The age of social media has given rise to a unique class of new celebrities, each rising to fame in ways impossible before sites like YouTube, Vine, and Instagram existed. Brands eager to remain relevant have co-opted these social stars’ followings for sponsored content, hoping to drive sales from a new generation of consumers.
Now, as their one-off influencer campaigns rack up great engagement figures, some brands are considering signing Internet celebrities to long-term endorsement deals.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, emboldened by a holiday campaign featuring a dozen such influencers that generated well over 27 million impressions, is considering bringing those same faces back from a year-long campaign instead of finding new social stars. “It’s not just one and done — it’s a relationship that we’ve developed with social media influencers,” said Dick’s senior digital director Jay Basnight.
Old Navy, on the other hand, is taking a different tack to its influencer campaigns.
Instead of using the same cast of social stars they’d used for a summer campaign, the Gap-owned clothing chain brought a new roster of Vine influencers on board for a winter promotion that brought them 6,600 Vine followers and 84,000 engagements.
Taylor Bux, Old Navy director of digital and social, said the company used new stars so as to make their spots look like something more organic than simple paid placement. “We don’t want to be overly disruptive, so we’re not pushing a commercial message first.”
Skeptics worry whether influencers have the same sort of staying power traditional celebrities command, as they are known for rising and falling with the increasingly fickle tastes of their mobile-first audiences. “The speed at which these influencers are rising and falling is very quick,” stated Upshot senior vice president of interactive marketing and analytics Dan Swartz.
It’s clear that influencers, as obvious of a successor to traditional celebrities as they may seem to be, still stand in reasonably uncharted territory. If Dick’s gambit pays off, other brands might follow, paving the way for groundbreaking new endorsement deals.
