Interview published in French in Influencia

INfluencia: Can you describe your agency in a few words?

Edouard Fillias: JIN has been in existence for just over ten years and employs 120 people. Our objective is to understand communities and their respective ecosystems in order to activate them and provide a service to the brand managers who use our services. Our clients include Bouygues, Ferrero, Grand Optical, Allianz, Casino, Samsung and recently Happn. We have a very corporate and marketing culture.

IN: When did you get involved in influencer marketing?

E.F.: Very quickly. Our first client in this market was Europcar. We called on an Instagrameur who took a whole series of photos of the most beautiful roads in Europe. The idea of this project was not to take advantage of his community but to use his influence to spread this campaign in 20 countries. We then did influencer marketing campaigns for many other clients including Ricoh and Geodis. For Bouygues, we developed a BtoB operation using drone pilots to shoot images in tunnels. This sector has always fascinated me. In 2019, I even co-authored the Influencer’s Handbook published by Ellipses.

I apply the principle of Jacques Séguéla when he called on Dali for a Citroën ad.

IN: How has this sector evolved over the years? 

E.F.: It all started with the emergence of bloggers in the early 2000s. These people who were good at writing were mostly journalists. From 2010 onwards, videographers like Squeezie began to appear. Since 2015, there has been an explosion of new online talent. With the collapse of the cost of access to video linked to the arrival of new smartphones, everyone is starting to post content on the web. It’s an incredible cultural revolution. Influencers are specialising in more and more specific niches. YouTube is and remains at the forefront of influencer marketing. I myself spend two hours a day on this platform because it is so rich.

IN: Faced with this explosion in the number of influencers, how does a brand choose one over another?

E.F.: Faced with the collapse of digital advertising, which is less and less impactful and effective, more and more clients are considering digital marketing as a recourse. While many agencies sell volume or pretend there is a wand to find the right influencers, I favour a more traditional approach that some might even say is old-fashioned. I apply the principle of Jacques Séguéla when he called on Dali for a Citroën ad. The designer and his messages must be in line with the brand. The meeting between the client and the influencer is a public relations job. It takes time and must be done face-to-face. The technological tools we use are used to detect talent, but in the end, the link must be forged between the creator and the company’s managers. This is even more true today because brands nowadays want to develop long-term relationships with the influencer, who becomes their muse, as it were. Most of them have become much more professional in recent years. Almost all of them have agents or agencies that represent them.

IN: Who are the most relevant influencers for a brand? The big global stars, the national stars or the nano-influencers?

E.F.: It all depends on the budget, the ambitions and the number of countries targeted by the client. We know that the larger an influencer’s community is, the less prescriptive they are. However, there is no universal answer to this problem. Global influencers can be counted on the fingers of one hand. To get high visibility quickly, using large national influencers is often the most effective option. To trigger a wave of buy-in from the bottom up, from customer to customer, using nano-influencers can make sense. Another option for brands would be to create their own influencer, but no one dares to do so yet and cross that Rubicon.

IN: How much does an influencer cost these days?

E.F.: We are currently going through a transition. 2021 was a very good year and 2022 marked a return to reality. Influencers are still charging the same prices as during the pandemic but the market has evolved since then and rates have dropped significantly and this trend should continue in the coming months.

IN: Is influencer marketing becoming cheap?

E.F.: You can’t say that… To launch an effective influencer marketing campaign, you need to pay an influencer but you also need to free up a budget to activate content, organise events and pay the agency that will manage the project. The entry ticket for a serious project is between 150,000 and 200,000 euros. 40% to 50% of this amount will be paid to the influencer, 30% to 40% to the agency and 10% to 20% to the activation costs. However, this envelope can be very variable. A campaign with a single nano-influencer can be done with a budget of 10,000 euros. However, I am delighted to see some brands investing between 500,000 and 1 million euros for ambitious campaigns.

Today, if you have one million subscribers, you are already an SME because you employ two or three people

IN: Will influencer marketing develop further in the future?

E.F.: I’m sure it will. Influencer marketing will quadruple in size by 2025. This sector will grow at the expense of SEA and advertising on social networks, especially Facebook. TV advertising, which is a medium on borrowed time, will also decline but I think radio and magazines will hold up better. The media landscape will change a lot in the coming years. The success in the United States of Dailywire, which was launched by an influencer close to the Republican party and which is a paid platform on which influencers replace journalists, is a good example. We can very well imagine seeing in the future media created by influencers specialised in politics, beauty or travel. This evolution is inevitable. Today, if you have one million subscribers, you are already an SME because you employ two or three people to help you, such as an editor and an assistant. You are also already a content producer. The next logical step in your development is to set up your own media and brands will have a role to play in this market.