Influencer marketing: why the honeymoon is over

Mark Henshall, head of content for Qube Media, explains why he thinks influencer marketing is evolving fast and what the future may look like for the travel industry.

"The Fyre Festival influencer marketing saga earlier this year, in the Bahamas, felt like one of those old timeshare horror stories where holidaymakers turn up to find their villa hasn’t been built yet. To recap, in brief, the festival in ‘paradise’ promoted by influencers in slick videos beforehand actually turned out to be more like a horror movie with disaster relief tents, feral dogs, water and food shortages, and a lack of toilets. It wasn’t pretty.

Let’s be clear – even while the lawsuits for the festival organisers roll in – one dodgy event doesn’t mean influencer marketing is dead. However, the contrasting hype and reality of Fyre Festival does bring into sharp relief legitimate concerns around the rules of engagement in this relatively new marketing discipline. A lack of transparency threatens to erode any sense of authenticity and damage consumer trust.

High profile cases of influencer non-disclosure have exacerbated the situation. When consumers aren’t aware that an influencer endorsement is sponsored they feel understandably duped. When an influencer cut and pastes an endorsement to Instagram sent from a brand PR with the instructions still on it, fans of the influencer will rightly be confused. Brand reputation and influencer credibility are both on the line here, and it’s reached a tipping point – the influencer honeymoon is over.

For influencer iarketing the current situation is unsustainable. The thinking is often woolly, the practise misleading and the measurement inconsistent. The opportunity for the travel industry is to move away from the heady, early days of the ‘wild west’ and create a more robust framework for brands, influencers and regulators. Recent guidelines from The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and moves from bodies such as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and ISBA (Voice of British Advertisers) are promising.

There are will always be unfortunate outliers in any marketing discipline who don’t do the rest of their group any favours, but influencer marketing seems more fundamentally flawed, presently, through a lack of rigour. More brands need to adopt mutually agreed expectations, guidelines and contracts with influencers to avoid any misunderstanding, and regulatory bodies need to enforce penalties and fines where duty of care is breached. Campaigns need more clarity to address public levels of understanding of what constitutes a paid ad and what’s acceptable. Lastly, measurement of influencer marketing ROI needs to be more effective – we need to move past the idea ‘digital is different’ and report results accurately.

Influencer marketing with the right kind of collaboration can still be incredibly effective, but the nature of influencers is changing. Yes, there are growing pains, but there is also now more competition and choice. The next evolution of influencer marketing will begin to see more diversification as the travel industry enjoys the benefit of working with more niche or ‘micro-influencers’. These are classified as social personalities with 1,000 to 100,000 followers with more highly engaged communities than mass influencers.

Travel brands working with a range of micro-influencers in niches from food and fitness to fashion and wildlife can enjoy higher ROI than sticking with one big influencer who has huge reach but lower relative engagement. The audience of micro-influencers also tend to be more passionate as they feel more connected to the micro-influencer and their content.

Influencer marketing will also see travel brands working more closely with their customers as promoters. Many travel brands already use sites such as Tripadvisor, TrustPilot, Feefo and Bazaarvoice to their advantage, but more brands will use user-generated content and adopt customer advocacy programmes where travellers will be able to share brand content on their own social media channels. As people love talking about their holidays and these individuals possess a high level of trust with their friends, family and peers, this is a huge business opportunity for the travel brands, in particular, to scale.

Lastly, the people who know your holidays, products and services better than anyone are your colleagues. Travel brands that engage with their employees more and galvanise what is often a huge untapped resource will gain a competitive advantage. Again this can be scaled and managed effectively with an employee advocacy programme that helps colleagues share exciting news and offers to their personal network.

Influencer Marketing 2.0 is a great opportunity for the travel industry that doesn’t need to leave brands, influencers or customers stranded."