The role of Influencers in Latin American Marketing efforts, often in real-time, was a pervasive theme during last week’s #PortadaLat. Comments from Social Influencers as well as from Brand Marketers in CPG, Cosmetics/Health and the Luxury Goods and Services Categories.
As Denisse Guerra, Regional Marketing Director Latin America, The Estee Lauder Companies and Manuel Medina Riveroll, Marketing Director, Bayer Mexico pointed out during their session on “Brand Leadership in a disruptive World”, even the traditionally conservative healthcare and cosmetic sector has to take a leap of faith and compete in real-time. That includes the hiring of Social Influencers. They also emphasized that some of their categories are growing much more in LatAm (as an example they cited OTC products which are growing 17% in Latin America vs. low single digital growth rates in the U.S. and stagnation in Japan). During his presentation, Jon Suarez-Davis, VP Global Media Strategy, Kellogg Company also noted that Influencer Marketing is an important of the CPG Giants, Latin American Marketing efforts.
At a session called “Online Video Power Connection”, putting together Online Video Content Creators and Platforms, moderated by Pablo Silva, Director Product Innovation at Viacom, Fabienne Fourquet, CEO and co-founder of MCN 2btube stressed the importance of user-generated “instant videos’.
Lyfestyle and Fashion Blogger Daniela Ramirez noted that she has experienced an increase in interest from brands over the last few years in Influencer Marketing: “Now there is a budget for this,” she said.
Influencer Marketing does not mean a lot for the Luxury goods and services category represented at a panel during #PortadaLat by Alexis Thanasoulas, MD Latin America, Zenith Optimedia Group, Stephanie Peña, Regional Sales Director Americas, Longchamp, Andrea Carneiro, Director Sales and Marketing at The St. Regis Mexico City as well as by Javier Martinez Staines, Director General Editorial, Televisa. During the Q&A after their presentation Maya Kosovalic -Head of Media and Digital Communication at L’Oréal Travel Retail Americas and also a presenter in a video advertising best practices case session together with executives from Teads and Socialyse- asked about whether St. Regis and Longchamp have Influencer Marketing programs currently going on. Both of the brand representatives noted that this is not a priority right now.
A little bit of Schizophrenia
“There is a little bit of schizophrenia in the Luxury World,” said Zenith Optimedia’s Thanasoulas. “Luxury brands are often debating between keeping control or letting it go away. 80% of the marketing programs are still invested the old-fashioned way and not in Social Media.” The marketing of many luxury brands is managed centrally and this makes decentralized content marketing and social media programs more difficult.” Panelists also pointed out that while in the U.S. luxury brands consumers like to be associated with the mainstream and its celebrities, this is not the case in Latin America where consumptions of luxury goods and services ss a more elitist endeavour.
Besides, as Thanasoulas pointed out, “Brands like Hermes have very few social media followers, but they are selling like crazy.”
