EMPOWERMENT TO CONSUMER PEOPLE

I got a poetic vision about marketing, I believe that brands are people.

If we close our eyes and think about some brands we are going to feel passion, craziness, hate, inspiration…and for that reason, yes…brands are people.

As a brand we want to be that person that everyone wants to be with, that top of mind person when we want to have a drink, confess, ask opinions or simply hang out and feel all the positive energy.

The new marketing buzzword “humanization” is a reflection of the need and ambition for brands to be more authentic, human and not merely a commercial transaction.

Just reflect on what’s happening on Instagram, where the younger ones are getting off the platform because it creates social pressure, the need for the perfect photo and the perfect life.

They want to be on platforms where they can be authentic, without filters and without pressure, which translates to the success of TikTok, Discord and Twitch.

The big question is “How do we humanize a brand without smelling fishy?” even more so when Generation Z and Alpha have a bullshit radar because if it isn’t done legitimately we enter the dangerous territory of purpose washing.

To help you, I’m going to share the laws we use in our digital strategy:

1 – THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SEED

Brand building is not done in 2 days, so it is necessary to put the seed in the audience that we want to impact and feed the brand’s core message over time.

2 – AWARENESS ≠ ATTENTION

Creating notoriety without message and attention is just noise. More than notoriety, we want to capture the audience’s attention on the right channels.

3 – ATTENTION–RELEVENCE = SPAM

We have to be relevant, understand the pains, ambitions and designs of the audience, the message and the content needs to be interesting and relevant, otherwise, it’s spam.

4 – Likes to brand equity

Likes without a message are just noise.

We have to make sure that engagement is about the message and not the form.

To help in the analysis, I recommend creating weights in the metrics, for example, a “save” is worth 4 times a single like.

5 – From people to people

Our content has to be as real as possible, made by people for people.
For example, our “rawer” and real people photos have 3X more engagement than typically more advertising photos (photos with a lot more editing, perfect framing).

I invite you to see our “sumólicos” rubric, an example of co-creation of UGC with the brand, where every Friday we publish on Instagram a true story of a fan of the brand.

But how do we implement these laws? What is the process?

In 2014, we created the concept of DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM where our co-creators are at the center.

I share a recent quote from Suzanne Kounkel, Deloitte’s Chief Marketing Officer, who embodies this concept well “Fusion is the new ecosystem, Fusion is the art of bringing together new business partnerships, customer insights, and digital platforms to create ecosystems that more holistically address human needs”

Co-creation is not about ambassadors and brand promotion, but about people who identify with the brand and are able to adapt the brand message in an authentic and native way.

In addition to the typical “post”, the co-creators are part of the brand’s daily creation, they are our consultants, they are producers, they are photographers, they are models, they are artists, they are activists, it is who allows us to arrive with the right and native message to the different audiences.

A project that currently has more than 65 co-creators, some of which have been with the brand for over 5 years.

How is it possible to manage so many people? So many personalities?

Easy , a family concept was created, where the new ones are welcomed by the older ones in the family, we foster synergies and content between them. We support your projects and give voice to your art on our networks.

For example, our community manager is a co-creator, our designer was a recommendation from a co-creator, the person in charge of Sumol Magazine is a co-creator, the producer that produces almost all of the brand’s digital content was born within Sumol.

And what are the briefings like?

We encourage authentic and native content, we don’t have brand guidelines but message guidelines. We want them to interpret the brand in their language and not in the brand’s language.

For example, the most viewed TikTok with over 5M views was created by a co-creator.

And what was the audience’s reaction?

This proves that people want authentic content, native to different networks.

The humanization of marketing is giving a voice to our communities, and true influencer marketing is making a brand’s message credible.

That’s why I end the article with Johann Goethe’s famous phrase:

“Tell me who you’re with and I’ll tell you who you are. Let me know what you are busy with and I will also know what you can become”

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We’ve all read it somewhere. Instagram is hiding likes count on posts. Now what? What will happen to influencers? How is this going to impact the Influence Marketing industry? How will brands select influencers? How will influencers be noted? 

I work for Primetag, a SAAS company that develops tools to transform influencer marketing. It is a collaborative platform designed for influencers, agencies and brands to work together in a scalable, simple and data-driven way. We are in a unique position to observe and to speak about these changes Instagram is operating.
Pedro Fernandes, Chief Marketing Officer at Primetag

First of all, what’s really going on?

Instagram first announced this decision in their annual developer conference, in April 2019. The rationale was reducing pressure and helping users focus on the quality of their contents, not on its performance. Removing the likes count removes the burden on the performance, according to their thesis. 

