A look into the GenZ’s and their use of Influencers

 The next generation of consumers is growing up! 

 

There is an estimated 2 billion GenZ’s (born between 1996/7 and 2010/12 - depending on which research document you follow) that are starting to enter the work force and will dominate the consumer market over the next few years.  They have lived through a pandemic which has shaped their thinking, likes, dislikes and general characteristics.  They are unique and we better all get our thinking right as to how we are going to attract this powerful customer.

 

By now their predecessors, the Millenials, are well established and financially independent.  GenZ’s are living through this crazy, uncertain and changing world which is in lockdown one minute, open the next only to be locked down again.  As we are shaped by our reality, and things that happen in our world, this becomes ingrained into our philosophy and the GenZ’s are showing signs of great resilience, strength of mind, agility, ability to make quick decisions while not afraid of change.    

 

Having plenty of GenZ influence in my life currently, I cannot stress more their need for authenticity.  Those as young at 8 years old can smell ‘fake’ a mile off!  And those 8 years old also want to consume from a brand that gives back to communities. They are also completely dedicated to their influencers.  I have not come across a single GenZ that does not have their favourite list of influencers that they religiously follow.

 

The recent statistics indicated that this maturing generation’s spending power exceeds $600 billion, which includes direct and indirect buying (the influence they have on their parents)

 

What also makes them unique is the fact that they were born into the world of advancing internet, and their brains are completely wired for technology.  They understand how it works and if they come across a tech problem, their mind can solve this within minutes.  Whereas the Baby Boomers and Gen X’s are often weary of all the apps around, the GenZ will gaze at us in disbelief as on their phone they will have 30 to 40 apps that they make regular use of.

 

It is the influencers that I am most interested in.  One of the new buzz words is ‘filter fatigue’, a term used to explain how the GenZ’s flick through their social media platforms quickly and distrust and discard with disdain all the unrealistic once-off brand mentions from influencers.  They know their influencers well and know very well what the person likes and dislikes, and a sudden promotion of something out of character is seen as the person jumping on the billion-dollar bandwagon to earn a quick buck.   This is just out of order!

 

In the US alone the influencer industry is estimated to exceed 4 Billion dollars in 2022.  It is interesting to know that GenZ’s will trust friends and family more than influencers, and celebrities and social media stars they trust even less.   All this is due to their filter fatigue and distrust of advertising motives.

 

So what does this mean?

 

Enter the nano-influencer. The regular person without the massive following but having enough following to be seen as real.  Their posts are important and show their everyday life without the enhancing apps that change their appearance and everything else about them.    In a recent research by Student Beans, 82% of GenZ’s in the US and UK said they don’t trust traditional influencers to give an honest opinion on a brand or product. 

 

There are a myriad of nano-influencers varying in ages from a young pre-teen to a grandparent.  Many of them are young leaders, such as university or college graduates, sports fanatics, those in the sciences, gamers and so forth.  The Student beans survey found that 45% of GenZ’s followed nano-influencers with 5 000 to 20 000 followers and found them as the most trustworthy.  This went down to 30% who trusted those between 20 000 and 100 000, 15% only trusted those with 100 000 to 1 Million and only 10% trusted anyone with over 1 million followers.

 

I have a couple of young early 20 GenZ’s in the family, whose budgets are limited, yet health, wellness and beauty are important.  They follow nano-influencers that use make up and other products that are easily accessible and can be bought within their budget.  They also want to follow influencers that promote themselves flaws and all.  They also sniff out all the giveaways and discounts as this directly impacts their budget!  They might follow celebrities and will see the sudden promotion of products, but they will not rush out and buy the product.   

 

Then we get the younger GenZ’s.  They follow completely different influencers, but the general feeling is exactly the same.  This category of consumer are influenced by their peers so they will follow the high profile influencers, such as YouTuber, Mr Beast, but they are also disparaging about anything that is not authentic.  Many a time I have listened to the youngsters chatting about posts that they found ‘completely fake’.  Sometimes I wonder if they are looking for fake posts!

 

I asked an 11 year-old, Cole,  why he loved Mr Beast’s ‘50 hours buried alive’ video (I personally didn’t get it).

His response; “It was interesting!  I felt scared for him and I wondered what it would be like.  I also like it because he gives a lot of his money away to all sorts of different causes.”

I asked what the experience taught him; “I leant about ‘Trust’ as he had to trust his support team completely.  I would never have done that and I watched his team prepare him and look after him.”

