Whoever lives on social networks will perish through social networks. Talk to influencers who filmed themselves last week partying aboard a Sunwing flight, in defiance of the most basic health rules and standards of international aviation. Could this episode and the public outrage it aroused even spell the end of “influencer marketing” in Quebec?
At the start of the year when Quebec is confined, these influencers who have taken refuge under the Mexican sun seem to channel the frustrations generated by the pandemic restrictions. Anger so deep that it could end up splashing all influencers, believes Nina Duque, lecturer in the Department of Social and Public Communication at UQAM.
“What made influencers so successful was that they were close to their followers. Young people could identify with them. But how do you expect young people to identify with people who charter a plane to Cancún, when here there is a curfew and everyone is confined? Beyond the negative images that emerge from this controversy, the Achilles heel of influencers today, it is above all this estrangement that is created between them and their audience, ”explains Mme Duque.
A crumbling proximity
Sometimes bringing together tens or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers alone, influencers owe much of their fame to videos posted on YouTube or to reality TV. They are mostly young, from modest backgrounds and without any particular artistic talent, and therefore not necessarily predestined to achieve glory.
A notoriety that some consider superficial, but which makes them in the eyes of their audience less inaccessible and more convincing than the stars of the small screen or of music. Big companies and advertisers have smelled it, they who have made influencers muses of big and small brands in recent years on social networks.
Today there are agencies that specialize only in influencer marketing. Even Public Health used influencers, during the pandemic, to promote the wearing of masks or even vaccinations. As of December 10, Quebec had invested $ 232,222 in investments on Instagram since the start of the health crisis, according to figures obtained by The duty.
“People tend to overestimate their real influence. We confuse number of subscribers and influence. In the early days of social media, young people would follow influencers on YouTube for advice on all kinds of things because they felt like they had the same life as them. But now, they follow the influencers because they are entertaining, not because they are models ”, continues Nina Duque, who is convinced that the communicators will sooner or later notice it.
The researcher is not paying a lot of influencer marketing for years to come.
Micro-influencers and prejudices
Communication professor at the University of Montreal, Bernard Motulsky is less categorical about the future of influencer marketing, even if he recognizes that the scale of the current controversy risks forcing some companies to be extra careful before do business with influencers.
He, too, believes that agencies and advertisers often miscalculate when they combine influence level with number of subscribers. For him, the next few years will be those of “micro-influencers”, personalities who are followed by barely a few thousand people, but who have expertise in a particular area, such as cooking, travel or the outdoors.
“I anticipate that there will only be a few huge influencers, big stars, and several micro-influencers left who influence in their respective fields of expertise. Microcommunication is very much in tune with the times. It makes it possible to reach a much more targeted audience than with mass communication. But who says micro-influencer also says microbudget, ”says Bernard Motulsky, who predicts that it will become increasingly difficult to earn a living with sponsored publications on social networks.
After all, who still dreams of becoming an influencer? Even before the footage shot on the Sunwing flight was relayed all over the internet and in the media, the title had already lost its luster. Some people prefer to designate influencers as “content creators”.
“We made something pejorative about it. Influencers are automatically associated with the phenomenon Double occupation, while it is much more than that. As soon as there is someone who is described as an influencer who is caught up in a controversy, as in the Sunwing affair, we generalize ”, indicates with annoyance Nicolas Bon, president and founder of the Clark Influence agency. .
A work ?
Nicolas Bon is convinced that influencer marketing is a real job and that it is really effective. Despite the stubborn prejudices about influencers, advertisers know how to recognize their contribution, he says, optimistic for his part about their future.
According to a study conducted in 2020 by the firm Léger on behalf of Clark Influence among 192 Canadian content creators, barely 18% of them earned more than $ 100,000 per year. Almost 60% had pocketed less than $ 30,000 in the past year with their social media activities.
Finally, 71% confided that they had another job.