Today we celebrate International Women’s Day and we’d like to do it by talking about their contribution to the Influencer Marketing industry.
Information technology has historically been a difficult industry for women and especially so during the first two decades after the start of the digital revolution and the spreading of the World Wide Web, followed by the fast development of the digital economy. But something seems to finally be moving: last year Iceland fully enacted the first equal pay law. Since then the topic has gained momentum in mainstream media, gender equality and salary gaps have become key issues in the workplace. However, it is still the case that four times more men than women in Britain earn a six-figure salary, according to new government data. And it doesn’t really get much better in Silicon Valley, where women not only earn less, but they’re also likely to be rewarded with less equity. The recent class actions and lawsuits against some of the largest tech giants in the world has proven that the bubble is about to burst and the issue can’t be ignored anymore.
For what concerns the Influencer Marketing space, the story is fortunately very different. It is probably no secret that Influencer Marketing is a female affair. According to our data, 59% of the Creators chosen by our AI-powered technology (and of course approved by our clients!) to take part in our Influencer Marketing campaigns are women. They dominate categories such as Food & Drink (60%) and Home & Garden (65%), as well as the two queens of Influencer Marketing i.e. those of Beauty (74%) and Fashion (61%).
Our data shows that women also represent 61% of the audience reached by our campaigns, denoting that women are more likely to follow Creators’ social channels. A recent report shows that 62% of women follow Influencers on at least two social platforms. This comes as no surprise, given that they form the majority of users on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.
What is even more interesting to observe is that 61% of them said that they wouldn’t engage with content that doesn’t feel genuine. Forget about Kendall Jenner and the Kardashians – who still dominate Instagram’s sponsored post charts with the highest engagement together with Cristiano Ronaldo – women like authentic and genuine content, and that hardly comes from a celebrities’ Instagram feed. Women were early adopters in the Influencer Marketing sphere and they have become very familiar with this new and disruptive channel. Apparently one of the main reasons is that they are more likely to share than men.
That has also led to a wave of criticism towards inappropriate, objectifying and on some occasions plain wrong ways of portraying women in advertising. Women have fought to change the aesthetic of advertising – and Influencer Marketing – into something real. Think of the advent of curvy models and the online activism for body positivity. Women are more keen to delve into the power of real leveraged by content Creators.
At Buzzoole, we have a balanced gender split both among our employees (45% female) as well as on the board level leadership team (three out of eight are females). No doubt there’s still much to do, but we must admit that we can start feeling cautiously optimistic about the future.