Instagram started testing this in Canada and by mid July they extended the trial to Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Italy and Japan. Which makes it seem more like a roll out than an extended test, but let’s put a pin on that for now.

It’s important to notice that while the number of likes is not public, the posting user still has access to that information. So the likes are not gone. The public just doesn’t see them.

How will this change impact the behaviour of the user? 

Instagram was built based on the “like” behaviour. Simply put, you browse your feed and when you see something you enjoy, you double-tap to “like” it. Which begs the question: if the number of likes stops being visible, will users keep liking posts? Where’s the incentive for doing so? 

For instance, video posts on Instagram have typically a smaller number of likes than image posts because the default behaviour is watching it. If you like the video, you watch, that’s how you exteriorize that likability. You are less prone to add a like to that video because you already watched it. So we actually can identify a user behaviour where adding or not a like to the content is not so relevant.

So, yes, we may be seeing a fundamental change in the way people interact in Instagram. 

Think about Instagram stories, which are nowadays a big part of the content being published in this social network. There are no likes for stories. The default behaviour is watching the stories and swipe up when you want to see more, eventually go to the purchasing page. And we all know that Instagram is working on building an ecommerce experience around the app. So maybe removing the likes may just be an intermediate step towards a more shoppable experience.

All things considered, it seems to me that removing the number of likes from posts is not that radical. If you think about, it’s actually quite in line with the overall app experience and evolution.

Will this harm influencers?

Influencers have large audiences. And social networks want those audiences because they earn money showing ads. The more people, more ads. The more ads, more money. So it’s hard for me to believe that Instagram would harm influencers, at least intentionally. 

Seems like Instagram stepping away from vanity metrics, and forcing brands to step up their game.

At Primetag we develop software that lets brands and influencers (or media and talent agencies on their behalf) collaborate in a professional and sophisticated fashion.

Brands with little or no experience in influence marketing resort to likes and comments to evaluate the success of their campaigns. Experienced brands and brand managers know that the metrics and KPIs to monitor vary according to the campaign goals. Without likes and engagement rates, inexperienced brands will need to dig deeper and find better ways to evaluate their campaigns. They’ll be forced to evolve, to increase their expertise.  

There are digital providers that estimate influencers insights and put this information out there. This lack of transparency affects every player within the influence marketing sector. Brands are making decisions based on estimated data, not real facts, and influencers are being evaluated based on information that is not correct. 

With this move, Instagram is making life much harder for digital providers that estimate insights. Which, in reality, is a good thing for influencers. Primetag’s platform allows influencers to share their real insights with brands in a safe and controlled way. Favoring platforms that work with real data is Instagram’s way of promoting this industry and protecting its most valuable asset, the influencers in their social network.

So, Instagram is removing likes. Don’t panic!

The post Instagram is Hiding Likes. Don’t Panic! appeared first on Primetag Blog.

Influencer audience insights is critical information to plan successful campaigns. Are you sure you’re using real data?

Understanding influencers’ data

Each influencer has access to the analytic information of their social networks, whether we’re talking about a blog, Instagram account or a Youtube channel. That is commonly called “private data”. As opposed to other public metrics, such as number of followers, likes, and comments.

That private data includes information regarding the location of an influencer’s audience, such as the city and country, its gender, and age range. The reach of each specific post. And many other metrics, depending on the social network

Reach is how many people actually saw a specific content. Not all followers will be shown the post. And sometimes non-followers see the post.

That is why public data is information nice-to-have, but private data is a must-have. Because it gives you an insight into an influencer’s audience. Hence the name, audience insights

When do brands need access to influencer audience insights?

There are two critical moments when brands and agencies need to access the real data from influencers’ analytics.

The first moment is during the campaign planning stage.

A brand (or an agency working on its behalf) has goals to achieve in any advertising campaign, and with influencer marketing it’s no different. The brand has a target audience to reach, with specific characteristics, grouped into segments.

Let’s imagine you are a brand and you want to impact 500.000 people in your country. With public data, you will have to look at the number of followers and interactions of an influencer and try to guess how many people will actually see that post. Which, let’s face it, is not the most rigorous approach (hint: it’s ).

With access to audience insights, you get to know the average reach and impressions of that influencer. And you can, with a high degree of confidence, forecast the number of posts required to reach the 500.000 people you are targeting.

The second moment is evaluating the campaign results, in the report stage.

Brands need to evaluate the performance of the campaign, to know whether it reached its goals. To do so, they need access to audience analytics of all the influencers in the campaign. Only then can the brand assess the campaign’s performance. Again, without access to authentic data, you will not be able to correctly assess the campaign’s performance.

