Investment in influencer marketing is projected to reach a staggering $56 billion within the decade. While demand for being “always online” shapes how brands, influencers and audiences interact with each other, some creators are getting burnt out and retiring from the industry. Others, however, are changing with the times.
Influencers and their content will change as they age, attracting new audiences. So marketers and brands will have to support influencers through these changes and plan for more fluidity in their audiences. After all, personal evolution makes for good storytelling.
In today’s creator economy, this focus on “the journey” has complicated our idea of authenticity. Particularly as influence as we know it is entering its second decade, with its child stars growing up and its mainstays ageing out. Audiences have become used to watching people change.
If the old ideal of influence was to have a single, unwavering personal brand, it’s now equally authentic to be a chameleon. Just look at creators whose persona centers around a given life stage — the entrance into motherhood or the early throes of pop stardom. Reinvention is the norm.
Since shaking up your identity also means shaking up your audience, creators are playing with a delicate balance: planning their evolutions to win new viewers without losing resonance with their core fanbase.
How are creators reinventing themselves?
On the one hand, the history and nostalgia of influence have put a focus on the long-term change of OG creators, such as content highlighting legendary Viners, then and now. On the other, a more age-inclusive internet culture means the creator economy no longer forces people out after a brief window of youth, allowing creators to stay around for longer.
This means many creators are in a position to change. Some are evolving, such as creators like Julie Vu, who has won the love of her audience for making narrative content that visualizes “the journey” of her trans evolution as much as the destination.
Others have gone down more of a “dramatic plot twist”’ line. From Charlotte Crosby, raunchy reality TV stars turned wholesome momfluencer, to Sophie Aris, fitness guru turned lazy girl, certain creators are leaning into stories of radical personal change.
Plus, with influence having been around for longer, creators’ life journeys are being followed for longer periods of time. This perhaps comes through most notably in the reinvention of child stars. It’s sometimes executed poorly – like Jojo Siwa’s cringeworthy evolution from a precocious child on Dance Moms to a poseur-like internet celebrity – but sometimes more persuasively, as with Troye Sivan’s growth from young YouTuber into global pop sensation.
Brands should reinvent creator collaborations
As creators progress through their life stages and personal reinvention, it’s changing the rules of engagement for brands.
That means marketers need to consider providing more long-term support to match the longer-term careers that are becoming normalized among creators and should also consider how to partner with them through these lifestyle transitions.
For example, Sure Deodorant took this approach in its partnership with Sophie Aris, the former fitness influencer who publicly stepped back from the gym and influence writ large.
They also need to plan for the shifting audiences. Specifically, brands who want to make themselves relevant to a new audience should seriously consider partnering with influencers who are following a similar path. Gucci famously took this approach: to move its own brand away from outmoded ideas of men’s and women’s fashion, it partnered with Harry Styles as he piloted his increasingly gender-fluid dress sense.
For savvy brands, this potential for longer-lasting, evolving creators is an exciting opportunity. Carefully considering how a creator’s audience might change over time, there’s space for longer, deeper audience connections. The key is to evolve their creator collaborations in a way that is just as authentic.
*Here’s more on the “Next Gen Influence” report from We Are Social.
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