How to spill coffee and influence people

You may be aware of the role of ‘influencers’ in modern marketing strategy.

According to digitalmarketinginstitute.com, influencers are people who have established credibility in a specific industry, have access to a huge audience and can persuade others to act based on their recommendations.

You may not be aware of Omar the construction guy.

Omar is a regular guy who was frankly unimpressed with his daughter’s strong affiliation with various social media influencers, claiming that ‘anyone could do that’. He then went on to prove his point by creating his own Instagram influencer account (justaconstructionguy) and posting pictures of himself going about his daily business in the visual style of typical social media influencers. In around a month he racked up over 333,000 followers, all avidly awaiting the next image of Omar drinking coffee on his break on the building site, or dramatically splashing his coffee over a construction sign…

The internet was delighted. Sadly, it turned out Omar was actually not a spoof influencer but an actual influencer in an ad campaign for… a coffee shop…

The internet is still debating whether to laugh at itself or be outraged but the story got us thinking about whether or not there is a role for social media influencers in the context of saving for retirement.

Engaging people – especially across the younger age range – around saving for retirement has been an ongoing challenge but as the media and technology landscape evolves, it throws up new ways to tackle this challenge. Maybe influencers could be the next big thing.

The idea of somehow getting YouTube and Instagram influencers to take a break from extolling the virtues of the latest fashion, beauty, food and beverage trends to comment meaningfully on the advantages of starting to save for the future – certainly has some appeal.

According to Kamiu Lee, CEO of Activate, writing for Entrepreneur Europe, influencers can humanise financial brands and highlight philanthropic efforts in a way that more traditional and other digital marketing struggles to deliver.

Let's face it – pretty much all finance topics can be complicated, boring and even a bit scary. And on top of that, financial institutions have long had a reputation that doesn't put them on the list of consumers' favourite brands, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis.

Here, Kamiu believes, influencers are uniquely positioned to connect a brand to a personal story in a way that's superior to what a traditional print or digital ad could do. Connecting a brand and its products to a personal life journey - whether that be paying for a wedding, financing a renovation or saving for retirement -- is all about bringing a friendly brand connotation, relatability and authenticity to these financial brands and the concepts they service.

As communications people, this makes a lot of sense to us but we’re also conscious of the challenges that are specific to the financial services sector. Indeed, Kamiu also highlights the requirements of various financial regulatory bodies across the world and the need for no clear product placement or recommendations occurring in a post about a financial brand as well as clear disclosure around an influencer's paid posts.

But even setting these regulatory framework considerations aside, is that even possible to ride of the coattails of social media influencers with message of saving for your future anyway?

According to Antonio Grasso (a self-proclaimed B2B Influencer in the area of digital transformation), an influencer is someone with the ability to change behaviours or affect purchase decisions in a given context, having already earned an engaged audience by producing content on specific topics. And influencer marketing aims to harness the influence of key individuals on the social web to meet a business goal by building mutually beneficial relationships.

In other words, influencers are typically more about preaching to the converted and creating a place for them to congregate, than they are about converting those whose ear they don’t already have.

As behavioural psychology tells us that people tend to ‘filter out’ messages that they aren’t already aligned around or on board with, the idea of influencing young people about saving for their future when they’re engaging with content about the latest trainers feels a little remoter.

Maybe if Omar had posted a few shots of himself increasing his monthly pension contribution instead of splashing all that coffee around…