Kardashian vs Vamp: Who would you choose to create content for your brand?

Kardashian vs Vamp: Who would you choose to create content for your brand?
four women at a bar

Influencers, as a collective of influential individuals, send a much more powerful message to your customers than a flash in the pan with a Kardashian.

Imagine the budget fairy has come along and granted your brand $500,000 to spend on either Influencer marketing or a Kim Kardashian post. What would you do? 

100 million followers. That’s currently around a seventh of all active users on Instagram following Kim Kardashian West, with Kendall and Kylie Jenner not falling too far behind. Brands pay up to half a million dollars a pop to tap into this vast audience.

Why? Because the products they endorse “sell out immediately” Michael Heller told US Weekly. Heller is CEO of Talent Resources, the digital-marketing company which organises the K/J-fam’s collaborations with brands.

Unlike the luxury brands that you might expect, the products they endorse are everyday products from relatable brands which the majority of people are able to purchase.

There’s no denying the pay-off of having a Kardashian, or another Instagrammer in the hundreds of thousands/millions of followers region post a selfie with the new product you want to push.

Presuming you can even afford it, however, how does this kind of result compare to working with a collective of relevant Influencers whose niche audiences see them as relatable friends and actively seek them out for product recommendations?

Let’s imagine for a moment that the budget fairy has come along and granted your brand $500,000 to spend on either Influencer marketing or a Kim Kardashian post. How would you spend it?

You can certainly pay a Kardashian to post a selfie with a new product you’re launching and reach up to 100 million Kimmies but would this one-hit-wonder be the best use of your cashola?

How many Influencers would you have to work with on a typical campaign to hit Kim Kardashian’s reach? 

Even if you worked with 1,000 individuals whose reach didn’t exceed 10,000 followers, at the rate of $350 per post, your campaign cost would be $350,000 to reach 100 million customers on Instagram. You’d still have $150,000 left to play around with.

All up, with a budget of $500,000 you could in theory get a total of 1,428 pieces of content for your brand from 1,428 Influencers.

Fact is, VAMP is doing something completely different to the Kardashian-style product spruke. 

Yes we have a proven track record of a high sell-through rate (check out the stats from our recent New Balance e-Commerce campaign). Influencer marketing just works. Heck, since the New Balance campaign, nearly all of us on the VAMP team have strolled into the office with a shiny new pair of NB 247s! Products our Influencers style for VAMP x ASOS campaigns frequently go out of stock before you can say check out.

A high sell-through rate is only one piece of the pie.

If you want a flash in the pan effect, feel free to blow the budget on a Kardashian style product endorsement. You might pay them to promote your green tea product one day and they’ll promote someone else’s black tea product the next. It’s the millennial version of the Oprah effect.

You’re simply not going to build brand credibility and develop consumer relations as well as push product sales. Influencers offer your brand a much bigger and more sustainable opportunity.

The influence of a collective

First and foremost, a Kardashian is product endorsement, our Vamp Collective are product placement. They don’t just endorse products they like. They authentically place products in a natural environment in a way that they know their niche audience will engage with.

Come together and you’ve got a collective of people posting products whose influence has a powerful ripple effect across a more engaged community.

Product placement

Product placement is a form of advertising that involves creating a scene in which the product features naturally and authentically. Product placement on a creative social media channel like Instagram gives content creators the power to feature the product in any creative and authentic way they choose.

Product endorsement 

Product endorsement is loud glaring advertising overly promoting the purchase of a product. VAMP promotes product placement as it engages people in a much more effective way and is seen as more trustworthy. By subtly including a product in their image it allows our Vamp Collective’s followers to see how they use the product in a real and authentic manner.

During campaigns we frequently see comments on our Influencers’ posts like – ‘I am seeing this product all over Instagram, I’ve got to try this!’ We also regularly see influencers posting bonus content of the products they love from brands weeks, even months after the end of a campaign.

You can also see this in the engagement rate results. Where a Kardashian gets around 1-1.5% engagement rate on a paid post, our Vamp Collective achieve between a 3-7% average engagement. The power of the influencer lies in how relatable they are. They present a lifestyle which is obtainable to their audience. A recent study showed that 56% of Influencers spend at least 4 hours a day on Instagram and 20% spend more than 7 hours, engaging with their community in a meaningful way. (Source)

Content for content’s sake

Kim Kardashian photo for Fit Tea Shakes

VAMP campaign content for Isowhey Protein Powder

In this scenario, with Kim you’d also only have 1 – let’s face it – poorly shot photo compared to nearly 1500 high quality pieces of content which your brand can re-purpose in EDM, print, digital advertising, website, etc. for a fraction of the cost that your brand might pay for a creative agency to produce.

Whatever you might think about the Kardashians, they’re smart business women and have certainly helped to pave the way for the end of the reign of the traditional celebrity in advertising. With the smartest brands wanting to capitalise the most from their Influencer Marketing campaigns by amplifying the content into paid media, for the best campaign impact, we suspect Influencers would win the budget hands down.

Download the free Vamp guide and learn how your brand can succeed on the original influencer marketing platform, Instagram.

Download this free Vamp guide and learn how to succeed on the world’s most viral platform.