THE FUTURE OF INFLUENCING

June 8, 2018 Team Soho Advertising, Creative, Fashion, Influencer, New Trends  

Influencers are still a new concept for most traditional brands as part of a campaign. A big name movie star or sporting legend normally gets banded about in creative meetings, or indeed by the brand themselves. Trying to pitch reality TV stars is still not fully appreciated by some bigger brands, though becoming a little more popular as the influencing power they possess grows. 

So how easy do you think it is to convince a brand to use an influencer who’s made their name solely on one of the social media platforms? What if we said the influencer wasn’t even human, but an Artificial Intelligent, or AI, influencer? Would you be convinced?

Meet Miquela Sousa, aka Lil Miquela, a 19-year-old singer (yes she has songs on iTunes), ‘It girl’ and social media influencer from California, with 1.3 million followers on Instagram (@lilmiquela). Sporting a space bun hairstyle with a micro fringe and doused with pretty freckles, she wears clothes by the likes of big clothing brands like Supreme and Chanel. Even the likes of Prada invited her to take over its Instagram account during one of its Milan shows and she has appeared on the cover of magazines such as Wonderland and V Magazine. 

Miquela frequently posts across her Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts, and Time magazine named her as one of 2018’s 25 most influential people on the internet and she doesn’t even exist. Miquela is a CGI creation who lives in a virtual universe, which resembles our own world. Miquela isn’t the only one though, she’s at the forefront of a new wave of AI influencers.

She was created by LA start-up, Brud, in 2016 with many followers not even reading that she wasn’t real, but her capacity to rake in the cash via endorsement deals and brand collaborations is vast, even better than some household Hollywood stars and musicians.

With this power pull continuing, coupled with the ability to fully control the influencer for brand alignment and suitability, just how far can this go? I guess the real question may be, how far is the consuming public willing to be dictated to by a CGI/AI creation?

Suddenly all the futuristic movies of old don’t seem so, well, futuristic. The future of influencing lives now, in our present. How soon will you be willing to include an AI influencer on a future campaign?

Read More

X,Y…Z?

March 27, 2017 Team Soho Advertising  1

To most, the simplified letters of X, Y and Z will mean nearly nothing apart from the last three letters of the modern alphabet. To some they may believe it to be referring to coordinates or axis on some sort of map. Yet to marketeers, these letters are crucial, as they define a particular group of consumers; a generation of consumers in fact.

Millennials were who brands were predominantly focussing their attention on, but now it seems Generation Z is here and ready to make their mark. Generation Z, the newest generation, are starting to make an impact on retail buying, and according to Forbes, Generation Z (those born in and after the year 2000) already make up 25% of the US population and a similar number here in the UK. That makes Generation Z a larger percentage of the population than Baby Boomers and are quickly approaching Millennial levels.

Not only large in size, Generation Z are also strong in purchasing influence. A recent IBM study (15,600 people in 16 countries) has Generation Z’s purchasing power at approx. £35 billion. Furthermore, Generation Z influences 93% of the family budget. The IBM study also reveals that Generation Z is all about mobile; 25% of Generation Z spend over five hours per day on a mobile device learning, socialising, but most importantly, purchasing, and they are the first generation to be born into a life where mobile technology is all they know.

Generation Z want to browse online and in stores, and they are looking for a seamless experience no matter what method they use to do this. If a brand can’t, or doesn’t react quickly to their needs, they will drop it and move on to another quickly, so brands need to be mobile-savvy, create a seamless, omnichannel experience and respond quickly to their needs.

With Generation Z, Brand loyalty is not at the forefront of their minds, as it is with Millennials and Baby Boomers. They are a new, but powerful group of buyers, so it’s important to start preparing for them now as they are impatient due to their overstimulation to technology.

Read More