I asked the 13 year old GenZ and he said “I really liked it, it was cool!” and that was the end.

 

In conclusion, influencers are mushrooming, from the celebs to the nano-influencers, and this is great news.  There are so many topics of interest in the world and there is an enormous choice and consumers, including every industry, even the public relations companies such as Intune Communication, can draw on influencers to get our message across to the GenZ’s.  However, keep them authentic, unfiltered, genuine and what is so fantastic is that we can all use raw content as that is what the world is all about.  No one is perfect!  GenZ’s know this and they want to see brands they can relate to. Nano-infuencers can make a huge difference in successful campaigns.

 

The stumbling block is that there are a millions of nano-influencers – choose wisely!  The good part is the ability to change tactics if something isn’t working!  After all, we are now completely used to change, the pandemic has given us this excellent ability.

 

Looking at the changes in how content is used on Twitter - Intune Communications and Entertainment July Blog

 We are into the second half of 2021 and many of you might be wondering where on earth the year has gone. We’ve been dodging the Covid-19 virus; waiting for our age group to be called for the vaccine; and online schooling and zoom meetings are the new reality. Looking at what is trending on the internet, and wondering how we can trend, have become part of our everyday anxieties.

 

July is the time of the year when many businesses reflect on the past six months. The pandemic has resulted in every business transforming its digital marketing strategy. Measurement of online impact has become critical, and this requires a more thoughtful, scientific and in-depth measurement strategy.

 

Where does #twitter fit into the equation? We all know that twitter should not be ignored, but many corporates are merely using the platform to evaluate what is being said about the company, its brands and its competitors – in other words they see it as a reactive as opposed to a proactive platform. 

 

Gone are the days, however, when twitter was merely an outlet for people to get onto their soap boxes and gripe and complain. It’s not been eradicated, but that relentless negativity has been curtailed somewhat through the ability to stop the comments on a post.

 

What businesses need to know is that twitter has evolved exponentially since the onset of the pandemic. The new developments have, arguably, focused on business applications, in an attempt to climb onto the financial bandwagon that other platforms such as Instagram and Facebook created after companies began diverting their funding from traditional to social media when the pandemic hit.

 

The use of twitter for promoting launches (no matter the size), to push product awareness and in marketing campaigns has shown a steady increase, with remarkable success. It has effectively driven traffic towards websites and ultimately produced sales.

 

Good ‘CONTENT’ creates attention onto every social platform and twitter is no different. But where to start, what to say, how to say it, which hashtags to use and how to use those hashtags has become overwhelming. 

 

There are ways to create effective twitter copy, such as use of pictures, video clips, the use of the media library, effective use of hashtags and tweet threads, Copy needs to be inspiring, and emojis must be used effectively.

 

What is very interesting is the way in which ordinary people, the man in the street, have made the best use of twitter and how it has helped them become influencers. On a micro, macro or nano scale, influencers have effectively turned their twitter presence into money. Companies are starting to encourage their staff to go onto twitter to become relevant for the company. This can particularly be seen in the #beauty industry.

 

The most recent change to twitter is the New Business Profiles function, which enables businesses to ‘Convert to Professional’. It is currently being tested in the USA and will open up globally over the next few months.

 

This option was shared by both @janeManchunWong and @AlexandroPaluxxi, both app analysts. Businesses follow a three-step process enabling them to select a business category and assign either a ‘Business’ or ‘Creator’ profile to their accounts.

 

@Twitter explains it in this way: “Professional Profiles are a new tool that will allow businesses, not-for-profits, publishers and creators – anyone who uses twitter for work – to display specific information about their business directly on their profile. We’re starting with a small pool of businesses in the United States. and will give more accounts access to Professional Profiles in the coming months.”

 

Once converted, more of your company’s details will be made available for view. Further down the line product display panels and picture galleries will also be available.

 

Twitter currently has a ‘boost’ option for revenue generation.

 

Through recently launched ‘Twitter Blue’ (only available in a few markets) Twitter is trying to get businesses to pay for tracking elements such as brand surveys and other analytics.

 

Social media is here to stay and will continue to grow and twitter is giving us an alternative way of getting our message across to a wider audience that we might not have accessed before. After all, it is all about maximising our presence in as many different markets as possible. 

 

The new idea is to get away from the LSM’s and rather target anyone with the same likes.

 

Allow us, Intune Communications, to help you build your social media strategy.  Being a creative agency, we can effectively and efficiently get to work and make your platforms produce results

 

 

Is Influencer marketing the way to go?

