What’s more valuable to your campaign – recruiting influencers or cultivating ordinary people with networks? Most marketers have an opinion. Here’s mine: both. In this post, I’ll shed light on the topic using an actual campaign experience and share some simple tips.
Influencers come in all sizes and stripes. Some of them can rock your world while others can poison your well. It’s important to know who is which based on both the business objective and the psychographics of your likeliest early adopters. Mega-influencers deliver eyeballs and retweets. Brands with an upbeat lifestyle message can gain some traction with a mega-influencer. Guy Kawasaki can use your camera and push out Instagram snaps, and you’ll sell more units. But if you are hoping to persuade people to adopt a new mindset, or learn something new – it’s important to choose an influencer with gravitas who’s considered an original thinker by your target audience.
Take, for example, the campaign my team designed and executed to help educate the public about information privacy. Ours was an attitudinal objective: to gain adoption of information privacy as a social norm. We would measure results via Google Analytics and social media monitoring. With a modest budget and a fire in our bellies, we plotted a propagation plan aimed primarily at a constellation of influencers.
Cracking the anti-privacy culture
In 2007, privacy was a bold idea. The prevailing wisdom was that sacrificing our online privacy was the price of admission to the Internet. Anti-privacy thought leader Scott McNealy, as CEO of Sun Microsystems, spoke for the industry at large when he said: ”You have zero privacy. Get over it.” Our research showed that even among the most sophisticated digerati, there was a feeling of helplessness about the topic.
How influence leads to advocacy
Positive behavior change is best achieved in a group – just ask the folks at AA or Weight Watchers. That’s why peer influence is such a big driver in online communities, especially among Millennials, whose identities are still forming. But there’s a complex mix of insights at play when seeding an idea, and we’ve learned to pay attention to the human nuances of networking. We discerned our likely early adopters after a rigorous thirty day listening period via Twitter and blogs.
Our campaign needed to be edgy. That meant no ”establishment” digital celebrities would do as our chosen influencer. After all, those with the largest networks have already, in the eyes of our target audience, jumped the shark. We also needed ”discussants” more than chatty conversationalists to form the inner layer of the mesh. That’s how online communities collectively arrive at new understandings, the first step to adoption. Finally, consider that flashy, big-name influencers can tarnish your relationship with ”radiants” – ordinary people who are credible, relational, and have a slow burn multiplier effect.
Drilling into the subculture
Once we knew the type of influencer we wanted, we needed to identify the best subculture for our message. We refined our target: the intelligentsia digerati, mostly Millennials. They are the creators of YouTube hits, the digital meme originators, and the retweeted. Their value set is about revolution, remix, and creativity. I tapped into this cohort back in 2005 while researching my book, RenGen: Rise of the Cultural Consumer. Retro brands including Vespa, as well as Apple and Vans, bond with this cohort. World builders, they are the Saul Alinskys of their online communities and they niche into gaming, music, and video production to amplify their points of view.
Choosing a neo-celebrity to scale up
The lifestyle and consumption habits of our target pointed us to a bevy of radiants. That got the conversation started. Still, we needed a heavy hitter with a big megaphone. And, because authenticity is critical, our celebrity pick needed to speak passionately. We reached out to a dystopian novelist and blogger with a pixel trail on the topic of privacy. His audience was very large – 25K unique users per month for his blog alone, and his championship of our issue was the tipping point.
Lessons learned
It comes down to this: young digerati want a voice in shaping the digital culture where they devote so much of their time. We drew scads of information privacy advocates by unleashing people’s pent up desire to act out in response to something they had previously felt helpless to change. Yes, information privacy is an idea, not a product. But every brand can benefit from knowing that reaching out to the most ”radiant” people among your target generates meaningful momentum and puts your brand well on the way to shaping a better world. That last point is important. Research abounds that consumers across the demographic spectrum want some taste of empowerment, and they want it right now.
Takeaways:
Setting off a positive chain reaction to seed new attitudes involves:
- Finding the ”radiants” who can adopt the message and provide a credible mesh (How? Listening via Twitter and blogs.).
- Defining subcultures predisposed to wanting their voices heard on a topic.
- Choosing the right key influencer who will rally your target with purpose and passion.
Photo credit: Ed Yourdon
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Patricia Martin Patricia Martin is an author and noted expert on commerce and culture. She is CEO and Founder of LitLamp Communications, an award winning marketing boutique acclaimed for using culture as a medium to connect brands with communities of consumers. Author of the book Renaissance Generation: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What it Means to Your Business and Tipping the Culture: How Engaging Millennials Will Change Things, Martin pioneered the point of view that the convergence of art, technology, and entertainment is remaking the American consumer. |
