Everyone Is In It For The Truth

Who am I? Why am I talking about influencers?

Before I present you with an analysis and a personal overview of a hot topic, I would like to introduce myself: maybe not as hot as this topic, but I am Nicole, a Brazilian girl living in The Netherlands doing a Master in Communication Science. I did my bachelor in advertising and marketing back in São Paulo, where I lived for 24 years before moving here. I feel that a 25 years old person does not have that much of life experience and sometimes knowledge to talk about many topics such as Physics, Economics, Chemistry, etc (especially when you choose to study Communication), but I can definitely say that as a millennial, I’m almost post-graduated in Social Media. That’s why I will talk about this topic in this post. 

Image source: Flickr

A study overview

In the past five to ten years, social media took over the scene. Everyone is on it, everyone talks about it and especially: everyone is influenced somehow by it. A recent study by Ganga S. Dhanesh⁎, Gaelle Duthler (2019), demonstrated some interesting facts about social media influencers, but also aroused some questions on me. The main focus of it is to examine the effects of awareness on sponsored posts (those that influencers are paid for) and the public response to that. Basically what they intended to find is how people react when they are impacted by an influencer post about something knowing that this wasn’t organic, but hired by an organization. 

The marketeer's eye disease

Image source: Flickr

My first instinct as a marketing professional is to think that most people wouldn’t react well when knowing that the post wasn’t made by the influencer’s desire to share something that they genuinely love. And that is an amazing proof of how marketeers can be blinded by their own perceptions. On the study mentioned above, it is possible to see that the general public seem to find an influencer more trustful when they are transparent about the nature of the post (sponsored or not) than when they don’t know about the truth behind it. Actually, when people perceive that post as an advertising instantaneously (because of disclosure), they are more likely to purchase or even spread the word about it (Word Of Mouth - WOM).  When you study and/or work with marketing, you are able to see further the post, behind the scenes of it. This way, you end up a bit skeptical of any type of advertising. But communication scientists proved me wrong: actually, an influencer that clearly states that some of her's/his' posts are sponsored, creates a positive relationship between them and their followers. In the end, the disclosure only allows the public to make a better decision and does not diminish their relationship with the influencer. 

Connecting the dots

A really interesting analysis between the Dhanesh and Duthler (2019) study and an article published by PR Week website on 2016, is that, as said by Stephanie McCratic CEO and founder of Acorn - an influencer’s agency-, nowadays people are aware of the commercial role of influencers. To make an organization’s sponsored post made by an influencer more reliable and effective, the effort has to be in finding among these online celebrities one that it is not directly connected to your product, but that it is possible to find a creative association with it, outside of the “niche box”. 

"If a tech blogger is writing about a 3D-fiber mascara, her followers are going to say, ‘She must really love this product to pause from her usual content and talk about it.’" - McCratic. 

This way, the efforts from organizations have to rapidly switch from just finding an influencer that has a direct correlation with your brand, but creatively find an association with someone that is not that obvious. Thus, the followers will believe that if that expert in cars is promoting a coffee brand (random example), that person must really like that coffee brand, even if she/he is being paid for that. It has all become about relevance and the relevance cannot be obvious as well. 

Nicole Rosset - 13/09/2019