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Influence Doesn't Mean Fan Base And Celebrity

Brands should traverse the celebrity and influencer landscape carefully. The temptation might be to drive awareness with an empty-calorie diet of celebrity and social media flameball du jour activation, or choose personalities based more on the size of their network than their actual relationship to the brand. But it's a smarter partner with influencers that people can relate to and that they can associate with the brand from the start. 

Kunal Muzumdar, one of the participants on an Ad:Tech NY panel on marketing using celebrities and influencers, articulated the idea that influence is relatability not aspiration, which is what brands tend to gravitate toward. The managing director of global media agency Possible actually mentioned a very traditional kind of celebrity endorsement because of its meta-commentary on endorsement itself: Sprite's ad with basketball star Grant Hill with the message that drinking Sprite won't make you a better basketball player. It follows the usual motif: Hill shoots perfect baskets on a city court. A kid watches; they both drink Sprite and the kid tries what Hill has done and it's a fail. "Thirst is Everything."

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Muzumdar's message is that traditional endorsements ask consumers to relate to a Beyonce or Michael Phelps, or Hill for that matter. "I aspired to be them, but I'm never thinking I'd relate to them," he said. "And the real power of influencers is relatability. The idea that you watch them and listen and feel you could actually be them, versus the simple celebrity endorsement."

And he states the obvious -- that fit matters a lot. It's hard to believe the brand/endorser relationship if you can't believe the endorser would naturally have anything to do with the brand. "You can't put a square peg in a round hole." And seeing a personality as a media channel with legs is a mistake. Rather, marketers and agencies should spend some time getting to know that person, rather than their friend list. Don't get trapped by tag-lines and hashtags, and don't make that a condition. "You have to let it slide."

In fact, he says, let go of the idea of integration itself. "It's a lazy way to say the same thing in every channel the same way. And influencers want to be part of creative process. if you let them tell their story the better off you are. An orchestra involves different instruments playing different notes. If all of the instruments play the the same notes, it's awful."

Jann Schwarz, global agency partner lead at LinkedIn, said real influence is driven by people within the company. They are most influential within their networks. "It's about influence driven by true relationships, digital being a representation of what's happening in the real world." He quotes the Edelman Trust Barometer on the most reliable sources of company info: "person such as yourself" and an employee of that company.

"What's happening is a concept of social proof and the notion of everyone as an influencer through their professional identity. Network results at the individual level are becoming increasingly important." He says it's the key idea is of individual and company messages being interrelated, and the close relationship between marketing power and overall reputation of the company and talent. "Do you employ great people? We think that's the future. It's the notion that we are the stories we tell and companies are the story the collective employees tell." 

He gives the example of Levi's CEO using LinkedIn to communicate to his network about things like e-commerce. "That's building the reputation of the company, exerting influence in way that's transparent and credible. This is social proof through a real-life connection."

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