Abstract:
Instagram star Kylie Jenner is at the
center of what we can call the Influencer marketing strategy. People uses
social media (SM) to create network and be friend with their offline friends,
family and relatives. But some are now using them to create bigger network of
people. SM becomes thus a poll of people corporates can pick. Marketing has
changed with the advent of social media influencers. Those people are instrument
for business; they work as business advocate to sell their products. And
because they are more trust-worthy than advertising on TV, to business, this
strategy is a precious stone. The relation between influencers and corporate is
like a heart pumping blood in and out; Influencers are pumping people from
corporate in their fanbase, and corporate are pumping people from influencers
in as customers.
Introduction:
Instagram lately is becoming one of the major online platforms for marketing. With features like promotion of posts, for only $1 per day to $30,000 over 30 days, Instagram ensures that the reach of any post increases consequently. Instagram has brought a new era in the world of business and fame. In the following work, we will study how Instagram has changed the face of marketing for many companies with the phenomenon known as Influencers. We will examine Kylie Jenner as one of the top influencers of the platform. Many corporates are adopting the influencer marketing method to maximize their returns. But not only on Instagram, but on different SM platforms; but for this paper, the focus will be on Instagram.
Development:
Danah & Nicole define Social Media as being a “web‐based services that
allow individuals to construct a public or semi‐public profile within a bounded
system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and
view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the
system.” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) They define SM as being services, and for
being so, corporates can use them to market their products. What makes SM
unique is that it allows us to showcase and exploit our network of people and
not only be friends with strangers. This network of people is what corporate
companies seek for their marketing. SM platforms are ideal tools for eWOM
(electronic word of mouth), because consumers generate and spread brand related
information to their friends, peers, and other acquaintances. (Khan, 2018) One
2018 report from Global Web Index estimates that, on average, social media
users spend 2 hours and 22 minutes online each day globally. (Social Buddy,
2019) With this number of users present online, corporates have a great poll of
people to which they deliver their promotion as compared to posters for
example.
People are now more incline to seek online review for information regarding products
and services. But not from anybody; from trusted people. A global survey among
28,000 internet respondents showed that only about 46% of participants reported
trusting traditional advertising, whereas 92% reported trusting word-of-mouth
from friends and family and 70% reported trusting online consumer reviews. (Dijkmans,
Kerkhof & Beukeboom, 2015) These figures show how people interact with corporate
now. People trust the advice of those people called influencers. This has forced
companies to change their marketing strategy. Some reasons for companies to use
social media are enhancing trustworthiness, brand attitude, and customer
commitment. One of the reasons why corporate reputation is so important is a
key parameter in the supplier selection process by potential customers. Associating
with someone like Kylie Jenner, will ensure a corporate to have trusted reviews
of their product or service. Consumers would prefer a company with a positive reputation
and the price of their products won’t matter. And to ensure a positive
reputation, associating with an influencer is the innovative way now. It is some
kind of brand advocacy. Second, a positive corporate reputation can increase the
market share, stand-in customer loyalty and which in the end renders higher
market value. Lastly, a positive reputation increases stakeholders’ disposition
to invest in a company, since it enables the company to attract higher quality
employees and to gain better returns. (Dijkmans, Kerkhof & Beukeboom, 2015)
A company must maximize their engagement level with their customers. This is one
of the objectives of a corporate to be online.
Social media has weaponized fame to the point that a real estate mogul can be
president and a 20-year-old from a family “famous for being famous”
can approach billionaire status by monetizing that to the extreme. (Robehmed,
2018) Though SM was first made to network people, it has become a weapon in the
hand of corporate to do marketing and sell their products. But not only corporate
but individuals also. The line of Anastasia Beverly Hills exploded when it
reportedly joined Instagram in 2013 and began sending influencers free makeup
to publicize the brand. Sending influencers product to advertise is mostly how
companies are going to as part of their marketing. Instagram’s potential as a
marketing tool for corporate use is largely based on the mobile-friendly nature
of the application and the highly engaged community Instagram claims as a
network. (Harmer, 2015) Though people can access Instagram on PC or laptop, the
most common mean to access it is via a smartphone which is permanently with anybody
in their pocket, purse or hand. For corporate this mean that their contents are
always readily available in the hand of potential customers. At any moment, someone
can swipe over the advertising of Kylie video about her lipstick for example,
thus rendering this person a potential customer for Kylie. Those Influencers
must also know how to create good content.
