watching too. The entire show is a match-making service that allows contestants to seduce brands into working with them. Even if you’re not one of the winners on the show, if there is the right fit between brand and contestant, then deals will be struck. Cosmopolitan recently reported on how contestants that get to the final are given a full “de-brief” by producers, reunited with their phones, and taken on whirl-wind tours of different TV interview shows. If Love Island was the interview, then the job starts immediately after the final credits.
4. Growing awareness around Influencers and mental health.
Love Island has shone a light on the pressures influencers can face within a socially-connected world. The old saying “haters are gonna hate” became colloquial for brushing off the comments of internet trolls. Online abuse aimed directly at influencers was normalised as an inevitability because of the social screen abusers could hide behind. But the fact that contestants are now offered psychological support shows how perspectives have changed, and influencers need to be protected from the intense scrutiny they come under.
5. Old School reality TV is mixing with new tech. Influencers are in the middle.
In many ways, what’s happening here is not new. When Big Brother first in aired in 2000 it received a massive audience of 10 million watching the final. In the same way we have talked about contestants being conditioned for Love Island, the same can be said for most (if not all) reality TV formats. Also, having commercial deals after such shows have been normal too. But the big change that Love Island shows us, is that it’s an old school TV format, that is super-charged for a socially and technologically connected generation. The show is able to feed off other platforms that are about tapping, liking, and sharing (not to mention buying). Influencers now sit in the middle between all of these different touchpoints.
Brooke Steinberg is Global Planning Director at Vizeum.
