Episode 105: influencer marketing
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Looking Outside is for curious people looking for a fresh take on familiar topics, in business and beyond.
Influencer marketing is not a paradigm shift. At best it’s an over-inflated investment (in the billions), at worst it’s serving up false credibility to audiences, masked as ‘trust’. And yet, it’s all that seemed to be on the agenda at Cannes this year, and is being heavily weighted in the marketing media mix by marketers that should know better. Is marketing through influencers, or content creators, a waste of money then? Ramanathan Vythilingam says no - if it’s intentionally used. Ram has been researching the effectiveness of influencer campaigns, following two decades behind the scenes at Unilever. He says the name of the game now is to get savvy and more protective of brand assets and marketing dollars, especially in this marketing era of abundance and clutter.
To look outside, Ram dives into diverse topics like history, scientific discoveries, mathematics. Because his head is always in marketing, it’s interesting to find links between ‘random’ subjects and marketing. He always ends up with big questions that matter for his field of focus.
Ram is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore. Prior to this, Ram worked for 20+ years in consumer insights and market research, with the last 15+ years in the Consumer and Market Insight team at Unilever. He presents regularly at industry conferences and publishes his research in industry publications.
More on Ram:
Connect with Ram on LinkedIn
Read Ram's WARC article on influencer marketing
If you’re interesting in influencer marketing ROI, Ram suggests the WARC Podcast with L’Oreal and Meta and System1 and TikTok learnings on its effectiveness.
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