What is happening in the market?

Well, it turns out that asking each influencer for their audience insights is a time-demanding task.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could go to a website and have all the private data of all the influencers available? It would! And, in fact, it just so happens that such websites do exist! But…

The problem with this third-party companies that sell audience insights is that their data is not correct! That is, the numbers they provide in exchange for money are fabricated. They do not have access to the real audience insight information. So they estimate data and charge for it.

Think about it. This information is constantly evolving. They would need to be in contact with the influencers, constantly requesting their insights to update their database. And there are multiple providers like this. So all of them would be constantly contacting influencers and requesting their private data. It’s absurd.

Let’s look at an example! Here we have a printscreen of the audience insights from an Instagram account with +8M followers.

And here is a third-party supplier data for that same account:

According to the third party supplier, 29% of their followers are from Spain. So, 29% of 8M followers would be 2,320M persons. However, from the private data in his account, we can see that this account only has 5% of his audience in Spain. 8194006 x 5% equals 409700 persons. There’s a staggering difference between the real data of 410k and the fabricated data of 2,3M!

So, where are they getting their data from?

There are a lot of third party providers, and each one has their own specific way of producing data. But at the end of the day, they are mostly a “guesstrapolating” from public metrics (hint: they are ). The data usually ranges from unacceptable to simply atrocious.

What are the consequences of these bad practices?

Brands and media agencies that are using this data to plan their campaigns suffer a direct impact from these misleading third party companies.

As they are using estimated data to plan their campaigns, the immediate consequence is the impact on the campaign’s performance. If you are making decisions based on wrong information, don’t expect a brilliant outcome.

Influencers and social networks selection, the number of posts, all of these will be decided based on fake data. And, obviously, as these third party companies omit the fact that their data is not legit, brands keep using that data, completely unaware of the disastrous consequences.

In short, brands and media agencies are burning money.

And that’s not all. Influencers are suffering from this plague too. Most of the time without even realising it!

Influencers are being disregarded for campaigns simply because they are being evaluated based on estimated data. And worst of all, they are not even aware of that. As brands (think they) don’t need to contact them to have their audience insights, influencers are oblivious to the whole situation.

What’s the professional approach?

We believe that data authenticity is mandatory to work in a professional manner, as this is the only sustainable way for this industry to grow.

Influencers are the owners of their audience insights!

They are the ones who should be in control of who has access to that information. What influencers need is a safe way to easily manage who has access to their audience insights. A tool to enable brands to obtain that information, and the ability to revoke access to it once it is no longer necessary.

Brands that work with an influencer must have access to the audience insights. It is in both parties best interest. Brands that are evaluating working with an influencer must have access as well, in order to accurately assess the fit between the influencer and the campaign goals.

We developed our platform with this concept in mind: influencers have full control of their data. They decide which brands can see their audience insights. They decide which agent can work on their behalf.

Why is Primetag’s data real?

Primetag was approved by the most relevant social networks to access their APIs for the audience insights level.

This guarantees that data influencers and brands see in the Primetag platform is real. Because it displays the information that comes directly from the social network. With our platform the influencer is empowered in the decision of sharing his private information and the brand has access to data certified by the social networks.

If you work in the influencer marketing industry and agree that real data is mandatory to work in a professional manner, drop us a line. We can explain a bit more about our tool and how you can use it to implement successful campaigns.

#RealFollowers event in Barcelona: influence marketing leaders join Primetag in Spain

The post The Deception in Influencer Audience Insights: Why Estimated Data puts Brands and Influencers in jeopardy appeared first on Primetag Blog.

Political campaigns, companies, security agencies, government departments, serious hardware and software failures. By 2017, the media and the general population finally woke up to a hidden reality – cybersecurity.

Today, the real reward for hackers is user information. Our data, such as passwords, financial or medical information, addresses and purchase history is all at risk. This information is valuable and it ultimately ends up being sold on the internet’s black market, the “dark web.”

What is the relevance of this to a professional working in the communication sector?

My interest in this subject matter has been sparked by my professional experience in e-commerce and brand construction within a digital environment.

Trust is the most valuable aspect for e-commerce companies. This is because without it customers are less likely to order a product they have never seen, from people they have never met, through an online store.

Cyber ​​attacks destroy consumer trust in companies, brands and businesses. There is no marketing plan, promotional strategy, or discount campaign that works when the consumer does not feel safe and protected.

