Hold on to your hashtags because the world of influencer marketing is constantly growing and Together Agency are about to break it down for you, by looking at key trends, stats and strategies to help keep you ahead of the curve.

They will spill the tea on how influencer marketing isn’t just evolving, it’s the latest social media revolution. From big names like Alix Earle (who has 6M TikTok followers) to micro-influencers building an audience of thousands, looking into the likely trends for this year and strategies for how your business can use influencers to level up your brand.

Take a look here and prepare to influence and be influenced.

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TLC Worldwide, the global leader in consumer rewards, has announced the launch of COSMOS, the latest iteration of its revolutionary rewards and insights platform that enables campaign creation and reward selection, whilst providing rich consumer insights.

COSMOS is an automated programme development and content management tool. Creating configurable customer branded websites, matching the right reward to the target consumers, and providing white-label consumer redemption and reward distribution. By leveraging the data and insight collected through the 400+ acquisition and retention programmes TLC runs globally each year, companies can create highly targeted and personalised campaigns that resonate with their consumers on a deeper level.

“We are thrilled to introduce COSMOS to our customers,” said Alec Johnson, CEO of TLC Worldwide. “This platform is a game-changer in the consumer acquisition and loyalty sector, offering businesses a level of insight and targeting that has never been possible before. With COSMOS, companies can connect with and reward their consumers in a way that is highly personalised and relevant, driving better engagement, deeper loyalty, and richer consumer LTV.”

COSMOS offers businesses a wide range of features, including campaign creation, access to the world’s largest curated experience rewards network, and rich real-time analytics and reporting. With its intuitive user interface and powerful capabilities, COSMOS is the go-to platform for companies looking to acquire and retain their consumers.

“At TLC Worldwide, we are always striving to stay ahead of the curve in terms of technology and innovation,” added Emma Baine, COO of TLC. “The launch of COSMOS is yet another example of our commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions that drive results for our customers.”

The benefits to our customers are significant;

• Rapid creation and ‘go-live’ for consumer redemption and reward distribution
• End-to-end experience rewards offerings
• Higher ROI from rewards spend
• Increased consumer loyalty and engagement
• Consumer insights and first-party data capture
• Intuitive UX

The launch of COSMOS comes at a time when companies are increasingly focused on delivering personalised and localised experiences for their consumers. TLC Worldwide is well-positioned to help companies meet this demand, offering a platform that is highly effective and easy to use.

To learn more about COSMOS and the personalised services offered by TLC Worldwide, visit their website at www.tlcworldwide.com

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Opinion From Holly Eddleston: Head of Influencer Marketing at BIG little LDN.

Having worked in this field for over a decade, Holly remembers when brands were trading lipsticks for a Facebook post and #Ad was yet to be a thing. Holly has been instrumental in running global campaigns for Dove, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Diageo and Red Bull so we wanted to pick her brains and share some of the most common challenges brands face when working with influencers, and how to overcome them.

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1. Target audience

Many brands approach influencer marketing by looking at the influencers directly, rather than the data behind them. If you’re trying to sell a product or service in the UK, you’ve got to talk to an audience based in the UK. It’s common for UK based influencers to now have a larger following in the US or Australia. Audience data is key when it comes to casting your ambassadors. At BIG little LDN, we have tools to help identify where followers are based and wouldn’t recommend working with an influencer who has less than 70% of their audience in your target location.

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2. Fake followers

Influencers base their fees on how many followers they have, yet without the right tools in place, brands will find it difficult to tell whether those followers are genuine or not. Before working with any influencer, we look at the data behind their follower acquisition. What we’re looking for is a steady line of growth. Any unusual spikes in follower count would be a red flag and could indicate that the influencer has bought followers and is not acting in the best interest of the brands they represent.

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3. Measuring engagement

Another problem we face a lot is the number of followers can be totally arbitrary due to fraudulent activity. Metrics such as engagement rate and the quality of the language used  in comments are much better measures to focus on. When we see consumers commenting on our influencers’ posts that include “try”, “want”, “buy”, “need” – this shows purchase intent and is what we’re looking for during each campaign as opposed to simply reporting on impressions and reach.

