Influencers vs. copyright for music beds: Why AI could be the solution

If you find the topic of music copyright confusing then you’re not alone. It’s complicated, disjointed and expensive. But for content creators it’s an integral part of their process and necessary to achieve success.

All content creators understand the value that music adds by providing a layer that sets emotion, fun and enhances the experience for the viewer. But the practical application isn’t as straightforward as adding your favourite track to your...

18 February 2021 | Automation

How to determine brand readiness for influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is no longer an unfamiliar territory. The industry is projected to be a $15 billion global industry by 2022, up from $8 billion in 2019. It’s no surprise then that CMOs continue to emphasise influencer marketing strategies in their plans.

74% of CMOs surveyed in the 2019-2020 Gartner CMO Spend Survey planned to increase their social marketing (including influencer marketing) spending while 65% planned to roll out full or pilot influencer campaigns, with an...

3 February 2021 | Content Marketing

Sara McCorquodale, CEO, CORQ: On influencer and brand relationships and Gen Z/millennial priorities

Influencer marketing is a catchy, catch-all buzzword - but for a term so vast, it has a litany of caveats attached to it.

Right now, in these uncertain Covid times, the word has a certain stigma - especially referring to those who are jetting off to conduct 'essential work' when so many are unable to travel. PR Week dubbed it the Dubai dilemma. Yet this undercuts the work many others are doing with far lower budget and scope.

Since the first brands caught on to the...

28 January 2021 | Content Marketing

Influence: How Social Media Influencers Are Shaping Our Digital Future book extract: On ‘influencer legitimacy’

In this exclusive extract from Sara McCorquodale's book 'Influence: How social media influencers are shaping our digital future', McCorquodale explores her path to working with influencers and setting up her agency, CORQ, as well as the relationship between brands and influencers.

The questions that had started to form in my head were these: do we have any reason to believe people with large social audiences have the power to influence their audiences beyond their number of...

22 January 2021 | Content Marketing

Assessing the 2021 landscape: Commerce aligned with social set to rocket as brands truly digitise

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that massive disruptions can happen overnight across industries, with customer communication responsibilities from marketing to care often falling to the social media marketing team. The trends we at Socialbakers have seen take shape this year -- from increased usage of social messaging to recruiting niche influencers to help expand social reach -- are likely to grow in the coming year as more and more customer interactions happen...

14 December 2020 | Advertising

Why experiential marketing is more than just FOMO-inducing activations

A pre-pandemic Ad Age article suggested that experiential marketing might have reached its peak and, in supporting its argument, cited Instagram-worthy installations like the Museum of Ice Cream and The Color Factory. The problem is that while both installations are fun activities in their own right, they’re not actually examples of experiential marketing. They’re photography-oriented theme parks designed primarily for entertainment and social media sharing.

Experiential...

9 December 2020 | Branding

Sherwin-Williams, influencer marketing and UGC trends: Why consumers were left shaken but not stirred

The story of a Sherwin-Williams employee who was fired after the company saw his viral TikTok channel focused on paint mixing has led to plenty of reaction around the decision, as well as discussion around wider influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC) strategies.

Tony Piloseno, who worked part-time at a Sherwin-Williams store in Ohio, had built a 1.2 million-strong TikTok audience for his channel which showcased paint mixing. As reported by BuzzFeed, Piloseno was...

24 November 2020 | Branding

The Covid-19 realities which support influence marketing and in-housing

As we push forward into the winter of 2020, nearly six months since the appearance of COVID-19 in our lives, the impact of the pandemic on business marketing remains significant. Where “zoom” might have been the occasional reference to just another web conferencing tool, “zoom” is now a verb defining an entire ecosystem. So while some aspects of business are being challenged, many other aspects are seeing opportunity explode. In digital marketing, this is truly the...

12 November 2020 | Influencer Marketing

Travis Scott, J Balvin, and McDonald’s: Why some social partnerships work and others are destined to fail

If you went to McDonald’s in September, chances are you encountered Travis Scott. The prolific rapper had the first celebrity meal partnership to be featured on the McDonald’s menu since Michael Jordan’s in 1992. The Cactus Jack meal, named after Scott’s record label, replicated his favorite childhood special-order. The partnership was wildly successful. In its first few weeks, McDonald’s saw many franchises completely run out of ingredients for the meal, forcing a logistical...

12 November 2020 | Influencer Marketing

How user-generated content can be more powerful than influencer marketing campaigns

User-generated content (UGC) is quickly becoming the most popular marketing tool ahead of online influencer campaigns. The public have become accustomed to reality stars and has-been celebrities flogging whichever never-used-gadget that they’ve been paid to promote.

Since the rise of the Insta-marketeer, the Advertising Standards Authority has prescribed new rules for promoting products and services through social media platforms and online blogs, where a paid promotion must be...

11 November 2020 | Content Marketing