Is influencer marketing dead? Effective? Worth it? Ethical? Sustainable? Content

marketing? Paid media? PR? An overhyped fad? Better than digital ads?

The autocomplete feature from the most popular search engine in the world,

with its corporate mission “to organize the world's information…,”1 offers a

fascinating glimpse into what questions the world is asking about any topic, at

any given time. These search suggestions, or predictions (in the beginning of

this paragraph), made me think about the intricacies of the influencer marketing

industry.

So many questions and so many different answers. There’s no question, however,

that we live in a world where everything is getting more complex, where

it’s impossible to keep up with all the information that is available at your

fingertips—and knowledge alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. What we really

need is synthesized wisdom, not additional information overload.

If you work with marketing (either for a brand or an agency), you’re probably

reading this book because you believe that influencer marketing can play an

important, perhaps even critical, role in your business. There’s a great chance

that you’re a marketing professional, founder, or social media creator that has

seen the rise of influencer marketing and how this new digital media landscape

has transformed entire industries.

Savvy marketing teams at direct-to-consumer brands like Revolve, Gymshark,

and Vanity Planet have played this transition to their advantage and spun up

hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue by riding the influencer marketing

wave. Art exhibitions (or museums, if you can call them that) like Color

Factory, Museum of Ice Cream, and Egg House sell hundreds of thousands of

tickets in days,2 and there’s a 6-month waitlist to have your picture taken with

a backdrop of giant cherries and marshmallow clouds. Even traditional brands

like Adobe, Volvo, and Samsung are rapidly catching on to reconsider the distribution

of their media mix to win their next generation of consumers.