Fashion influencers find new opportunities during Covid-19

As travel bans and quarantine orders restrict regular work, influencers are riding an increase in online traffic from housebound audiences.
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Xenia Adonts working insideXenia Adonts

Key takeaways:

  • With word of mouth through social media driving purchasing decisions, influencer marketing is unlikely to disappear, but brands need to adjust their strategies.

  • Influencers who can pull in audiences across multiple content categories and do behind-the-scenes creative work for brands will thrive.

  • The shift will see brands move beyond traditional dressing or product placements and explore new ways to refresh their look and stand out online.

At the beginning of March, Leonie Hanne was due to travel to Munich for a photoshoot and cocktail party for Louis Vuitton. The German fashion influencer, who counts over 2.1 million followers on Instagram and whose clients include Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Dior, had planned to stay an extra few days in the Bavarian capital for a Bally store party before flying to New York for more events she was obliged to attend as part of her contract with the Swiss luxury brand. “As a personality, a lot of my work is based on events and travel,” she says.

But following the global spread of the coronavirus outbreak, her plans came to a halt, along with work pegged to major annual events like Coachella and Cannes. “These big events being cancelled means my opportunities with brands are also cancelled.”

Influencers make money through paid assignments like event appearances, product promotion, sponsored trips and other awareness-raising activities for the brands they work with. But as brands and retailers tighten their budgets over coronavirus fears, influencer marketing faces an uncertain future.

Leonie Hanne has been creating content for a loungewear partner from home

Leonie Hanne

According to a recent Econsultancy survey, 55 per cent of UK marketers and 57 per cent in North America are delaying product and service launches, with the majority of respondents claiming marketing budget commitments are under review. Several global brand executives declined to comment on their strategies for this story, citing "times of uncertainty". One CEO said they would “reevaluate their marketing strategy” but could not “at this time determine what direction and strategy” to take, as promoting luxury products does not resonate in a time of crisis.

With brand deals cancelled or delayed due to current circumstances, macro-influencers like Caroline Daur, Doina Ciobanu, Yoyo Cao and Xenia Adonts, who typically travel every month, all say they are trying to find their footing in this new reality. But despite business disruption, these social media personalities aren’t being wiped out. According to Hilary Williams, senior vice president of talent at Digital Brand Architects (DBA), the influencers she represents are seeing 20 to 50 per cent higher views on their content.

The increase in online traffic from homebound audiences presents new opportunities, particularly as they have more time on their hands to create small-scale content, the influencers we spoke to say. The shift comes as the power of traditional influencer marketing has begun to wane, and those standing out are the ones who can also offer behind-the-scenes skills to brands, like photography or styling. Brands will get the most out of partnerships with influencers who are polymaths that offer a broader skillset.

Diversify, but stay authentic

With word of mouth on social media driving purchase decisions, influencer marketing — an $8 billion economy — is unlikely to disappear. But during a time of travel bans and quarantine orders, influencers predominantly focused on fashion may struggle, says Amber Venz Box, co-founder of RewardStyle, a Dallas-based platform that works with 5,000 brands and 70,000 influencers globally.

“We’re encouraging our influencers during this time to not back away from their audience but to lean in,” says Venz Box, commending Aimee Song, founder of the popular account Song of Style, who has 5.5 million followers on Instagram, for diversifying her content and sharing her full lifestyle. Pivoting from fashion-only content to share recipes on YouTube, for example, has resonated.

Caroline Daur, who has 2.3 million followers on Instagram and works with luxury brands like Fendi, Dior and Valentino, has pivoted from sharing street style images on corner blocks to posting regular workout videos on Instagram and YouTube. “This is the time to try out new activities that I don’t usually have the time for,” she says. “It has definitely led to a closer relationship with my followers as everyone is in the same situation.”

Some of these followers will tag Daur in their own posts copying her moves using her hashtag #DaurPower. As a result, her online engagement has gone up, she says. A post featuring her upper-body home workout garnered almost 70,000 likes and 800 comments, double the amount on a fashion outfit post that she shared the same day.

Caroline Daur doing an at-home workout

Caroline Daur

For Venz Box, it marks a shift that has been taking place over the past year. Influencers built businesses by taking advantage of their social media followings to profit, usually by promoting particular brands, products or content. But an increase in sponsored content has been perceived as inauthentic by audiences.

Fashion brands are increasingly looking to engage more well-rounded influencers, and disruption to typical brand deals will exacerbate that trend. By broadening the scope of their partnerships, brands have been able to boost careers for influencers in areas like filmmaking or art direction and build more genuine relationships that make for a better sell to the savvier online consumer.

“One-dimensional influencers — those with a single platform, single topic, single revenue stream — will fall away as collaboration revenue will become too unpredictable for a sustainable business and consumers will crave relatable talent,” says Venz Box.

Even before the coronavirus, some brands have started moving beyond traditional dressing and product placement opportunities by asking the right influencers for behind-the-scenes input, as they look for ways to refresh their look and stand out online. 

