Unilever gets tough with influencer buyers

Unilever has expressed its intention to stop working with those influencers who buy their followers after they announced an audit of their advertising spend. It has stressed transparency in dealing with influencer marketers and has iterated that brands should “never buy followers”.

In their press statement, the brand emphasized the scale and scope of influencer marketing and their importance in the marketing mix as a direct line into the hearts of consumers. However, their impact is devalued by shady practices of fake followers, bots, fraud and other business models that erode trust in the business ecosystem.

“Marketers currently have limited visibility to accurately measure influencer programming and track authentic engagement. As the influencer marketing space grows, we are looking to work with social platforms for increased visibility and transparency,” Unilever added.

Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed said one of the ways it wants to rebuild trust back into the digital ecosystems and wider society is to increase integrity and transparency in the influencer space. This can be done through responsible content, platforms and infrastructure, and “urgent action” needs to be taken to rebuild trust before it is gone, he said.

“The key to improving the situation is three-fold: cleaning up the influencer ecosystem by removing misleading engagement; making brands and influencers more aware of the use of dishonest practices; and improving transparency from social platforms to help brands measure impact,” Weed added.