As somebody who has always fought in opposition to her frizzy locks, I’ve been intrigued by the Brooklyn-based skilled hair care model, amika, which has constructed its identify on the antithetical premise that magnificence is completely clean and straight. So when Chelsea Riggs, Model President of amika was on the town for the Model Advertising and marketing Summit, I used to be delighted to study extra about how amika has created its model and connects with customers in a aggressive market.
How did the amika model come into existence and what’s the story behind your #hairrebellion motto?
Till the late 90’s, when Sephora turned the sweetness trade the wrong way up, ladies generally purchased their magnificence merchandise from division retailer counters. The whole expertise was centered on the model being the “skilled,” and the client feeling like she wasn’t as educated. Manufacturers sometimes dictated a perfectionist-version of magnificence. As a substitute of purveying unattainable perfection, amika believes in an idiosyncratic and particular person model of magnificence. Our mission is to encourage a way of life of self-expression and hair riot—going in opposition to conformity and the mundane—regardless of your hair kind. Whereas {many professional} hair manufacturers had been began by superstar hairdressers, amika was based by trade outsiders. Our objective was to create a product that felt like an excellent buddy: simple, reliable, enjoyable to hang around with and by no means pretentious. In truth, that is how the identify amika, which interprets to buddy, was born. In the present day, amika merchandise can be found in over 10,000 salons nationwide and thru main retailers akin to Sephora, Birchbox and, our quickest rising channel, loveamika.com.
You’ve had a entrance row seat to the final decade of influencer advertising. In the present day, amika is among the high performing unbiased magnificence manufacturers. How is your method to influencer advertising totally different than different shopper items and sweetness manufacturers?
The wonder trade caught hearth with the event of social media platforms like YouTube. Whereas some individuals could say that the sweetness trade led the way in which in influencer advertising as a result of it’s so visible and straightforward to speak, I imagine that one of many primary elements influencer advertising took off was that on a regular basis ladies and men had been capable of demystify magnificence. These influencers modified the sport—making magnificence approachable and academic on the similar time.
amika has labored with influencers lengthy earlier than they had been labeled “influencers.” For those who can imagine it, there was a time when many manufacturers checked out influencers as a part or a waste of cash that wouldn’t translate into gross sales. Even with restricted budgets at first, we noticed the facility and scalability of influencer advertising, and so we put the vast majority of our funding into these partnerships. Our method to influencer advertising differs as a result of we deal with influencers like model ambassadors, and never as media buys.
Even with our paid campaigns, we collaborate on content material and provides the influencers artistic freedom—in fact inside some pointers and bounds—however authenticity is crucial for all our partnerships. We’re in fixed search of the proper influencers to accomplice with who embody the amika buyer values, no matter race or gender. We additionally incorporate their content material into our distribution. For instance, we glance to influencers to create how-to movies for our Sephora product pages as a substitute of manufacturing these movies ourselves to authentically show finest utilization.
Many entrepreneurs nonetheless take a look at influencers as a silo advertising automobile, or a possible substitute for promoting {dollars}. I see corporations that refuse to “pay” for influencer placement as a result of they don’t see the worth in it. I additionally see it being dealt with incorrectly or in an inauthentic manner (the buzzword of the last decade). They might assume that influencer advertising is a “must-do” tactic, like social media may additionally be seen as, however I imagine that in case you aren’t executing it correctly, then you definately shouldn’t do it in any respect.
As you’ve scaled your program from a couple of vloggers to over 1,000 influencers, what have been the largest challenges so that you can overcome?
Our largest problem was to retune the mindset of how our crew functioned. We knew early on that influencers had been the place we needed to spend our cash, nevertheless it was a course of to vary the thought technique of our crew. For instance, our PR crew wanted to assume past press releases, editor mailings, press launch occasions and long-lead pitches, and take a look at editors as influencers and influencers as editors. Our social media crew went from focusing solely on creating our personal content material, to working with influencers for 75% of our content material. Our advertising plan went from launching to shoppers first, to launching on social first. Additional time, we transitioned from one-off campaigns to an built-in influencer follow.
What varieties of organizational and expertise choices did you need to make as you grew your program from one-off campaigns to an built-in follow?
We restructured our advertising crew from conventional silos to incorporating influencer advertising into each function. As knowledgeable model, we work with many superstar and “insta-famous” hairstylists along with shopper influencers. Our PR crew just isn’t solely centered on conventional shopper and commerce media, but additionally on skilled stylists who’re influencers on their very own and are sometimes featured in press. Our social crew is built-in to collaborate on content material, neighborhood administration and influencers, whereas every crew member focuses on a selected kind of influencer, akin to micro influencers, unpaid vs. paid, or model ambassadors.
Was that cross-collaboration tough to determine? What recommendation do you will have for individuals right here who’re attempting to combine influencer advertising all through model methods?
