Influencer

The Science Behind Swaying Others

T. Bettina Cornwell, Helen Katz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000317862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Marketing digital

The influential are no longer only those with celebrity status – but until now there has been no authoritative resource on the theory and practice of influencer marketing. This book will educate and inspire decision makers, researchers, students, and influencers themselves.

Diving deeper than the many "how-to" books on the influencer phenomenon, this book brings in frameworks from marketing, sociology, psychology, and communication studies to redefine the influencer as a persona (related to a person, group of people, or organization) that possesses greater than average sway over others. Cornwell and Katz go on to:

• introduce the influencers, macro and nano, authentic and inauthentic, ascending and fading;

• consider their relationship to brands in the marketing ecosystem, along with regulations that set limits on influencer marketing;

• describe how influence is measured and evaluated and look into the future; and

• bring together the latest research on influencer marketing and organize it for the reader.

The book serves both those who want to understand the science behind influencer marketing and those who want to most effectively employ influencers in brand strategy. Instructors, students, and professionals will appreciate international examples from multiple industries applying theories to the real world.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

1
INTRODUCTION TO INFLUENCERS

It is 7 am on a Monday morning. Your phone alarm beeps to wake you up. You lie in the bed and check your social media accounts… Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Pretty soon, you realize it is 7:30 am and you’ll be late to work if you don’t hurry. Once out the door, you pop in your Air Pods and listen to your Spotify playlist, which helps you ignore the crowded subway. During the day in the office, you peek pretty regularly at your social media apps on the phone to make sure you are keeping up with the news, as well as your friends’ posts. A daily news podcast accompanies you home, and after a quick ready-to-eat dinner, you settle down to watch your new favorite streamed show on Hulu or Amazon Prime Video or Netflix. That also gives you some time to respond to some posts and text friends and family about the next weekend’s plans. Before you turn out the lights, you watch a few funny BuzzFeed and TikTok videos and then listen to your meditation app, the combination of which leaves you relaxed and ready to sleep.

Sounds familiar at all?

Now let’s rewind, and think about that day when you were likely exposed to brand messages from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and maybe Spotify as well (unless you shelled out for premium, ad-free music). Also think about the posters in subway platforms, trains, escalator; elevator ads in the office; podcast sponsors; Hulu ads before and during your favorite programs; brand mentions in Netflix content; BuzzFeed, and, last but not the least, TikTok.

The estimates of how many ads or brand messages an average consumer is exposed to on a daily basis vary tremendously. Some say it is as high as 3,000 times a day! What all these marketers want to do is try to influence you, as the consumer, in some way or other—to be aware of their product, prefer it, want it (and search for it), and to talk about it with others. Ultimately, they want you to buy it and use it (and buy it again). This notion of influence is not new. It was what Lydia Pinkham’s Compound was trying to do in some of the earliest newspaper ad messages in the 1870s. It was why Coca-Cola became an official Olympics sponsor starting in 1928. And it was what Procter & Gamble’s intent was in sponsoring the first television soap operas in the 1940s.

Today’s version of influence is, in many ways, very different. Celebrities, like Kim Kardashian, use their fame and personality to influence millions of people to buy FitTea and SugarBearHair products. Regular people, like Gretchen Geraghty, are helping brands such as CVS Pharmacy, Fabletics, and Care/of Vitamins by using their influence to persuade millions like them of the best health and wellness products. During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, even organizations became influencers. The World Health Organization (WHO) created and distributed numerous videos encouraging people to wash their hands and explaining how to do it effectively, garnering millions of followers and likes in the process. Here, we begin our discussion with influencers as defined by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association: “A person or group of people who possess greater than average potential to influence due to attributes such as frequency of communication, personal persuasiveness or size of and centrality to a social network, among others.”¹

Why do they matter? How are influencers any different from earlier methods used to persuade customers to buy a certain brand of toothpaste or cereal or car? How have influencers altered the relationship between consumers and the brands they buy or the media they use? This chapter considers the history of influencer marketing. While it seems like a new phenomenon, its roots can in fact be traced back several decades.

Once we establish the foundations of influencer marketing, we dive deeper into the role of influencers in the broader marketing ecosystem (Chapter 2), investigate the boundaries between endorsers and influencers (Chapter 3), explore the process model for influencers (Chapter 4), examine the fledgling regulatory system surrounding influencer marketing (Chapter 5), note barriers and challenges to consider (Chapter 6), explain how influence can be measured (Chapter 7), and, finally, look at what the future holds for influencer marketing (Chapter 8).

