Setting the trends in

Setting the trends in influencer marketing

As the global head of influence, Rahul Titus is in charge of the strategic direction of Ogilvy’s influence proposition, which covers the full spectrum of influencer collaborations, from big celebrities to micro-influencers. BR sat down with him to learn about his work leading a team of creative experts who are responsible for delivering best-in-class influencer marketing for clients including Walgreens Boots Alliance, Bacardi, Unilever, and TCCC.

By Romanita Oprea

You say that things are changing very quickly. How do you keep up? Do you have a special department that only does research to predict new trends in order to stay ahead of the curve?

movers in this space. Obviously, we've got over 250 people around the world who do influencer marketing alone. These are dedicated influencer specialists. And the way that we've hired these teams, under great people like Ana [Ana Sisu, head of PR & influence at Ogilvy Romania], was with agile principles in mind, so they build for agility. They are platform native; they come from this space. And I think one of the biggest mistakes we've seen other people make has been bringing in people who don't come from influencer marketing—and I think that’s when you start falling behind, right?

We are set up for success from the way we structure our people and our teams. That's what makes the biggest difference.

Secondly, I definitely encourage my teams to be brave and bold, and I think that’s the Ogilvy DNA. We want to push boundaries. We want to do more. Ogilvy’s first principle was wanting to be known for actions, not words. Because honestly, I've done it for so long and I'm really sick of seeing people holding a product and saying “buy this”—that’s not influence. It’s so much bigger than that. We make sure to allow people to create campaigns, even to make mistakes. That's okay.

I would rather try something and fail than not try to do anything at all. That's how we make sure that we are set up for success. We obviously also keep a very close eye on trends. Every year, we launch a trends paper, which comes out on November 30, where we talk about the biggest influencer marketing trends in the world.

Last year, we predicted that B2B influence would get really big, and it's definitely been one of our biggest growth areas this year. Also last year, we spoke about purpose-driven influencer marketing becoming a big part of campaigns, going beyond people simply holding products and actually driving purpose.

Hays study: salary indexation - top of the agenda

Hays Romania looks at how inflation has a marketwide impact, and where employers can optimise their hiring and retention strategies to remain competitive. The aim is to offer a clear image of how organisations in Romania are tackling inflation growth right now and what is on the horizon for salary and pay rates.

Timur Makhmutov, Managing Director Hays Romania

In October 2022, Hays surveyed 122 respondents operating across the country in various market areas and industries. The data is supplemented by on-the-ground expertise from recruitment consultants, economic observations from credible sources, and one-to-one discussions with clients fuelling the conclusions.

GROWING INFLATION FORCES EMPLOYERS TO REACT

The immediate impact of 2022 inflation of growing consumer prices and shrinking interest rates – and the potential consequences on people’s standard of living – means organisations must take action to find feasible ways of supporting employees while maintaining operating margins. The results of the study show that most organisations know this. Precisely 64% are making plans, or have already taken action, to mitigate the effects of growing inflation on earnings through salary/benefit package indexation.

Hays recommendation - Start communicating what you are doing for your employees clearly and openly. If people trust that you are acting, they are less likely to look for a new job. Organisations that plan ahead, stay ahead. Even if you are not well placed to offer significant increases, employees would value transparency.

TODAY’S DECISIONS, TOMORROW’S ACTIONS

In the current economic, social and political context, the biggest challenge for organisations is to effectively keep core staff and build teams in conditions of rising operational costs. Even so, they are prioritising the heart of the business – the people. We will see the salary increases made this year continuing through the beginning of 2023. Of the 64% of employers increasing salaries, 46% said they will be starting in January 2023, while 34% already adjusted earnings in 2022.

Hays recommendation - Salary increases are not your only form of recourse. Take into account other benefits, such as home working and subsidising utilities, or engaging your employees better with an improved employee value proposition. A good organisational culture, consistently promoted and followed up on, can be a vital tool in retention.

INFLATION OUTSTRIPPING INDEXATION

In September, the monthly inflation rate in Romania reached 15.9%, according to Trading Economics. Just 24% of respondents are increasing salaries by 11%- 15% - barely keeping up with the current inflation rate. With the prevailing 44% looking at increases of 5%-10%, we can conclude that employers want to support employees but remain cautious in a fluctuating market.

