Pieter Groenewald
Influencer Strategy

I realised, "This is not what I want to do. I don't want to check other people's work." But then my dad told me, "Listen, follow through and finish your articles. We don't start stuff we don't finish."

South Africa is a nation of 55 million, how can we put the same band on a nano or micro-influencer here as you do in America, for instance?

The micro space is a very exciting space because that's where people are popular and they draw a following around topics that they put themselves out to be specialists around.

And that's where the magic of authenticity is, connecting brands with their true fans. And not because you've sent them a product that they must unbox and talk about. The challenge brands have is that, at best, they can talk to their customers.

So it works. I've seen it work every day. I wouldn't be so entrenched in it if I didn't believe that people change people's behaviour more than a brand ever would.

So if influencer marketing doesn't work, it means no other social media works. And we know that's not true. What we have found, though, is that influencer marketing outperformed branded content 99 out of 100 times. 

We've seen that delivers the results that you need. I don't have to go and drop 50 product drops to get two pieces of content. I do two product drops to two influencers that perfectly match my brand and I get them to create the content pieces and I pay them for that.

And people like to talk about things that they are passionate about. Scroll through any social media pages and what do we talk about? 

But the luxury of having in one group the two platforms that you can deploy in tandem is, I would think, 60% of our campaigns now, have a dual strategy. 

Now, how media works is, over time, more brands wanted to access this channel, but couldn't afford these macro-influencers. All of a sudden micro-influencers start coming to the fore and more brands could play in the space.