Who are 'influencers' influencing? (Marketers.) - Marketing Professor Ramanathan Vythilingam
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What is the central argument about influencer marketing in this episode?
Today all of those constraints are gone, right? Like I could I could create a thousand pieces of content at the click of a button. I could do synthetic research and get data on the spot. But the question then is becoming not so much about whether you do all of that, but whether you become intentional now. Intentional choices, I think, becomes the reality in the world where we have unlimited resources and the ability to do anything that we ever wanted, but should we do it, I guess becomes the question.
Brands need to be in the conversation if they want to be considered. And so they have to play in social media. But as spend in influencer marketing grows tremendously, it poses an important question of whether influencers are still influential. Speaking with me today about this topic is former insights leader at Unileva, Ramanadhan Y. Tillingham, and now professor at at Nanyang Business School in Singapore, researching and teaching about this topic. Right now we're seeing just billions of dollars being spent in this area, 44 billion in creator ad spend in 2026 is what's kind of projected at the moment. But it still feels like it's a pretty new area for marketers where the impression is that they're kind of still winging it and not quite sure how to get the optimum return for that investment.
I mean, I think again, influencer marketing is not new per se, um, Joe. So so in the early days when YouTube started, people started creating video blogs, so vlogs, as a way to kind of showcase their interest in a certain category. That then transitioned over to when brands started to use those kind of influencers as a way to showcase their products and services. So it became a paid partnership where brands Would pay an influencer to review their product or to showcase their product to their audience. So far, so good. I think it's just that in the last few years, this whole space has exploded in terms of how much money is going into that space. And we've started to conflate influencer marketing with a whole lot of other things which are probably not right.
So things like people don't trust brands anymore and therefore For an influencer is a trustworthy, credible voice is the narrative that was underpinning the space. I fundamentally don't agree with that idea because if big brands are not trusted, then who is? And therefore, this whole idea of do I need to get a halo of trustworthiness and credibility through somebody else was always something I struggled with. So it kind of goes back to saying what Is a brand using an influencer for? And do we then measure it adequately in terms of saying, does it deliver to that objective, which is why I chose that influencer? And I think that's where there's still a lot of ambiguity and there is still a lack of measurement options that are available to really understand that kind of impact that you get when you engage influencers.
The most recent article that I saw with War. Which is published with L'Oreal and Meta, which just came out three weeks ago. They are saying exactly what I think people should be talking about with influencer marketing, which is that you should be thinking of influencer marketing as just another marketing channel and treat it as you would any other marketing medium. And you measure its outcomes and you measure the impact of the brand in similar ways, right? So you look at the right media metric. You look at brand Live studies, you look at econometric models like MMMs, but that reality doesn't change. And therefore you are keeping influencer marketing and holding it to the same standards as you would any other marketing that you would be doing.
Which I don't think is the traditional way that marketers think about what the role of influencers are, right? They think that it's about the higher level brand funnel elements of building awareness and maybe affinity and association versus actually driving it down to the bottom of the funnel where it's about conversion and sales. Maybe as a marketer, you're not really selecting that as a channel f to drive sales in the first place.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central argument about influencer marketing in this episode?
0:00–6:30
2
How did influencer marketing evolve from early YouTube vlogs to paid brand partnerships?
6:30–12:39
3
Why do marketers struggle with measuring the true ROI of influencer campaigns?
12:39–20:39
4
What role do influencers play in the mid‑funnel and consumer education?
20:39–28:35
5
When should brands choose micro‑ or nano‑influencers over mega‑influencers?
28:35–36:05
6
How might synthetic AI influencers change the risk landscape for brands?
36:05–40:09
7
Why is intentional budgeting and channel selection crucial for influencer spend?
40:09–42:40
8
What are the key takeaways for marketers looking to use influencers wisely?
42:40–43:01