With a growing number of active users on
Instagram, this means that most of the Instagram community is looking for content
to consume. (Harmer, 2015) Corporate people who run the marketing of a company
on Instagram must know how to use its aesthetic style to the fullest to grab
its target audience attention. Corporate should share images of their
organization during a workday, or from a conference so that Instagram users can
clench a realistic feel of what it means to be a part of your organization. Companies
which have a set and developed Instagram community use advanced marketing
strategies, such as Instagram takeovers and event marketing. (Harmer, 2015) Humanizing
the company posts is another strategy that is used to charm the audience. Showing
behind the scenes of productions or people within the company are examples. Corporate
have multiple ways to make their posts more powerful and having the face of an
influencer just render the marketing another level. This strategy is the
addition of two community/network; the business community and the influencer
community and it is most of the time the influencer that has a bigger community
and the corporate sucking up people form it.
Finnish Influencer marketing company “PING Helsinki” has one of the best definition
of influencers. He defines influencers as “those who keep a blog, or post their
opinions on YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram or other social media channels. They
can be for example athletes or artists among many other things, but the
essential element is that they have their own community in SM and they have the
willingness to produce sponsored and professionally produced content for their
followers.” (Biaudet, 2017) Influencer marketing is an exciting phenomenon and
both a very powerful and leading instrument to use when marketing. (Biaudet,
2017) People who were once bloggers are now named Influencers. People trust those
people opinion about a product or service more because they seem more. However,
those bloggers have now shift from typical blog page to Instagram. 2 years ago,
I participated in a marketing campaign for Subway; they call out for people
having 3k or more followers on Instagram in the island to be part of the campaign
and thus expanding their presence on Instagram. (Favory, 2017)
According to Technorati Media’s 2013
Digital Influence report, 65 % of corporations are participating in influencer-based
marketing. According to the same study 86 % of influencer’s are bloggers. (Biaudet,
2017) Those influencers are thus gaining recognition on Instagram for
associating with a company which have a settle audience based and inversely. In
Biaudet study, he stated that Brown and Hayes define an Influencer as “A third party
who significantly shapes the customer’s purchasing decision but may ever be
accountable for it.” (Biaudet, 2017) Those people use their power to influence
people opinion and decision making to sell a particular product to the extent
to sometime faking liking a particular for the sake of money. Instagram is just
one platform where influencers play on.
Following is a list of influencers in their related field of expertise; Food
influencer Jamie Oliver (6.7 million followers) top the ranking followed by Brad
Lau (620k followers) and Megan Gilmore (70.9k followers). As for travel
infleuncers, we have Annette White (99.2k followers), Matthew Karsten (153k
followers) or The Points Guy (115k followers). Following are influencers for
fashion and style like Alexa Chung (3.1 million followers), Julia Hengel (1.2
million followers) or Oscar Cobo (162k followers). For beauty we have Michelle
Phan (2 million followers) or Huda Kattan (28.2 million followers). (Forsey,
2019) Those people are expert in their field, and they are solicited because of
that and because of the power they have over people. They can sell you pretty anything.
In a study, Seungbae Kim and some others found that, firstly, influencers tend
to have many fans, who are potential consumers of brands, whereas they tend to
follow popular and influential people. And that influencers with same occupations
tend to have more reciprocal influencers, more interactions, and more common
followers, compare to influencers with different occupations. (Kim, Han, Yoo
& Gerla, 2017)
Example:
Kylie Jenner has a following of over 111 million on Instagram alone and each
one of her sponsored posts is valued at $1 million. This is more than Selena
Gomez or even Christiano Ronaldo makes for a post. (Ma, 2018) At only 21 years
old, Kylie Jenner has one of most fruitful relationship between her company; Kylie
Cosmetics and SM. She has sold for over $630 million worth of makeup since,
including an estimated $330 million in 2017. (Robehmed, 2018) Her fortune, as well
as for the other members of her family come from one place; SM platforms. “Social
media is an amazing platform,” Jenner says. “I have such easy access
to my fans and my customers.” (Robehmed, 2018) What all the Jenner do is influence
her social media following to gain money. Announcing new products and testing
them on Instagram or Snapchat is what she does mostly every day. Her audience
is targeted with over 110 million followers on Instagram and millions more on
Snapchat, and many of them are young women and girls. This type of marketing is
free of cost and very effective. Leveraging fame to sell her products, Kylie is
one of the best at doing so. 175 million-plus who follow her across Snapchat,
Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. (Robehmed, 2019) The Kardashian-Jenner empire
is a massive one on Instagram. (See picture 1) Kylie is one of the top influencers
in the market.
