The price of influence

A 23-something Instagrammer stares insouciantly into the camera, unboxes a pair of soccer shoes and holds it up. No words are spoken, nothing captions the moment either. Except for a rush of hearts and exclamation marks that float up the screen and an almost imperceptible flash of fingers that snaps the box open, the million-plus followers of the dancer-cum-fitness trainer get nothing more than a fleeting glimpse of the global shoe brand that paid a hefty sum to choreograph the launch of its new line with a band of mega influencers from around the world.

Even a few years ago — well, maybe a decade ago — the brand and its advertising agency would have agonised over pithy copy and knocked heads over creating the perfect set of creatives around the launch. The media plan would have stretched across outdoor, print and television advertising.

Instead, the shoe brand, like many others within and outside its business domain, now signs up influencers, whose word holds sway with a million-plus followers on social media platforms and who script their own content and design their own aesthetic for such launches. The media plan works like a dating app, matching brands with social media stars, using follower counts, age and promotion fees as filters.

This lets advertisers break through the jammed highways of the Internet and gain visibility amidst the clutter. But all of this comes at a price. The brand no longer has a voice of its own; it speaks and looks much like the dozens of other brands that have handed the microphone over to a glib and amorphous influencer brigade.

Advertising has ceded power at the pulpit. From being one of the key custodians of the brand and its persuasive voice, it has let itself be hostage to the pied pipers of social media. Instead of finding the right mix of words and images to lubricate the consumer’s path to purchase with desire and aspiration, the profession is now a race for views, retweets and friend lists.

It matters little what the brand has to say or stands for. What matters is the size of the follower list and the age of the influencer. A report by Influencer.in in July this year said that most influencers in India are 18-30 years old with the numbers skewed in favour of the 18-24 age band. It is time to let the young inspire (or market to) the young, the report said.

This may well be how the dice rolls in the digital age where everything is measurable and where data outlives all relationships. Influencer marketing plans help trace and map the connections between ad budgets and revenue generated, like never before and thereby, offer the imperfect and fragile art of persuasion, a seemingly more stable business model.

Appearances can be deceptive though. As the numerous instances of fake followers and inflated ratings indicate, brands may end up chasing a rainbow even when they follow the numbers. The danger is that by hitching the brand to the jet trails of social media stars, they may not only end up with worthless stardust, but also lose the chance to mark their unique spot in the firmament.

Take the case of a popular cola brand. Sometime in the 1980s, it cultivated for itself the image of being a playful and even rebellious counter-culture experience. Cut to the present, an influencer-led social media strategy has the brand coopting everyone, from an octogenarian cricket lover to a movie star, to declare its “swag” — an attribute much aspired for and easily claimed by many, but one that does little to set a brand apart from its clones.

This is not to imply that following the herd is weak strategy. That has been a well-travelled and rewarding route in the advertising world. Even so, advertising has given brands many iconic moments, demonstrating a remarkable ability to dig nuance and memorable lines out of popular tropes.

Think of the Nike tagline (Just do it) and its trademarked “whoosh” or the Mastercard advertising line (For everything else there is Mastercard) that framed a relatable and aspirational moment to relay the brand story. Closer home, the Tata Steel advertising by J Walter Thompson in the early 1990s captured the group’s vision in a single line “We also make steel”. And the evergreen Amul girl, among others, successfully managed to create a space for their brands across time and age groups.

All of the above and more speak to us of the power of advertising. But when advertisers walk in the footsteps of celebrity, measuring impact with slippery television ratings and social media reach, they let that power slip out of their hands.