Brands turn to social media influencers for fresh looks, wider audience

Social media networks aced the persuasion game, as influencer marketing proved to be the fastest route to customer acquisition in 2019

What did PepsiCo India do to spread the word about its new look Lays? Or luxury watchmaker Tissot, to gain familiarity in the country, or Chinese handset brand, Vivo, to add a youthful gloss to its image. In all of these cases and many more, through 2019, brands turned to select social media networks and a band of influencers to amplify their marketing efforts. 

A report released earlier this week by an Indian influencer-marketing firm Buzzoka said, “From celebrities to the rising class of micro–influencers (experts in a specific topic with smaller, but more highly engaged audiences), influencers are emerging as a critical marketing tool for brands large and small.”

The top social media platforms are Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, in that order, according to the Buzzoka Influencer Marketing Outlook-III, 2020. For most brands, influencers were an amplification strategy, helping the brand take its new launches, fresh looks and offers to a wider audience.

Sameer Singh, vice-president, Monetisation, TikTok India has been working very closely with brands over the past year. “We worked with Pepsi for their #SwagStepChallenge. The challenge garnered close to 37 billion views till date. Moov partnered with us to launch #MakeYourMoov that gave young users an opportunity to showcase creative and unique fitness moves. The campaign has garnered over 10 billion views. And Marico Hair & Care launched #KhuleBaalBefikar. Within three days, the hashtag saw 2.8 billion views, and to date, it has over 10.6 billion views,” he says.

According to the report, 76 per cent of the respondents said that influencer marketing is an important part of their marketing strategy and the majority said that its relevance grew in 2019 and will continue to do so, because influencers offer brands better reach and engagement and come with phenomenal story telling capabilities.

In 2019, TikTok dominated the brand story in terms of its expanding base of young users while Reliance Jio played a big role in the growth of influencer marketing, both in terms of content creators and the audience watching them. 

“Influence has long been at the core of marketing, seeking it, increasing it, and then effectively using it to achieve goals,” says Prashant Sharma, CMO of Nofiltr, a social marketing firm. He estimates that the influencer marketing segment will grow at a CAGR of +38 per cent over 2020-26.

Most marketers said that they looked for a combination of factors while choosing influencers and platforms. The number of followers, the quality of the content that they generated on their feeds and posts and the level of engagement they had with their followers played an important role. 

Shashank Surana, VP, New Product Development, DS Group, had spoken to Business Standard earlier on the rise of influencer-led campaigns. Pulse candy has been leveraging both macro and nano influencers in the digital space, he said, adding “There is a need to find and leverage the most suitable digital influencer, who embodies the true brand value and proposition.”

As the report notes, influencers help amplify the brand message. They help the brand speak in many tongues, adapt to regional preferences and become more resilient to changing tastes, by taking the brand closer to consumers in remote parts of the country and to those that do not find a place in the mainstream narrative. 

Dilen Gandhi, senior director and category head, Foods, PepsiCo India spoke to Business Standard earlier about the company’s influencer strategy and said, "Influencers act as micro-amplifiers that can drive engagement to the idea. It’s the equivalent of your friend relaying a message they’ve heard on mass-media; your friend will add his own flavour while retaining the essence. This makes the message at once more relatable and sticky, however the original idea still remains core.”

Digital drivers

• Brands choose influencers on the basis of their content (43 per cent),  ability to spread the word (37 per cent) and expand the reach of their campaign

• 94 per cent said that there is a need to identify and work with regional influencers to unlock the full potential of such marketing

• Marketing budgets for influencer-focused campaigns have gone up significantly, for 2-5 per cent of respondents it was  47 per cent of the total marketing budget,but for the majority it is between 13-20 per cent

• Source: Buzzoka Influencer Marketing Outlook-III, 2020