Influencer marketing is upsurging and doesn’t appear to be coming down anytime soon, well, not if statics have anything to do with it.

Impact of influencer marketing 

According to a recent case study by TapInfluence and Nielsen Catalina Solutions, influencer marketing delivers 11 times the ROI of digital marketing -as it pertains to actual revenue, not impressions and views. In this study, influencer marketing generated $285 per 1,000 impressions, which was 11 times as much as digital advertising. With statistics like that, you can see why cinemas are using influencers as a valuable marketing tool!

Why diversifying influencers is important

There is great value of influencing marketing and its ability to help your brand reach a wider audience (Brown and Hayes, 2008). However, to reach a wider audience, cinema’s must truly embrace diversity, considering partnering with influencers who reflect a variety of demographics (such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) that can help push your message to a more diverse group of people (SMW, 2016). “If a business makes an effort to value all customers, its likely to see a positive change in brand awareness, loyalty and business profit” (SMW, 2016).

When you look at many social media accounts of Cinema’s today, there is an apparent lack of diversity with their influencers, and this is limiting their scope to attract new customers. Few examples of influencers used by leading Cinema chains in the UK have been posted below, all, which fail to represent ethnic minorities.

 

 

By not having a diverse group influencers to represent your brand,  you not only limit your scope to reach new audiences but can also create negative imagery of your brand, to the ethnic groups not represented because they feel the brand has failed to identify with them, which makes them feel left out (Bryant and Oliver, 2009). As a result, they can boycott you entirely and in worse cases, create negative eWOM, which can lead to negative brand reputation(Friedman, 1999).

Impact of failing to diversify influencers 

When “Stand UP To Caner” launched a campaign in collaboration with famous Youtube starts like Zoella, Casper Lee and Alfie on this campaign. The lack of diversity amongst those chosen on the front push of the campaign didn’t go unnoticed, with several YoutubeTubers and fans taking to Twitter to express their dismay at the situation and call out both companies involved. See reaction below.

This is a clear indication, of potential backlash you could face from your audience/ potential audience if you fail to identify with them (Zillmann and Bryant, 2014).

Film industry starting to open up with more diverse influences after backlash from Oscars

The lack of ethnic minorities cast in Hollywood’s films has been a major topic of conversation recently, with many actors recently boycotting award shows and starting a Twitter campaign called #OscareSoWhite to voice their dissatisfaction with the lack of representation of minorities in films. The campaign has gained a massive on-line audience with over thousands of retweets!! and lead negative eWom for Hollywood.

Since the campaign was launched, there have been noticeable differences, with an increase in the number of ethnic minorities cast in movies. Hollywood has learnt from the backlash of this campaign and has taken a reactive approach when it comes to diversifying the social media influencers to promote news films.

Hollywood understand the importance of diversity and have identified the growing value of social media influencers, when promoting a new movie, to reach huge audiences and get more people talking about their upcoming releases.They have invested in technology that is able to use demographic and psychographic targeting to identify the best social media influencers for any given campaign. As a result, they are able to find influencers from different ethnic backgrounds, increasing their reach of their audience.

For example, famous YouTuber “KSI” who is from an ethnic minority has partnered with leading film companies to give exclusive interviews with celebrities on his Youtube Channel to create a buzz for upcoming releases. These videos can have up to 2 million views and over 100,000 likes! See video below

“KSI meets Matt Damon”- Interview “The Great Wall.”

 

The Cinema houses should learn from the mistakes from Hollywood and take a reactive approach to diversifying their social media influencer to avoid the risk of online backlash. Statistics, further support that customers value ethnic representation. In a study conducted by the Advertising Association’s (UK) more than half (53%) of the UK’s ethnic minority population say they prefer to purchase from brands they feel “meaningfully” represent their culture. This is strong evidence for cinemas to diversify their social media influencers if they wish to reach new customers and avoid upsetting their current customer base.

Points to consider when diversifying influencers

• Diversifying influencers can be expensive, due to the number of influencers you will have to partner with to reach diverse targets demographics.

• When using influencers, you, risk some level of control over your content, a bad influencer can create negative eWOM (Gillin and Moore, 2009).

• Measuring the effectiveness of influencers require advanced tracking tools which can be costly with no guarantee of the campaign being successful.

 

References 

Brown, D. and Hayes, N. (2008) Influencer Marketing: Who really influences your customers? Amsterdam: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann.

Bryant, J. and Oliver, M. (2009). Media effects: Advances in theory and research. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.

Friedman, M. (1999). Consumer boycotts. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.

Gillin, P. and Moore, G.A. (2009) The new Influencers: A marketer’s guide to the new social media (books to build your career by). Fresno, CA: Quill Driver Books, U.S.

SMW (2016) Why Diversity Matters in Social Media. Available at: https://smwitoronto.com/2016/05/30/diversity-matters-social-media/ (Accessed: 31 January 2017).

Zillmann, D. and Bryant, J. (2014). Media Effects. 1st ed. NJ: Taylor and Francis.