Over 50% of marketers spend 30 minutes or less vetting a single influencer, and 22.2% of marketers only vet up to 25% of influencer content.
This is a huge risk for brands’ reputations.
Influencers have the power to shape perceptions and sway purchasing decisions. However, their personal brands are built on transparency and relatability, which means their content and opinions can sometimes be unpredictable.
An influencer’s past content, public opinions, or even their follower base can raise concerns about brand alignment.
Some brands have fallen victim to “influencer scandals” that could have been avoided with thorough vetting.
A scandal blew up in 2020 when influencer Olivia Jade’s parents spent $500,000 to get Olivia and her sister into the highly competitive University of Southern California. Sephora and TRESemmé faced public backlash and had to cut ties within days.
Beauty guru James Charles repeatedly faced online volatility and allegations of misconduct when he was locked into a long-term relationship with Morphe. The brand’s delay in response to the allegations contributed to declining credibility and eventual bankruptcy.
Brand safety in Influencer Marketing involves thoroughly vetting creators to ensure that they:
Running these checks manually is extremely time-consuming, especially for brands working at a global scale.
However, the Creator Economy has entered a new era where heavy-lift, manual tasks are now handled by AI and advancing technologies. Working with an agency that offers AI tools for time-consuming tasks like influencer vetting can put a greater focus on client servicing and creative ideation.
Our end-to-end campaign management platform, Chord, enables our team to vet creators in seconds thanks to its smart AI integrations.
The BrandSafety AI feature analyzes shortlisted creators' previous posts for suitability, relevance, and safety for brands. It provides a summary of findings, as well as a provisional indicator as to whether the creator is “brand safe”.
The AI is designed to review public content from creators as well as any public mentions or conversations about or involving the creator. It checks for any risky themes or topics like violence and racism, as well as analyzes whether the content the creator produces is a good brand fit for the brand we are working with.
Our human team members will then review the summary produced by the AI and make sure nothing has slipped through the cracks before sharing the shortlist with the client for approval.
Our BrandSafety AI supports over 100 languages, covering content in multiple regions. This, combined with a diverse human campaign team that is fluent in many languages, enables us to scale campaigns and work with creators and brands across the globe.
Want to learn more about brand safety in Influencer Marketing? Reach out to us at hello@digitalvoices.com.
