An Introduction on How to Work with Influencers in the G.C.C.

Ever since the birth of digital advertising, the efficacy of the work of influencers (at Digital Ape we call them 'creators') has been debated. Their selection is scrutinised and the hottest prospects offer their services up through agencies for a large chunk of a marketeers yearly budget. In the G.C.C, the discussion has taken a similar tone. In recent years, creators have started to make a substantial living from their services. This has brought a degree of professionalism and expectation of bang for brand managers' buck. In the first in our mini series on creators*, we will focus on how most brands navigate creator management and an introduction to The Digital Ape Way. We will then follow this up with a more in depth look behind the metrics and the benefits to the bottom line. Lastly, how this methodology has produced needle moving campaigns. The Standard Creator Selection Story It's a story that will ring true for most in the industry and bring up bad memories of wasted resources and dicy discussions to justify spending. Let's set the scene... Influencer A is significant in KSA - "let’s hire him to promote our product, he has like 1mn followers! He's really popular." Problem is Influencer A only has a RealReach of 10% of that 1mn, and of that, only 15% are in KSA. So that 1mn is now 15,000; is that enough to justify a $20k price tag? No. Are they even in the right vertical? From audience analysis, their affinity is not with the brand, but an automotive brand. So going with him is all around not a great decision and will result in lost ROI. The D/A Way At Digital Ape, we use the power of our proprietary insight software - Sila - to turn social intelligence into actionable marketing. As part of the tool, we are able to create value for our clients by proving their creators will have the desired; real-reach, relevance, and resonance. How? The image below shows Sila for creator selection. According to the brief parameters, we can filter out the right people based on; target audience, nationality, location, brand affinities, fellow creator affinities, content type and preferred objective (clicks, engagements, trial etc). We also filter out all influencers with less than 80% of the RealReach (so real people, who actually see their content). (We will also discuss further how this is possible and why this is so important in our next article, so stay tuned!) When it comes to managing creators, talent agency style relationships with influencers should be a thing of the past. Why? It doesn’t make sense from an audience or client perspective. To offer specific people or solutions that might not be best for the brand. Like Joey Tribbiani selling cologne one week, then to 'Ichiban! Lipstick for Men' in Japan. The content misses the mark or the market soon smells of a lack of authenticity. Only with a tried and tested methodology is it possible to manage the process of connecting, briefing and starting the campaign. On the back side, monitoring tools can then measure the impact of a campaign depending on objectives. By utilising our Sila service and its demographic models, we are able to not only see vanity metrics (av. views etc), but also the audience data. Through this we are able to work towards clear KPI's and provide tangible ROI.

About the data source.

DA has built a custom data warehouse service called Sila, powered by data science, we ingest millions of data points a day across social media and the web, in Arabic.

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*Go to the second article in the mini-series, focusing on the science behind modern creator selection by clicking here.