HOW TIMING & AI WILL IMPACT INFLUENCER
our 2019 Social Media Week review
Social Media Week is one of the world’s largest premier conferences and industry news platforms in media, marketing and technology. With Social Media Week LA starting this Wednesday (June 12th, 2019), we wanted to share some of our team’s best takeaways after immersing ourselves in the Social Media Week NYC conference.
In New York this year, sessions covered a variety of hot topics amongst key movers in the space. From analysis of Smirnoff diversity campaigns to the functionality of AI, one macro trend became clear - data is going to shape the future of influencer marketing. In a platform discussion with Dollar Shave Club, Campbell Snacks, Micah Jesse, and more, centered around successful influencer campaigns, the speakers explained how AI is quickly gaining ground in the influencer space. With new social listening tools designed to understand audiences, AI selected creators were able to perform 40% better than brand selected creators. For a long time, social listening tools helped take over the e-commerce space, and now it’s only a matter of time before they expand into influencer.
Although these tools are incredible, it still doesn’t mean we can rely on AI for everything. For example, Google introduced another marketing strategy called the Cultural Zeitgeist, which they defined as, “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.” They utilized this spirit of time, by capitalizing on the Oscars to promote Google Assistant. By creating commercials during the Oscars that used clips from classic films such as Scream, where instead of Drew Barrymore falling victim to the killer, she uses Google Assistant to lock all her doors and alert the police.
For influencers — While it is necessary to stay on top of tech innovations when it comes to social, it is just as important to factor in Cultural Zeitgeist by trying to time content with a pop culture event or moment in order to reap the engagement benefit for yourself and the brand. The bottom line is, although we can figure out what audiences want to see, smart influencers & brands will still determine culture and time-based strategies to position campaigns optimally.
Another key topic was the removal of the Instagram “like” button. Anyone looking at the future of influencer marketing was deeply fixated by this test, especially brands focused on engagement metrics. But not to worry — we learned that Metric data will still be sent to individuals possibly making it even easier to determine target audiences.
Overall, we were very impressed with the content at SMW, and had a blast speaking alongside Grubhub about positioning your influencer campaigns for success. We’re looking forward to following the trends at SMWLA!