Mar­riott and Nikon are tap­ping into the pow­er of con­sumers, pro­vid­ing them with the tools they need to gen­er­ate authen­tic con­tent that oth­er con­sumers will relate to. But brands need to be selec­tive when it comes to choos­ing the influ­encers they work with and they need to make sure they cre­ate sit­u­a­tions that allow for those influ­encers to cre­ate con­tent. And, experts say, as long as brand advo­cates tell their own per­son­al sto­ries and include per­son­al mes­sag­ing in their posts, there is lit­tle risk of being per­ceived as inau­then­tic because there is an inher­ent sys­tem of checks and bal­ances in place that penal­izes influ­encers that put the brand’s need before the audi­ence’s.

The con­cept of authen­tic con­tent has become some­thing of a Holy Grail for mar­keters.

Every study and sur­vey shows that the aver­age con­sumer weights an advo­cate far greater than any brand, ad, or sto­ry. While cre­at­ing influ­encer pro­gram­ming is some­times a com­pli­cat­ed task, it moves the nee­dle and push­es con­sumers to pur­chase, said Mar­cy Mas­sura, senior vice pres­i­dent at PR firm MSLGroup.

“Cre­at­ing authen­tic expres­sions is at the very core of why/how influ­encer mar­ket­ing came to life,” Mas­sura said. “It was born out of the fact that brand mes­sag­ing was becom­ing crowd­ed in the ad indus­try and the mes­sage was being lost and no longer pen­e­trat­ing people’s con­scious­ness and they were blow­ing it off as just from a brand…it came out of a desire for more authen­tic expres­sions of advo­ca­cy at the core of the con­cept.”

Marriott Asks Guests To Make Videos With GoPro Cameras

A good exam­ple of a cam­paign that seeks to cre­ate authen­tic con­tent comes from Mar­riott Hotels, which has put a new “POV” on the guest expe­ri­ence by pro­vid­ing GoPro HERO4 cam­eras at 17 of its Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can loca­tions.

The offer allows guests to try out a GoPro cam­era to “cap­ture and share all of their adven­tures and expe­ri­ences.”

Fur­ther, guests are encour­aged to sub­mit pho­tos and videos across social plat­forms with the hash­tags #GoPro, #trav­el­bril­liant­ly and #via­je­ge­nial for the chance to be fea­tured on Marriott’s Trav­el Bril­liant­ly web­site, an inter­ac­tive site that, in part, asks guests to share ideas about “how to make trav­el more bril­liant.” The con­tent will be curat­ed across Marriott’s social media chan­nels and in-room enter­tain­ment sys­tem at par­tic­i­pat­ing hotels.

As of this writ­ing, the site includes about half a dozen GoPro videos from guests.

“Through this pro­gram at Mar­riott Hotels, we’re giv­ing guests a fun way to tell their own trav­el sto­ry using the ver­sa­tile and mem­o­ry-mak­ing GoPro tech­nol­o­gy and imme­di­ate­ly share their con­tent with friends and fam­i­ly,” said Craig Smith, pres­i­dent of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca at Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al, in a pre­pared state­ment.

“It’s as if we’ve come full cir­cle in mar­ket­ing,” said Hol­ly Hamann, CMO of brand influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Tap­In­flu­ence. “It used to be that mar­keters want­ed con­tent to be per­fect, pol­ished, and pro­duced. But it became so pro­duced that it did­n’t feel real, which means con­sumers don’t relate.”

Relata­bil­i­ty is what actu­al­ly cre­ates mean­ing with con­sumers, she said. “Mar­riot­t’s campaign…[is] turn­ing aver­age con­sumers into influ­encers,” Hamann said. “I just think it’s fas­ci­nat­ing how con­sumers’ access to infor­ma­tion online has changed how they buy and, in turn, changed how mar­keters need to talk about their brands.”

While the con­tent will be more authen­tic and gen­uine than if whol­ly brand cre­at­ed, Mas­sura said Mar­riott has to help ush­er this process along by giv­ing con­sumers the tools that allow them to par­tic­i­pate.

“The chal­lenge here – and any­one who has giv­en out cam­eras to their guests at their wed­ding to cap­ture more moments [knows this] – is the large major­i­ty of con­tent is not going to be usable. And it is cost­ly to review, and edit and pack­age up that con­tent into some­thing that is on-brand and of a qual­i­ty wor­thy of an owned chan­nel,” Mas­sura said. “So what starts out with ‘Let’s use our guests to make con­tent for us! That will be cheap­er than us mak­ing our own videos!’ some­times doesn’t actu­al­ly turn out that way.”

Nikon Helps Individuals Stand Out

Anoth­er exam­ple of a brand seek­ing to cre­ate authen­tic expres­sions is imag­ing com­pa­ny Nikon, which announced its “I AM Gen­er­a­tion Image” cam­paign in Novem­ber, which it said is a “new plat­form to ampli­fy the voic­es of indi­vid­u­als who want to stand out in a world of visu­al noise.”

The cam­paign includes an inter­ac­tive site that fea­tures con­tent from a “select group of extra­or­di­nary indi­vid­u­als who doc­u­ment their own pas­sions through imagery.”

These “visu­al sto­ry­tellers” will “cap­ture con­tent that will be seen through an immer­sive expe­ri­en­tial web­site that acts as a por­tal, offer­ing a glimpse into their fas­ci­nat­ing worlds.”