The Fyre Festival disaster where many Instagram models and influencers were paid to promote the event, which ended up being a flop. It was finally revealed that the directors were trying to secure $25 million from investors. Some names that was in case are: Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Kendall Jenner and much more. (Soen, 2019) Huda Kattan, 34 is also in the list of influencers who makes millions because of her presence on Instagram. With an estimated net worth of $550 million, she started Huda Beauty in 2013, with 26 million or more Instagram followers. (Robehmed, 2018) This is an example where using Influencers failed. It was not the influencers fault, but we can see how they are used to benefit others; though sometimes for bad reasons.
Conclusion:
To sum up, Instagram and other social medias are weapons for marketers and influencers the soldiers for corporates. Social medias are a poll of millions of people that can be reach at the end of their fingertip. Influencers are like the maestro in this marvel that is SM marketing. They lead people like puppet to buy certain products. Kylie is just an example of what this strategy can render, a billionaire.
Reference list:
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a Marketing Tool :The process of creating an Influencer Marketing Campaign on
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Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History,
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Dijkmans, C., Kerkhof, P., & Beukeboom, C. (2015). A Stage to Engage:
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(Robehmed, 2018)
Hi JFavory,
Thanks for the read. It gave a detailed and insightful look into the world of marketing through influencers. As you mentioned, influencer marketing is an exciting phenomenon that is a super powerful and leading instrument to use in current marketing strategies.
I completely agree with this and loved your use of examples to back up this statement. I was wondering your opinion however on the ethics behind this type of marketing. When we see an advertisement on television we know that this is set out to try and make the consumer make a purchase, however with influencers we often don’t know this is a paid promotional post. This can mean many people buy a product because they truly believe that the influencer promoting it also loves that product. As you mentioned this can be a great marketing tool, but do you think brands are being ethically responsible when using it?
Thanks again for a great read, and I look forward to hearing your response.
Hi AMcAuliffe,
Thanks for the reply, and regarding the ethical part of this practice, it is true that sometimes it can be misleading. Some Influencers can be paid thousands to promote a shitty product and people who trust those Influencers would buy the product. Or even for illegal products, it can happen that an Influencer promote it. However, most of the Influencers tend to be clean and clear when promoting a product or service.
Waiting for your response.
A strong argument, especially regarding the high influence that the Kardashian family has as a marketing tool for brands and companies on social media.
The marketing world has indeed changed with social media and the rise of earned, paid, owned and shared media. Businesses pay celebrities and influencers to post content about their brand thus, they gain as a business from doing so. In relation to earned media (publicity gained without paying anyone), I think celebrities when they post something without sponsorship are not trusted by society. Although earned media does benefit businesses, consumers are so used to seeing celebs used as marketers in case such as tv adverts, magazine adverts etc… that when their content is not sponsored they hold a sense of distrust towards it.
Also, I think that influencers are more powerful than celebrities when it comes to digital marketing because it is normal to associate celebs with paid endorsemants and sponsorships (as said above) rather than influencers, who people follow because they enjoy their content. So a sense of trust for an influencers likes on a product seems more powerful. Specifically when influencers post content involving earned media, I feel as though it is more trustworthy than when a celebrity does.
Hello SMallaber,
Thanks for your comment, i appreciate your interpretation between Influencers and Celebrities. Trust is earned and i believe that Influencers earned the trust people put upon them. They are more genuine and down to earth when “selling”/ advertising a product or service. People already know how celebrities are used in advertising, so the level of trust can be lower as compared to Influencers.
I totally agree with you. We can also talk in the end of an era. The era of Big celebrities is coming to an end. YouTube and Instagram are making anyone an instrument for advertising. We are in the era of Influencers.
Hello JFavory,
This is a very nice paper which gives a good insight about how the marketing of a product is now made online via influencers. However, I would like to see and understand better who the target audience is. As for me, Instagram has a rather young audience and thus is it why online marketing works that well? Influncers on IG promotes ‘utopia’ and the products that comes with it; slim tea etc.. As the audience on social media platforms are teenagers and young adults (other age range also are online) do they also influnce bad behaviour among teenagers who would do anything to look like their idols.
I will be looking for your response! And thank you for this view on online marketing!
Hello MLegeant,
Thanks for your comment. To answer your question, i will say that “yes”, the target market on Instagram is rather young people. However, i believe it depends that the target market depends on the product being advertise and the Influencer chosen to advertise it. Not all Influencers have followers under 25 or 18 years old. Others might have exclusively people over 25 or 30 years old.
