The Power of Influence

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connect to their customers and we are witnessing major communication disruptions. In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter said that users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much as their friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here's today's big question. Should brands consider adding influencer marketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Neal Schaffer, author of ‘The Age of Influence” gives us the scoop.

Related Content & Links:

• https://hydroottawa.com/
• Twitter feed: @NealSchaffer
• Amazon link to book: The Age of Influence: The Power of Influencers to Elevate Your Brand on paperback
• Website: nealschaffer.com
• Apple podcast link- Maximize Your Social Influence Podcast

Transcript:

Dan Seguin 0:02 Hey everyone! I'm Dan Segin from Hydro Ottawa. And I'll be hosting the ThinkEnergy podcast.

PewDiePie, Dude Perfect, Hola Soy German, Whindersson Nunes, and El Rubius. While perhaps not household names to you and I, they are powerful influencers to Gen Z's audiences aged 13 to 18. In fact, these youtubers combined have 262 million subscribers, and are more influential to this generation than movie stars and politicians. It's not surprising that today's consumers are increasingly more savvy and critical of branded advertising. Gone are the days where advertising messages and propositions were trusted and taken at face value. In an online world where advertising is seen as more intrusive than valuable.

Brands are struggling to find a new way to authentically connect to their customers, we are witnessing major communication disruptions. This includes declining television viewership, continued growth of social media audiences, an increase in ad blocking technology media Fasting, and a significant rise of noise clutter on all channels. It's becoming increasingly more difficult for brands, particularly energy brands to keep up with the digital landscape, as consumers take extreme measures to avoid being advertised to. With demand for attention on the rise and overwhelming product options on the market, consumers are beginning to lose sight of who they can trust. Is the energy industry facing a Kodak moment? In an article that appeared in Adweek, Twitter said that users now trust influencers like YouTubers, almost as much as their friends. This is the age of influencer marketing. So here's today's big question. Should brands consider adding influencer marketing to their everyday marketing mix and is there a right way, and a wrong way to do it. Our guest is no stranger to social media and the marketing world. He's the author of three books, teaches digital media to executives at New Jersey Business School, has a podcast called maximize your social influence, orchestrates digital transformation for leading businesses and is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Dear listeners, please welcome Neal Schaffer. Hey Neil, how would you define influencer marketing? And can you give us some examples of brands doing it well?

Neal Schaffer 3:48 Thanks Daniel. So influencer marketing is something that I think a lot of people are mystifying or they're mis educated on or they've been misinformed about. You know, when I look at influencer marketing, I look at Who has online influence? Who has digital influence? So, yes, celebrities have digital influence. But there's a lot of other people that I've influenced because there's so many of us that use social media that build communities, in the hundreds in the thousands in the 10s of thousands, but even those people that have communities in the thousands are still able to influence others, right. And even in the influencer marketing industry, where they have gone smaller and smaller, you know, with each year we they used to talk about macro influencers, then mid tier influencers, and then micro influencers, which are people that have between, you know, 50 to maybe 500,000 followers. And then over the last year or two, we talked about nano influencers, people with one to 10,000 followers. And if you think about, you know, I don't know about Canada, I'm assuming it's pretty similar demographic wise, but in the United States, the majority of the workforce are millennials. So these are digital natives that have been doing social media since it began. And they've bui...