Influencer Marketing: Demographics Analytics Hold The Answer

As I wrote in Ikon London Magazine in my coverage of Cannes Film Festival: With 53M Instagram followers, singer Rihanna is one of the most desired ‘influencers’ to collaborate with. And while the star is not actively posting the promoted content on her social media, she is actively promoting the brands she collaborates with. This year, the luxury jewellery house Chopard decided to monetise on Rihanna’s ‘influence’ and launched its official Rihanna X Chopard collaboration collection called Rihanna Loves Chopard.

Now, starting from 1,200€ you can become the lucky owner of a knuckleduster inspired Chopard golden ring.

Now, starting from 1,200€ you can become the lucky owner of a knuckleduster inspired golden ring, or for a hefty 9,120€, you can have the heavy duty chain inspired golden necklace all to yourself. Rihanna was delighted about the collaboration and commented on her Instagram: “had a blast tonight at the official launch of our collaboration”. And so were her followers, whose median income is $19,800 per annum, according to Demographics Pro analysis.

The report further reveals that the same followers are interested in Kardashians and Nicki Minaj and the most frequent hashtags used are: #pout, #selfienation, #trainers, #blacklivesmatter, #50shadesofgrey…

The perennial question of ‘influencer marketing’ has always been “do ‘influencer’ collaborations actually translate into sales?” Chopard is yet to learn the answer to that question. With the money invested in the collaboration and ‘edgy-luxury’ pieced already made, we hope that the established luxury brand Chopard can sell anything to its wide client audience as we wouldn’t count on Rihanna’s followers – 54% of whom are on less than $10,000 per annum – to be sweeping the Chopard shops anytime soon.

For advocates of ‘publicity’, the Google Trend stats for last five years reveals that the collaboration with Rihanna wasn’t a groundbreaking one in terms of the number of Google searches. Word “Chopard” has experienced a similar increase in searched around May – Cannes Film Festival.

To put it further in perspective, another luxury brand Bulgari almost replicates the same trend on annual basis.

In comparison, Kendal Jenner was recently appointed as Adidas ambassador, breaking the news to her 81,4M followers in an Instagram Tweet: “officially joining the adidasfam!” (sic). With the comparatively similar audience, one might argue that Kendal Jenner poses greater ability to influence the buying behaviour of the potential target audience and sway them towards buying Adidas.

The time will show, of course, but I can’t stress enough how useful is Demographics Pro when it comes to choosing the celebrity collaboration and predicting the potential outcome of the campaign. It should also be a must for entrepreneurs and business owners who outsource their marketing.