How PR Professionals work with Influencers
By: Ellen Gunning
Navigating the influencer landscape in public relations requires a delicate balance of choosing reputable influencers, ensuring regulatory compliance, and fostering meaningful collaborations. Maeve Governey, Deputy Managing Director of Walsh PR, recently shed light on the intricate dynamics of working with influencers in the PR landscape.
PR consultancies invest a lot of time with their selected influencers. They will provide a meticulous briefing and immerse the influencers in the brand before any campaign begins. A substantial effort goes into creating successful pr-influencer collaborations.
Incorporating Influencer Marketing into a Campaign
Traditional media relations remain crucial to successful PR campaigns, but that subsection known as ‘influencer marketing’ has become a substantial component, accounting for about 60% of Walsh PR campaigns.
It is vital that influencers align with the reputable brands they represent, particularly in sectors such as food, health, and sustainability. “Without integrity, influencers are downgrading themselves to mere sandwich boards,” said Maeve.
Influencers also need to understand the impact of their role and maintain integrity in brand representation. They too must carefully choose the products that they align themselves with as rapid changes in alignment with competing products damage their business and leads to a lack of credibility.
Transparency is vital
There should also be full transparency about paid partnerships. In fact, Influencers are obliged to disclose paid partnerships, using hashtags like #ad or #spawn. Maeve acknowledged the need for influencers to be educated about industry regulations and emphasized the responsibility of PR agencies to review and approve influencer content before it goes live.
Influencer engagements with PR consultancies are typically short-term collaborations based on specific campaigns. Brand ambassadorships, on the other hand, are typically longer as the ambassadors have more dimensions to their public profile.
Listen to full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/26JGetLFFWoj0HmEfHnawz?si=2DysIJj9ThKaDyA3LWLilA
Note: This blog is based on an interview between our director Ellen Gunning and Maeve Governey, Deputy Managing Director of Walsh PR, which was first broadcast on the Mediascope programme on 103.2 Dublin City fm. You can listen to the full interview here on Spotify