How Influencer Marketing Needs to be Decentralized
6 Ways GenZ is pushing for a new marketing model on the blockchain using user-generated storytelling.
There has been much made of blockchain intersecting with the future of advertising, content and even influencer marketing.
As influencer marketing on YouTube and Instagram likely peaked in 2017, micro influencers are seeking new channels to grow more organically and earn a side income. They want the next stage of the web to be aligned with their interests, values, preferences and peer-group.
While TRON, Steemit and others show promise, it will likely be years before we see a decentralization of content platforms in any mainstream sense.
1. Micro Influencers are Seeking New Channels
GenZ personal brands and micro influencers are thus flocking to where tipping takes place — namely channels like Amazon owned game streaming Twitch, or where content can go particularly viral with videos such as musical.ly and Tik Tok.
2. Personal Brands are Searching for a place to be Authentic
Fashion conscious teens are exploring apps such as YEAY, where showcasing apparel is trending. A new generation of apps is targeting video-native GenZ consumers and creators. Young creators are leveling up their personal brands seeking an online niche to call their own.
In this article, I’m not going to repeat the usual statistics of how brands are leaning in on influencer marketing or user-generated-content to reach young people who trust their peers more than brands. GenZ want inclusive environments where they can relate with their peers, where interruptive branded ads don’t corrupt the user experience. This is fairly intuitive to understand.
3. Young Influencers and Entrepreneurs Seek New Incentives and forms of Rewards
Video storytellers know their worth, and brands have been for the last few years willing to pay them for it. However, something broke along the way. The top influencers can summon huge amounts in a “celebrit-ification” of the system, while many micro influencers who can add more targeted value are left without much to go on.
This is in part why we created the WOM Token economy; we believe GenZ especially will appreciate our intent to match their needs and user experience, no matter where they are building their personal brand online.
GenZ are seeking tangible rewards for their entrepreneurial efforts through creative storytelling and nurturing their own tribe. Tokens are a currency for rewarding this. With the right KPIs, tokens have the potential to democratize influencer marketing in a way that the creators do not need to compromise themselves.
4. Micro Influencers are Choosing Video as the Next Channel of Word-of-Mouth and Viral Marketing
In the evolution of how GenZ shares personal experiences, stories, memes and entertainment all converge. Everything from Instagram filters to idiosyncratic stylization of video, to channels that are more live-stream orientated.
This represents GenZ’s unique stamp on digital marketing, and it’s changing what user-generated content is becoming. Vlogging has evolved to the point where any minority can find video creators who mirror them and their personal experience across spectrums, breaking down boundaries and creating a fundamentally new online culture.
Whether you are LGTBQ, disabled, a gamer, a designer, or speak a particular language — there’s an online community for you where you are embraced in GenZ’s paradigm of inclusion. Retail brands are starting to understand this and how it relates to GenZ trust in and receptivity to peer-to-peer influencers.
5. Young Consumers want to Relate to Values that are Inspirational
As user-generated content contests became common on channels such as Instagram and others, brands started to leverage uplifting themes such as sustainability, inclusion, corporate social responsibility and doing good for the planet in little ways to increase their brand visibility in campaigns more likely to go viral.
GenZ and the young consumer therefore are value driven, not just in the discount shopping sense but in gravitating to brands that embody values and stand for a lifestyle they can relate to and empathize and connect with on a moral level.
- Inclusion
- Sustainability
- Empowerment of minorities
- Celebration of diversity
- Mental health and well-being
- Social equality and a socially caring society
- Crypto: and now with cryptocurrencies, even this concept of “decentralization” is catching on among young people as something preferable to some of the systems we have in place.
6. Advertising Needs an “Upgrade” and GenZ want to “Level it up".
The way we’ve done advertising and marketing in large part is no longer relevant. Cord cutting means Netflix is winning over TV companies. While mobile ads create some kind of “engagement” and “impressions”, they don’t easily convert us in our 4-second attention spans.
GenZ want to stand for a reinvented web where blockchain aligns with a more trustworthy way smart contracts can impact how the attention economy could work on a fundamental level.
Advertising and marketing in the United States is estimated to generate more than $200 billion each year. This number is likely to reach $260 billion by 2021. What if micro influencers had a more transparent way to participate in influencer marketing that could be more decentralized and empowering of their authenticity? That is what we are implementing with the WOM Token.
In 2017, it is estimated that $16.7 billion was lost to fake bot traffic. With a DApp protocol, a word-of-mouth (WOM) ecosystem could minimize the pain points influencers have to prove their value and be compensated easily. While Google and Facebook mobile ads appear effective, they are not the ultimate end-game of advertising. They are effectively bidding wars for our attention. But these algorithms are imperfectly optimized for people, especially young audiences. The WOM Token is built on the advice and wisdom of GenZ entrepreneurs and influencers themselves.
If Google and Facebook have a monopoly on mobile advertising likely for years to come, it could be argued YouTube and Instagram have a duopoly too on influencer marketing. This creates a certain inequality among celebrities, established influencers and micro influencers. It favors an ecosystem where vanity metrics are rewarded over authentic and relevant niche creators.
This is incompatible with the values and preferences of GenZ. They are optimistic about the prospects of a world where influencer marketing displays some characteristics of decentralization and incentives that match KPIs that are more up-to-date. On such a platform the user experience of personal brands would be effortless.
The Benefits of Marketing on the Blockchain
- Being instantly rewarded for brand advocacy
- No signed deals with brands needed
- Word-of-mouth stories that don’t feel forced
- No over sales-yness needed, but KPIs where authenticity and honesty are rewarded
- A commitment to a fairer and more transparent token-incentivized interaction
Like what you have read?
Why not be an early investor in the WOM Token. We are seeking to build a better reality for influencers and personal brands while driving resetting how word-of-mouth could function powered by blockchain protocols.