Hays recommendation - Be aware of what your competition is offering on the indexation agenda. Ensure you conduct thorough exit interviews with people leaving your business. If you do see a trend of employees leaving for specific competitors, find out what they are doing differently and make adjustments. If you are ahead of the league, don’t be shy to make a clear statement to your people.

This year, every brand around the world is talking about purpose. So, we like to be the agency that sets the trends.

We don't get all of it right, to be very honest. Even 70 percent right is good, I'm okay with that. And I think that's what we're trying to get to.

You mentioned mistakes. Can you give us some examples?

Mistakes make us better, I think. We have no issues talking about some of the things we've tried and not succeeded with. Three years ago for example, when I was working on one of our first trends papers, I said that virtual influences were going to be really big and take over the world. Three years later, it hasn’t happened, but that’s okay. But what is happening this year is artificial intelligence influencing. AI-powered influence is now getting big, and we’ve had wonderful projects where we’ve used AI influencers as part of a marketing campaign. That's one of our big trends for next year. Therefore, our prediction of a trend three years ago was maybe a little too early, right? That’s actually great, because it gave our agency three years to get our product right.

So, when we talk about AI, I know for a fact that we as an agency have much more capability, reliability, and strength in this space than anybody else in the marketplace. Mistakes happen, but they lead to better things; mistakes are part of our DNA.

What advice would you give clients for their first time working with influencers?

My advice has always been: take that first jump! Don't be scared to do it and do it well! A lot of clients right now are starting to dip their toes in the water with, say, 50,000 euros a year. I say if you're doing it, do it well, because you’ll see that it will always work out for you. I’ve been doing this for 12 years, as you know, and I've never, ever in my career seen a brand campaign do better than an influencer campaign. If you put an influencer campaign on social media versus a brand campaign, the influencer campaign will always do better. Always. So why wouldn’t you want to do that? Try it! You never know. It might become the centrepiece of your marketing strategy.

Tell us about the areas where you’re seeing the power of micro-influencing. Why is it sometimes better to take this route instead of working with big influencers?

At Ogilvy, when we talk about influence, we’re talking about a spectrum. So that's everybody from a celebrity down to micro-

influencers, creators, employees, consumers. Everybody has a role to play. For us, influence is not only limited to social media, which is good. Micro-influencers are incredibly powerful. It's a very underutilised part of influencer marketing. But I would never recommend micro-influencers as a replacement for big influencers. They have a very clear role.

Big influencers give us mass reach, mass awareness, and fame. You work with somebody that's got a million followers, people are going to know them much more than the small ones. But what they don't deliver are those high engagement rates. Micro-influencers are very good at driving high engagement rate entry into smaller niches and communities, and they will deliver for you in terms of ROI.

You need to make sure that your KPIs match up with what you're trying to do. Because if you're trying to hit mass reach on a market like Romania, you need to work with the big ones. If you want to break into small communities of mothers based in Bucharest, then you must work with the micros, because they will do much better.

Do successful brands today have to be present on all major social media platforms or can they just focus on some of them? Please explain.

I don’t think all brands need to be on every single platform, and I make that very clear. I think there is an expectation that you have to be on TikTok, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and the list goes on. But my answer is: absolutely

not. I have lots of brands that will not get onto a platform until they're absolutely sure what they want to achieve. Choose the platform that your audience uses the most! If you are a B2B brand and your audience is on LinkedIn, don't set up a TikTok page and start doing viral dances. It's not going to work. It doesn't mean that you can’t follow the trend, just do what's right for your audience. But if you're trying to tap into new audiences, those new platforms might be interesting. If some of my brands are on Twitch, it’s not because they are gaming brands; they are on Twitch because they want to target gamers. Some are on TikTok because they want to target Gen Z, because their audience is dominated by millennials and they want to get to a younger segment. So, meet people where they are with your existing audience, and try out new platforms to bring in new audiences. But don't just do it because it's cool. There's no point to that, because by the time you’ll finally get everything right it will be too late, and you will mess up. It’s better to stay focused.