Influencer culture is a divisive one: you can love it, or you can hate it, but you can’t ignore it and you can’t deny that it’s inescapable in the current marketing climate. But is this a good thing? Pete Sayburn, marketing expert and CEO of StudioSpace, reached out to us this week to offer his thoughts on a recent surge in demand for TikTok and influencer marketing he’s noticed in recent months and whether it represents a curse or an opportunity.
Partnered with the rise of TikTok, brands are needing to quicken their content output and stay on top of innumerable trends to remain relevant. Many are choosing to do this through partnership, leaning specifically to external agencies for help with this online rush.
A monthly report from StudioSpace showed that the highest number of briefs received from clients last month were looking for agency support with social media and content creation.
September’s Marketer’s Most Wanted revealed that the proportion of social and content briefs submitted to StudioSpace has risen from 18.2% in August to 18.8% in September - its fourth month in a row on top of the list.
But why is it that big brands - especially those with internal marketing teams - are looking for help outside of their own team when it comes to content creation?
The answer is relatively simple: non-traditional campaigns require non-traditional approaches.
The harsh truth is that having over 30 years’ experience in marketing does not automatically make you a TikTok genius, nor does it guarantee you an understanding Gen Z influencer culture, or the ability to grapple with the huge number of trending audios that are changing and falling out of fashion all of the time.
We’ve seen amongst client briefs a desire for fresh thinking, especially from some of our younger agencies that really do specialise in Gen Z-tailored marketing. Original content that is both interesting and entertaining has proven to be a great way for brands to engage customers and build loyalty.
In second place on September’s Marketer’s Most Wanted was briefs looking specifically for agencies with UX and UI design skills - these briefs made up 12.5% of the total.
This type of brief has been consistent in our top three for several months now.
Mihaly Sipos
It’s clear that brands are looking for external resources to boost internal capability as they undergo digital transformation. Much of this transformation is driven by a move to Direct to customer (D2C), and we’re finding that brands enjoy the flexibility to upweigh or downweigh external UX/UI resources for critical delivery crunch-points.
Digital rebranding becomes increasingly common as we gear up for the new year, and brands like Nationwide and MA Financial Group are setting current trends in this respect.
Creative and production briefs were pushed down by UX/UI design into third place, although they still retained 10% of our total incoming briefs for the month.
This figure was matched by software development briefs, reflecting again a desire to outsource technical skills and to capitalise on the ever-growing digital landscape. Indeed, 2023 saw a 7% increase in app downloads, and it’s clear that brands are looking to participate in this increasingly mobile culture.
Other key features of September’s report included a re-entry from research and insight (5%) - likely because of brands looking to analyse their YE data and predict forecasts for the coming year - and from event and spatial design (3.8%).
Towards the end of the summer, we saw demand for help with event and spatial design decline (to be expected as the days get shorter and colder), so it’s interesting to see it creep back onto the list.
A new entry was also seen from media buying, with 3.8% of briefs looking for this sort of specialism. This entry indicates that brands are still wanting to outsource media planning and buying to external specialists and thus ensure that they spend their investments in the right place.
Despite persistent tough economic conditions, brands are still looking externally for support across a range of specialisms.
As we move into the colder months, businesses are looking for fresh ideas from specialist agencies to reach people from the comfort of their own homes, hence the increase in social media and content briefs we’ve been seeing and expect to continue to see.
