We made a terrible mistake and planned not one, but two influencer campaigns for a client in August.
TWO.
Now, because we’re shit-hot at what we do they did both come together nicely in the end. Very nicely in fact.
Here’s an ad for one, which saw a beautiful partnership between The Royal British Legion and Ancestry UK blossom into a family research project for four prolific social media influencers. What do you think?
Even if we do say so ourselves, these look lovely. But what we’ve neglected to mention thus far is that because we were shortsighted enough to pencil in this shoot for slap bang in for the Summertime, we aged about 40 years getting the shoot organised and influencers involved.
In short, we learned that you must never – repeat, NEVER – run influencer campaigns in August unless whoever you’re working for has a tonne of budget and awesome products to throw at YouTubers. Which is lovely and in an ideal world would be the case all the time, but the world is not ideal, and so here we are.
You can go ahead and cross that month right out.
Look, fellow Influencer Marketers, we know you’re picturing cool AF cameramen filming happy famouses in the sunshine. Perhaps everyone’s rider is boxes of Cornettos. Perhaps your boss is buying everyone iced lattes. Perhaps you’re more than ready for these fabulous types to spend an inspiring, invigorating and meaningful Summer’s day with you, befriending you forever and ever after making this collaboration such a success, and everyone’s delightful because… SUMMER. We know. It’s the stuff that keeps you on your toes and loving your work. But please, please do take this on board, for your own good.
Do. Not. Plan. Influencer. Campaigns. In. August.
And this, our dears, is why.
1. All the influencers are on holiday
We can’t stress this enough – no one is home. No one is available on your allotted filming dates because they’re off to Malia or Ibiza or somewhere equally gorgeous that you could’ve gone to, but you didn’t because you thought it was a better idea to forgo a holiday and work on this influencer campaign. You were wrong.
2. It’s awards season
No, they’re not available for your campaign before or after their holiday either because that’s when the blogger and vlogger award shows are. And mate, we would choose beauty sleep before a red carpet moment after an exhausting day of filming any day too – absolutely no blame here. Applicable also for ‘wedding season’.
But also… bugger.
3. It’s conference season
We’re looking at you Summer In The City!
SitC was the second campaign we foolishly took on alongside the one in the video above. We were a little rusty on SitC as we hadn’t taken an influencer campaign there since 2015. Of course, all that’s happened since then is that influencer marketing has grown infinitely, meaning the social media superstars are all in very high demand. So they’ll go with the brands they’ve been affiliated with longest, or they will have been snapped up right after last SitC for the following year. Unfortunate if you’re a first-timer. Prepare for sleepless nights wondering who the eff you’re gonna get to host your cooking demo, and wondering how famous Margaret from the Accounts department is on Instagram.
Because life wasn’t hard enough, England has been burning in the eye of a sizzling heatwave. Notoriously, good weather = less screen time, which means less checking of emails that you feel are urgent, but most other people couldn’t give a monkeys about.
Please see the desperation in my email subject. Please.
Actually, mention of the weather brings us nicely onto…
5. Everyone’s drunk at the beach
*Breaks down and grabs a bottle of Pinot, an extra long straw and a paddling pool that your laptop comes dangerously close to falling into.*
6. Really, EVERYONE is on holiday
We’re not kidding. They really have all fucked off and aren’t checking emails.
Ok, so everything ultimately did work out fine.
Honestly, it did. But man… we really could’ve done without landing ourselves in the influencer world’s radio silence – there’s enough of that at the best of times.
So please, heed our advice. Do not plan influencer campaigns in August.
