Influencers (love them or hate them) are opinion leaders. Fans view them as aspirational figures; others see them as dissociative personas.
My social media experience has taught me that large followings don’t always equal great results, and authentic content will resonate better. I prefer an influencer with a smaller but highly engaged audience than one with a large following and poor engagement.
For example, during the summer of 2018, I worked on an influencer campaign for Clamato Tomato Cocktail to promote the Michelada. The Original Clamato Michelada is a staple drink for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The most basic Michelada recipe consists of Clamato juice, Beer, Tajín, and lime on the rim. From there you can get very creative, so here’s a plug to the Clamato website where you can find more tasty recipes.
Clamato, at that time already had an established relationship with several Mexican-American influencers and was trying to expand into the general market. For this reason, the campaign added non-Hispanic content creators for the general market effort. Engagement with the previously established creators performed well as expected (due to cultural affinity and product familiarity). However, for the other group, it was hit and miss. Some introduced the product with little to no context (Links to an external site.). Their audiences lacked reference groups and felt lost in translation. We learned that keeping the authenticity and “passing it on” is key to reaching the general market.
The insight was to present Hispanics as an aspirational group by sharing traditions and teaching others to make the authentic Clamato Michelada. We applied this insight in the following year (sample post below). The campaign called “Who taught you that? relied on having that Hispanic friend pass along the recipe and teach others how to prepare the drink. This led to higher product awareness and trial within the general market consumer target in post-campaign studies.
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