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4. Influencer management

So, you’ve found your influencer, you’ve told them your campaign, now what? We’ve worked with social teams who have been great at building online communities, but have never managed influencers before. Without clear structure, direction and a posting schedule the most competent of social teams can fall down at this next hurdle.Working with influencers isn’t the same as working with your internal teams. It takes careful planning and ongoing project management to ensure everyone is on the same page and expectations are met. A poorly run campaign can easily result in an influencer relationship turning sour and having the opposite effect. A lot of the time, this is overlooked and as a result brands can end up wasting budget purely as a result of miscommunication. Over the years, we have crafted fool-proof templates that save our clients time and money and ensure the greatest return on investment.‍

5. Negotiation

When starting out with influencer marketing, brands can find it difficult to know if they are paying a fair price for the influencer and deliverables set. Having run hundreds of campaigns in the past, we know what a rate card should be and when someone could be trying to overcharge. It’s possible for brands to access to preferential rates and other added value ways of working by leveraging the relationships BIG little LDN has forged over the years, For example, influencers will have set prices for individual Posts, Stories or Reels, but if you are planning a campaign with multiple deliverables over a longer period of time, we will look at the campaign in its entirety and negotiate a price that is fair for the influencer, while keeping within the brands budget.

Email for guidelines to influencer prices.

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6. Contracting

The most important part of any business relationship is the contract, so it surprises me how many brands still don’t contract their influencers and then wonder where it all went wrong. Contracts lay out deliverables, timelines, fees, responsibilities and content usage rights meaning there is a single source of truth in the event of any misunderstanding. Working with a UK top 100 media law firm, we have drafted watertight contracts and make sure these are signed and in place with every influencer before we employ them to represent our clients.Working with influencers without a contract in place poses a great risk to the business and may even mean the content they’ve paid for doesn’t legally belong to them.

Most of the brands who approach us and haven’t yet dipped their toe into the world of influencer marketing because they view it as being very expensive. However, our tried and tested method of end-to-end influencer campaign management, alongside our access to thousands of up-and-coming influencers, audience insights tools and negotiation experience means any expense laid out, will be relative to the return on investment you see.

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If you’re thinking of running an influencer campaign or want to learn more about how influencers could boost your sales, get in touch.

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Did anyone else find a renewed love of takeaways during lockdown? We know we did! Post lockdown one of the top things we all wanted to do was to go out for dinner with friends and family – 49% of UK adults surveyed saying it was something they missed! And now with the Cost of Living Crisis hitting us all hard, unfortunately going out for dinner or getting a takeaway is something we are all conscious of doing.

However, TLC Marketing have built an incredible Dining Network of restaurants and takeaways alike to offer to your customers, at a fraction of the cost to you. This means your customers can get back to doing what they love to do. TLC have created an e-book with insights for you to deep dive into and hopefully see how TLC could help you with your new campaign – take a look Here!

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Agile start-ups are subverting the grocery aisles – older brands must learn their tricks to stay ahead of them, says Sam Bannister of Brass Agency

You only have to explore a few aisles of a supermarket to see that we’re in a golden age for ‘challenger brands’ – the fast-moving, agile start-up brands that are changing the norms of grocery shopping. From Fever Tree in drinks, passing by Propercorn in snacking, Freaks of Nature in chilled and Halo Top in frozen.

Even the trip to the supermarket itself is being challenged, if we think about brands like HelloFresh and Gousto.

But how is this possible? How can these young companies, often crowd-funded and with limited budget, take on the might of established FMCG companies? We believe three factors play a key role in this disruption:

An intuitive sense of consumer needs and trends.

These new challenger brands are often created in response to a specific gap in the market and, as such, often exploit a new and burgeoning demand from consumers. Be that healthy, local, artisan, or free from, they find a void and fill it quickly, benefiting from being first to market. Part of the joy of shopping is discovering a new brand that better meets your needs. Sainsbury’s are playing back this sentiment with news that more help will be given to help incubate start-ups, including listings, mentoring, free Nectar data, and even equity for exclusivity.

The ability to be agile.

Not constrained by large estates, legacy systems and (dare we say it) bureaucracy, challenger brands have the ability to be much more flexible and entrepreneurial in the way they operate. Whether this is product innovation or packaging design, they implement change in a fraction of the time that a more established brand may be able to.

A mastery of marketing direct to consumer.

