I am sure most of us, when we think about OOTD’s & fashion outfit inspirations, turn ourselves towards what social media influencers and content creators out there are recommending. Beauty & Styling videos are all over the internet and widely appreciated these days, but who are influencers?
Who are influencers; why do they have so much power?
An influencer is anyone with the power to impact consumer opinion. Authenticity and credibility are key to this power. In a world where everyone wants to be on-trend, influencers post their takes on what’s hot and what’s not and how they are building their own personal style.
I believe that this influencer phenomenon is motivated by customers’ need to control their decisions. As a result, they have formed and shown a strong preference for businesses that they recognise as ‘genuine.’ Rather than trusting the BRAND’S voice, they rely on the advocacy of PEOPLE whose opinions they respect, which drives and maintains brand engagement.
People quickly become inspired by these influencers and content creators or their lifestyle and tend to have a lot of trust in the influencers they follow. Influencers have a new degree of power in today’s social media-obsessed world when it comes to shaping the thoughts or purchasing decisions of a brand’s target audience. Consumers nowadays look to their favourite ‘personalities’ for dependable advice.
Influencers are apparently changing fashion for common people.
This brings us to influencer marketing in the fashion and beauty industries.
A personal recommendation remains the most-trusted method of advertising or communication, according to a Nielsen report from 2015. This survey by Fashion and Beauty Monitor looked at how brands choose to use influencers as part of their marketing strategy.
More and more fashion and beauty brands are turning towards influencers for promoting their products. Crucially, though, unlike the celebrity brand collaborators of old, whose message and image was often dictated by the brands they advocated, today’s influencers are independent and very much in control of what they say, create and publish. They may be actively collaborating with a brand and being paid to do so. Still, their power lies in their own opinions and in the social media following that trusts them.
It would be interesting to consider how the pandemic-related changes in our lifestyles, and the growth of online events, has changed the dynamics of influencers & content creation.
More people turned towards social media influencing and started posting content as well as following fashion & makeup tutorials online. As a result, influencers and brands began to shift their messaging from product to brand values. Because selling products in the present economy is challenging, the market has changed toward relationship-based influencer marketing rather than transaction-based marketing as a result of the crisis. Brands give up significant control over content, enabling influencers to express themselves more freely.
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