Ukrainian twins Tanya and Zhenya Posternak’s signature style on Instagram — cropped close-ups, pastels — and a love for photography has earned them partnerships with Mansur Gavriel and Amsterdam-based label Kassl. Julia and Sylvia Haghjoo — known for their black-and-white scenic images — have been commissioned by brands like Chanel and Barrie to produce editorial shoots for them. The current situation could accelerate this shift.

Experiment with video and other formats

Consumers are increasingly seeking inspiration and guidance from those with expertise and specialist knowledge; fashion influencers who provide solutions to a social media landscape littered with paranoia, confusion and boredom are seeing increased levels of engagement from a captive and receptive audience, says DBA’s Williams.

On the whole, social media consumption is soaring. Instagram and Facebook Live views have doubled in the last week. Instagram users have been posting 6.1 Instagram stories per day on average, which is an increase of 15 per cent week-over-week, while views increased by 21 per cent. 

As a result, videos have taken centre stage. Fitness coach Joe Wicks of The Body Coach, for example, has responded to self-isolation by creating more video content to enable people to exercise safely at home, as well as developing new PE classes to ensure children who are now not at school can still exercise sufficiently. 

Fashion influencers like Hanne, Cao and Adonts have all started creating more video content on IGTV and YouTube. Cao, who is based in Singapore and works with Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior and Chloé, says she has noticed an increase in engagement of around 20 per cent since posting more videos. “They’re more engaging than just the photos on my feed,” she says.

According to Adonts, who is now staying in Hamburg and works with Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Prada, a funny, non-promotional video she posted on Instagram Stories was forwarded over 6,000 times. “It shows that people crave [this kind of] content,” she says.

Some influencers have also pivoted to TikTok. Venz Box, however, points out that a new platform also means having to build a new audience. She recommends influencers only devote about 10 to 20 per cent of their time to new platforms. “We encourage our influencers to engage with the audience they already have. I would say that sharing unique elements of your life will get you farther with your audience than a TikTok video.”

Self portrait by Doina Ciobanu for UN environment week

Doina Ciobanu

Milan-based influencer Doina Ciobanu, who has 568,000 followers on Instagram and has worked with brands like Louis Vuitton, Ermenegildo Zegna and Tom Ford, has been trialling Instagram Live sessions — something she says she never used to do. “The traditional outfit-of-the-days in the street did not do it anymore,” she says.

But while there is a growing shift towards audiences seeking more meaningful content, some influencers have been called out for sharing misinformation or giving inaccurate advice. Ciobanu chose to enlist the authority of experts across the fashion, beauty and wellness industries to join her on Instagram Stories, where hundreds of viewers tune in daily. So far, that has included appearances by entrepreneur Barbara Sturm, pilates instructor Jacqui Kingswell, model Lindsey Wixson, eco champion Livia Firth and Jasmine Hemsley, a wellbeing author and cook.

Other influencers have teamed up with fashion magazines, like Elle, giving influencers both visibility and validity. The title is hosting a series of daily online masterclasses featuring the likes of Afro hair stylist Charlotte Mensah, who will show audiences how to master their curls, and culture writer and creative director Raven Smith, who will host an online book club.

A new opportunity for CGI models

Since Lil Miquela posted her first selfie back in April 2016, debate around the ethics of CGI models and influencers has swirled. The pixelated It girl has amassed over two million Instagram followers, collaborated with Givenchy and Prada, and even scored an editorial in Vogue’s September issue.

At a time when influencers aren't able to leave their homes, CGI models can provide an alternative for brands, says Jennifer Powell, the founder of an influencer management and brand-building agency, which nurtures six-figure brand collaborations for clients like We Wore What’s Danielle Bernstein (2.3 million followers on Instagram) and Julie Sariñana of Sincerely Jules (5.5 million followers). One of her clients is Cameron-James Wilson, founder of Shudu Gram, a CGI avatar with almost 200,000 followers on Instagram.

“What I’m seeing is an increase of [bookings for Wilson] and what he does with the models that he creates,” says Powell, because he’s “able to put ‘models’ into campaigns but not expose people to one another”. In a recent Instagram post, Shudu is pictured wearing a design by celebrity designer Claude Lavie Kameni in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar Arabia.

“While events and campaigns are being cancelled, brands still have to figure out what to do in the immediacy and influencers, real or otherwise, are a great resource to be able to sell and help drive people to e-commerce,” Powell continues. “What I'm seeing is cancellations of trips but the rise of new digital activations and content creation campaigns.”

Looking ahead, she adds that these new measures are here to stay. “The financial impact of Covid-19 on retail and on brands is going to be felt for years.” Brands may invest in social campaigns over trips, dinners and events after finding there’s a similar return on investment but fewer financial and health risks. “It has been abundantly clear the amount of wastefulness or excess that we have experienced in our line of work in the quest for storytelling,” Powell says.

Venz Box believes there will also be lasting impacts on the influencer industry. “Outcomes will become more important than output. Influencers will be challenged to expand their content cross-category and performance-based compensation will rise as the foundation of influencer revenue as it is hedged and more reliable. Across the industry there will be a needed shakeout of players. Those that add value to the ecosystem will thrive, while those that don’t will close.”

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