An influencer model we want to avoid at all costs…

Not that I read the Sunday papers often, but serendipity had it that I dipped into the Independent on Sunday at the weekend. A political lobby agency, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs (BPPA), has compiled a report on Gordon Brown’s “inner circle” – Mr Brown is widely held to be the next Prime Minister (and despite us both hailing from Fife is no relation of mine…).

Anyway, the lobbyist has compiled a list of the close influencers surrounding Mr Brown. Fair enough. They are selling this list to firms that might want to understand the community of influencers in the next government. Again fair enough.

BPPA is now selling time with specific influencers in the inner circle. Firms can pay a fee to attend a dinner at which influencers are present. It turns out that the influencers, mostly current politicians with high aspirations, didn’t know dinner attendees were paying. One notable influencer, Stephen Timms, declined to attend on find out he was being “sold on”.

It’s fascinating to see the influencer model at work in the world of politics. The value of the information and insight into the prospective future government is clearly worth having. But at what price? Lack of transparency is unethical and usually counter-productive. Which politician will now risk attending a dinner arranged by BPPA. My guess is that BPPA has severely damaged its chances of getting influencers anywhere near a dinner table, much less charging firms for them to attend.

Of course, in the commercial world, influencers are entitled to charge a fee for providing their advice. But their influence diminishes if they don’t declare this at the time.

It’s official – advertising doesn’t work

It’s official – advertising doesn’t work, and marketers are insane.

On BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on Monday 5th February, Eddie Mair interviews Fiona Dawson, Managing Director of Masterfoods UK, on its move to stop advertising targeted at under 12’s. Masterfoods makes Mars bars and other sweeties.

In explaining the impact of the decision on Masterfoods’ market, Ms Dawson states that, “There is very little evidence to show that advertising has any effect, despite the amount of money that we spend on it, in term of driving purchasing behaviour.”

You can almost hear Eddie Mair’s jaw hits the table. “You don’t think that advertising affects buying behaviour?!” he asks.

“Well, there’s very little evidence to show it…” repeats Ms Dawson, adding, “We still spend quite a considerable amount…”

Indeed they do. Advertising Age estimates MasterFoods’ global advertising expenditure of $939m in 2005, on annual sales estimated at $18bn. That’s roughly 5% of sales, with no evidence to support its effectiveness.

I recorded my thoughts on this type of insanity in a white paper recently. MasterFoods is another example of marketers doing what they have always done, despite any measurement of its effectiveness.

Influencing school dinners

I had a curious email from an MBA student a couple of days ago. Asking for some direction in the academic study of influencers (answer: not much), he explained his interest. The much-discussed school dinner healthy eating debate can be distilled into one simple issue: kids don’t want to eat healthy food.

So my correspondent has identified the critical factor in getting kids to want to eat healthily – find the influencers and get them to promote the idea. His thesis is that the headteachers, dinner ladies and other people in the school community are key to encouraging kids to eat well.

It occurred to me that Wayne Rooney might have a more powerful effect on kids’ eating behaviour. Pictures of Wayne eating salad might influence kids more than the headteacher…

But it’s interesting that the concept of influence extends beyond business and consumer purchasing to other aspects of life, and that we can improve our social environment through appropriate use of influencers.

Blogging for bigwigs?

The Economist runs a story (subscription required) on the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, featuring the promotion of blogging for CEOs. The conference theme is “The Shifting Power Equation” – a reference in part to the rise of social media as an influential means of communication.

Should CEOs blog? Seth Godin, a marketing hero of mine, thinks not. Quoted in the article, he says,

“Blogs work when they are based on the values of candour, urgency, timeliness, pithiness and controversy. Does this sound like a CEO to you?”

Few CEOs blog, and those that do seem to do so sporadically. I guess they’re busy running the company.

It begs the question, who in a firm should maintain a corporate blog?

Article in The Marketer

I’ve written an article on Influencer Marketing for the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s monthly publication, The Marketer. Though we’ll be making more of this later this month in the next version of our newsletter, I thought I’d give a heads-up to blog readers.

So the article is here. You’ll have to submit your details as usual (but we’re shortly to introduce a one-time registration for all our content, so bear with us).