John Bohan argues brands must let influencers tell their stories instead of controlling every message. Millennials and Gen Z watch almost no traditional TV, so social media is where billions actually are. Campaigns for Coke, Jack in the Box, and Enterprise succeeded by embedding the brand naturally rather than listing features.
It's a new world with influencer marketing. A lot of brands have a hard time letting go of their, their brand image and placing in the hands of influencers, but I think it's critical. I mean, influencers are talking about brands anyway, right, in ways that they want to choose. I think what the brands need to do is set certain parameters in terms of what they want to accomplish because after all they're paying the influencers to do certain things. They want that brand message to get out there. I think that's one mistake that brands are making is they're not giving them specific parameters that they want communicated to sell their product or service. At the same time, giving them the freedom and we heard earlier today surrendering your brand to the influencer is critical. Because these influencers have these massive followings. So, you know, 20 million users like Logan Paul, for example, or it might be 20,000 users from like a mid-tier influencer in, you know, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They connect with their audience because of their content. You're hiring them because you want them to connect in a way with their audience, but at the same time bring your brand along to get your message across. I think a common metric is really, really difficult for I mean, you've got TRPs and GRPs in television. You've got various metrics in digital. I think that's one of the ways that I think the industry is struggling. I think that's why we have, one of the reasons why we have all these silos. At the end of the day, though, I think that what will happen over a period of time is the digital executives will start to take over as people who are brought up in television, honestly, start to retire. And I think at that point we start to get to more common metrics. So the current place we are is that you just have these wars and it's just not working. And the advertiser is losing. So the CMOs out there actually need to actually force these agencies to work together or get other agencies that work together. That's two ways. One, people retire, or two, the CMO demands it. And actually, that's— I think that's the only way it gets done. I think what What clients need to do in this new world that we live in, where social is in 2 billion people's hands, two-thirds of the internet, where millennials are watching significantly less TV, kids under 24 are watching 40% less traditional TV than their predecessors. I think that the clients who really get it right are the ones that actually have understood this for a while and they're not trying to hold on to Capas Metrics. So thinking of ways in which brands can communicate their message through stories. And I'm not talking about top-down. Top-down has been, here's my brand with the features and benefits, how do I say that in a 30-second message, and then where do I buy my media? That's old school. New school is, what's the story that's really connecting with my current customers? What's trending? What are they into? And how do I authentically work my brand into that message, and who are the influencers that are gonna do it for me? So I think the biggest thing brands can do is think, don't do it top-down anymore, and kind of flip that model on its head. And then I think what happens, and you see it all the time, we've done campaigns for Coke, Jack in the Box, Enterprise, et cetera, that all of a sudden the story is what people grab onto, and because the brand is integrated into that story so well, it's an ad, yeah, it's an ad, but it's done in a story and it gets shared more more often.
