Move Over Sports Stars…Are Influencers the Ultimate Brand Ambassadors Now?

Open a social media app like Instagram and you’ll likely find carefully curated posts sponsored by brands flooding your feed.

Like billboard advertising that lines the road, this defines marketing of the 21st century as all digital-first ad campaigns travel down the social media highway.

What stands out about this kind of targeted marketing are the faces being used to sell you everything from sneakers to women’s apparel to the latest tech products.

While in the past, Hollywood stars and national sports heroes were the go-to personalities used to reach consumers, now, it’s social media influencers who are being used to bring you targeted ads to get you to engage with your favorite brands.

A new industry

It’s a strategy tied to algorithms and the ways consumers interact on their accounts. Sometimes it’s even difficult to tell what a sponsored ad and a more organic post by a user who has generated a big following. Honestly, in 2020, is there much of a difference?

In fact, influencers have such, well, influence that an entire industry has been built around them.

The Guardian interviewed Beca Alexander, the founder and president of social media casting and management agency Socialyte Collective. Her firm represents about 100 influencers, each one having about 30,000 to 2 million followers.

“There are a variety of ways they earn that revenue, and we work on strategies that best suit the individual style and audience of each one. Some might focus on promoting as many brands and products as possible, but always being aware of the natural synergy with their own ‘brand,’ so it feels authentic, while others have contracts with a curated range of brands to work on exclusive long-term campaigns,” Alexander told the British newspaper.

Out with the old

A lot goes into the constructed, highly choreographed influencer post. The right lighting, the perfect pose, the witty caption, spotlighting the product or brand in question in a way that feels organic to that influencer’s identity — it’s all part of the delicate process of marketing as we now head firmly into the third decade of the 21st century.

We all remember how the second half of the 20th century was defined by the celebrity endorsement.

Think Michael Jordan’s game-changing partnership with Nike. Product and star were so interlinked that Air Jordan is synonymous with the iconic basketball star. High-end fashion and beauty brands like Chanel have long gravitated to movie stars from an early association with Marilyn Monroe to its splashy Baz Luhrmann-directed ad campaign starring Nicole Kidman.

Now, those kinds of endorsements are less valued. They still make an impact, but why pay millions for an Oscar winner or an NBA champion when you could employ an influencer to reach millions upon millions of consumers by just simply hitting the “share” button?

What makes influencers special

While no less manufactured than a traditional celebrity, social media influencers bring with them the air of relatability and trust in a product and brand.

“These people have a profound connection with their audience, built on trust, credibility, authenticity and value. Above all, they maintain close relationships with a community of followers that they have built on their own,” according to this 2018 Medium article. “Thanks to the Internet and social media, the influence has been democratized. People who created valuable and useful content have built a large follower base. And companies have recognized this as a potential opportunity for marketing, many of which have launched successful influencer campaigns.”

As the ways we interact with our social media platforms become increasingly sophisticated, expect the influencers you scroll by in your feed to continue to play a major role in how you see and consume brands.