MANILA, PHILIPPINES — At the adobo Festival of Ideas 2019, a key topic discussed is one of the hottest buzzwords in the industry in recent years — Influencer Marketing. Instagram’s APAC Head of Product Marketing, Alexander De Leon, came up onstage to discuss its value, and how it changed the perception of advertisers on the impact of influencers on a consumer’s purchasing journey.
Firstly, to answer the question of “does it matter?”, he laid out how the “Influencer Industry” is currently valued. He shared that there is an estimated spend of $15B on influencer marketing; 70% of marketers tap influencers; and the practice has made its way into our own individual paths to purchase. From this we can also see the significant shift across consumers’ decision-making that resulted from the rise of digital media and digital marketing.
Alexander de Leon, Head of Product Marketing at @instagram APAC talks to us about the value of influencer marketing and answers: does it matter? How do we measure? And why do we have to collaborate?#adoboFOI2019 pic.twitter.com/DfEMlzEpUL
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But how do they measure its success? De Leon shares its mechanics by talking about Reach, Optimization, and Measure — the tools that brands and content creators use to extract relevant data (number of people who saw the post, number of people who engaged with it, number of people who purchased, etc.) from social media posts, specifically on Instagram.
Finally, to talk about Collaboration in influencer marketing, he was joined onstage by actress, host, entrepreneur, and content creator Isabelle Daza, who broke down the process that she and many other influencers undergo when working with a brand – from sitting down with them to receive a brief, brainstorming, and the actual creation of what we see online. Daza shared how she determined whether or not to work with a specific brand, and how she differentiated between being an endorser and a content creator. It boils down to three things: the role she has to play in marketing the brand, the goals she has to achieve, and the content she is tasked to create.
Alex De Leon’s session dissected how digital media presence and social media posts have reorganized the way we, as consumers, look at brands online. We have now ventured into a time where organic social media posts and relatable stories by influential individuals from each generation hold as much weight as the traditional TV/radio/outdoor/print ad that presents products in a straightforward manner, naturally directing potential consumers to purchasing a certain product.
The consumer’s journey, from awareness to purchase (and even to repeat purchase) has evolved drastically with the rise of digital media and marketing, and De Leon, with the help of Isabelle Daza, showed us how this came to be. Watch it in full below.
