Page 56 - Gulf Marketing Review

S T R A T E G Y

make them get the information out quickly
to as many people as possible, including
well-connected friends.
This is exactly what happened when
we tested the incentives in our studies.
In one case, we used a product that had
this externality characteristic built in. Many
communications services, multiplayer video
games and social media platforms such as
Facebook use this technique.
In another experiment, we used a prod-
uct that didn’t have this characteristic and,
instead, built the externality nudge into a
marketing promotion. This is similar to the
type of flash sale used by Groupon and Liv-
ingSocial, whereby a customer would only
get a discount when a minimum number
of people redeemed a particular offer in a
period of time.
THE WELL-
CONNECTED SOCIAL These are just some ways that everyday
MEDIA USERS WHO influencers can be activated, but it can be
YOU WANT TO as simple as nudging them towards sharing
RECRUIT FOR YOUR information with their well-connected friends.
NEXT INFLUENCER In summary, influencer marketing can be
CAMPAIGN MAY BE very effective, but it isn’t always easy to make
VERY HARD NUTS it work. Selecting the ideal influencers is the
TO CRACK
simple part, but activating them and putting
them to work is hard (and often expensive).
3V ]NVLNZ UJZSN\RVP LJV and will not achieve the desired outcomes. We Our suggestion is that marketers
be very effective, but it isn’t borrowed ideas from behavioural economics turn the model on its head and try to use
always easy to make it work on incentives and "nudging", and tested special regular customers – everyday influencers
incentives for everyday influencers, based on and a bit of behavioural economics and
what economists call "externalities". nudging to achieve the same, or maybe
to have a preference for spreading information The incentives were designed so that the even better outcomes.
to their well-connected friends. value of the information to the regular per-
They need to seek these people out; oth- son would be higher if more people also had Key points
erwise, information will just spread randomly the information. The logic being that it should • You need key influencers, but don’t always
need to target them directly, if it is difficult
or costly to do so.
• Everyday influencers can be used to reach
ANDREW STEPHEN, ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH, L’ORÉAL
key influencers and, in fact, can spread
PROFESSOR OF MARKETING AND HEAD OF THE MARKETING FACULTY information more quickly
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD’S SAÏD BUSINESS SCHOOL
• For the approach to work, everyday influenc-
“It isn’t hard to identify or select potential ers need an incentive to share information
RV ]NVLNZ[ OWZ J LJUXJRPV K]\ R\ R[ QJZM \W • Consider incentives that reward everyday
get them to do what you’d like them to do” influencers for spreading information widely
and quickly

56 I GULF MARKETING REVIEW I DECEMBER 2017/FEBRUARY 2018