INFLUENCERS IN FOCUS
Industry faces scrutiny over transparency,
SHARING her passion for fashion was only meant to be a hobby for Sinéad Carroll, founder of the Irish Blogger Agency, not to sow the seeds for a range of businesses. In June 2013, Carroll launched Yummy Mummy Fashion and Lifestyle, a blog where the then banker offered her own style tips to followers, taking her love for the latest trends and sharing it online with the public.
It started to pick up, getting noticed by the public and brands alike. Sensing that more people were sharing their interests online, and gaining a following from brands and consumers, she began looking for other bloggers on the west coast of Ireland, setting up the Into The West Blogger Network.
“It was only blogging in 2013; I think SoSueMe [a blog set up by influencer and businesswoman Suzanne Jackson] had kicked off. It was a new concept, and I just started blogging about fashion and lifestyle. It really started to grow from there.
“I was made redundant [in 2015], and influencer marketing was only beginning to take off. I had a network of other bloggers and influencers at this stage and was getting emails all the time from brands asking me if I could connect them with the right people. The interest from companies wasn’t going away.”
After watching the network grow steadily, Carroll sensed there was a business opportunity emerging. In late 2015, she took a leap of faith and set up her own business, Mini Media, a digital marketing company. Nine months later, she created the Irish Blogger Agency, a dedicated agency for digital influencer marketing, with clear synergies to her marketing business.
Carroll hasn’t looked back since. Her agency formed a partnership with Swedish company Mikz Alliance in early 2018 to help develop a new online platform for the business, which made it easier to connect the right influencers with interested brands. She has 692 influencers on the platform, with a global reach of 7.1 million consumers.
The plan for the platform is to go global, helping the right Irish influencers connect with brands across the world. “I’m the only one in Ireland with access to this platform,” she said.
“I’m so passionate about influencer marketing. It is a lot of hard work to get it to the stage of a fully-fledged business, but we are absolutely getting there now.”
The rise of influencers, and their burgeoning relationship with businesses and advertising, has led to the industry becoming a hot-topic among marketing academics.
Dr Margaret-Anne Lawlor, a lecturer in marketing and marketing communications at Technological University Dublin, defines influencers as individuals who use social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, to present and share content about an area of interest.
Lawlor said these people become an influencer when they attract followers to their content, typically more than 100,000, appealing to consumers if the content is seen as “original, relatable, entertaining and accessible”.
“What is particularly important is the accessibility, which refers to how relatable they are seen to be. Many consumers will look to an influencer because they feel he or she is just like me.”
She added that these influencers become commercial influencers once they start receiving approaches by digital marketing agencies on behalf of brands, or from them directly. Influencer marketing is now becoming big business in Ireland. A report by Bord Bia shows that Irish brands are spending more on influencers than ever before, with the potential catalyst being the 2.3 million people here on social media.
The report said that Instagram is leading the way in Ireland, while other research from Business Insider suggests TikTok is the challenger.
While firm figures for Ireland aren’t available yet, research by Business Insider Intelligence estimates that the global influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to $15bn (€13.6bn) by 2022, up from as much as $8bn last year. According to Lawlor, the global market value was just $500m in 2015.
Businesses are prepared to splash out on individual posts from these influencers.
Marketing firm Izea found the average price of a sponsored photo on Instagram had soared from $134 in 2014 to $1,642 in 2019. Comparing 2018 to 2019, the average rate on the platform for a sponsored post rose by 44pc. Some top Irish influencers could be making as much as €3,000 for one Instagram post.
Despite the influencer marketing industry’s meteoric rise, storm clouds are beginning to form on the horizon, which threaten to spoil the picture-perfect posts of Irish influencers.
Lawlor notes that one of the big challenges for influencers in the years ahead will be brands setting out to prove return on investment. She also said that scepticism of influencers is becoming more prevalent, with audiences becoming more evaluative of their content.
With these challenges looming large, and watchdogs growling over transparency, some are worried about the continued sustainability of the influencer marketing industry.
Across the world, transparency in the industry is the crucial issue for brands, consumers and regulators. In July 2019, the World Federation of Advertisers published the results from a survey of 34 companies with combined global marketing spend of $59m, all of whom utilised influencers.
The most prevalent concern regarding influencer marketing for 64pc of respondents was ‘consumer trust and blurred lines’ between editorial and commercial content.
With transparency concerns noted by companies, influencer marketing has kept watchdogs busy, including the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI). According to Orla Twomey, the head of the ASAI, the watchdog received 60 complaints last year from consumers regarding influencers, up from zero in 2015. She noted, however, that only 16 complaints had gone to adjudication since 2017; two cases resulting in an issued statement with no formal finding and the rest being upheld.
Twomey said the ASAI became more aware of influencer marketing in 2016 as it grew in stature across the US, UK and Europe. It took an active interest in the developing industry, issuing Irish guidance around what makes a social media post a marketing communication for influencers.
“Our concern is that, when it is advertising, it is declared as such,” she said. “We don’t have a role in how influencer marketing develops, except in [helping it] be transparent, recognisable and compliant with the codes.”
