Influencer marketing reached $13.8 billion in 2021 and will continue to grow throughout 2022. Influencer campaigns are popular because it is human nature that if you see somebody you love and are inspired by using a specific product, you will then want to purchase it. More and more we are seeing product campaigns that use a celebrity for endorsement and we then associate the product with that celebrity. A good example of this is Mo Farah’s campaign with Oral B, or Claudia Winkelman’s Head & Shoulders adverts. We remember these campaigns because of the celebrity endorsement; it is a good technique because we remember the brands and the campaigns when we hear anything about these celebrities.
Globally there are over 3.7 billion social media users and in the U.S alone 79% of people have some type of social media account. Social media is necessary for any company to be visible to their audience. Twitter and Instagram are great platforms to stir conversation about their product. A prime example of this is Aldi and the infamous Colin VS Cuthbert lawsuit. Aldi created talk and gained support from the public because of their use of social media during a copyright lawsuit with M&S. Creating memes and a hashtag was not necessarily serious but it created awareness around the subject and people could not stop talking about it and found themselves constantly checking the Aldi Twitter page.
Despite TikTok being predominantly popular amongst teens and young adults, the impact it has is unbelievable. An example that jumps out to me the most is the influence ‘BookTok’ has had on the reading community. If you are unfamiliar, how TikTok works is each person has a different algorithm and if you like a post that is related to a certain topic you will see more posts that are similar on your ‘For You’ page. So ‘BookTok’ has become popular to tag in posts related to books, this has spread and spread on the platform and bookstores have taken advantage of this growing buzz around reading. Waterstones and the Works have created sections in their stores labelled ‘BookTok Favourites’ and have displayed the books that are popular and most talked about on the app. For people who see this content on TikTok this is great advertising for bookstores because the sales in these specific popular books are huge because of TikTok and the sales are soaring as a result.
Something that can have a big impact on company products is sending celebrities and influencers your product. What often happens is these creators will show their gifted items on Instagram Stories or YouTube videos and try them out, their audience then sees this content and if the creator has a good opinion on the product, and more often than not, viewers will buy these products just because somebody they look up to has a good opinion of them.
