The rise of social media influencers started around 2010 – 2011, and it has only grown since then. It is interesting to me that, according to our reading, a Major League sports team was one of the first places we saw these “Brand Ambassadors.” They would invite social media users to sit in a special part of the baseball stadium to watch, and post, about the game. The social media users would also have media passes in order to access information typically reserved for traditional journalists.
Today, you can’t scroll down Instagram without seeing a social media influencer posting an advertisement for a brand that they are affiliated with. According to Ste Davies, a digital consultant, there are more than 500,000 active influencers on Instagram alone and over 2 million companies use these influencers to advertise products.
These influencers can be used for anything from promoting a product to releasing information about the company. Influencers don’t have as many restrictions that companies do when it comes to copyright and talking about the products from competitors, those can just be treated as a negative review.
Recently, though, influencers are branching out and creating their own companies. For example, a lifestyle and fitness influencer, Taylor Chamberlain, had several brand deals with supplement and clothing companies. In the past two years, she has created her own clothing company and is no longer a brand ambassador for companies like GymShark. Instead, she is the owner of a company while still being an influencer. She gets to promote her own products rather than someone else’s.
This also gives her an interesting position when it comes to feedback. In the past, if someone had an issue with a product that she promoted, there is nothing that she can do. Now, though, she can take feedback from her customers and actually implement those in her products. This is a great thing, but only if the reviews are actually implemented.
Another influencer is having a bit of a problem with that. Grace Beverly is a former fitness influencer who created a clothing brand. This brand is based around sustainable activewear, which is made by recycled plastic bottles. At first, Grace’s loyal followers from her time as a fitness influencer made her brand successful by buying up all of the stock. But then the products did not meet expectations. They ripped after one wear, went completely sheer, and felt rough after one wash. The customers were not happy with this and left reviews that said as much. Instead of listening to her customers and followers, Grace’s company continues to create the faulty products and this will eventually cause her company problems.
These two influencers are in interesting positions because they created their brands after becoming “famous” on social media. Their followers feel like they should be listened to, because they feel like they know the influencers on a more personal level.
Some influencers are also utilizing crowdsourcing for their brands. Chamberlain has just recently, within the past few days, released information on a competition for her followers to become a brand ambassador for her clothing line, Balance Athletica. This competition asks social media users to upload a video of themselves answering the question “Why do you want to be a Balance Leader?” The winner will get to experience being a brand ambassador for Balance, including a trip to the headquarters, a photo and video shoot, and free items from the brand. Crowdsourcing like this is a great way to get people interested in your company. It is giving people a chance to feel like they are a part of the company in a way that is bigger than just buying the products. Today, February 15th, is the second day of the “Leader Search” and there are already over 1,000 posts of people trying to win.
Companies use brand ambassadors every day. I have noticed that brand ambassadors are especially popular in college towns. Brands like Serengetee and University Tees have both use college students to promote their products. Today, more and more brands are using crowdsourcing as a way to select brand ambassadors. Just like Balance is doing now, the luxury handbag brand, Kelly Wynne, has a competition each year at colleges around the country to become a “campus rep.” This campus rep is charged with getting people interested with the brand at their respective campus, especially during football season. The campus rep chooses one person each week during football season to carry the clear “Mingle Mingle Mini” (a stadium approved bag) in their school’s colors.
Another brand, Fashion Nova, has arranged its business model around crowdsourcing on social media. They take more expensive items that are popular with larger social media influencers and create lower cost copies. According to the website “Digital Initiative,” it takes Fashion Nova 24 hours to “create a prototype, photograph it on model and post it online.” They are able to create cheap copies of expensive items for a price ranging from $10 to $50. They also rely on thousands of “micro-influencers,” or social media influencers who have a smaller online following, who post photos of themselves wearing Fashion Nova clothing ang tag the brand in their posts. According to the article, “… anybody can dress like the Kardashian-Jenner and be Insta-famous.” There are few issues with the Fashion Nova business model, though. The main one being intellectual property infringement. But, as of right now, the consumers don’t seem to care about that. They just care about being able to dress like their favorite influencers without having to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do so.
I think we have so much more to come when it comes to the marriage of crowdsourcing and social media influencers. Companies are beginning to see the impact that social media influencers can have on sales. They are starting to see the benefit of creating Instagram competitions using influencers as well. One Instagram influencer, Brighton Keller, regularly has sponsored contests or giveaways on her channel. Right now, she is giving away a supplement to the person who wins. To enter, all you have to do is like and comment on all of the photos that she has posted between certain days answering the question in the post.
It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next few months to years. Do you see consumers getting burnt out on influencers and sponsored posts, or do you think we are only at the beginning?
CM. (n.d.). Fashion Nova, The Rise of an Instagram Based Crowdsourcing and Marketing Model. Retrieved from https://digital.hbs.ude/platform-digit/submission/fashion-nova-the-rise-of-an-instagram-based-crowdsourcing-and-marketing-model/
Davies, S. (2019, November 11). 18 Instagram Influencer Marketing Stats You Need to Know. Retrieved from https://www.stedavies.com/instagram-influencer-marketing-stats/
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