A few days ago, not many in the Arab world had heard of a media organization called the New Media Academy.
As it defines itself, it is an Emirati educational media platform. Social Blade statistics say that until Saturday, June 12, 2021, the number of subscribers to its YouTube channel was only about 9 thousand, and its videos achieved a weak to average spread.
With midnight on the same day, everyone was suddenly talking about this establishment after it became the topic of the hour on social media.
Of course, the reason was the sudden appearance of the Al-Daheeh program, which is very popular among Arab youth, through the channel, and presented by the famous Egyptian YouTuber and content creator Ahmed Al-Ghandour. This contributed to raising the number of subscribers (subscribers) in the channel from 9 thousand subscribers only to 323,000 subscribers in one night, not to mention adding two million views to the channel’s total views in one day. By the end of the week, the number of subscribers to the channel had doubled to 650,000 subscribers, and an additional six million views, which is equal to the total number of views the channel had achieved since its inception in the summer of 2020.
This huge growth in views and numbers for an institution that many considered unknown, and its transformation in record time into a source of attraction for millions of viewers from all over the Arab world, raised widespread doubts about the possibility of considering this step as part of a project to attract the masses of emerging platforms accused of normalization with Israeli entities.
However, in terms of marketing, it can be said that the use of the principle of influencer marketing has already succeeded in achieving and polishing the channel in a way that cannot be compared to traditional marketing tools.
( 1, 2 )
Marketing through influencers simply means cooperating with the influencer who has a large fan base of followers, with the aim of polishing and promoting a particular brand in a way that draws the attention of his followers and affects their decisions to interact or buy more than using traditional marketing methods.
Typically, this promotion through engaging content leads to positive brand outcomes.
At first glance, it may seem that influencer marketing is a new term associated with the world of social media and the emergence of the concept of influencers who have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, but the reality is that it is an old marketing principle that has been followed for decades, only the tools used to implement it are different, as they have shifted from traditional media To rely on icons and celebrities who emerged from the womb of digital development associated with the Internet, and have proven widespread, so that they can be relied upon in marketing services and products through these means.
This method has long been considered one of the most effective and effective tools, and the most return on investment (ROI Return on Investment) compared to other usual marketing methods (3).
Influencer credibility is the key to successful influencer marketing campaigns in passing brand awareness to audiences
"People don't buy products or services, they buy relationships... stories... and magic."
This is how the global specialist in the field of marketing, Seth Godin, summed up the basic message behind the marketing campaigns, in which the principle of influencer marketing covers the largest part of their budgets, as glamor, creativity and storytelling play the largest role in attracting the audience to interact or buy without thinking long, based on The “magic” offered to them by the influencer, as Godin described it. (4)
According to the European platform "Media Kicks" specialized in marketing for influencers, there is a set of basic objectives behind the influencer marketing strategy that companies, organizations and brands target, on top of which is undisputed: Brand Awareness and advocacy.
This definition and polishing of the brand always calls for reliance on influencers with high credibility with the audience, which allows it to attract huge numbers of users and customers in a way that its quality is not comparable to other marketing campaigns, which makes this type of marketing an excellent opportunity for two types of organizations: To spread its brand quickly and effectively through credible influencers, as well as institutions that are already in the market and face fierce competition with other institutions, or suffer from the vibration of its brand and the loss of its luster, which makes it lean on the shoulders of large and credible influencers to polish its image. (5)
In this regard, the credibility of the influencer is the key to the success of influencer marketing campaigns in passing the audience’s definition of the brand, and according to the “Marketing Influencer Hub” platform, the use of influencers who provide creative content is the winning formula to quickly attract attention to any emerging brand, and the winning formula Also to polish the image of any institution that is declining in the market or facing problems or fierce competition. (6)
In the mid-1980s, Nike, the global sportswear company, was going through hard times.
It was the year 1984 that witnessed the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and usually such an event is accompanied by a significant increase in the company's sales, but the surprise is that Nike made huge losses and suffered a huge drop in its profits.
