In the beginning was… clay. And a potter. Strange as it might sound, according to nogre.com’s infographic, the first Influencer action dates back to the 1700s when Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter and entrepreneur, paid Royalty to endorse his pottery. Have you ever wondered how Influencer Marketing will look, let’s say, in 2020?
#InfluencerMarketing the (very) old school way
The first recorded influencer action was celebrity “Fatty” Arbuckle, a silent film actor, who had an endorsement with Murad Cigarettes in 1905. Then it all started on a larger scale — print ads, radio ads, TV ads.
Now we have the Internet. And that means you have no longer to be Royalty or a celebrity to become an influencer.
2004? seems like a lifetime ago
It’s 13 years now, since Facebook was launched. One of their first recommendation systems was Facebook Pulse (now deactivated), which allowed you to see the most popular products from different categories in your friend’s network.
At the same time, people started developing their FB and blog sites. This continues for approximately for 6 years.
Amazing Amazon
Then, in 2010, Amazon noticed a huge potential behind social media users. In cooperation with Facebook, it allowed its users to link both their accounts. Thanks to this move, Amazon was able to recommend consumers items based on Facebook activity and interests. Also, users could see notifications about their friends’ birthdays and possible gift suggestions.
This is the time in Influencer history, when “influencing” still wasn’t a true profession.
As a matter of fact, it was your friends and family, who were one of the first Influencers!
Travel influence
Everything changed in 2015, when Airbnb started a cooperation with well-known influencers — music stars. The first one was Mariah Carey. She was paid for staying in one of Airbnb’s properties, taking some pictures and posting them online. The buzz was huge and encouraged Airbnb to put Influencer Marketing at the heart of their advertising strategy.
Nowadays, Airbnb is considered to be one of the leading Influencer Marketing brand strategists in the market, at least within their travel niche. And stars like Selena Gomez, Cristiano Ronaldo or DJ Khaled became the biggest Influencer Stars among the celebrities.
Google prefers it too
A Lot of talent agencies and multi-channel networks popped up in the blink of an eye during this time. They worked with the most recognizable influencers on the Internet and helped them to co-operate with brands who were seeking for a new quality of advertising.
Banner blindness was huge and marketers desperately needed to restore their authenticity in the eyes of consumers.
In 2016, Google launched Google Preferred advertising program aimed for the advertisers who wanted to cooperate with the biggest vloggers on YouTube. Pre-roll ad format, interest segmentation and close fits to the chosen target groups were pretty successful (if we don’t count i.e. PewDiePie anti-semitic scandal), but — there was a one huge downside.
Those advertisements were really expensive — see Lilly Singh’s cooperation with Coca-Cola or Michelle Phan’s contract with Lancome — so not every brand could use it. Moreover, big Influencer Stars didn’t have the engagement rates you might imagine. To be honest, they were quite poor.
Celebrities? So last Millenia…
At the same time, Facebook launched the system of recommendations for places, restaurants and businesses. Thanks to this, FB could start selling products via its own platform. Also campaigns like #Readtolead started engaging people to endorse items and recommend them to their friends and followers.
In 2016 also Southest Airlines conducted the campaign #SouthwestPassport, engaging slightly less-known influencers. Marriot, on the other hand, has embraced some Millennials, and let them take over its Snapchat company profile for a month. Both campaigns were a huge success and got a really good market response.
It went out that, paradoxically, influencers with a smaller amount of followers were often more powerful than Influencer Stars, thanks to their huge engagement rates — the ratio between a number of followers and their activity (likes, comments and shares).
This was when indaHash saw a big potential among so-called mid-tier influencers (1000–100 000 followers) and created an international technology platform that automates content marketing campaigns with them on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.
Its success is clear through its growth with over 300k influencers cross 70 global markets working on campaigns for the likes of Coca Cola, Google and McDonalds.
What’s still to come?
A new era of Influencer generated Content (IGC) has just begun.
In September 2017, Pinterest launched “Pin Collective” — a group of professional influencers helping brands prepare perfect content for their campaigns.
At the same time, a new Cost Per Content (CPCon) pricing model enabled brands to conduct campaigns in a completely new way, allowing them to buy content prepared, but not posted, by an influencer.
Nothing to be surprised about — as indaHash stats show, IGC is on average 5–12x more engaging than content generated by a brand itself.
Secondly, on the basis of new trends in Influencer Marketing, we can say that it’s heading towards a new model of… advertising.
The biggest brands in the World have started using influencers recommendations to help their clients make purchasing decisions exactly at the moment of buying or booking products and services.
Example: in 2017, Amazon’s Affiliate launched programs like “Amazon Spark” or new Influencer’s Program, which allows clients to buy products directly via Instagram-like posts or dedicated influencers’ links.
As indaHash Chief Growth Officer, Joanna Pawluk, says “Influencer Marketing’s ultimate goal is to make a consumer buy a product based on a recommendation from a person he follows and likes, exactly at the moment of purchase or reservation.”
Want to learn more? Stay tuned: “A quick look into Influencer Marketing future” will appear soon!
