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  • Virtual Influencers: Hit or Miss?

    Virtual Influencers: Hit or Miss?

    Kunal SinhaIf you looked at recent CMO surveys and panel discussions lately, artificial intelligence (AI) and influencer marketing are on top of the agenda. 81% of US marketers say that influencer marketers is an essential part of their social media strategy; 77% of Indian marketers are confident in their agency’s capability to effectively manage influencer campaigns[1]. At the same time, 81% marketers say that AI has had a positive impact on their work[2]; and over three quarters of Indian marketers (78%) say they are ready to embrace AI[3].

    What happens when you combine the two? We get virtual influencers. Even though human influencers still vastly outnumber virtual influencers, the latter have caught the fancy of marketers and agencies and are becoming increasingly common.

    52% of U.S. social media users already follow a virtual influencer, and that percentage is higher in India at 58%[4].

    Global brands including Prada, Cartier, Disney, Puma, Nike, and Tiffany use virtual influencers to promote their products.

    Lil Miquela is a pioneer in the virtual influencer space. Describing herself as a 19-year-old robot living in LA, she has 2.6 million followers on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/?hl=en

    and 3.5 million followers on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@lilmiquela?lang=en

    Managed by creative agency Brud, she has featured in brand partnerships with Prada, Calvin Klein and BMW, earning a spot on TIME magazine list of 25 Most Influential People on the Internet.

    Fashion brand Myntra created the virtual influencer Maya, incorporated her into the studio section of the Myntra app, where she doles out fashion advice apart from advocating mental health, inclusivity and body positivity. ‘Based out of Bangalore, and a student’, she has a follower base of 178K already, and endorses brands like L’Oreal.

    https://www.instagram.com/maya_unlimited/?hl=en

    Kyra or Kyraonig was created by Himanshu Goel, launched in Jan 2022, and enjoys a following of 243000 on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kyraonig/?hl=en.

    She has has been prominent in the music and entertainment industries, endorsing various brands such as Amazon Prime Video, boat, MG, Titan EyeX and John Jacobs.

    Within two years, it is expected that  marketers will dedicate 30% of their celebrity and influencer marketing spends to virtual influencers[5].

    What should they keep in mind, as they embrace this opportunity?

     

    Virtual influencers give you control over content

    Brands that want to get across a certain message or have a specific point to make through their influencer partnership have a higher level of control over content with virtual influencers. Being able to control what an influencer posts can be appealing to some brands with a very specific message to share.

    Youth entertainment channel MTV collaborated with DDB Mudra to develop India’s first virtual rapper ‘BotHard’ to draw attention to its property, MTV Hustle 2.0. The bot was brought to life with the GPT3 platform and was specially trained to find rhyme structures of popular rappers. This collaboration inspired the creation of over 350,000 rap videos, with the show racking up 2 billion views across social platforms. This represented a nine-fold growth over the previous season. By creating a virtual influencer in-house provided the brand with greater control, agility, intellectual property ownership, and brand differentiation.

     

    Adaptability

    Virtual influencers don’t age, can speak multiple languages and can be made to travel to any place. This level of adaptability and flexibility allows brands to potentially use one virtual influencer for campaigns in different regions instead of identifying and engaging different influencers in various markets.

    British fashion house Ralph & Russo, successfully used a virtual influencer to launch its 2020–2021 couture collection. The company designed Hauli, a tall Black virtual model. Her name was derived from the Swahili words for strength and power.

     

    The campaign featured her posing at the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, and other wonders of the world, location where conducting a photo shoot with a human influencer would be difficult (and expensive). The combination of an African influencer and a global context contributed massively to the campaign’s success. The promotion achieved 19.4 million views worldwide, with the brand estimating the value of the media exposure at $65.1 million.

     

    Brand safety and reputation

    While virtual influencers may seem to be a safer bet than real-life influencers, they’re not completely immune to controversy.

    Humans don’t fully understand how these systems work or make decisions, which poses a huge challenge for marketers and agencies. In the absence of clarity, is difficult for brands to predict how these virtual influencers might be accepted. Granted AI’s cool factor, marketers should be careful about diving in headfirst to avoid unfavourable PR.

