Q.
Last year the panellists agreed that traditional relationships with press had been most impacted by Covid, but that the opportunities to work with influencers had made up for that. Is that still the case? What are the opportunities and challenges that persist there?
Mike Hendrixen, Vertigo 6: We worked even more closely with influencers than before. They actually formed the backbone of many campaigns. As global teams have their focus on the world’s biggest influencers, we as a local agency include relevant influencers in our territories. As the world has grown more digitally connected, it has become more manageable to work with wider selections of smaller influencers. The challenge is to be familiar with the content for each of these influencers and manage the content closely. Local knowledge is key here.
Kirsty Endfield, Swipe Right: Influencers have always played a huge part in our campaigns even before the pandemic and I can’t see this changing. They are opinion leaders and offer significant value when it comes to broadening awareness for our clients. The main challenge is finding the right influencer for your brand and while we do on occasion work with external influencer marketing agencies we’ve started to take on more of this in-house.
For example, our work with Coffee Stain and all of their titles such as Valheim is all earned content, not paid for, so that requires careful auditing of creators across key markets and offering first looks and creative content solutions. This is becoming more difficult to achieve as demand for unique content is so much higher and influencers are even more oversaturated. If you aren’t offering anything exclusive or completely unique then you should be prepared to part ways with a big chunk of budget. Even if you are spending budget on influencers, the main challenge you’re faced with is not being on brand. There is still a disconnect with how big franchises or licensors need to carefully manage their brands and what an influencer is willing to do. There is a fine art to juggling between the two.
Julia Herd, Five in a Boat: What is completely true is that relationships with press have been and continue to be impacted by Covid. We now have fewer editorial staff with bigger remits, and less money coming into publishing houses which has seen a trend in monetising editorial content to try to cover lost revenue and much longer planning cycles when pitching stories. This has not changed, and I don’t expect it to. What has changed is the “who” of media and the “how” of engagement. Many senior journalists at influential publications are building followers outside of their immediate readership or are moving to paid newsletters like Substack so there is a personal opinion versus a professional remit – in some cases journalists have been forced to resign from their positions as they are not towing the established narrative. We have non-traditional media becoming subject matter experts and therefore influencers in their own right. And then we have influencers with huge followings providing opinions on a world of different subjects that puts a whole new spin on the word journalist.
The opportunities and challenges are many.
From a positive point of view, the average consumer is now getting information from multiple sources which I would like to think is encouraging people to be a little more open-minded. The use of influencers as ambassadors is also forcing brands to re- evaluate their content strategies and really dig deep on how to engage their communities and drive long-term authenticity and relevance. More negatively, Covid-19 has demonstrated how the spread of misinformation, amplified on social media and on other digital platforms, was a huge threat to public health and made consumers question the truth. While this created massive opportunities for PR professionals specialising in issues and crisis management, it undermined many of our societal structures.
“The average consumer is now getting information from multiple sources which I would like to think is
encouraging people to be a little more open-minded” Julia Herd
Founder and managing director, Five in a Boat Febraury 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 45
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