The influencer marketing niche is growing, and today there are PR campaigns that rely solely on communication through endorsers, says Marius Marin, Reputation Manager at Minio Studio. Influencers are increasingly using personal stories to inspire and help, Marius notes, and brands are standing out with social campaigns and a more human and consumer-friendly approach.

This year we’ll see the difference between brands that allow themselves to communicate naturally and authentically and choose credible, representative endorsers, and those that don’t. We will also see more pragmatism in measuring campaigns and allocating budgets, which are already limited, says Marius.

Communication crises spread faster, and brands are sometimes blamed for what they do to the influencers they choose to work with. Although influencers depend on their communities to be relevant to brands, they sometimes take the misguided approach, according to Marius, of dismissing opinions they don’t like with a simple “unfollow me”.

About the campaigns he is proud of, plans for 2023 and useful everyday tools, Marius tells you below.

Challenges and achievements in 2022

In general, budgets are a constant challenge because you have to implement the project with what you have and still achieve your goals. In advertising, we’re pretty much guided by the saying “Make the best of what you have”, which has become a kind of “Make the best with what you`ve been given”.

I found that more and more projects also came with the requirement of an influencer component and I think it’s noticeable that the influencer marketing niche has continued to grow. New influencers have emerged and the micro-influencer category has grown. There are people I discover every day, there are some who have grown considerably on Instagram or there are some who, for example, barely communicate on Instagram but have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers on TikTok.

If I were to talk about the projects I’m proud of, I’d like to mention that for me it’s a joy to see any project brought to completion and looking beautiful in the aftermath. Of the client projects, I’d mention Hill’s Pet Nutrition #MisiuneaNoastrăPrietenpeViață campaign (which continues this year) and where, through the involvement of the brand, influencers and everyday people online, tons of food were donated to animals in several shelters across the country.

In last summer’s campaign, SOCAR collaborated with influencers for the first time. For example, Mariciu and his family took a week-long trip around the country in a SOCAR van and chronicled the experience and the places they saw in a series of vlogs.

The projects I was most excited to see them launched were: Maker Podcast – a podcast where I talk to content creators about how they became makers (influencers) online and we’re already nearing the end of the first season – and Creative Chaos – a Minio Studio documentary where we brought together all the parties involved in an ad campaign, applied to one of/with one of our large campaigns as an example, to tell the story of all the how to’s behind the scenes.

What you’ve set for 2023

2023 started with a bang. We were even talking to several industry colleagues that we were used to the beginning of the year being quieter, with the return after the holidays, and around the beginning of February we would get into the bread. Instead, this year we’ve kicked off right from January with new projects, challenges, pitches, so for us it’s looking good, with new clients, new campaigns that we’re excited about.

From my role as a PR & influencer marketing man, the plan is to have at least 1-2 highly visible campaigns in the market, and the ones we’ve already started working on are promising. At the same time, we are preparing a series of initiatives that we will also communicate.

Communication market in Romania

What we have noticed is that we are moving more and more into a social specificity of PR, brands are more visible by approaching social campaigns, by supporting vulnerable groups or communities in society, and less by product or service PR. I think the pandemic years have made us think more about each other, we have become more empathetic and attentive to what matters most.

Online PR dominates, and influencers are a heavily used amplification channel. We see, for example, PR events with only influencers sharing the brand’s message online to their audience or 100% influencer campaigning without TV and radio.

The potential for PR crises is even greater, again through online. Messages spread fast, reach multiple channels, so it requires a lot of attention and speed of response, close communication with the PR agency, but also effective collaboration between departments (with SM and digital).

We keep seeing situations where consumers “charge” the brand by what an endorser does, but also the other way around, where they criticize the person through association with a particular brand and what it communicates.

Trends, with good and bad

It’s not necessarily very recent, but I’ve noticed that more and more influencers are sharing personal stories online that inspire and even help their followers, which I find remarkable and inspiring. What I don’t like, however, is the approach of some influencers to quickly unfollow what they don’t like in interacting with followers and hear “if you don’t like it, unfollow me” when that community is the basis of what they stand for to brands and are considered for campaigns.

I’ve noticed that there is more and more discussion, from LinkedIn to TikTok, about social topics and issues such as mental health, sex education, diversity, social inclusion, and brands are also opening up to such topics and even doing dedicated campaigns.

We are seeing more and more audience-specific communication and personalisation of messages, including for Gen Z, a generation that keeps giving brands pause for thought.

Otherwise, trends are the order of the day in Social Media, we say they are cool, they viralise content, they bring great reach, but as a brand you have to look at what suits you and how you adapt your content.

Challenges of the year

In this sea of content, trends and approaches, the main challenge remains to be relevant and attentive to what they communicate, where they communicate, through whom they communicate and with whom they associate.

Brands that dare will benefit, but understand that they need to be consistent in their communication and make sense of things in the long term, and have open communication with agencies. There will also be brands tempted to try all sorts of things that their audience doesn’t understand, isn’t used to that kind of content, and they will get the right kind of reaction.

And because I mentioned agencies, beyond being close to their clients and their needs, they also need to be attentive to the needs of the people on the team, as well as providing an environment where they feel comfortable.

Prediction for 2023

It will show the difference between brands that give themselves the freedom to communicate as humanly, naturally and spontaneously as possible, that choose credible, representative endorsers, and those that do not. Brands that continue to communicate only on the shelf and remain very product-oriented in their communication will realise that they need to be more human, interactive, to enter into the world of consumers.

I think brands will be even more pragmatic and will analyze more what brings them ROI and what doesn’t, if it’s worth paying for X number of advertorials, if it’s worth investing their whole campaign budget in 2-3 influencers and so on.

The impact of AI applications

We actually tested a few of them at the office and I must say they surprised us. At least for text, it generates pretty good content, but it still needs to be curated. At the moment, we haven’t generated any press releases, but we may do so in the future. :)) It’s going to be an interesting relationship between advertising and AI.

What a successful strategy means for 2023

For me it means, first of all, to have a very good understanding of what is wanted from that project, to consider the context, what the problems are, what the competitors are doing and then to come up with concrete, realistic and meaningful proposals. The communication strategy is good when the objectives are achieved and the results are seen.

What are you reading, listening to?

I read Marcomm publications from Romania and abroad, watch what’s being communicated in the media and listen to podcasts like Mind Architect , and as a PR man I try to follow pretty much everything that’s happening online, but also offline. I also look at case studies from abroad, but social media is the place for trends (see TikTok, where we have the day and the trend).

3 daily tools

HypeAuditor and Influence.co for influencer projects, Bitly for custom links and tracking, Discord for team communication.

Source: IQads