The Foundations of Influencer Marketing

Before there was influencer marketing, brands relied on two key forms of external motivation to persuade consumers to buy their products. The first was celebrity marketing, and the second was word of mouth. Celebrity marketing, as noted earlier, dates back many decades. The idea that people respond positively to a product or service if someone famous talks about it is founded on plenty of psychological research on the power of authority in persuasion.²

Newspapers in the early 20th century featured famous sports figures such as Cy Young and Babe Ruth promoting tobacco products and actress Lilly Langtry endorsing Pears soap. The phenomenon continued throughout the 20th century, led largely by the big tobacco companies that hired a slew of famous actors and actresses, from Ronald Reagan and Marlene Dietrich to Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, to promote their cigarettes. With the growth of radio, these same companies started to sponsor programs, such as the Lucky Strike Dance Hour, during which radio listeners heard the brand mentioned nearly every 30 seconds!

While the early years of television were more about putting the brand name in the program title, such as Kraft Television Theater or Colgate Comedy Hour, it was not long before celebrities were appearing on the brands’ behalf in 60-second TV commercials. Lucille Ball appeared in ads for Summerettes shoes, Rita Hayworth promoted Max Factor cosmetics, and John Cameron Swayze was seen in ads for Timex watches. During the last several decades of the 20th century, it was hard to watch TV without seeing famous faces appear during the commercial breaks, such as those of Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, or Muhammad Ali. The list seemed endless.

While brands have often turned to celebrities to support their message and promote their image in advertisements, they have also always been eager to generate positive word of mouth from regular individuals. The notion that people respond more positively to things that have been endorsed by friends and family has a lengthy heritage in the psychological literature.³ Informally, companies have long known that when customers had a positive experience and spoke to others about it, their businesses grew. The growth of word-of-mouth marketing, however, is said to have formally started in the 1970s, thanks to a psychologist named George Silverman, who realized while conducting focus groups with physicians that the positive opinions of one doctor helped change the opinions of the others.⁴

It is inherently difficult for brands to force consumers to talk about them positively, so some of the best examples have occurred when the company did little to create the buzz (at least initially). Companies such as Apple, Starbucks, and Zappos have all grown their businesses, in part, by getting their satisfied customers to not only remain loyal to them but also speak favorably about them to others. One of the best examples of the power of word of mouth, however, is in the nonprofit world. Here, the charity working to find a cure for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) created an enormous phenomenon, both online and offline, in what became known as the Ice Bucket Challenge.⁵ People were challenged by friends to dump a bucket of ice water over their heads within 24 hours (and share online) or else donate $1 to the ALS Foundation. The campaign raised more than $100 million in donations, along with a huge enhancement in the awareness of the disease.

That campaign not only marked the enormous power of word-of-mouth marketing (and, to a lesser extent, the power of celebrity endorsers as many famous people joined in), but more importantly, it also demonstrated the critical importance of the Internet and social media in driving the success of a brand.

The subsequent rise of influencer marketing is in fact inextricably linked to the phenomenon of sharing, and, to some degree, liking. Shared information such as word-of-mouth communication has always been of interest in marketing⁶ and consumer behavior.⁷ The Internet, however, has amplified the number of individuals any one person might reach. “Liking” a brand by clicking an icon of approval (e.g., a heart or smiling face) has allowed marketers to gauge affinity for their brand or brand-related communications.⁸

It is quite staggering to consider how large the sharing phenomenon is, with more than 200 million people in the U.S. using social networks, a number that gets magnified rapidly when global usage is considered, rising to nearly 3 billion. Facebook alone is estimated to have 1.7 billion users around the world, with both Instagram and WeChat moving toward 1 billion each. According to the survey company GlobalWebIndex, about one-quarter of social media users say they turn to these outlets in order “to share my opinion,” while about the same percentage do so because “many of my friends are on them.”⁹ This combination perhaps helps to explain the growth of influencer marketing, which we explore further in Chapter 2.

Definitional Development

In order to discuss “influencer marketing,” we need to start with a definition of marketing. This exploration of definitions of marketing also leads to a new, slightly different definition of influencer. The American Marketing Association (AMA) explains that “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”¹⁰

This definition of marketing has become broad-based and more inclusive over time. Importantly, marketing is for nonprofit as well as for-profit organizations, products, as well as ideas, and can be employed for good as well as evil (e.g., in propaganda). It can be employed in the health sector to encourage people to get a vaccine, in charities to gain donation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction to Influencers
• 2 Influencers in the Marketing Ecosystem
• 3 Endorsers and Influencers Clarifying the Boundaries
• 4 Who Are the Influencers?
• 5 How Influencers Are Regulated
• 6 Barriers and Challenges to Consider
• 7 How Influence Is Measured and Evaluated
• 8 The Future for Influencers
• Index