How Influencers Have Transformed Modern Marketing | Rachel David | TEDxVancouver

[Music] hello thanks for coming today so we are currently going through a revolutionary shift first there was the Industrial Revolution then there was the mass media revolution and now we are in the digital revolution if you think about it advertising it stayed relatively the same for about 50 years until the Internet and social media came and disrupted it I mean when is really like the last time that you bought something because you saw a newspaper ad or a billboard now advertisers are spending their money towards platforms like YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and on top

of these platforms we have these things called influencers now you might be wondering like well what is an influencer Rachel well simply put an influencer is just someone like you and me except where they choose to consistently post stuff online this will be on Instagram on YouTube and it can be in the niche of their choice so this could be beauty tutorials or comedy skits or these things called vlogs if you don't know what a vlog is people literally film just their life like drinking soup and you find it entertaining and somehow they've amassed a

huge following and have become an influencer so if you're wondering maybe why your kids are glued to YouTube this is why and this is the world that I work in so currently influencer marketing is a 4.5 billion dollar industry and its projected to be a 10 billion dollar industry by 2020 so what is happening is these brands they're realizing wow this is a highly effective way to market the problem is is it's virtually the Wild West when it comes to regulations procedures rates measuring ROI all these things we're figuring it out as I speak on

this stage so a little bit of background on myself my name is Rachel David I run a company called hashtag communications it's an influencer marketing company and it's been around for about two years in the past two years we've done over a million dollars worth of brand deals with top creators in the world and top brands now not only is that in one place no we work with companies in Asia in Europe in America and each place deals with influencers a little bit differently so during this talk I hope that I can share with you

some of the craziness I've seen this unique perspective I've had and equip you with ways that you can utilize influencers to your advantage or at the very least just make you look a little bit cooler amongst the Millennials in your life so I believe that influencers are really applicable to anyone trying to get attention on anything over the past five years we have seen businesses virtually transform especially in the e-commerce space thanks to influencers I read the stat that 70% of purchase decisions by Millennials are made from a peer recommendation which makes sense because like

if I am gonna go get laser hair removal I'm gonna go ask my friend and be like well where did you go get it so I'm not just gonna like look good now I wouldn't even look at a facebook ad for a laser hair removal recommendation and then I read the stat that 60% of in-store purchase decisions are influenced by something that someone has seen on a social media post or a blog post like 60% that's really high but if you think about why that is on average Millennials are spending nine hours on social media

so oftentimes what is happening is these youtubers they're watching are starting to become their friends more so than their real-life friends so I read this case study about these two founders their name their names are Nick and Alex they are the founders of hi smile you might have seen it it was it's a teeth whitening products you might have seen Instagram models taking a picture with it it's it's very photographable so these young founders created this product and I read the headline Kylie Jenner helped to twenty something year olds turn a few thousand dollars into

a forty million dollar business I was like oh God let me read more than I read within eighteen months they did ten million dollars in sales so I was like okay well how did you do this well what they did is they actually it yes it's a very millennial product but they took a really a millennial approach to their marketing they started off by utilizing these mid-level and micro influencers they started generating more sales eventually they were able to save up enough money to then do a brand deal with Kylie Jenner the Big Kahuna when

she put it online it went out to seventy five million of her followers at the time she's a little bit higher now and their sales skyrocketed so I often get asked what is the difference between a celebrity and an influencer and it's really just one word my friends and that's relatability people love that these influencers that they're uncensored and they're unscripted and every now and then they'll just drop the f-bomb and I know you might be thinking but Kylie Jenner she is a celebrity and I agree but you have to think about what is she

famous for like she's not famous for singing a song she's not famous for playing a character that you fell in love with she's not famous for dribbling a ball down the court no she's literally famous for her personality yes it started off on a reality show but then she took that she started posting consistently online to the point where millions of people followed were engaged they got to know love and trust her to the point where just recently Forbes put her on the cover and they named her one of the youngest billionaires in the world

she just made nine hundred million dollars in three years off of her Kylie cosmetics line that's pretty insane if you look at the data really only three percent of consumers are influenced by a celebrity endorsement when it comes to their product purchase decisions which actually make a sense because when I am looking at Jennifer Aniston on the TV and she is promoting a vino I'm like don't do you think I am like really like I know that you were airbrushed for three hours and then you probably got some weird vampire facial with their Hollywood friends