    Earlier this year, automaker Mahindra launched an AI-generated influencer named Ava, which was designed to showcase the team’s journey in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, and towards a more sustainable future for the planet. Mahindra’s team used GenAI tools like Midjourney and Leonardo AI to create its new ambassador, saying ‘Having Ava, an influencer that is strongly associated with us and documents our journey, but with a broader appeal to help promote our core values as an organisation, is a project we’re hugely excited about.’

    Eva’s Instagram account @avabeyondreality described itself as a “Sustainable Tech Queen & Racing Rebel Robot”, with the goal of fueling inclusion through AI innovation. It documented the virtual influencer’s life through 11 posts, the first of which dated back to 8 December 2023.

    The launch of Eva was met with backlash from fans and media alike on social media. Many argued that the team should have hired a human ambassador rather than a virtual influencer.  Devin Altieri, a PR consultant in motorsport, wrote on X:  “Mahindra creating an AI team ambassador that is a woman instead of simply hiring one real, actual woman to fill that role is so incredibly messed up”. Alanis King, an auto journalist added: “I’m not an AI expert, but everything I see is about enormous energy use. Isn’t it weird to call this a ‘Sustainable Tech Champ’?”

    Faced with such strongly negative response, particularly from experts, Mahindra abandoned the project and deleted Eva’s Instagram account.

     

    Fuel fans and consumers’ desire for novelty.

    With some brand ambassadors and influencers, some brands find value in stability and longevity. We know how Tiger Woods’s association with Nike lasted 27 years.

    On social media era, on the other hand, many consumers crave something new and different, and find brands that rely on familiar celebrities as stale or uninteresting.

    As they scroll social media quickly, it requires something unusual to make them pause.

    Research shows that one reason consumers follow virtual influencers is that they are unexpected and previously unknown. Although betting on a virtual influencer may require a leap of faith, marketers should realize that human influencers may be perceived as overexposed or past their prime.

    Traditional influencer marketing can be expensive, particularly when collaborating with celebrities or industry experts. On the other hand, virtual influencers are a cost-efficient and scalable option, requiring less time and resources. While the initial investment in creating a virtual influencer can be significant, the long-term benefits far surpass the costs.

     

    Kunal Sinha is a senior strategy and foresights executive based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is the author of several books including The Future of India’s Rural Markets and Raw – Pervasive Creativity in Asia. He writes for MxMIndia every other Monday. His views here are personal.

    ________

    [1] https://www.ey.com/en_in/media-entertainment/how-influencer-marketing-is-impacting-brands-in-india

    [2] https://sproutsocial.com/insights/index/

    [3] https://www.campaignasia.com/article/47-marketers-in-india-believe-ai-will-make-them-more-productive-linkedin-report/491903

    [4] Influencer Marketing Factory Report

    [5] Gartner global forecast, 2024

  • Punjab singers are making big brands like Prada and Gucci even more famous

    Prada and Gucci go balle-balle in fame index

    By Vijaya Rathore

     

    When a state has flamboyance as a sub-culture and makes no bones about it, you know that Prada and Gucci might as well be part of folklore. By the river Chenab, it’s as if you can almost hear the jingle-jangle of the Swarovski-studded bangles of Heer even as time stands still in the Cellini Rolex that adorns the wrist of her eternal lover Ranjha.

     

    “Punjabi dil se hi branded hote hain (We come branded at heart),” says Mika, Bhangra superstar and Bollywood playback singer, who’d rather show off the orange Hummer that he imported to India about seven years ago than try to impress you with his deftness with higher octaves.

     

    “A lot of people may own Hummers, but no one in Asia has an orange one,” says Mika, who insists his eyewear would either be Prada or Louis Vuitton. “My favourite watch is the Rs 40-lakh Rolex,” Mika adds for good measure, him, originally from Patiala, born in Durgapur and raised in Patna.

     

    Mika and his ilk feel eminently proud to be a part of the music mall of Bhangra where ace global brands these days vie with each other for your attention lest you get lost in the melee or meaning of lyrics.

