The new-look Think Thursday programme powers on and the latest season of talks saw us hear from a variety of expert voice on the topic of “Harnessing the Power of Creators and Influencers”.
Inspired by the context of the IPA research into Influencer marketing where the findings showed that the channel can drive real commercial access, including the headline stat that influencer marketing boasts the highest long-term multiplier across all media channels at 3.35 with linear TV the closest next channel at 3.27. Clearly it has never been a more important time to think about the role for influencer marketing within the modern media plan.
The season was kicked off by Ocean Outdoor who talked us through how creators can help amplify the power of premium OOH, by increasing our emotional reaction and hence our ability to remember advertising that we’ve seen out in the wild. The team shared some brilliant new research about the signalling power of OOH relative to other media channels, and how signalling power can help enhance ROI in both the short and long term.
Steve Bernard (Head of Insights, Ocean) showed that a channel’s signalling strength is a good predictor of long-term ROI and a very strong corollary of the halo effects the channel can have on other media investments. In the case of the latter they have seen a 91% correlation between signalling strength and the halo effect of one channel on another. Matt Tulip (Head of Agency Sales, Ocean) went on to explain how the combination of premium OOH and creator/influencer content on social media can be particularly potent. We can see uplifts in the region of +35% for brand engagement when that influencer marketing is used together with a standard OOH campaign.
Next up in the season was the team from Mail Metro who gave us a brilliant perspective on how the newsroom is changing – what used to be built around products and channels, is now being built around audiences and experiences. In fact for Genz Z in particular 75% of that audience get their news through social media.
Bill Pasterfield (Social Media Partnerships Director, Mail Metro) and Mike Carrington (Head of Content Partnerships, Mail Metro) talked about how understanding an audience, creating the platform to reach them and then building stories that can travel to wherever those audiences are, meeting them on their terms. The exciting things for brands is that a clear opportunity exists to take advantage of creator-led news and entertainment. The team left us with the thought that “everything should be underpinned by trust, authority and scale…because in a world where anyone can break a story, trusted news brands win the moment.”
Finishing the creator season we had Independent Media. And the theme of agility came through loud and clear. Jeanette Walker (Group Head, The Independent) talked to how they “will always evolve to meet our audience’s needs” and that was later cemented by Tapi Nyoni (Head of Long Form Content & IP Development at The Independent) when he spoke about the way to truly harnessing creator-led content as being rooted in data-driven insights. But also a bravery to experiment. Not everything will work but you learn by trying and evolving to what an audience wants to see and hear.
The team hosted a brilliant panel including Ada Enechi (Creative Director, Buzzfeed), Homam Ayaso (executive Director, Independent Studio) and Adam Clery (Creative Director, ACFC). And whilst varied perspectives were shared, there was some real common ground in the though that when you work with creators and influencers you need to be agile, you need to be brave in your experimentation, but you also need to have an authentic voice in order to stay culturally relevant for our audiences. And sometimes that means letting go a bit as a brand.
The timing of this season could not have been better with the growing capability at Publicis Connected Media, and particularly with regards to the world-leading expertise of Influential. If the moment is now, then we are ready embrace it.
