Week 10 [17.12-23.12.18] How the fitness brands use social media and influencers to promote their products

Nowadays everyone can share everything and anyone can become someone, which explains a massive rise of fitness influencers and personal trainers in social media. It seems we no longer need education and certificates to instruct others and tell them how to workout. All we need is a popular fitness account with daily updates and videos or information about nutrition and diet to get attention of the social media users and fitness brands. In this article I will analyze how fitness brands use social media and influencers to promote their products.

To understand the phenomenon of fitness brands and their influencers, we first need to look upon the social media platforms they work on. Snapchat and Instagram seem to experience the biggest popularity, though marketing and advertising on them wasn’t that popular few years back. According to Lev Manovich, since Instagram was launched in 2010 it has reached almost 400 million of users, mostly young people who wish to communicate their life through photos and connect to each other. Such great audience’s activity and engagement soon afterwards caused the platform to become one of the premier social medias ‘for brands to craft effective social influencer strategies, execute high-reach, creative and engaging influencer marketing campaigns, and chart long-term Instagram influencer collaborations.’ The reason for such expand of this platform as much as the rise of social media in today’s world might be surprising for some people, especially for the older generation that do not always understand its phenomenon, but studies show that such change comes naturally. Just like once in the past people moved from reading newspapers to watching news in TV, now the audience has moved into their phones and social media. ‘The way people consume content is evolving,’ Evan notices (2016). ‘To capture the attention of audience who spends more time staring at their phones than at television screens, brands must alter their approach to marketing.’ That’s why so called ‘influencers’ are so important for the brands and their campaigns. But what exactly is an influencer? According to Evan (2016), it’s an individual with a big social reach who has the power to make impact on the others and their point of view. Through reaching millions of users through a single photo or video, they can easily bring brand awareness and promote their products, working even more successfully than an ad placed between other posts. Their fame and reach differ from thousands to millions of users, but even the less popular accounts are often given an offer of cooperation with brands as their authenticity and closeness with the audience seems to build more trust and intimacy. It’s been even noticed (Evan, 2016) that influencers nowadays hold bigger power than celebrities, mainly because they seem more ‘real’ and are easier to approach (through, for example, comments or direct messages).

Though some might wonder how it’s possible that fitness business is operating on social media so successfully next to the other popular accounts like fashion and travelling, if to look at Instagram or Snapchat feed, it can be noticed that fitness is slowly taking over the content published there. The hashtags like #fitness or #fitnessmotivation can count up to millions of posts and demand on fitness among the users seem to be growing every day. As Tereza Litza notices (2016), ‘there was a time when fitness motivation was not easily achieved through promotional content, as it seemed distant from the audience’s actual needs and goals.’ Instagram has changed this approach and made the audience interested in staying fit and healthy, with many users posting useful information about workouts and nutrition. This means that Instagram not only allows the users to get the information for free, but it makes it easily approachable and within a reach of hand. The fitness brands understand it – and that’s why they moved onto Instagram.

Questions:

• Are you familiar with Instagram? Do you like it or not? If yes, what's your favorite content?
• Have you ever heard about influencer marketing? What do you think about it? Is it better than normal ads?

Bibliography

1. Burcher, N. (2016). Promotion vs. Persuasion: The new rules of Influencer Marketing. [online] MediaCom. Available at: https://www.mediacom.com/en/article/index?id=promotion-vs-persuasion-the-new-rules-of-influencer-marketing

2. Chapingidza, N. (2017). The rise of Australian's fitness influencer Tammy Hembrow. [online] Huffington Post. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-rise-of-australias-fitness-influencer-tammy-hembrow_us_59242c13e4b0e8f558bb29cd

3. Kaufman, I. and Horton, C. (2014). Digital marketing: Integrating strategy and tactics with values.

4. Litza, T. (2016). How fitness brands use instagram to build a motivated community. [online] Clickz. Available at: https://www.clickz.com/how-fitness-brands-use-instagram-to-build-a-motivated-community/96639/

5. Manovich, L. (2016). Notes on Instagram and mechanism of contemporary cultural identity.

6. Mediakix | Influencer Marketing Agency. (2016). Guide: How To Market With The Best Instagram Influencers. [online] Available at: http://mediakix.com/2016/03/brand-guide-to-working-with-top-instagram-influencers/#gs.gsO3kNY

7. MediaKix. (2015). [online] Available at: http://mediakix.com/2015/09/for-sponsored-content-social-media-engagement-matters/#gs.w=rcPWY

8. MediaKix. (2016). What is influencer marketing. [online] Available at: http://mediakix.com/2016/02/what-is-influencer-marketing/#gs.KVtGSMM

9. MillenialMarketers. (2017). [online] Available at: https://themillennialmarketers.com/instagram/gymshark-influencer-instagram-growth/