In this post, ‘The truth about brands, influencers and sponsored posts‘ I wrote about the precarious relationship between brands and influencers when there is a marketing objective involved.
Unlike more traditional PR, influencer marketing in its relative infancy, is an advertising channel that requires its boundaries to be constantly reviewed and altered. It is still, even in 2019, a murky industry built on a foundation of blurred lines and a lack of solid measurability. Couple that with other factors such as creative freedom, money, integrity and dishonesty and you have an active volcano just waiting to erupt.
That being said, there are individuals and agencies doing their best to stabilise the influencer marketing industry. They are doing this by publically calling out the bullshit, inventing tools to make measuring influencer activity more numerically tangible, and opening up the discussion on what makes for a good influencer campaign and what makes for a bad one.
Having previously asked: ‘Why is the term ‘influencer’ such a dirty word? In this post, I’m discussing the nuts and bolts of actually working with influencers and what constitutes towards both good, and bad outreach. And before I start, I must note that I work agency side, therefore, this post will be balanced more towards that perspective.
As a blogger, I too have had dodgy experiences with PR agencies.
I was inspired to write this post as I recently experienced a bit of a dodgy situation when collaborating with a PR agency who represented a big brand. The way that the situation played out, quite rightfully irked me, as for my sins, I am myself, an influencer marketing manager for a digital marketing agency. I knew what happened just wasn’t acceptable.
On a daily basis, I work with bloggers and social influencers, negotiating collaborations and generally being the middle woman between an influencer and a brand. If you’re a blogger yourself, you may have come across me, or my pal Ashley looking to set up collaborations for a number of brands including those that sell Christmas trees, those that sell those mattresses that come in a box, those that sell online clothing and many more. If we’ve met before, then Hi!
