A marketer’s dream? A new dawn for influencer marketing

By day two of Instagram hiding likes in Australia, Jules Lund had already felt compelled to post a “rant” smacking down the media for deriding influencers. After the news from Instagram broke, it naturally led to a wave of commentary, both from new and old media, on how it impacts creators, many gleeful the move would be the end of influencers.

The theory was that Instagram had taken away their source of power – likes – rendering them valueless to brands. Now, there would be no need for creators to post outrageously flawless gym shots or vapid brunch snaps every day.

These predictions were not only untrue, but also unfair, says Lund, the founder of influencer provider Tribe, and the result of a few bad actors in the influencer category who are picked up and amplified, tarnishing the image of all influencers.

“Influencers aren’t much different to any group [that] people enjoy bashing for their own enjoyment,” Lund says.

“There’s certain behaviour that frustrates anyone, and a lot of those influencers leave themselves open to that criticism. At times it’s constructive and reasonable, and I too would agree with it.”

Ridiculing influencers has been a trend not just in the public, but also within the marketing industry. For example, asking creatives and social media experts to review influencers’ Instagram posts for brands, led to comments labelling them as “embarrassing”. One creative turned down the opportunity to review them, saying they had nothing positive to say, while Glenn Dalton, ECD at Hardhat, boldly said he “hates most influencer marketing” for its inauthenticity.

Marketers too have downplayed the rise of influencers, or predicted their demise, none more prominent than the former Unilever CMO Keith Weed who said the industry needed to “take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever”.

Detractors’ view is that the meteoric rise of influencers has taken away the very thing that made them valuable – authenticity – or has been built on empty metrics, with transparency around reporting and measurement the biggest concern.

In addition to these challenges, influencers also take on the issues of social media, the environment in which they still live, which has big brand safety complications.

Following the Christchurch terrorist attack in March, both Facebook and YouTube were criticised globally for failing to promptly remove the livestream of the attack which left 51 people dead.

In another case in the US, a young man posted images of his murdered victim across social media.

While platforms can work to take such content down, the reality is that they can’t keep up with the volume of content being uploaded online every day, and brands that choose to advertise on social media risk appearing near “violent, abhorrent” material – nothing any marketer wants to associate their brand with.

BBC StoryWorks Australia boss Jelena Li warned that many marketers who rely on social media are stuck in short-term thinking. “Quality of content is one thing but if