     

    And so are their avid listeners. Like Navjot Kaur, all of 25, who decided to go for a Gucci handbag after hearing Honey Singh – the controversial but popular Bhangra-rap singer – expound virtues of the 92-year-old Florentine brand thus: Main keha kaali teri Gucci, te Prada tera laal; Kithe challo oh sohneyo, sajh dajh ke. In the video from the album curiously titled International Villager, Singh is seen zipping in a red convertible Bugatti announcing that he’d go for a brown-skinned Indian girl over any ‘white chick’.

     

    And back home, Indian girls seem to be swallowing the bait – hook, line, singer and brand. “I always knew about Gucci, but got a craving to own the label after watching Honey Singh videos… It’s cool stuff,” says Kaur, who claims she is in love with Honey Singh.

     

    Kaur bought a Gucci bag along with a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes from Delhi recently in cash, as birthday gifts from her businessman father.

     

    Be it singer Sharry Maan who weaves in Armani and Enfield Bullet in his songs, or a Bollywood hero wooing a girl to go for a long drive in his Pajero to celebrate her ‘Appy Birthday’, Punjabi songs are talking the brand language like never before.

     

    In one of India’s richest states with a sizeable population of NRIs, high-street brands have always had a great ride, but the brush with Bhangra is making them fly.

     

    Brand experts say these songs are only projecting what’s there on the ground. “These songs are short-hand for a certain kind of lifestyle Punjabis have. It is aspirational,” says brand consultant Santosh Desai. Also, brands that are iconic find a place in these songs. “They do not become iconic just because they are mentioned in a song,” he adds.

     

    Songwriters underwrite what Desai observes by clarifying that they never make a deliberate attempt to promote any brand.

     

    “It is a way of storytelling by describing a personality. People in Punjab love dressing up and love to wear brands,” says singer Sharry Maan. He says Punjabi is a very ‘practical language’ and integrating English names is easy. “Youngsters want to be seen wearing the best and these are the same people who like our songs,” adds Maan, who is currently busy composing a couple of new songs that will also have many brand names, including a few luxury labels.

     

    Thanks to the huge NRI population, most Punjabis have a close connect with Canada, the UK and Australia. Even the songwriters, singers and composers have either lived abroad or record the music at international locations, which exposes them to global lifestyles, luxury and the world of brands, which eventually gets reflected back home.

     

    Though Gucci, Prada or Armani may not have opened shops in Punjab yet, brands that are already in Punjab are having a great time.

     

    Brooks Brothers, a UK-based menswear brand that sells suits for Rs 70,000 and above, recently opened its largest store in the country in Chandigarh, and is happy being there. “Shortly after we opened, a middle-aged man walked in asking for the most expensive suits in the store for his son’s wedding,” says an executive managing the brand.

     

    Vijay Singh, a Mumbai-based businessman, who owns a hotel in Ludhiana, says the spending capacity of people in the state matches Delhi and Mumbai. “The per guest expense at weddings in Punjab goes up to Rs 3,000 and many times more than a big wedding in Delhi or Mumbai,” says Singh.

     

    Karanjeet Singh, who owns a multi-brand outlet selling brands like Rado, Longines, Tag Heuer, Mont Blanc and Omega, says his customers splurge on watches with gold, diamonds and Swarovski crystals. “We sell watches priced between Rs 50,000 and Rs 10 lakh. A lot of people buy expensive ones when they travel to Chandigarh or Delhi and even abroad,” he says.

     

    Coming back to the bhangra brands, Mitsubishi sells about 250 Pajero cars in the state per year. Sachin Goyal, owner of Ludhiana-based Northern Motors, says the company is adding more dealerships in view of rising demand from high networth individuals. “People here love to take the SUVs to the fields ideally suited for only tractors,” says Goyal. He often makes sales pitch to prospective buyers referring to local celebrities or politicians who own the same car. “Buyers get exciting about the vehicles they see in films, music videos or being are used by celebrities,” he points out.

     

    Fashion house Satya Paul is seeing its business in Punjab growing at 30-40% annually. “People are open minded and progressive, with an enthusiasm towards opulence making it an accessible eager market,” says Rajiv Grover, vice president of the high-end brand owned by Genesis Colors.

     

     

    Source:The Economic Times

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