The power of influencers in digital marketing, from fashion to politics - Part 1
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Read part 2 - The continuity of influencer culture
Amidst the rise of technology, influencers hold the power in digital marketing strategy. Brands often use them to market their products and/or services; not only in primary needs such as foods, clothes and houses, but also secondary and tertiary needs.
For instance, developers utilise influencers to promote their apartment units, such as LRT City Jatibening (@lrtcityjatibening) which joined forces with Putri Marino and Chicco Jerikho. Crystal stones are trending right now as collectible items because influencers endorse them-Nazla Alifa (@nazlaalifa) is often seen endorsing Canggu Crystals’ products (@canggucrystals).
In fact, every smartphone brand is expected to have influencers as their brand ambassador. Asus, for instance, hires a team of influencers for its latest campaign.
Not only tangible products and services, events also use influencers as one of their publication media. Influencer and internet sensation Bude Sumiyati came to Synchronize Festival in 2019 to endorse the event. Her attendance was a big attraction as many entertainment sites wrote about it and visitors queued to take pictures with her.
What power do influencers have to affect their audience’s decision making, which makes them a valuable asset in marketing? To understand it, we can look at Bourdieu’s Field Theory. There are three main components in this theory: social capital, field and agency.
Capital is earned through accumulated human labour in their field. Bourdieu’s work mostly saw the field as career: an arena to compete in, to collect the result of their labour. Those who have social capital can be agents: individuals who carry their own personal agenda which can benefit the society or only themselves (Tapp & Warren, 2010).
In other words, social capital acts as a power that drives one as an agent to achieve their agenda.
To become an influencer-thus an agent, one must compete in their field to do as much human labour as possible. To put it simply, the field is the social media platform where one can post digital content as the labour. The expected results are interactions, such as follows, likes, comments, shares and bookmarks. Interaction acts as a currency of power, which means that the audience hands power to the content creator. Those power can be converted into social capital, which then defines an individual as an influencer.
Influence is established most likely in a specified segmentation or niche market, which is linear to the field in Bourdieu’s theory. For instance, those who often create digital content about beauty and gain engagement are established as beauty influencers.
Take, for example, Gabriella Evans or Gaby. The main reason she focuses on the fashion field is because many people compliment her fashion sense. In an interview with TFR, Gaby said, “I try going to fashion since I got a lot of compliments for my style.”
To maintain her quality as a fashion influencer, she does endorsements only for fashion brands that suit her look.
If an individual is believed to create a good content that can build and nurture the relationship between the creator and the audience which results in engagement, they can gain more social capital from the field.
That being said, the higher the engagement influencers have, the more social capital they have. This is because the more power influencers have over their audience to affect their purchasing decision if they ever endorse brands.
Gaby’s social media followers grow overtime, and so does her engagement rate. With more than 50,000 followers, her endorsement content can gain 70,000-90,000 engagement in average.
In doing endorsements, influencers become agents with an agenda: to influence the audience into purchasing the endorsed brands. The higher the social capital, the easier it becomes to achieve the agenda.
The same theory can be applied to other industries as influencer marketing is also utilised in political campaigns. In DKI Jakarta’s 2016 gubernatorial election, Arie Kriting (@arie_kriting) used his social media platforms to endorse Basuki Tjahaja Poernama (Ahok) against Anies Baswedan and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono. In Indonesia’s 2019 presidential election, he also used his social media platforms to endorse Joko Widodo to win the race against Prabowo Subianto.
From this tweet, Arie Kriting endorsed Ahok by attaching #KamiAhok, a hashtag known to support Ahok after his blasphemy controversy.
Even Joe Biden, the recently elected president of the US, used influencers to help him and running mate Kamala Harris gain more votes to win the election.
One of the campaigns the Biden-Harris camp deployed was to have several influencers going live together on their respective Instagram account with Biden one at a time, then opening a discussion where the influencers’ followers could ask anything to Biden regarding his candidacy.
Technology certainly boosts the success of influencer outreach in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic since the situation forces everyone to maintain physical distance from one another, which is not an ideal situation to do political campaigns.
Furthermore, influencers have their own audience. Their relationship with their followers is more intimate than celebrities’ with their fans because it was built with constant and direct interactions on social media, and the interaction is maintained over time.
With the help of technology, face-to-face interaction does not need to be physical anymore and the message can still get across. Influencers may have the power, but the rise of technology helps them wield it fully.
