Lust in a World Thirsty for Love
Stealing a million dollar painting is useless unless you have someone who can find the right buyer, a fence. They themselves do not commit the crimes, but have access to a network of potential consumers. Utilizing their insight into a network, they are able to choose what items are best suited for their network and which ones don’t make the cut: quality, perceived value, functionality, features. Why can’t thieves just directly access their market? Consumers of reallocated goods have specific needs: anonymity, privacy, time restraints; they prefer to bypass the promise of a lower price offered by a “direct seller” and pay a premium for their products by paying the middle man who offers them the complete value that they are looking for.
Every successful thief's biggest asset is his fence or network of fences; you stole diamonds, get Carl, stole some italian suits, get Luciano on the phone, stole a container of chinese electronics, contact “The Gopher” (no one actually seems to know his name). While most brands aren’t thieves, all can benefit from access to a proper fence. A fence is the link between the supply and the demand; they broker trust for both the producer and the buyer. The question is who is this broker for brands? Enter left stage: the influencer.
By now, the word is synonymous with unemployment and unreliable; funny, sounds a lot like what described entrepreneur merely 10 years ago and now it’s a highly revered descriptor slapped onto your CV. Influencer marketing has been a tactic that many brands have utilized in their overall marketing strategy to accelerate market penetration; naturally, as with any new tool, there has been a learning curve. Brands began to learn that not all influencers are created equal; true, some were simply trying to avoid actually getting employed, but many were authentically enthusiastic about sharing their lifestyle and equally eager about testing new products.
In the early years brands tended to zero in and focus on the overall volume of followers that influencers had; the idea was the greater the following, the greater the sales potential (and expectation), and for the most part the rule applied. Celebrities naturally became influencers because of their popularity and likewise influencers became celebrities as their following increased and they became household names; getting your product featured in a post by someone with celebrity status skyrocketed your product placement and mindshare.
One crucial element that most brands were late to catch up on were the red flags. Celebrities are highly visible and possess an aspirational halo, as consumers we seek to emulate certain attributes that they represent: the bad boy, the man eater, the thoughtful caring one, the sophisticated one; but at the end of the day there is a chasm between their lives and ours. It is hard to love someone with which you can have some sort of contact: touch them or have a conversation; but you can feel lust. You may feel desire for someone that you love and someone that incites lust; but it is fundamentally different and entails a different array of emotions; ultimately, trust is lacking in lust while it abounds in love.
In the crystalline clarity of retrospect, most of us are able to identify behaviors that were indicative of a doomed relationship. Brands were sending consumers a narcissistic message, centered around themselves and the unreachable deities that possess them; they were handing the consumer the task of looking for them and pleading for their attention. While this tactic may have been a natural iteration of influencer marketing, and done very well to positively position brands, consumers have begun to show that they are growing tired of being used for attention; that awaited DM that once sparked excitement lost its luster as they began to feel frustration knowing that the message only arrived looking for attention and would leave as soon as they got it.
Brands have begun to mature in their marketing strategies and have revised their influencer marketing tactics; aware of this unsustainable dynamic, they have shifted their focus towards what they categorize as micro and nano influencers. In a simplified manner, micro and nano influencers are individuals who have a domain of impact at a local and regional level rather than a national or global one. These are people that you may see at a local coffee shop, meet them in an amateur soccer league, or run into at a farmers market; you share a common ground and are able to approach them, strike up a conversation and get a direct sense of their values. They become a much more effective broker of trust for brands and consumers.
The ultimate goal of all brands is to nurture a relationship of love with our consumers. The more channels of communication that we open to them, the greater our capability of achieving this goal.
Our challenge is finding the right ingredients for our elixir of love.
