Australia’s $800 million creator economy has significantly professionalised over the past decade, but creators need to demand better and more detailed briefs from clients, a panel at Cairns Crocodiles has heard.
Speaking on Tuesday’s creator economy panel, Instagrammer and former Miss Universe Australia, Olivia Molly Rogers, shared how much had changed in the past decade in Australian influencer marketing.
“It has changed so much in the past eight years,” said Molly Rogers. “I remember the first time I was sent a product – I was so excited about it. I put up a selfie with it straight away. There was no brief from the brand, and there were no real goals.
“Now, from both the content creators and the brands, there is so much more intention and strategy behind it… I think the partnerships that I prefer are the ones that have longevity, and they might be ones from three to six months or 12 months, and that’s where you really get to know the brand properly, and they get to know you, and you can really work collaboratively to make it work for both of you”.
Questioned by panel moderator Naysla Edwards, vice president, marketing ANZ at American Express, about what makes a good brand brief, from a creator perspective, Molly Rogers responded: “I think the more detail, the better… You want to find (a creator) who’s actually going to read the brief. And I am a nerd, so I will read it very thoroughly. And I think the don’ts are just as important, if not more important than the do’s.
“I love when a brand will have exact examples of the content that they want to see. And often now, brands will actually put click through links where you can see other content creators and see these examples. And then similarly, they will give their (list of) don’ts whether it’s bad lighting or poor quality videos, whatever it is, they’re very specific about what they don’t want to see.
“And that can come across maybe as controlling a little bit, but I much prefer it, because I want to get it right, and it’s going to perform better for both of us if it is right? Yeah, absolutely.”
Edwards also spoke about why American Express invests in influencer marketing telling the room: “At American Express, we are huge believers in creators, really amplifying the brand, creating content and culture and really experiences for their own audiences that sometimes the brand themselves cannot do.
“We have found it incredibly rewarding to not only to just have a creative that comes at that that’s a one off partnership with yourself, but really believe in the long term relationships. And I love how a lot of the creators we work with, we get to really take the time to explain how our products work, give them our products so they can go and use them and truly believe in the product, because if they don’t, I think it’s very difficult for the brand and creator to work together.”
Also on the panel was Anthony Svirskis, CEO of influencer marketing platform Tribe, who spoke about how the industry has significantly evolved measurement in the space.
“It certainly has gone well beyond likes, comments and engagement,” said Svirskis. “You know, the industry has matured so much and the clients we work with, who are the strongest practitioners of this category, are thinking about full final marketing from the start.
“That’s the reality that this category is capable of. It’s not a sort of plug and play category. So every creative is different, every piece of content is different, and it takes time to work through the full funnel. It is amazing how many marketers are still not thinking of those terms, and they are thinking of, I just need 10 or 20 (pieces of creator content) and we’ll just add this to our budget, and we’ll tick the box of creator marketing.
“The best clients we work with come in and give us a what’s, what’s the business problem, or what’s the marketing objective that we’re trying to achieve here, and then we build a strategy”.
Chef and content creator, Khanh Ong, who was also on the panel, noted that marketers can and should use micro influencers, who are creators with a follower count between 10,000–100,000 followers, as a feedback loop to help improve their product and offering.
“If I’m launching a new product and let’s say I have no market share at all, or I’m trying to do something really new here,” said Ong. “I would look for micro influencers, and I would actually go to market with maybe 20 or so micro influencers, because what you’re going to get is a lot of feedback.
Ong added that often marketers will focus on a big name creator when micro influencers can also be highly effective: “You will get a lot of like information back (from micro influencers) so rather than spending your entire budget on this one person… you would go to a lot of micros, especially if you don’t have that (big) partnership”.