At first, it was considerably tough to determine cross-collaboration inside our crew, however the end result was exceedingly worthwhile. My recommendation to anybody attempting to combine influencer advertising all through their model methods is to first incorporate a degree of duty in every division head. Our complete crew participates in some type at amika—we even contain our gross sales crew within the influencer identification decision-making course of. In addition they assist us decide which merchandise to advertise with influencers and what sort of influencer-generated content material will resonate finest with our shoppers.
In the present day, everybody on the advertising crew performs some function in influencer advertising, whereas beforehand, solely our social media supervisor was accountable. Moreover, we’ve employed on crew members particularly for built-in influencer advertising. These new roles are primarily accountable for day by day communication with our engaged influencers and seeding, which frees up time for our social specialists to give attention to the macro-tier and campaign-specific influencers.
With influencer advertising in-house, how do you keep genuine relationships with so many individuals?
Sustaining private relationships with every of those influencers has undoubtedly been a problem, nevertheless, we felt strongly that conserving this in-house was the one manner to make sure this was doable. We did try to work with businesses up to now to assist execute in opposition to a selected marketing campaign, nevertheless, the outcomes and authenticity of the campaigns suffered.
Within the early days, we employed very junior social expertise, which led to some turnover, and paired with the truth that we tracked every part in Excel, we ended up dropping numerous knowledge. I noticed that if we really needed influencer advertising to be the guts of our advertising technique, and never only a tactic, we would have liked to restructure the crew and convey on software program to make us extra environment friendly.
We spent greater than six months researching and testing each platform on the market and located Traackr match precisely what we would have liked. We had been searching for a platform that was primarily a CRM for influencer administration that additionally allowed us to mixture our marketing campaign analytics and entry the insights we have to correctly consider influencers, akin to their follower demographics.
How has your method to paying influencers developed during the last 10 years?
Identical to Fb was seen as “free advertising,” influencers had been the unknown they usually had been usually keen to submit in change for merchandise. As they grew in recognition, we observed many had been charging charges. Usually, we might accomplice on a bigger scale with an influencer in the event that they posted about us not less than as soon as and it might both drive site visitors, gross sales or new followers.
Macro-influencers had been alluring on the time as a result of we thought, “Wow, we will attain two million individuals in a single shot!” However typically, this wasn’t efficient for our model. We might solely afford to do that as soon as, and it felt random. When Instagram modified its algorithm, we started to focus extra on micro-influencers who had been creating superb content material. Some individuals might imagine that micro-influencers equal small, which might then equal free, however we don’t view it in that manner. These influencers are primarily a stylist, photographer and inventive director in a single, so they need to completely be paid for the work they’re creating. If you’re conversant in The Tipping Level by Malcolm Gladwell, one in all my private favorites, micro-influencers collectively attain additional and wider, touching extra individuals than macro-influencers.
What do you contemplate earlier than getting into right into a paid relationship with an influencer?
As with all advertising marketing campaign, it is advisable set up your objectives. What do you hope to perform from this partnership? From there, I ask varied questions: does their viewers resemble my goal demographic? Are they “on model?” What’s their engagement fee? Are their followers very engaged? Are their followers commenting versus simply liking their posts? How do their followers react to different sponsored posts in comparison with non-sponsored? Would a sponsored submit with my model match into their aesthetic? Do they principally speak about drugstore manufacturers, status merchandise, or mixture of each? There are lots of elements we ponder earlier than contemplating a paid partnership with an influencer.
I perceive you stopped monitoring EMV at amika. What metrics do you observe?
We don’t use Earned Media Worth (EMV) as a metric, as a result of for amika, it’s not concerning the media equal value, it’s about reaching a selected advertising objective. On a weekly foundation, we’re activated influencers per tier, the variety of model mentions per influencer, our complete share of voice and influencer response fee. For particular campaigns, we are going to take a look at impressions, complete engagement, CPM and CPE.
You latterly expanded your partnership with Sephora. What function did influencers play in that launch?
We not too long ago launched completely new packaging for our model, and on the similar time, we expanded our hair care providing into Sephora shops with custom-end caps. Our launch technique led with influencer collaborations with objectives round each consciousness and engagement—working with various kinds of influencers for every goal. A part of our success was resulting from the truth that we had been hyper-focused with our messaging and selected solely a small collection of merchandise to advertise. We regarded for influencers with a wide range of hair varieties and ethnicities, and balanced media varieties by searching for influencers with sturdy video and pictures abilities. We partnered with a variety of influencers that centered their content material on magnificence, way of life, motherhood in addition to hair specialists, which all match our model aesthetic.
For each paid and unpaid influencers, we use Traackr viewers demographics to prioritize influencers who’s audiences had been not less than 50% U.S.-based, comprised of 80% or extra ladies and cut up throughout our goal ages (18-25 & 25-34). We’re extraordinarily selective with engagement fee, and regarded in the direction of earlier feedback on the influencers’ previous sponsored posts to find out how their viewers reacts to sponsored content material.
To maintain studying about strategic influencer advertising, try our report, World Influencer Advertising and marketing: Classes from Magnificence, that includes insights gleaned by finding out the highest performing manufacturers, together with amika, amongst 1,000 influencers.
