Star power

• If they don’t do it, someone else is going to. Celebrities are increasingly leveraging their fame not only for brand endorsements, but also to launch their own ventures — think Rihanna, Gordon Ramsay, and Uncle Roger.
• As they expand from entertainment to entrepreneurship, their businesses benefit from their media presence, personal brand, and marketing to their loyal fan base. But they also face unique challenges such as heightened consumer expectations and the need to maintain authenticity.
• Brands don’t often get the kind of engagement that celebrities and influencers get. René E. Menezes, Co-founder & President of 500-backed martech platform Involve Asia shares that the average influencer on Instagram garners a 2% engagement rate — 3-4x higher than brands that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Instagram promotions.
• How can influencers maintain their authenticity? “You can’t bite the hand that feeds you,” René shared. “You have to first and foremost, look after your clout. The great thing is that the audience has sort of a personal relationship with you; the comment section is a great insight into what people are thinking.”
• As for companies who want to engage a celebrity or influencer to boost their marketing efforts, he advises them to give a significant amount of flexibility to content creators.
• He explained that brands tend to want influencers to do things their way and it ends up becoming a push and pull, but brands have to trust that content creators know what will appeal to their audiences.
• Listen to the full interview on BFM 89.9.