‘They did not deliver value for money’: Agencies respond to government’s influencer ban
Influencer agencies have responded to the federal government’s decision to ban the use of paid influencers, arguing the issue isn’t about the effectiveness of influencers, but a misunderstanding of the industry.
Following the government’s recent decision to ban all use of influencers in its future marketing campaigns, a spokesperson from the federal government has told Mumbrella it believes influencer marketing “did not deliver value for money” and “could undermine the effectiveness of relevant campaigns”.
“The government has decided that paid social media influencers are not to be used in any advertising and outreach campaigns of the Australian Government,” the spokesperson said.
“The government took the decision to rule out the use of paid social media influencers as they did not deliver value for money and the use of social media influencers could undermine the effectiveness of relevant campaigns.”
Influencer (or “talent”) seems to mean hot girl who shows as much skin as possible or at least always wears activewear. Clickable of course but do they really influence?
Of course the influencer program worked in spades! After all Malcolm virtually invented the interweb-thingie.
It’s probably got more to do with the fact most of their ‘followers’ on Instagram are actually a way smaller a demographic than the Government Agency involved actually thought they were reaching out to. Of 100,000 followers, there will be heaps of men, lots of them professing undying love in the creepiest of replies to their posts. There will be teenage boys looking at half naked young women, believe it or not they actually do that. There will be all the bought followers, that happens with most ‘influencers’ to get them started. There will be lots of women there too, but how many will there be from a specific area that is hosting an event ? That’s probably the influencers actual friends. So all that money is spent influencing a very small amount of people for a relatively large sum of money. It is an emerging market that is still in its infancy, it will become easier to engage wider audiences as it grows, it’s a real way to make a living now, much like YouTube provides a platform for so many people, Social Media is always morphing. Most of these influencers will be ahead of the curve if they can keep paying the bills until it becomes a place where advertising revenue will bring serious money into the area.
Excellent decision. The government comms and media departments should be held accountable for this wasted money. Someone obviously spotted an advertising band wagon – ‘hey everyone’s on Instagram these days lets get some influencers’ – too tempting not to hitch a ride on and throw cash at hoping some of it would stick and buy them the equivalent of government street cred.
Although the talent may be local, why we are funding OS platforms and predominantly OS jobs at the expense of local media, journalism and associated trickle down industry jobs? Why are we throwing money at platforms that provide opaque metrics and are open to manipulation by the talent and the platforms themselves?
If local companies want to throw cash and in-kind sponsorship at people that look pretty, and fuel their lifestyles then good luck to them. But our government should be accountable when they throw our money at disposable talent on dispensable media.
Interesting that the response from the pro-influencer lobby appears to be: “If only they had done better due diligence they would have seen better results”
But what if they did do due diligence in this case (and I see no evidence that they merely stuck a pin and paid the money? What then? What is the defence if one spends time (and I assume engages with one of the agencies in the article) to identify and brief an influencer and it still doesn’t deliver? We are seeing this happen much more these days.
Why use the same moniker as I did to comment directly below my comment without differentiating yourself?