THREATS TO COMPANIES

Increasing Digitalization

Modern companies operate based on digital processes and rely on technology for communication, billing and logistics. With the increasing expansion of IoT (“Internet of Things”) it is understood that the more intertwined links you have the more you are prone to digital invasion and computer hacking.

Shopping Inhibition

A lack of trust continues to be one of the main factors preventing consumers from buying or using online services. However, if a loyal customer was to find their data exposed or potentially compromised, this would destroy their trust in that particular online business.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMPANIES

Contingency Plan

“There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be hacked”. 

Robert S. Mueller, former FBI director

This famous statement by Robert S. Mueller, a former FBI director, serves as a wake-up call for all businesses who need to prepare for contingency communication plans. These plans should be designed to respond to different scenarios of security breaches. The speed and the way you react to a cyber attack is determined by the amount of damage done and ultimately the public’s opinion.

Positive Differentiation

There is an opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves from competition. This can be achieved through an integrated plan to combat potential threats, and make this process one of the company’s values. Thus, increasing the trust a customer has in that business.

THREATS TO THE GOVERNMENT

Slow Adoption of New Technologies

The government tends to be slow in adopting new technologies and computer processes. While using new technology carries its risks, relying on outdated technology – with well-known weaknesses – also poses serious challenges to the systems sustainability.

Fragmentation of Adopted Solutions

Different departments that are ran by people who depend on electoral cycles, lead to a fragmentation of adopted solutions. This tends to lead to integration problems as they usually require consistency to function properly. The more links a system has, the more it is prone to attacks.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE GOVERNMENT

Lack of Critical Infrastructures

Portugal, for instance, does not have nuclear facilities or military infrastructure (when compared to other countries). Typically, these amenities consume many resources and require constant monitoring.

A smaller, cohesive, geographically focused network is easier to manage and maintain.

Capitalize on the Sense of Security

Portugal is viewed, internationally, as a stable country with low crime rates as well as being able to positively react to crisis scenarios. Our country ranks third in the “Global Peace Index 2017” and it is also included in the list of less dangerous countries for travelers from the United States Department of State. This, together with the excellent quality of our software and IT professionals, could be a good launching base for making Portugal a country with above-average levels of cybersecurity, attracting foreign investment and positioning it at the forefront of an industry that will define the future of our society.

The post Cybersecurity: Threats and Opportunities for Businesses and the Government appeared first on Primetag Blog.

I had just entered my teen years when the Use Your Illusion albums were released. I grew up reading everything I could find about Guns N’ Roses, acquiring every bootleg album I could get my hands on and essentially listening over and over to their tunes, much like every other kid my age. You can say that, in a way, we were all followers of Axl, even though the concept of social media was still years away.

Pedro Fernandes, Chief Marketing Officer at Primetag

Theodore Andreadis is a talented american musician of Greek ascent. Throughout his career he worked with a stellar list of artists, such as Alice Cooper, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Roger Daltrey, to name just a few. His musical talent alongside his instrument versatility garnered him the respect and recognition of his peers.

However, and despite being acknowledged by the very best in the industry, Theodore wasn’t a mainstream media celebrity. He played with the best, hang out with the best and, in fact, he was one of the best. But he just wasn’t recognized by the audiences as being a rock n’ roll star. It all changed one night.

Teddy goes to The Jungle

Let’s go back a little bit. In 91, Theodore Andreadis was given a ticket to enter the jungle and paradise city, all in one. Our hero was invited to join Guns n’ Roses on the “Use your Illusion” tour, playing keys, harmonica and helping with background vocals. That meant sharing stage with the most charismatic, incendiary, magnetic, hellraiser and sought-after rock n’ roll stars of the late eighties and early nineties. Namely, Duff McKagan, Slash and Axl Rose. 

(…) and the band’s slightest misstep becomes controversy and turns established magazines and newspapers into veritable Guns n’ Roses fanzines. No wonder they take themselves so seriously.

“Use Your Illusion II” review, Rolling Stone magazine, October 17 1991

And so, Teddy Andreadis started playing before fifty, sixty and seventy thousand people, day in and day out, taking part in what became the longest tour in rock n’ roll history. 

Axl Rose, the legendary frontman, had the habit of, every night, introducing all the musicians on stage. However, the addition of Teddy Andreadis to the band brought in a little problem. Apparently, the name Andreadis was a bit too complicated to pronounce, so Axl would quite often mispronounce it (or either flat out make something up, like “Teddy angry anus”). Until, that is, the day when Axl is walking backstage and overhears a crew member talking with Teddy, calling him Teddy “Zig Zag”. 