Following our recent video, we have received inquiries asking for more information on influencer marketing and whether this is relevant during and after the Covid-19 times, and here is our experience and what we believe could well be the way forward.

At Intune we have used this strategy in many of our campaigns over the years, with quite a lot of success. When the strategy has not worked well, the learning has been that you need to be very careful when selecting who you use as your influencer. After all, that person will be advocating the brand that you have spent years building.

The clothing industry, particularly those organisations who use online sales channels, often use influencers. There are case studies showing multi-million dollar industries built on this strategy. The majority of companies dabble with the use of influencers when a situation arises – specials, an event, launching a brand etc.

Influencer marketing is relatively new and is evolving quickly. It is important to know that there are mandatory rules regarding the use of influencers and it is now required to include ’ “sponsored by” when posting and there is an organisation, the Advertising Code of Practice on Social Media’ - introducing rules and regulations that are constantly being updated.

When the strategy first emerged companies were using celebrities at enormous cost. They usually wrote the copy for them and it often came across as stilted and unauthentic. In the worst cases, the celebrities promoted the brand on its social platforms, but on their own platforms, in their own voices, they would be promoting a competitor.

We have come a long way since those days. In targeting the Millennial, or the snowflake generation we have learnt that they generally have a short attention span and get offended easily, so, ‘phoney’ advertising doesn’t go down well. Campaigns that worked at the time were quickly forgotten. There were a few posts and it was over. There was no longevity for the brand.

Enter the micro influencers. They may have fewer followers than the celebrities, but they tend to be seen as credible, authentic, experts in their particular fields with good reputations. While some celebrities can reach a far bigger audience, these marketers can directly reach a target market and align with regular people. They are able to build a strong bond with customers through impactful messaging and so they can create sales or build awareness of a brand, a campaign or a CSR programme.

There is very little to differentiate between the thousands of similar products in the marketplace and research has shown that consumers are too busy and don’t have time to research what is best for them or their family. So, their propensity is to purchase based on recommendations and this is where the influencer is valuable.

How to contract an influencer:

1.      Pick the influencer that is best for your brand. There are agencies that specifically place influencers, but they might not know your brand and they may suggest an unsuitable candidate. So, it’s best to meet the person first and to make sure that they tie in with your brand and your company ethos. 

2.      Be sure that the influencer knows your brand thoroughly and knows what is expected from them. The return on investment that you expect must be clear from the start. 

3.      The influencer must convey the brand message in his or her own style, using his or her unique tone. Let them write the copy themselves, with the brand team’s guidance.

4.      The online messaging coming from the influencer should be blended with the corporate posts that are shared by the organisation.

5.      A longer contract is best to entrench the brand message

6.      Have regular discussions with the influencers to keep them on board, keep them passionate about your brand and make them know that you value their support.

Over the years we have had some classic bloopers with influencers, so you need an excellent understanding of what does and doesn’t work.  We can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t funny at the time!

In comes Covid-19 – how will this affect influencers?

This is an interesting question and only time will tell. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dramatic effect on global economies and many companies across the world will come out of this battle scarred and it is predicted that this could well mean the slashing of budgets – marketing and sponsorships could well be in the firing line. But this is where influencers could be valuable. 

Stats coming out in the last couple of weeks have seen an overwhelming increase in social media traffic and the length of time we spend on the different platform. We have seen into celebrity homes, heard how they are managing and noted their frustrations and fears are the same as ours. 

Brands that have used celebrities and other influencers in their Covid-19 messages have had incredible traction.  The World Health Organisation effectively used celebrities to promote sanitising, social distancing and the importance of lockdown.  Adidas is using David Beckham and family to promote exercising at home, Liverpool is using all their players and particularly their coach, Jurgen Klopp, to keep their fans updated and show empathy and support during this hard time.  This is merely a few. What we know is that the what the world needs now is empathy, compassion and unity.

We believe there is and will definitely be a place for influencers during and after lockdown.  Covid-19 is not going way!  Sanitising and social distancing will continue for a year or longer.  The world is not the same and brands will continue to use influencers to help drive the message of compassion and empathy.   

In conclusion, it is back to basics as marking teams wade through unchartered territory. There are no rules or worksheets on marketing in a pandemic. Consumers are online at the moment and they are spending more time there! There is a captive audience and brands need to contribute to the conversation. Using influencers/celebrities to be heard is a very good option.