Over the last five years, marketing communications has seen a tectonic shift in how it operates in the environment of its target audience. Social media has played a large role in that and today people ‘meet’ communications far more than they seek it. It isn’t that they did not meet it before. But between reading a company’s news in an industry magazine or in a newspaper page the chances weren’t many. But today, with the internet and social media, those odds have increased greatly.
A part of what that tectonic shift has experienced is that communications have had to change; to be less institutional, less direct and to meet people where they meet other people. These ‘other people’ being influencers.
It may not certainly look that way but today influencers are what can be only be beautifully expressed in French as “les auxiliaires de la communication.” After all agencies hire them on behalf of their clients to push marketing communications in various forms; product reviews, product experience, advertisement, relay communication messages and many other activations which we can put under the umbrella of everything done as influencer marketing.
So, influencers are indeed a component of the marketing communications funnel. And their proximity to target audiences make them even more vital depending on the strength of their credibility and their capacity to convert.
But do influencers really understand their role as auxiliaires de communication? By that do see themselves as an essential component of the marketing communications machine, and not just people with followers who are paid to represent X brand? I think not.
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