Q&A: brand infamy in the swipe economy

Social media today feels less social, more media. Facebook, Instagram, Snap and Twitter were the virtual town square of the 2010s; an evergreen landscape where the influencer economy boomed, and brands could buy platform reach and relevance with ease.

Now, Musk’s X circles the drain; mass layoffs across the tech industry and the rise of personalised algorithms, made popular by TikTok’s ‘For You’ page, signals a significant shift in ecommerce and online interactions. Amidst the consumer ennui for inauthenticity and growing trend around subcultures, has influencer marketing lost its lustre — or is it entering a new golden era?

The Goat Agency is the world’s leading, social-first marketing agency powered by influencers. In this interview, Editor-at-large, Natasha Randhawa, chats with founder Harry Hugo about fame and attention in the creator economy; from navigating changing social media platforms, to building influencer authenticity and brand awareness. 

Thanks for joining us, Harry. Goat launched in 2015; can you walk us through your origin story, what it means to be a ‘leader’ in the influencer marketing space and some of the agency’s highlights over the last decade?

Nick, Arron (my fellow co-founders) and I were already working together at Sportlobster, a sports-focused social network and app. This was before influencer marketing really existed; at least not in the way it does now. We trialled working with some small ‘creators’ who had very engaged sports audiences and noticed that they performed far better than many other big media channels — or even more than well-known professional athletes. We quickly realised that ‘influencer’ (what we mean by ‘influencer marketing’) was a hugely untapped market that not only provided a huge amount of value, but value that could be tracked.

It’s been incredible to see how influencer has evolved; how it’s challenged the norms of advertising, and moved from being what people assumed would be a fad to a true mainstay in the marketing industry. I think I’m proudest of the young people we’ve had coming into our business, who are playing a huge part in changing the status quo and building not just Goat, but the whole influencer industry. 

As a social-first agency, what’s your take on the idea that social media is dying? Goat provides services across myriad platforms, including Twitch and TikTok. Are you seeing a shift in favour of certain platforms over others in your data?

Oversaturation has always been a potential problem for influencers. But ultimately, we’re not even close to it – because of the continuous development of new platforms, and the fact that every day, there’s a new content creator emerging, doing something different. 

I’m not worried as I think this conversation is being had around all advertising channels. As long as you’re being strategic and authentic to the brands you’re working with, you can always reach those desired audiences. Platform preference is always evolving, as is the nature of social media, but I don’t see this as a bad thing.

We grew up on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Then we saw Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok push short-form video content. From Twitch to Pinterest, there are so many more platforms available and, in turn, endless possibilities now for advertisers. At Goat, we operate under audience-first strategies as opposed to being platform-first, meaning we start by asking, ‘Where are your brand’s audience and what are they engaging with?’ and not ‘Which platform should my brand be on?’

The theme at the magazine this month is ‘Fame and Attention’. The democratisation of social media means that fame is more accessible, but arguably less enduring. How does Goat balance the fleetingness of influencer virality with building long-term brand advocacy and audience trust? 

I think this is a really important question. Influencers can have their 15 minutes of fame, but it’s the ones that stay the course that are really interesting to brands.

Of course, there are ways brands can tap into these ’15 minute’ influencers,  like how brands worked with the Corn Kid on TikTok. But this requires a high level of reactivity which is difficult for bigger brands with lots of approval processes. There are so many amazing legacy creators that brands can partner with; not just on content for that brand, but also partnering on IP. I think that’s going to be the next big thing: collaboration with creators on totally new brands.

With online audiences increasingly fragmented across niche communities and subcultures, how does Goat adapt its strategies to ensure campaigns resonate with diverse groups — even when working with a single brand? 

It’s right to think of every brand as having multiple audiences. They all have their core audience, but it doesn’t mean that the only person who ever buys that product is a ’25-year-old woman from London’.

It’s important to understand how you can leverage different audience personas across different platforms to really embody and spread the message of your brand. At Goat, we work with brands to identify what their core audience looks like, what their wider customers could look like, which communities they could be a part of, and how those audiences can be reached through relevant creators. What’s interesting with brand content is often, they can only really focus on their core audiences e.g. because of the rigidity of the brand guidelines and the costs associated with creating a TV ad.

The benefits of influencers are: you can get super niche and highly targeted and relevant, and because there is little crossover between the audiences, you can create highly bespoke content for them at scale and with less production. Our founding principle has always been ‘Niche content to niche audiences at scale’ and this is how we approach brand campaigns.

Indeed, the future of digital marketing seems to lie in micro-segmentation and hyper-personalisation. We know that consumers crave authentic content and interactions. In your experience, are micro-influencers THAT much better in reaching atomised audiences?

Micro influencers have been such a big talking point over the past five years. It’s not always about size; bigger isn’t necessarily better. However ‘big’ influencers still absolutely have their role to play. We approach it through the frame of ‘communities’ and ask ourselves, ‘How can we work with as many highly relevant creators as possible to build the right engagement with the right communities?’, and work back from there. 

We’ve done this with every type of brand, from beauty and fashion, to a brand that sells welding products and helmets. The audience for these is so highly specific that it would be difficult to use mainstream media to reach them, whereas micro influencers are talking directly to our desired customers.

Goat operates globally, connecting brands with influencers in 70+ countries and 28+ languages. Can you share how you’ve leveraged micro-influencers to cultivate hyper-localised engagement?

One of our key terms over the past few years has been ‘Glocalisation’ — thinking globally, but operating locally. We have ‘Goats’ — our people — on the ground in 37 markets. They are crucial in us creating relevant campaigns at a local level, as they understand the culture in a way that people who’ve never lived there simply could not. We then work together globally to maintain that cross-market view of what is innovative and what’s trending on the platforms. 

An example would be our campaign with games developer King, on its launch of Crash Bandicoot. We had creators across the UK, the US, Mexico, Brazil and India. We had a hero campaign that was centralised, but we had to get very specific in each market to account for different phone usages, cultural considerations — down to what type of phones are more popular (iPhone or Android). So we were able to take the core idea, but bring it to each market in a highly relevant way.

Looking ahead, what are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities you see for influencer marketing in the next five years? Is AI set to disrupt the industry? If all platforms continue to look and feel the same, what value and differentiation can brand and influencer collaborations offer consumers? 

AI will help influencers rather than hinder them. This technology will enable creators to produce better quality content more quickly and make it more accessible to different audiences. For example, MrBeast is already using AI to create content in multiple languages. 

In terms of other opportunities, I think we’ll start to see more brands co-creating products with influencers and working much more closely with them in the product development stages. 

Then there’s the ever-changing platforms. We’ll start to see more platforms emerge; platforms like Twitch and TikTok starting to tap into live shopping and commerce; and existing platforms adapting to new formats. Personally, I think YouTube continues to prove everyone wrong on just how loyal and sticky the audiences are on there, and it will really rise to become the TV of the future.

All in all, influencers have a long and colourful future ahead, and it’s an incredibly exciting time to be part of this industry. It’s only continuing to grow and we’re now seeing it as a much bigger line on brands’ media budgets – and this will only increase over the next five years.

Featured image: Crash Bandicoot / King