Feature
event.
The charity used influencers for its annual
wedding showcases in 2017 and 2018, working
with prominent wedding bloggers to profile the
palaces’ wedding offerings and promote the
showcase.
Milan Thakrar, commercial events business
development director at HRP, says: “We saw
great success, as many other wedding bloggers
followed suit to provide coverage organically,
plus we were able to reach a huge targeted
audience through the influencers’ platforms.
“This resulted in several enquiries post-
event, directly attributed to the showcase
coverage. One influencer recorded 2,500
impressions on their Instagram stories on the
night, as well as 8,000 impressions from three
supporting posts – a huge additional reach.”
Key to this success was making sure
audiences knew what was sponsored: “Our
content was marked as sponsored content,
both on blogs and social media posts. The
research stage is key. You need to work with
the right person for your brand to avoid any
possible mismatch down the line.”
Building a billion-dollar empire
For those who are able to utilise influencers
responsibly and transparently, then, there can
be huge gains. The influencer market, of which
HRP’s posts are but a drop in the ocean, is an
enormous one.
Last summer, Forbes ran a feature about
television personality Kylie Jenner and the
enormous cosmetics empire she has built
through Instagram.
At the age of 21, Jenner is predicted to
become the world’s youngest self-made
billionaire – her Kylie Cosmetics line was
valued in the Forbes article at around $900m
and continues to grow rapidly. If she succeeds,
she will break the record set by a 23-year-old
Mark Zuckerberg in 2008.
Jenner’s billion-dollar business has only
seven full-time employees, one of which is her
mother Kris Jenner. She outsources production
and packaging to a company in California,
and retail to online outlet Shopify. Most of the
profits go straight into her pocket.
The missing piece of the puzzle, as you might
imagine, is Instagram. Jenner leverages her
110 million Instagram followers for marketing
purposes: she takes pictures wearing different
“Influencers can
have a huge impact
on what their fans
decide to buy”
shades of her $29 lip kits, and her followers
flock in droves to buy them.
Responsible advertising
If event organisers want to tap into that kind
of influence, the first thing they need to be
aware of is how to play by the rules.
The Competition Markets Authority (CMA)
recently released a lengthy document titled ‘An
influencer’s guide to making clear that ads are
ads’, which you can find online.
It lays out, in detail, exactly what is required
of both influencers and the brands who hire
them – and both are equally culpable if the
rules are broken.
Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA,
said: “Influencers can have a huge impact on
what their fans decide to buy. People could,
quite rightly, feel misled if what they thought
was a recommendation from someone they
admired turned out to be a marketing ploy.”
It bears mentioning, too, that the rules are
equally as applicable to supermodels with 100
million followers as they are to exhibition
organisers looking to boost their visibility.
As long as we make it clear when we are
advertising to our audience, influencers could
hold enormous amounts of untapped potential
for marketing events.
So, event profs, is it time to look beyond the
newsletters, flyers and press releases, and start
talking to the Instagram influencers in your
community? What do you think? EN
March — 31