Bonds head of marketing Emily Small talks influencer strategy, as told to Josh McDonnell.
We've enjoyed strong relationships with influencers for many years probably more in a traditional sense of product seeding.
Back in the day, we worked with the likes of Zanita Morgan when we launched micro mesh underwear quite a number of years ago.
We also work with a regular group of influencers from various different background who are in the digital space now.
It's very much a changing environment, that shifting media dynamic means that digital is playing a much stronger role in communications.
People are on their mobile devices a lot more frequently, they're following influencers, seeking information from them and where we have a nice alignment with our brand values and influencers that we are working with, then it can work out to be a really great partnership.
For somebody like Sarah Ellen, our latest influencer collaboration, the average post would be one a month for a period of three or four months.
It's a growing area, it's evolving on a daily basis. The key thing for us is ensuring we have authenticity with the people we are working with.
We want to make sure they have a vested interest in the brand and that they align with our brand values to make sure it is the right partnership for us. Therefore we get its a more authentic partnership.
What are some of the criteria these influencers have to meet to be part of the team.
We are for all Australian's, we are definitely a loved brand across Australia. We have a sense of humour, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We are pretty self-deprecating, so there just needs to be elements of that, that are coming through in the influencers that we work with.
There is no concern from us when identifying where there is an influencer post under new AANA guidelines.
We are really upfront about who we work with and we're about true partnerships.
We work with them in an ambassador sense which is a joint partnership between the two parties that has full transparency for the audience who are looking at the post.
We are understanding of them and will always talk to the new ambassador that we are working with.
We are not trying to hide the fact that we have a partnership with an individual so it's not a great deal of change for us.
It really comes back to who are the influencers that are right for us to work with for our brand and as long as we are always creating, engaging, entertaining and inspirational content I hope that we can deliver to our customer base.
There is definitely a shift in people engaging with video content.
So we are certainly looking to work with partners who are creating more unique content that shows a real personality of themselves as part of that and the more kind of real person that you can show in the content you are producing, that's what we will be looking for in the future.
Certainly, first and foremost we are want to provide engagement and entertainment and knowledge of our brand to our customer base.
But there is commercial component with what we do, we do sell a product. So it while it isn't the primary reason we engage with influencers but it is something that we monitor.
We are a highly loved brand so for us it about how do we communicate new product ranges across a very varied customer base from 8 seconds – 80 years old.
You can have a granny wearing our cotton tails or white t-shirt or a newborn baby wearing our coveralls.
So we are really trying to showcase that and hopefully gain a emotional connection and really talk to our customers in the sense of what are they attitudes they have toward life.
Engaging with influencers and creating engaging content and sharing that in our social channels is a really great way of doing that.