Who’s doing Influencer Marketing?

By Duncan Brown
duncan.brown@influencer50.com

Some of you may know that Nick and I are writing a book on Influencer Marketing. As far as we know, we’re writing the book on Influencer Marketing, since we can’t find anyone else that’s written on the subject (aside from academic references to influencers in relationship marketing).

We wanted to make the book as practical as possible – a show-you-how guide – rather than a theoretical exploration. So we have hunted for examples of organisations engaged in Influencer Marketing and found some interesting insights.

Firstly, organisations are beginning to think about influencers in a structured way. Terms like Influencer Relations are emerging, initially glorified collective nouns for PR plus AR. But it’s a start. Other firms, like SAP, Wipro and Atos Origin are using the term to reflect their broadening coverage of influencers beyond press and analysts. Still more firms are creating Influencer programs of activities within core marketing tasks, firms like Microsoft, HP and Xerox.

Secondly, firms are fairly reluctant to talk about their experiences. This is partly to do with the early stages of involvement in Influencer Marketing, with RoI still emerging. But mostly (firms tell us) it’s to do with perceived competitive advantage. The thinking goes like this: if we are now targeting the key influencers in our market, and our competitors are not, then we can gain mindshare amongst those influencers and shift the balance of influence in our favour.

Thirdly, the marketing professionals involved in Influencer Marketing are enthused by the opportunity to try something new. I’ve commented before on the lack of creativity and innovation in marketing, noting the irony. Some of this is caused by groupthink within the professional, but it is reinforced by senior management that still think advertising, direct mail and press relations are effective means of marketing.

Influencer Marketing introduces variety into the marketing mix, shakes up the status quo, and asks some awkward questions (“Just how many of your journalist contacts are really influential on decision makers?”).

This try-something-new approach carries more weight than you might otherwise suspect, so much so that we’ve convinced some to feature in the book as case studies. They demonstrate a broad cross-section of uses of Influencer Marketing concepts, with the solid core of orientation around the key influencers in their markets.

We’ll be announcing them at regular intervals until publication of the book in November, on the Infuse blog and the soon-to-be-launched book web site: www.influencermarketingbook.com.