Brand Communication and Digital Influencers: Fad or Bab!

Abstract

Today the media share the power to define agenda-setting with other spreaders and mediators of information that is available to “public audiences”. Among these new mediators, the so- called digital influencers (DI) have achieved great popularity. In the last decade, this popularity, in the context of social networks, has made them relevant and an attractive option for brands’ communication. As a result, identifying and selecting these DI – which, is assumed, to have a strong impact on their followers - constitutes one of the main challenges for companies and, above all, for communication managers. In this paper, we seek to understand the importance of DI for the brand, to describe the nature of the partnership and to know how the relationship between communication managers and DI unravels.

According to the results achieved in this exploratory survey, based in a mainly qualitative methodology, digital gatekeepers seem to be changing the work of those in charge of communication and branding, placing them as an important touch point for brand messages, alongside other traditional mediators.