How Influencers Help Brands Enter the Conversation, Not Interrupt It

(This article is originally from the Insider Insights newsletter written by James Nord, Founder & CEO of Fohr. If you or anyone inside your company would benefit from this information, sign up here.)

It should come as no real surprise that I am a big fan of Monocle magazine. Their unique point of view, unabashed snobbery, and intellectual curiosity have been a companion of mine for over ten years. I remember years ago they started doing a new kind of advertorial, ones produced in-house, written by their writers, shot by their photographers, and edited by the editorial staff. I thought they were fantastic, and I loved seeing the Monocle POV applied to an advertising product. 

It was, in part, what gave me the courage to start Fohr–this realization that ads didn’t have to suck. That they could be not just something we put up with, but something we could enjoy, that we could get value from consuming. This is the same thing that makes influencer marketing so powerful and transformative, this shift from interruptive to integrated marketing. 

With traditional ad media, you are interrupting content someone wants with content they do not want. Sit through this ad so you can get back to the game; flip past this ad to finish the article. Advertisers are forcing themselves into places where people don’t want them but have to tolerate them.

Compare that to influencer marketing, where, like with Monocle, the creative uses their POV, voice, and vision to tell a compelling and ultimately interesting story about a product. As a brand, you aren’t interrupting something; instead, you’re included in an ongoing conversation. 

While optimizing traditional ad strategies means finding more effective ways of interrupting consumers, influencer allows us to create things of value that consumers actually want and enjoy consuming.

In that way, it’s not even fair to compare traditional advertising to influencer marketing because the very foundations are different. While optimizing traditional ad strategies means finding more effective ways of interrupting consumers, influencer allows us to create things of value that consumers actually want and enjoy consuming. Imagine that. 

In our most recent webinar, ‘In This Economy: Influencer Marketing & Driving Value in a Recession,’ Grace Murray and I talk about this topic and more. Download the 7 key takeaways from the webinar here.