Well-heeled with a cargo worth of beauty label and heaps of brand partnerships, Kylie Jenner has topped off as the most influential internet sensation! In 2012, Kylie, only 15 years old, in collaboration with PacSun has targeted teenage girls, who were their target customer base. However, in 2015, Kylie shunned away from promoting existing brands and launched her own cosmetics line, Kylie Cosmetics.
This brand-promotion shifting didn’t stop there! Half-sister of Jenner, Kim Kardashian, is one of the major-league people but has now diverged a different path. Over a decade now, she has been sticking her metaphorical seal-of-approval on beauty products, shoes, among other things. However, now the 37-year-old has undergone a metamorphosis – it seems, from being a brand promoter to being a brand owner.
This is a paltry amount of instance, given that these products aren’t limited to cosmetics. Brands and Internet influencers range from self-care to tech products. But what is making them enter into a business which is already occupied by famous product-centric brands?
With Social-Media influencers distancing from brand endorsement and rather producing their own brands, will the brand building picture get more complicated?
Building New Brands Is Plain Sailing For Influencers!
With a towering user base already hooked onto social media and online shopping, it is absolutely no surprise that Internet Influencers have taken an entire economy by storm. The trend of selling personal brands seems clear-cut, given the Gen-Z cohort as the main target base, attracted towards fashion, make-up and self-care.
Influencers are already familiar with the brand building processes to generate revenue in the creator space. It comes as no sweat. Brands reach out to influencers, following which there’s a deal over compensation and then influencers promote the brand-specific products on their social media feed.
However, cutting this whole fiasco of negotiations comes easier – Starting your own brand! Although this doesn’t come as simple as ABC, on a brighter side, successful influencers have already cleared the most difficult portion of the test!
Internet Influencers Shunning Away From Other Brands?
According to many Internet Influencers, starting a brand is a way to invest in yourself and that establishes brand endurance. There’s zero pressure of pleasing any third party source and there’s freedom of being on the driver’s seat.
With most Influencers resorting to creating their own brands rather than promoting pre-existing brands, they note of enhancing their creative side, along with financial benefits. In addition, the brand thus created can market itself, and there’s lesser need to outsource other trappings.
“We can take the creatives ‘in house’ to put the business in a place where it can be successful and generate revenue.”- Jaquory Lunsford, a Los Angeles-based creator.
When these Internet Influencers duck away from existing brands, they outgrow the restraint of being answerable to them. This is one of the reasons, Kardashian has pulled back on licensing deals and is focusing on her own brands.
Influencers are already aware of their power to boost sales of third-party brands have now potentially ventured into a more lucrative spectrum – Use their power to boost their own brands. Smooth sailing, isn’t it?
Rat-Race of Pre-existing, Mainstream Brands!
With Internet Influencers incorporating their “influence” in promoting their own brands, give a cut-throat competition to third-party brands who were dependent upon these social-media presences for boosting their sales. The Internet Influencers who shared a symbiosis relationship of give-and-take for these third-party brands are now posing threat to their old benefactor, being in the same incumbent space.
Existing brands are realizing that it is more difficult to work with big-name influencers. The obvious reason being, they are too busy trying their luck at rolling out their own line of brands. At the same time, such internet influencers silently learn the traits of the business by being associated with big brands.
Now it all boils down to one question – Has Influencer Marketing reached its saturation point?
