An Expert With Whom I Can Identify: The Role of Narratives in Influencer Marketing

Feng, Y., Chen, H., & Kong, Q. (2020). An expert with whom I can identify: The role of narratives in influencer marketing. International Journal of Advertising. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2020.1824751

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Influencer marketing reduces resistance to advertising messages, especially among Millennials and Gen Z, who a prefer a more personalized experience to intrusive traditional advertising. Influencers act as narrative advertising, in which there is a storyline with main characters, goals, actions, and outcomes. That narrative has the power to elicit emotions from the audience that transport them into a positive, vulnerable state, especially when the narrative portrays the influencer positively and the influencer is a similar age to the viewer. A person is less likely to respond negatively to an ad when it is a first-person influencer narrative because they’ve built a relationship with the influencer over time, and because they’ve used a lot of cognitive resources to process the narrative, so they have less of an ability to create counter-arguments. Follower reactions typically remain positive even when influencers disclose sponsorship.

In my own work as a social media director, I’ve noticed a growing distaste for intrusive and impersonal marketing. I helped launch the College Board Creators program, through which we hire high school students to make social media content for our channels. This research confirms that I should continue using influencers to help deliver key messages on social media, while keeping in mind that relationship building over time and using first-person language can increase receptivity.

Learning Outcome 6: Create and deliver elegant messages appropriate to audience, purpose, and context.