Quick to embrace digital-first, challengers are often bold and creative in their marketing. Not afraid to experiment with guerrilla tactics and social media channels to shout about how well they understand consumers and, in turn, build a strong connection.

So that’s it, then? If your brand has been around a while, it’s doomed? Well, we’d argue that this is very much not the case. All of this artisanal craftsmanship and soy-replacement has to be balanced out with something else, right? Heritage brands possess attributes that don’t come easily to challenger brands:

Familiarity

Status to a large audience – heritage brands often have latent awareness, and media spend may be more effectively deployed to reach a mass audience

Inherited affinity

Whether it is inherited from parents or siblings, or recommended by friends and colleagues, heritage brands that consumers ‘grow up’ with are very often adopted into their adult households

Emotional attachment

It might be the jingle. Maybe it’s the smell. It might even just be that you’ve seen the brand on almost every single trip to a supermarket. Heritage brands have the ability to stir powerful consumer emotion through nostalgia.

The goodwill of heritage itself

Being around for a long time can carry weight. It suggests a brand has stood the test of time, consistently delivering quality and consistency… an elevated status. This can be very powerful if used correctly, particularly in categories where purchase frequency is low.

So what does this mean for heritage brands?

In short, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution for a heritage brand to remain contemporary and relevant. But it’s imperative that they are dynamic in their marketing, and here are some pointers for thought:

• Don’t disregard what your brand has done well for so long; but at the same time learn from what the challengers are doing well
• Place the consumer at the heart of your brand. Gain insight from them, and use it to your advantage
• Understand not just current trends in the marketplace, but also what the future might look like – where next?
• Innovate, innovate, innovate. In product, flavour, packaging and marketing.
• Reflect the excitement that consumers have been trained to expect, but do it in your own way
• Be bold, and challenge the norms. In outward communication with consumer, but also through internal practices
• Innovate some more!

Sam Bannister is Head of Insight at Brass Agency. Brass is a multi-award-winning full-service marketing agency with expertise in strategic thinking and delivery and specialist skills in digital, advertising, design, PR, SEO, media, shopper, consumer insights and promotional marketing. Clients include Coty, Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Perrigo and Burton’s Biscuits. This comment originally appeared on Brass’ website.

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Brand experience agency ignis has launched the first product from its new tech venture, ignovation labs.

Ignis claims its new Retailemetry is “a unique data capture, reporting and insights system that delivers live audience and activity analysis, when activated in a retail promotional environment.”

The launch took place at the recent Tax Free World Association Exhibition & Congress in Cannes, as part of the TFWA Digital Village. TFWA attracts the world’s leading travel retail operators and the brands which sell through the travel retail channel.

Ignis says Retailemetry collects data at point of purchase and allows it to be assessed in real-time to instantly measure how campaigns are performing. Data is automatically uploaded to the cloud with a web app front end meaning that data collection can be made across multiple devices at the same time.

That data, such as demographic, attitudinal and purchase insights, can then be accessed in real-time to monitor, measure and report on the success of each event activation.

An API means Retailemetry can be deployed to work with other tech-driven applications and products. For example, it can be used with intelligent flooring to record footfall in store and produce heat maps of shopper movements in real-time, or it can be used with local weather data to analyse the impact of changes in the weather.

Ignis announced the launch of ignovation labs in September. It is a new in-house department tasked with identifying and developing pioneering technologies and reinforcing a culture of innovation within the agency.

The department is headed up by ignis’ Oliver Carew. Carew says: “Innovation has always been an integral part of ignis’ DNA, and the ignovation labs are an extension of that philosophy. The labs exist to develop several new proprietary technologies each year that solve big problems for existing and new clients. At times parties may feel uncomfortable in the ideas we put forward, but ultimately we hope to inspire them to push boundaries further then they have ever done before.”

As part of ignis’ commitment to innovation, the agency has also invested in DRNK?, a spontaneous socialising app that helps users meet new individuals and groups when they’re out and about.

Stephanie Whitaker, Managing Director of ignis, observes: “Incubating and accelerating growth in tech start-ups allows the agency to operate on the cutting edge. DRNK? has significant potential in its own right, and also provides an interesting opportunity for our current roster of drinks brands to advertise on the platform.”

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