Influential media partners How media firms can incentivise professional social media influencers to generate value for them Student Name: Thomas Stoffer Student Number: 453541 Supervisor: Matthijs Leendertse Master Media & Business Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication Erasmus University Rotterdam Master’s Thesis June 21, 2018 ABSTRACT During recent years, a more interactive internet caused for a digital equivalent of opinion leaders to emerge: influencers. Influencers are understood to have the ability to influence a particular group of people through social media or blogs. They are different from the more traditional concept of celebrities where influencers could also be everyday people, who use the internet to reach their accumulated following through the visual and textual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles. Simultaneously along the rise of the concept of influencers, businesses also developed interest to work with them because they are considered to be the main channel of electronic word-of-mouth marketing. Existing literature on influencers primarily had an exploratory focus on including them in marketing and advertising strategies, with no attention to the principles of co-creation. Additionally, academic co-creation literature primarily resolved around firms working with consumers or other stakeholders. At the crossroads of these two gaps in the current literature, this study aimed to determine how media firms could incentivise professional social media influencers in order for them to generate value. Hence, this study carried out a qualitative research whereby twelve semi-structured expert interviews were conducted. The results derived from thematically analysing the interviews shows that companies need to incentivise influencers on the partnership creation level and on the implementation level. Noteworthy, currently firms primarily work with influencers in a more traditional way, slowly moving towards co- creation. In the partnership with professional social media influencers, it is important to determine the goals of the firm, select the right influencer, maintain the relationship, discuss the goals and compensation, inspire the creative process and monitor the results. To ensure the quality of the co-created value, firms should ensure trust is built, authenticity remained and creative freedom is ensured. Keywords: influencers, social media, partnerships, collaboration, co-creation, value creation 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank the experts who dedicated time to answer some questions to help me carry out this research project. I enjoyed talking to all of you and found it both very inspiring and enriching. Additionally, I also want to thank my supervisor, Matthijs Leendertse. Your guidance and knowledge kept me focused and constantly inspired me to continue during the process. Finally, I would like to thank my family, friends, and girlfriend for always believing and continuously supporting me. Without each and every one of you, I wouldn’t be writing this section in my master’s thesis today. Thank you. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements, abstract and keywords 1. INTRODUCTION ________________________________________________________ 5 1.1. Research Problem __________________________________________________ 7 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ___________________________________________ 10 2.1. From opinion leaders to influencers ___________________________________ 10 2.2. The collaboration between influencers and firms ________________________ 13 2.2.1. Influencers and media firms’ partnership objectives _____________________ 16 2.2.2. Industry examples _______________________________________________ 17 2.3. Creating the partnership ____________________________________________ 18 2.3.1. Partnership establishment _________________________________________ 18 2.3.2. Relationship management _________________________________________ 19 2.3.3. Discussing the terms _____________________________________________ 21 2.4. Implementation ____________________________________________________ 21 2.4.1. Inspiring the creativity _____________________________________________ 22 2.4.2. Executing the plans ______________________________________________ 23 2.4.3. Monitoring the process ____________________________________________ 24 2.5. Conceptual Framework _____________________________________________ 26 3. METHODOLOGY ______________________________________________________ 27 3.1. Method selection ___________________________________________________ 27 3.2. Research design ___________________________________________________ 27 3.3. Validity and reliability _______________________________________________ 28 3.4. Expert selection ___________________________________________________ 28 3.4.1. List of experts ___________________________________________________ 29 3.5. Data collection ____________________________________________________ 32 3.6. Operationalisation _________________________________________________ 33 3.7. Data analysis ______________________________________________________ 35 4. RESULTS ____________________________________________________________ 37 4.1. Partnership creation ________________________________________________ 37 4.1.1. Establishing the partnership ________________________________________ 37 4.1.1.1. Determining the goals _________________________________________ 37 4.1.1.2. Selecting the right influencer ____________________________________ 39 4.1.1.3. Reaching the influencer ________________________________________ 42 4.1.2. Maintaining the relationship ________________________________________ 44 4.1.2.1. Relationship management ______________________________________ 44 3 4.1.2.2. The length of the relationship ___________________________________ 45 4.1.2.3. The role of intermediary ________________________________________ 47 4.1.3. Discussing the expectations ________________________________________ 48 4.1.3.1. Briefing the expectations _______________________________________ 48 4.1.3.2. A fitting compensation _________________________________________ 49 4.2. Implementation ____________________________________________________ 52 4.2.1. Inspiring the creative process _______________________________________ 52 4.2.1.1. Instructing the process _________________________________________ 52 4.2.1.2. Co-creation _________________________________________________ 53 4.2.2. Executing the production __________________________________________ 55 4.2.2.1. The important aspects of co-creation with influencers _________________ 55 4.2.2.2. Facilitate the influencer ________________________________________ 57 4.2.2.3. Distribution choices ___________________________________________ 59 4.2.3. Monitoring the process ____________________________________________ 61 4.2.3.1. The measured value __________________________________________ 61 4.2.3.2. Risk management ____________________________________________ 63 5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ________________________________________ 65 5.1. Significant findings and theoretical implications ________________________ 65 5.2. Limitations ________________________________________________________ 69 5.3. Future research ____________________________________________________ 70 APPENDIX _____________________________________________________________ 80 AppendiX A - Interview Guide ____________________________________________ 80 AppendiX B - Consent Form _____________________________________________ 86 4 1. INTRODUCTION With the rise of social media marketing (Colliander & Dahlén, 2011) new ways to communicate messages to consumers have also arisen. One of these ways makes use of the principles of word-of-mouth marketing and uses opinion leaders, or influencers, to reach out to specific audiences. The use of influencers in fields such as marketing and advertising has been a growing phenomenon in recent years (Agrawal, 2017; Byrne, Kearney & MacEvilly, 2017; Uzunoğlu & Kip, 2014). Influencers are not only people who have achieved something which resulted in the accumulation of fame, such as athletes (Agyemang, 2014), musicians or movie stars (Freberg, 2011) but caused by the rise of social media, they can also be ordinary people (Murphy & Schram, 2014). Because it is simple to create an account on social media and share your own content, the boundaries between consumers and producers have never been so blurred. Through social media, individuals could become digital celebrities and attract a large following (K. Freberg, Graham, McGaughey & L.A. Freberg, 2011). Influencers owe their name to the understanding they have accumulated influence over a certain group of people. These people tend to trust the opinion of the influencers they follow, for example when they are discussing their attitudes towards a particular brand or product. When influencers start to professionalise their online activities, and thus start to generate revenue based on their audience, the concept of professional social media influencers rises. One of the examples of an individual who became a professional influencer through social media is Felix Kjellberg, better known by his YouTube username PewDiePie (Kain, 2016; Solon, 2017). In 2013, PewDiePie became the YouTube channel with the highest amount of subscribers, while at the time he surpassed the channel of Smosh around the 12 million subscribers mark (Cohen, 2013). Since that day his channel has been growing to over 60 million subscribers and no other channel surpassed his subscriber count (Solon, 2017). In his videos, PewDiePie would