That night was the night that forever changed Teddy Andreadis life. Axl went on stage and, for the first time ever, he introduced to the World the guy that was playing harmonica as being “Mr. Teddy Zig Zag”. Remember this was the early nineties. No social media. No internet. No youtube to amplify what had happened that night. Just a musical performance for around sixty thousand people and the media, that would write about the show in the next day newspaper or in next week’s magazine. However, Axl Rose’s influence power was such that, from that night on, Theodore Andreadis became Teddy Zig Zag. Forever! From that day on,  everybody started addressing him as Teddy Zig Zag. 

Even today, in a World with so many social media celebrities, with thousands and even millions of followers, that kind of influence is absolutely uncanny. The magnetism, the charisma, the power of influence of Axl Rose was so colossal that in one night, in one second, he threw Teddy into mainstream celebrity. And that, kids, is how you influence people. 

The World has changed

In the past we had a handful of people that were known on a global scale. Today, the number of people recognized globally has increased by an order of magnitude. I grew up with only two TV channels. So, give or take, we were all subject to the same media content. And that, in a way, favoured the appearance of Axl Rose type of phenomena: the combination of highly charismatic and magnetic personalities with the concentration of existing the media. Today there is so much dilution of content, so many channels and communication platforms available that I don’t think we’ll ever be able to witness such phenomena.

The post Influencing before Social Media: the Power of Axl Rose appeared first on Primetag Blog.

The basic definition of the internet as “a network” is correct but outdated. Today, the digital universe goes beyond the traditional design of the internet. Added to the base, were several other networks to form an increasingly dense and complex digital machine.

At the beginning of the digitalization of brands and industries, the strategy was focused on ensuring a presence on the network. A bit like having a stand at a fair or opening a shop in a busy hub, a way to have your “foot in the door.” 

A New Paradigm

In recent years we have witnessed a process that leaves behind many of the analogies linked to the physical world. As digital reality built its rules and defined new operating processes, it has impacted how brands and companies view the world’s digital capabilities.

The advent of large-scale social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has reversed the “alias” and anonymity paradigm on the internet. Instead social media prompts people to take on an online presence that reflects their own identity and personality. From this point on, it became possible to trace the behavior of both individuals and social groups. In addition, technological developments, such as smartphones and the mobile internet, created an outlet for digital human interactions and relationships. This exponentially increases the amount of data provided by users through their involvement in various online networks.

Opportunities and Challenges

The Social Media phenomenon has created the need and opportunity for brands to start listening to consumers and keep up with their online public activity. What initially began as a collection of data, referred to as “social-media monitoring”, it quickly evolved into “social-media listening.” This means user data is now analyzed to help advance businesses based on the users information and interests.

We have reached a point where digital reality increasingly affects the reality of the physical world. One of the areas most affected by this phenomenon is the production of content, both informative and advertising.

There is a decline of investment in traditional advertising, such as print ads, billboards, and television ads. Advertising shifted from eminently metaphorical and heavily encoded messages to a communication paradigm where real people build factual stories around products, services, and experiences.

The Power of Influencers

The use of characters and personalities in marketing and communication is not a new concept. However, the difference in is that the hierarchy of visibility used to be from top to bottom. At the moment it is seen on the contrary, ordinary people have a lot of influence on the behavior of consumers because they identify more with a common customer.

The increase in influence became a focus of interest and quickly attracted the attention of companies, brands and advertisers. They saw this as an opportunity to utilize a new medium for the delivery of brand messages and the promotion of products.

Quickly after, the business market realized the value in influencers and ordinary people became much more recognizable and more utilized. The rise of influence marketing displays how capable the digital world is of distorting the classical boundaries of the marketing and advertising production process.

If you work with influencers to promote your brand, bare in mind that they are also the ones listening to their followers – your consumers.

Sérgio Abreu

Create Lasting Relationships

I believe that influence marketing is the logical evolution of the aforementioned process of “social-media listening”. The true power of influencers lies not only in the promotion of messages and products but in the relationship they build with their followers. Even the semantic difference is important in this case. While the audience hears and has a static behavior, followers choose to connect with other people and interact with them on a very personal level, sharing values ​​and feelings.

Creating a lasting relationship with influencers goes beyond the logic of digital marketing, based on metrics such as CPC, CPM, likes and views. The relationship enables business to collect essential information through privileged translators, such as Primetag.

Listening to consumers allows brands that to build a close, human relationship with them. The businesses able to embrace this process will be the ones most apt to grow and seize the opportunities of a fast-changing world.

The post Listening to Consumers: The Importance to Brands and the Role of Influencers in the Process appeared first on Primetag Blog.