There was another surprise, in fact, and perhaps more serious, one entitled Reebok, the British company for sports products, which appeared this year as a black horse that swept the American market, especially after launching a line to produce women's sports shoes dedicated to running, and supporting it with a well-known marketing campaign. , which meant threatening Nike's sales in its primary market in America.
A sharp decline in profits, increasing criticism of Nike shoes, and the emergence of a strong and rapidly expanding competitor in the American market, all combined conditions to pose a serious challenge to Nike, which began to search for highly efficient and unconventional marketing solutions that would bring it back - and quickly - to the forefront of the sports products market, and shine its brand affected businesses in that period.
Influencer marketing has been the company's most important way to regain its luster, by targeting a hugely popular and influential American sports icon and linking the sports icon to its products to attract hundreds of thousands of fans even if they prefer competitive shoes. This symbol was the giant brown American basketball star "Michael Jordan" who was living his glory during that period, which made Nike rush to sign an exclusive marketing contract with him not only to employ him in its commercials, but to use his name and associate it with one of its new sports shoes, To bring out to the market the famous "Air Jordan" sneakers.
Although Jordan himself had once admitted that he was more inclined to use the shoes of the German company "Adidas", the offer of Nike was generous and could not be rejected, both in terms of materiality and in terms of the way of advertising itself by associating his name with one of the Its best new sneakers ever on the market.
With the advent of 1985 and the appearance of Air Jordan shoes on the market, the scene had completely changed in record time: the new shoe was a huge hit by athletes and Michael Jordan fans, even those who weren't enthusiastic enough about Nike shoes.
Thus, the company was able to achieve huge sales within only two months of launching its product associated with the most famous sports icon in the world of basketball, to re-tighten its grip on the sales of sports products in front of the emerging company Reebok and other competitors.
In the subsequent years, Nike held a long-term strategic partnership with Jordan throughout the eighties and nineties, through which it was able to harvest a river of profits annually, and the "Air Jordan" marketing campaign became one of the most historically successful case studies of the concept of influencer marketing.
(7, 8)
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Aljazeera (@aljazeera)
Despite all these potential benefits, influencer marketing is a double-edged sword. An influencer who can inform the shares and profits of a sky-high company by promoting its services and products (Brand Awareness) can also negatively affect the activity of another company by criticizing its services and products (Brand Attack).
The most recent example of this happened in the press conference held on Monday, June 14, on the sidelines of the European Nations Cup "Euro 2020", which was attended by Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, and saw Ronaldo remove two Coca-Cola bottles in front of him and raise a water bottle instead.
Immediately after this situation, the stock of the prestigious Coca-Cola company fell from 56.10 dollars per share to 55.22 dollars, and the market value of the company decreased from 242 billion dollars to 238 billion dollars, which means that the company lost 4 billion dollars of its value - temporarily - after a quick action by the star The Portuguese ball in front of the cameras did not exceed ten seconds.
Why would a giant company the size of Coca-Cola be shaken by such quick and simple action?
The reason is that the person who did this behavior, in addition to his overwhelming sports fame, has on his account on the “Instagram” platform about 300 million followers, a number that no other account has ever reached, except for the account of the Instagram platform itself.
This number (300 million followers) makes Ronaldo's followers more than the population of most countries in the world, and even more than the population of a huge country such as Indonesia, which has a population of 273 million people.
The power of influencer : Coca-Cola lost $4 billion in market value after soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo suggested people drink water instead#CristianoRonaldo #CocaCola pic.twitter.com/UhiTaESZz4
— Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) June 16, 2021
This event and its aftermath was considered a stark example of the enormous influence that sports influencers have, according to a report by Bloomberg Economics platform comparing what Ronaldo did with other examples in which influencers have made a positive or negative impact on brands large or small.
(9, 10, 11)
Proving or denying the level of influence of something is often best understood with numbers and statistics.
