The "Wild West" Just Got a Little Less Wild...and That's a Good Thing
Congratulations to Tim Sovay, Jonathan Kroopf and the rest of the team at CreatorIQ for their deal with Unilever coincidentally announced in the Wall Street Journal just ahead of Cannes Lions.
Having a global CPG giant like Unilever, which takes a highly thoughtful approach to how it crafts marketing messages and where it distributes them, make a strategic investment in their influencer platform represents significant progress in formalizing influencer marketing.
Viacom took similar steps with it's acquisition and integration of influencer marketing agency WHOSAY last year, and YouTube with its purchase of creator data and campaign management platform FameBit prior to that. These strategic investments and acquisitions deliver upon two key frameworks for advancing corporate innovation put forth by Dave Knox in his book on the subject, Predicting the Turn. It allows big companies to:
Further strategic goals of learning about a new direction the industry is taking and to produce financial returns
Leverage strategic business development and joint business planning to collaborate on new products and processes
Finally, and perhaps most significantly for the health of the still nascent influencer marketing industry, this deal represents an important step forward in reducing risk and uncertainty for advertisers who want to tap into the power of influencer marketing but have been reluctant to do so. This is a win-win scenario for brands and creators by contributing to continued growth and value creation in the industry.