that I am NOT gonna go and get so I'm not buying it sorry if you're watching which you could no I want to watch somebody who is like me promoting a product now not only is influencer marketing applicable to brands I do believe it's applicable to people's this is where you come in ask any millennial if they're trying to build up their Instagram right now and they're probably gonna say yes and that's not something to be looked down on if anything they know more than anybody that building a personal brand today is more important than

ever when it comes to things like accessibility opportunities job employment before I started my company I basically made youtube videos I took a whole year off I made YouTube videos with no intention of really doing anything I just wanted to share my life vlogs those things that we were talking about and I ended up you know garnering an audience and growing that so then by the time that I actually did have this idea that I was going to start this company I immediately had a customer base I immediately had clients because they grew with me

they trusted me and they were like oh yeah okay well rachel is talking she's doing this thing why don't we use her to this day I haven't had to spend any money at all on marketing to this day I haven't had to spend a penny on marketing so personal brands are important and part of that puzzle piece is growing your audience so how do you do it so one way you can is utilize and influencers so say that you have a vegan Instagram page that you want to grow you would go and you could actually

pay a bigger influencer in your niche to shout you out and these shoutouts are how a lot of people are growing really quickly so one of the most interesting discoveries that we're gonna be faced with is in the next 20 years when generation Zed grows up and I often get asked by concerned parents you know what do you think is gonna happen the thing is is I don't know like I'll be the first one to admit that I think that there should be more kids outside playing with a ball but I am happy to say

if we're relating this to marketing on the regulation front we are putting stricter rules in place so part of what I do is I'm involved with the ad standards Council and we come up with decisions of how people are going to be consuming branded content so for example you might see influencers posting on Instagram and they post something and it'll say hashtag ad at the bottom this is now requires to put a hashtag ad or disclose if it's hashtag sponsored or if you're watching a YouTube video in the first 30 seconds they do need to

disclose if it is sponsored by a brand now of course there's still things that we do need to figure out and just a couple days ago I was watching a video and I saw that Jake Paul actually put out a video that was 13 minutes long and seven minutes of that was up selling to kids advertising his products to kids well there's rules around that in broadcasting like you're only allowed to market to kids like 20% of your pro can be marketing the kids this had almost like 50% to marketing to kids so do we

still have a long way to go yes but it's like I'm saying it is the Wild West right now but we are taking it one day at a time and we will get there so lastly we got a talk about the money everyone wants to talk about the money and I think that there's this stigma attached to influencers and that they're all these like young millionaires and that they get paid too much and hey Jake Paul I mean I just saw him save it he's like I made fifty million dollars this year and I'm like

so there's this stigma and people think that these kids are riding around their Lambos and they all have pet monkeys but I assure you that 99% of them do not I actually do a podcast every week where I interview an influencer or a creator and we talk about how they make money online and their different revenue streams and a lot of them are just trying to sustain making content as their full-time job what I want you to keep in mind is not only did the advertising industry change no the entertainment industry changed as well you

know advertisers they had bigger budgets to go and make commercials there was like five times the amount that they have now and then even on the entertainment industry front there were bigger grants there were bigger bursaries there was a support system a much bigger one for artists so now when you look at an influencer who's doing a sponsored post you're they're essentially getting two for one for a fraction of the price so relatively they're not actually getting paid that much these creators they are on-camera talent they are directing they're producing they are lighting they're doing

their makeup they're you know editing they're their management they're their admin and they are their distribution I mean I work for a broadcaster that is something actually getting it out to an audience of putting it on camera so if you see a sponsored post by a creator that you like like don't roll your eyes if anything this is the time that you should actually go and interact because and show your support because when you actually like like you know say there's something sponsored if you even just like that post you know that that's when the

brand is actually looking at their stuff so it means a lot to a creator they're ready feeling a little bit self-conscious of how are you gonna react to it but if you like it then the brand sees that and then they might want to do another deal with them and then you get more content so if you see an affiliate link and you need that product anyways use it if you see a promo code you know use that if you see even a youtube video and you know how sometimes I mean I know it's annoying

we watch and in the middle of a video there's an ad but when you watch that full video through they get paid a little bit more and what you're doing is you're really helping these highly creative people build their lives so they can make more content for your enjoyment so in closing I'm going to keep it super short to recap influencers they're not going anywhere number two stop picking on your kids number three support the influencers in their life and number four have a great [ __ ] day thank you [Applause]