How Technology & Influencers Are Disrupting Traditional Marketing

Influencer Marketing has become a staple of the digital media mix, however, it does not inherently function in a smooth and efficient manner.

At #SMWLDN, Justin Rezvani (Founder & CEO of theAmplify) spoke about traditional marketing and how technology and influencer marketing are disrupting the old model.

How Is Tech Disrupting?

Rezvani began his talk by the current age of disintermediation. Older industries like transportation and hotels being disrupted by technology like Uber and AirBB. Marking is currently being disrupted by technology as well, whether thatʼs through Facebook and Google advertising or in Rezvaniʼs case, Influencer Marketing.

The old marketing model consisted of a brand hiring and agency, production company, and a publisher to find an audience for their product or service. Each of those three steps would cost an exuberant amount of money.

According to Rezvani, the new influencer world skips three of those steps and goes from the brand to the audience through the use of technology and influencers.

Creator Identification

But how do you find the right influencers for your brand? Through technology. Rezvani spoke about the following public tools that can help brands find influencers.

• TensorFlow: Googleʼs AI that can help you find the right influencer by
  reverse engineering your target audience.
• IBM Watson: Find the personality and tone of your influencer and see if it works for your brand.
• Facebook: The social media giant provides a marketing graph to find influencers that match the same customer segments of your followers on your pages.

The Current Model of Influencer Marketing

When a brand decides to work with an influencer to distribute their content they need to communicate the brands message to them effectively so that the target audience is being reached the way the brand intended. This isnʼt always the case no matter who the brand or influencer is.

Although the Kardashianʼs (and their inner circle) are know as some of the most influential marketers in entertainment, they have made mistakes when it comes to advertising a product and itʼs because of the old model of communication, content creation, and distribution.

In which Scott Disick copied and pasted the email from the skinny tea marketing team onto his Instagram caption pic.twitter.com/ocVdxi4jaZ

— frankie (@frankiegreek) May 19, 2016

Rezvani provided an example of one such instance when Scott Disik posted on Instagram about a protein shake that he was advertising by literally copying and pasting the entire email he received from the marketing company, which included the copy and when he should post it. Someone took a screen shot and tweeting it, which ended up receiving more engagement than his failed post. This is where Rezvani and theAmplify have stepped in to disrupt the current content creation and distribution model for Influencer Marketing.

How Tech Is Evolving Influencer Marketing

theAmplify has developed a program that allows brands to communicate their product or service directly with the influencer by having it all available in one place. Brands can now brief creators about a campaign from where ever they are in the world through their smartphone. So now the only thing that needs to come from the brand or the creator is the brief and the rest is done within the platform, including the distribution to the different social platforms.

The company has also tried to change the current way that marketers and brands view analytics, but bringing voice-first technology into the mix and having a program like Amazonʼs Alexa talk to the individual about specific marketing campaigns. With Reach, you can get real time analytics with Alexa and get quick or full updates on marketing campaigns. Rezvani sees this as another way to get campaigns directly to the influencers without having to go through multiple steps and have the entire process automated.

What Is the Role of People?

With all of this new technology replacing many aspects to marketing, what is the
role of people in this new disrupted industry? Rezvani believes it is the brandʼs job to create amazing briefs, perfect the content, and develop the audience. They need to focus continue their focus on creating and following trends.

AIʼs can replace a lot of things, but they canʼt replace the “white glove service” that marketers provide for their clients. People will still be the ones facilitating the details between brands and influencers. Rezvani also spoke about how the AIʼs behind paid media are still developing and the strategy still needs to be run by people to be effective.

“Some interesting stats that we are seeing right now on a paid media perspective is that when brands decide to spend on influencers with the same call to action, but instead of their brand decide to use an influencerʼs channel they are getting a 2x ROI on that money.”

AI, Bots, & AR Are The Future of Marketing

Rezvani closed his session by talking about the future of marketing and how AI, bots, and AR will continue the disruption. He believes that AI and chatbots that are the focus of conversational marketing should be called “digital extensions.”

If you have a brand like Ford, your chatbot shouldnʼt be the brand itself, but it could be the digital embodiment of Henry Ford and developed a persona and messaging system for him to communicate effectively with that audience.

These types of innovation is what Rezvani believes will start a conversation and theAmplify is now developing “Influencer Chatbots” for brands to help give them a digital extension of their brand identity and help them reach customers in a whole new way.

Further analysis and commentary from “Process vs. People: Everything You Need to Know About Influencer Marketing” session:

"We live in the world of disintermediation." CEO of @theAmplify #SMWProcessvPeople #SMWLDN pic.twitter.com/UtSAEZxDwv

— Olga Rabo (@olgarabo) September 13, 2017

New Influencer World:

Brand > Influencer > Audience#SMWProcessvPeople #SMWLDN @justinrezvani @theAmplify

— SMW London (@smwldn) September 13, 2017

Scott Disick when he copied and pasted ad copy for a brand he was endorsing… #SMWProcessvPeople #SMWLDN pic.twitter.com/XhbYt94gcq

— SMW London (@smwldn) September 13, 2017

The old world vs new: marketing process cut in half thanks to technology. – @justinrezvani @theAmplify #smwldn #smw #SMWProcessvPeople pic.twitter.com/SUvojKUIcZ

— Lucie Cadova (@Lucishkaa) September 13, 2017

Real time analytics w/ Alexa (@amazonecho) #SMWProcessvPeople #SMWLDN pic.twitter.com/rU4lywizvR

— SMW London (@smwldn) September 13, 2017

Exciting to see @justinrezvani demonstrate how Alexa can deliver campaign stats simply by asking #SMWProcessvPeople #SMWLDN pic.twitter.com/Cv4rzGV2oY

— Ciara Fitz (@CiarFitz) September 13, 2017

What is the role of people in a digital world? People can create amazing briefs, start trends & have influence #SMWprocessvpeople

— Eleanor Bishop (@EleanorBishop19) September 15, 2017

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