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“Take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever”: Unilever marketing boss
The FMCG giant wants to improve the integrity, transparency and measurement of influencer marketing.
Unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer, Keith Weed, has called upon the brand to take action and avoid bad influencer marketing.
He wants the company to control bad practice in the social influencer marketing side of the business – issues such as fake followers, bots, fraud and ‘dishonest business models.’ And he has drawn up a three-point agenda:
- Unilever won’t work with influencers who buy followers
- Unilever has promised its own brands will never buy followers
- The business will prioritise partners who increase their transparency and work to eradicate nefarious practices throughout the digital ecosystem
Unilever has, in the past, powered drives for brands like Dove Men, Dollar Shave Club, Stork, Magnum and skincare range Simple. A recent study from Rakuten Marketing found that marketers would pay up to 75,000 Euro for a single post mentioning their brand by someone with over one million followers while they would pay 'micro-infleuncers' - those with under 10,000 followers - an average of 1,500 Euro for a single post.
And there are the fakes.