In this context, the data tells us a lot about the huge impact of influencer marketing, to the point that this marketing style is among the most developed and influential.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, which specializes in monitoring influencer marketing, influencer marketing is likely to grow to reach a market size of $14 billion by the end of the current year 2021.
Also, according to the numbers, 80% of marketers said that influencer marketing is effective according to all indicators of the success of marketing campaigns, while 71% of marketing experts said that customers who come from influencer marketing campaigns are better than customers who come from other means of marketing.
The remarkable number in these statistics is that about half of the customers who were surveyed (49%) said that they rely on the opinions and recommendations of the influencers they follow to make a purchase decision.
According to a study conducted by the same source in 2019 on a large number of businesses and brands, for every dollar spent on a marketing campaign through influencers, it returned about $5.20 in average revenue.
Some of the brands in the survey (13%) made $20 in revenue for every dollar they spent on influencers. (6)
In general, influencers can be classified, according to the current classifications compatible with the global digital environment, into five main types, according to the Hubspot platform, which specializes in e-marketing topics: (12)
First type:
Micro Influencers.
Here we are talking about influencers who have limited numbers of followers, perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of people interested in a particular field (Niche), and in this type, despite the low number of followers, the interaction with them is usually greater (High Engagement Rates), and the influencer allows To have a stronger relationship and more interaction with his followers.
The second type:
Celebrity Influencer, or Mega Influencer, are influencers who have large numbers of followers of hundreds of thousands or millions, such as actors, football players, and others.
They often influence several areas rather than a single niche, and therefore have opportunities to reach wider audiences (Multiple Audiences) through different, larger and more comprehensive channels.
The third type:
Blogger influencer, which means a person who blogs in writing or visually in a blog or an electronic platform that has thousands or millions of followers, subscribers or readers.
Cooperation with this type is often through blogging as a guest on his famous blog, channel or platform, or agreeing with him to mention specific products, services or people, or his support for an institution or initiative, in a way that diverts the attention of his readers or viewers to the service or product that is being promoted on his platform.
Fourth type:
Social Media Influencers.
It is the most prevalent type, their activity is largely concentrated on social media, and their accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and others have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers.
Their activism often focuses on areas in which they excel, such as health, training, food, automobiles, activities, travel, fashion, art and design, among others.
Fifth type:
Key Opinion Leaders are experts in certain fields whose opinions in that field attract hundreds of thousands of followers.
Usually, the owners of this type are the highest paid influencers in promoting products, services and brands, because they are not only followed in large numbers, but also have the ability to persuade their followers greatly and form their opinions based on the great credibility they have built.
Finally, there is no saying that can be mentioned that summarizes the importance of “influencer marketing” and its results compared to the rest of the traditional marketing methods better than what the global specialist in business and marketing, “Malcolm Glodwell” said: “There are people out there who are able to launch epidemics spreading around the world, all that must What you do is find these people and work with them."
Goldwell means here that influencers, with their ability to spread services and products very quickly, are like “epidemics” in their superior ability to spread, as he puts it.
_____________________________________________________________
Sources
:
Social Blade
Despite the denial of normalization and the cessation of cooperation with "Nas Daily"... Activists attack "Al-Duhaih" and demand that he leave
What is Influencer Marketing: An in Depth Look at Marketing's Next Big Thing
5 Top Influencer Marketing Quotes to Guide Your Marketing Strategy
The State of Influencer Marketing: 10 Influencer Marketing Statistics to Inform Where You Invest
What is Influencer Marketing: An in Depth Look at Marketing's Next Big Thing
?Air Jordans.
The greatest influencer marketing campaign of all time
How Nike landed Michael Jordan
Because of an indirect warning from Ronaldo, a soft drink company is losing billions of dollars in value
Cristiano Ronaldo Has More Social Media Followers Than USA Has People;
India Ahead
'Bottlegate' at the Euros Shows the Limit of Sports Influencers
What Will Influencer Marketing Look Like in 2021