Concerning the “bad behavior” you mentioned, i think it has always been present. People have always wanted to be like their model, it that case, the Influencers. It started with Barbie doll, and now it is James Charles. So i won’t say that it is “bad behavior”.
Hi JFavory,
An great topic of discussion here, and one I have a lot of interest in.
I think you summarise influencer marketing well, and the key parts that are included to make this successful. However, I would like to ask what you think the line between influencer and celebrity are? As often in my previous research I have come across definitions that seperate the two and therefore place a number of your examples in the the celebrity rather than influencer category.
I look forward to your response!
Sophie
Hi SFielding,
Thanks for your comment, you raised a good question there. So, i believe that what separate an Influender and a celebrity are money and followers. As you know, celebrities are paid to advertise a product; sometimes it can be with millions of dollars. An Influencer won’t be paid that much to advertise a product. Also, an Influencer will be chosen in regards to the number of followers he/she have.
Obviously, there are some Influencers who are considered as celebrities and inversely.
Hi JFavory,
This conference paper contained good insight on how influencers can market a certain product to their fans and overturn a large amount of money in the process. I was just wondering what your thoughts are on Kylie Jenner being a ‘self-made’ millionaire? In my opinion, the word ‘self-made’ is used quite loosely due to fact Kylie was brought up in a wealthy family .
I would love to hear your opinion on this
Muhammad
Hi MHanafi
Thanks for the comment. So, my opinion of Kylie Jenner being a “self-made” millionaire is that she was just born with a golden spoon in her mouth. Like you said she was brought up in a wealthy family. From what i have read, it is not totally “self-made”; she has got the help of her parents and her surrounding to brought her business to life. And the million she has made is justify, it is truly her who made out millions with her beauty products.
Very interesting. I must admit that before, I never really knew what the job of an influencer truly was. Now though, I have a better idea of what it entails and the massive impact it is getting in the marketing and advertising industries; especially considering the evolution of the digital era and social media. Overall, nice instructive article!
So you’ve talked about inflencers in the business perspective. Aren’t influencers a double-edged sword to companies however? Any mishap with a product, for e.g: Comestics, can also lead the influencer to initiate a sense a rebellion by the community willingly or unwillingly. And the larger the community, the larger the risk. What are your views towards this?
Hello Daryl,
Thanks for your comment first. Yes some influencers are double-edge swords. Some might just be doing advertising online for the money, though they might be selling crappy products. If the right amount of money is put in the table, some might test a “bad” product in a live on Instagram, saying that it is the “best” product they might have ever used. This is very dangerous as it is playing with the trust of their followers. And when it comes to the size of the community, it is obvious that the risk of a backlash increases.
Hi JFavory,
I liked your paper and the examples that you used to back up your statement. It is true that the Kardashian/Jenner family is the most influential family on Instagram. Especially Kylie who is building an empire on social media by promoting her make up products and skincare brand online while her sisters Kim and Chloe use social media platforms to promote their products which are very expensive. Do you think that they genuinely care and think about their fans when they bring out new products or is it just an attempt at gaining customers and making money?
Regards,
Pooja.
Hello PGhina,
Thanks for your comment and to answer your question, i believe it is sometimes only for marketing purposes (to make money) and sometimes to please the fans.
Hello J Favory,
I really enjoyed reading your paper. I am sure that influences can make a great impact on social media marketing. I understand there are people who are paid to be influencers online or people who are ‘rich’ enough to influence others. But what about ‘normal’ people who build a great community online and became really popular online? Don’t you think by becoming influencers, they have to abide to rules of the brand they work for, and forget about their real goals and opinions online?
Thanks for your comment DContance
I personally think that being an influencers may them be rich or poor, it is the way they create that trust with their community that counts more. Also there are “rules” that companies the influencers are working with must abide to, it might not always be the same rules. But they must not forget their real goals online.
Thank you for your response J Favory,
What I meant about the rules is that there influencers who are really assessing products by their own and other who are biased because they are abiding to brand. Sometimes, brands have great powers on an influencer’s account. What happens if they want to share their real opinions on their account and stop working with brands? What about their reputation and the trust of the followers who only liked the page because of the brand?
Hello DConstance,
Thanks for your reply. I believe that most brand want to have a positive outcome from working with an influencer, so they would work together to produce that positive image. Obviously some influencers might want to produce their own content and the result will be biased. Moreover, If a brand want to keep an standard image, they would seek Influencers who would fit their standard. I also believe that if people want to keep a decent reputation, they will work with brands that will not tear their reputation down.