The ASAI has had some high-profile incidents concerning influencers. In 2018, fashion blogger Rosie Connolly became the first influencer to receive a warning from the ASAI after publishing a filtered image showcasing Rimmel make-up.
Last year, model Rosanna Davison received a slap on the wrist for uploading a post deemed to have contained an affiliate link, which can garner a commission. Twomey feels that work in recent years, flagging what makes an influencer’s post an ad, has helped to lower the number of complaints received from consumers, as well as the industry becoming more engaged with companies and professional ad agencies.
“We have done so much work about the need to flag when it is an advert that more influencers are now doing that in a sustained way,” she said.
“A brand that wants to work with an influencer will sit down and set out what the influencer can and can’t do. The industry is maturing.”
The industry is also evolving, with many influencers turning their online personas into businesses. Bord Bia’s research notes that many are launching brands, either through new companies or in collaboration with established firms.
SoSueMe influencer and businesswoman Jackson, who has recently become a presenter on RTÉ Television, is a clear example.
Accounts filed for SanFran Cosmetics, a cosmetic product company which sells branded palettes and lashes, revealed profits had soared at the firm to more than €900,000 in 2018, up from €750,000 the previous year.
According to Anna Nolan, a content specialist at The Story Lab, part of London-headquartered advertising firm Dentsu Aegis Network, more large-scale influencers will transition into forming businesses. She also believes that over the next few years, more business owners will try to become social media influencers.
“They are all launching their own products to give themselves some longevity. I don’t know how long or how much you would want to consistently cover your life into your 50s or 60s. At some point, they’re going to want some privacy.”
Other Irish influencers who have started their own businesses include Lisa Jordan, known as Just Jordan online, launching a make-up brand called Luna. Influencer Jodie Wood also launched a jewellery range with Irish brand Crystals & Co.
From the business owner side, David and Stephen Flynn, who own flourishing food brand and café Happy Pear, have also taken to Instagram to promote their company, using similar influencer-style posts. The company recently struck a deal with Musgrave Group to develop and promote its products across Ireland.
Tracking return on investment is also becoming more critical for businesses. Nolan, whose company has used influencer marketing in campaigns with Glanbia and Diageo, admits that, in the early days, it was difficult to track the success of campaigns launched by influencers. She said companies were now getting creative with how to capture performance.
“We were running campaigns with influencers, and there were no parameters set for measuring the success of using them, so you couldn’t really justify using them again,” she said. “They’ve really worked at creating more trackable elements. We see a lot more affiliate links and swipe-ups which measure engagement rather than reach. [Engagement] is what is most important for businesses.”
TU Dublin academic Lawlor believes that the influencer marketing industry has proven it can offer a return on investment due to the sums of money being spent.
Referencing the $600m deal US make-up giant Coty made with Kylie Jenner for a majority stake in her Kylie make-up business, she said the industry had proven its value to big business.
“One of the proofs was this investment,” she said. “Why is that? It’s a strategic partnership, a win-win. Jenner will drive the creative side of the business — with input into communication activities — while Coty brings its manufacturing expertise.
“Equally, another benefit for Coty is it accessing Jenner’s social media following — currently 159 million — allowing Coty to bring its brands to a younger audience.”
While this deal is of a size unlikely to be replicated in Ireland, Lawlor believes it shows that the demand for this industry isn’t going anywhere — provided influencers respect their increasingly sceptical followers.
“The marketing interest is there, the consumer interest continues to prevail. But I think what’s interesting is that, as consumers become more aware of influencer marketing, they are equally becoming more evaluative and sceptical toward the concept,” she said. “Emerging academic research suggests that, even though younger audiences might be getting more sceptical of the phenomenon of influencer marketing, they may still have positive attitudes to the influencers they follow.
“Looking into the future, the successful influencers will be those that continue to respect their audience and their followers. They need to realise that consumers are giving their time to follow these people. If they’re transparent, then that will be appreciated by followers.”
Lawlor, Nolan and Carroll agree that the sector remains sustainable. The trio believe the industry is geared toward influencers who continually adapt, stay transparent and commit to honesty. Nolan also points to a trend toward micro-influencers, who typically have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers on social media, which she believes will become “more important” in Ireland.
“We’ve seen them being included in way more plans,” she said. “It’s not about scale anymore but the actual engagement rates. Someone with 5,000 followers may be more influential than someone with 200,000 followers — if they are loyal.”
The micro-influencer trend is something which the Irish Blogger Agency founder has capitalised on with her business.
Carroll said her platform had focused on micro-influencers, with positive results so far. During the final quarter of last year, Carroll was able to show that campaigns she had worked on had a return on investment of 50pc.
“The growth I’ve seen on my platform just proves that there is a large market for micro-influencers out there to promote brands,” she said. “Everything that has come to our network has been organic, so that is very good.”
Carroll is confident that influencer marketing is here to stay, and that brands will continue to invest the big bucks to get their message out to consumers in the best way they can.
“We have to be part of their marketing strategy, as influencers are in nearly every niche. There is no getting away from it,” she adds. “Brands are investing.”
‘Looking into the future, the successful influencers will be those that continue to respect their audience. They need to realise that consumers are giving their time’