Influencers offer brands the ability to deliver the 'right' communication and marketing messages to a specific target audience. This is one of the first textbooks to explore the phenomenon of influencer marketing and how it fits within marketing communications to build brands and their communities.
Across four core sections, this book brings together the key theory and practical implications of this new marketing tool: how it works as part of communications campaigns, including how to select the right influencers and measure their success, the dark side of influencer marketing, and the legal and ethical framework. Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of influencer marketing from the perspectives of influencers, agencies, brands, and platforms. This 2nd edition has been fully updated to refresh and add content on agency recruitment, brand-influencer partnerships, analysis of cultural differences and cross-border promotions in China, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Africa, influencer crisis and care, emerging regulations, sharenting, de-influencing, virtual influencers, the impact of AI, and metrics and measurements for efficacy. It also delves into regulatory impacts on influencers, agencies, and brands. Interviews with influencers and agencies help the reader delve into lived experiences. Underpinned by academic theory, the book incorporates case studies, questions, platform considerations, and ethical implications to stimulate discussion amongst students and show how the theory is applied in practice.
Influencer Marketing should be core and recommended reading for advanced undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education students of Digital Marketing, Advertising, Marketing Communications, Brand Management, and Public Relations. With its accessible style and practical content, it is also highly valuable for Marketing Communications, Branding, and PR specialists.
Online resources include PowerPoint slides, podcasts, an instructor manual, and test banks.
Joyce Costello, PhD is a senior lecturer and programme director of the Marketing degrees (Advertising, Branding, Marketing Management, PR, and Sales) at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She is the co-editor of Influencer Marketing: Building Brand Communities and Engagement book (2020) and the co-author Advertising in the Digital Age: Theories and Practice book (Sage). Costello spent 21 years as a broadcast journalist and public affairs specialist with the US Army/Department of Army before entering academia. She brings to the classroom a wide variety of experience in dealing with international crises around the world as well as public sector integrated marketing campaigns and setting up employee influencer programs. Her research focus is on public service motivation and the public sectors integration of influencer marketing. She is looking for PhD candidates who are wanting to explore the dark side of influencer marketing.
Sevil Yesiloglu, PhD researches the area of digital marketing communications including online harms, brand related content, influencer marketing and social media engagement. She is a senior lecturer in Marketing at Queen Mary University of London and a senior fellow in HEA. Yesiloglu is co-editor of Influencer Marketing: Building Brand Communities and Engagement book (2020). She is co-author of Advertising in the Digital Age: Theories and Practice book (Sage). She has contributed to policy work in influencer culture, defining influencers and digital economy, and is cited in various UK and European government documents (DCMS, European Parliament). Yesiloglu advised major media brands and agencies like Hearst, PhD media, Wearisma at a strategy level on ways to capitalise digital promotional content.