Nikon says par­tic­i­pants are not pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers, but “rep­re­sent a wide range of sto­ries from entre­pre­neurs, phil­an­thropists [and] come­di­ans.” This includes two gay fathers from Atlanta that had a viral Insta­gram image last year.

They tell their sto­ry on the site, along with the oth­er par­tic­i­pants.

“It all goes back to authen­tic­i­ty,” Hamann said. “That’s their sto­ry. They’re not being asked by the brand to be any dif­fer­ent or to pos­ture or have a pre­tense.”

The effort is being pushed by a series of videos and con­sumers are encour­aged to inter­act with the cam­paign by tag­ging their own sto­ries with #IAmGen­er­a­tionIm­age for the chance to be incor­po­rat­ed.

“What Nikon did that was real­ly suc­cess­ful is that it let these peo­ple tell their sto­ries,” Hamann said. “Nikon drew atten­tion to those per­son­al­i­ties for their sto­ries and let them share using a Nikon camera…that’s authen­tic con­tent. If you look at the site, the whole sto­ry is about them and the plat­form and the tech­nol­o­gy that they use to cre­ate it was the Nikon cam­era and they did it in a sub­tle, authen­tic, com­pelling sto­ry­telling way…that has a halo effect for con­sumers who are drawn to have an affin­i­ty for the brand.”

Give The Right Influencers Something To Talk About

Pro­vid­ing tools to con­sumers in exchange for more authen­tic con­tent alone isn’t enough. Anoth­er part of the for­mu­la with influ­encers and con­sumer-gen­er­at­ed con­tent includes choos­ing the right influ­encers and let­ting them tell authen­tic sto­ries that res­onate with their audi­ences, Hamann said.

In addi­tion, brands should take the time to make sure that the influ­encers they work with actu­al­ly like their prod­ucts. This allows for easy inte­gra­tion into the influ­encers’ lives and makes it eas­i­er to stay authen­tic, she said.

Brands also have a bur­den to cre­ate sit­u­a­tions for their influ­encers and advo­cates to react to.

“[Brands] can’t say, ‘Hey, influ­encers, we know you like our brand, now talk about it every month,’ they have to give them oppor­tu­ni­ties to see behind the scenes or share expe­ri­ences and try new prod­ucts,” Mas­sura said. “They have to con­stant­ly feed them things that will spur authen­tic con­tent. Oth­er­wise, it’s just regur­gi­ta­tion. If influ­encers are not cre­at­ing con­tent that first pleas­es the com­mu­ni­ty and sec­ond pleas­es the brand, that’s also when the com­mu­ni­ty can sniff out they’re in it for the mon­ey.”

The Dangers Of Inauthentic Content

Inau­then­tic con­tent and/or influ­encer mis­takes can tor­pe­do con­sumer trust, which is detri­men­tal to both the brand and the influ­encer.

For exam­ple, a fast food brand or a soft drink com­pa­ny try­ing to align itself with health and well­ness influ­encers would have high poten­tial for inau­then­tic results. Such a part­ner­ship might cause con­sumers to call them out. A more authen­tic part­ner­ship in this space would be around con­ve­nience or cost, Ham­mann said.

Two big brand advo­cate mis­takes are too fre­quent mes­sag­ing and posts that lack per­son­al opin­ion.

Audi­ences and com­mu­ni­ties are quick to notice inau­then­tic con­tent because the mes­sages lack per­son­al opin­ion, Mas­sura said. For exam­ple, they’ll notice when an advo­cate sim­ply rewords a press release or said, “Here’s a video from so-and-so.”

“You can’t just phone it in and post what the brand wants you to post,” Mas­sura said. “That’s very dif­fer­ent from an advo­cate telling a per­son­al sto­ry and explain­ing how a brand or ser­vices have done well.”

Inau­then­tic or irrel­e­vant con­tent will alien­ate read­ers and fol­low­ers and if fol­low­ers drop off, that influ­encer becomes less influ­en­tial.

“This is an influ­encers’ econ­o­my,” Hamann said. “They have the poten­tial to decrease their own influ­ence and shoot them­selves in the foot if they stop pro­duc­ing rel­e­vant con­tent.”

And because decreas­ing influ­ence equals decreas­ing income, influ­encers are the ones that will ensure their top pri­or­i­ty is mak­ing sure they take care of the peo­ple that fol­low them, Hamann said.

Always Put Audience First

The fact that influ­encers are often com­pen­sat­ed does­n’t gen­er­al­ly com­pro­mise influ­encer con­tent because the ecosys­tem is some­what self-reg­u­lat­ing. Com­pen­sa­tion is an accept­ed prac­tice, as long as it is dis­closed and the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by influ­encers remains use­ful.

“I may be on someone’s blog and see spon­sor­ships or spon­sored con­tent, but if that blog­ger is writ­ing good content…and one of every five posts hap­pens to be spon­sored, if they dis­close it, it doesn’t both­er peo­ple at all,” Hamann said. “That’s how that influ­encer is earn­ing a liv­ing.”

Whether paid or not, brands and the influ­encers they work have a vest­ed inter­est in always putting audi­ence val­ue first and fore­most.

“There’s a phrase that I say it all the time: ‘Authen­tic expres­sions trump pas­sive impres­sions,’” Mas­sura adds. “That’s the gen­er­al heart­beat behind all influ­encer and advo­ca­cy pro­grams.