Gen Z Influencers: Emergency Influence

Having everyone’s eyes on you for your music, make-up tutorials, comedy videos is a thing. Having the world’s attention pointed on how you behave in pandemic times is another. Especially if a large slice of your audience is made of those young people who may be less affected by the virus, but who are also among its potential silent carriers and spreaders.

So, what does the influencers’ world look like in Coronavirus times? Are GenZ’s influencers aware of their power in making the right (or wrong) information percolate among their audiences?

Because, yes, WE ARE watching them. A multi-national study by Global Web Index shows that basically every generation group has increased its in-home media consumption since the Coronavirus emergency has started, with 70% of Millennials and 80% of Gen Zers saying they are spending more time on their smartphones. Yes, not a surprising outcome for any of us, but data is our friend, and it’s good to have a solid, numeric base to understand further developments of this scenario.

And with hundreds of thousands/millions of followers, influencers are likely to receive even more attention than before. So, how are they dealing with all of this?

Well, some influencers are certainly doing their active part to support their local and national communities. Beside staging living room concerts to be streamed on Instagram, singer Billie Eilish and her mother Maggie Baird helped setting up the Support and Feed initiative, which aims to support plant-based restaurants in Los Angeles — forced to close because of the emergency — and donate meals to first responders, hospitals, senior centres, food shelters, and women’s shelters. Eilish posted about the initiative from her own back yard, inviting her followers to “get through this time together”.

In Italy, fashion influencer Chiara Ferragni and her husband, rapper Fedez, have raised more than 3 million euros with a GoFundMe campaign to help the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, one of the cities that have been hit the most by the virus, and build a new intensive care area in just 8 days. Ferragni also warned other fashion influencers — such as Kendall Jenner, who posted on Instagram belittling the gravity of the situation — not to underestimate the virus, aware of the power people like her have to direct the beliefs and actions of their audience.

Other members of the Jenner/Kardashians clan seem to have taken the clue, and they are urging their followers to respect quarantine and isolation rules. Kylie Jenner shares her advice on Instagram about activities to do (puzzles, movies, home-spa moments) while staying at home, and reminds her followers to “take social distancing seriously”. Looks like a flimsy action? For some members of the scientific community, it isn’t. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams thinks that influencers can help social media savvy generations to understand the heightened risk for young people, and he incites them to use their clout to spread awareness.

However, “spreading awareness” doesn’t mean submerging followers with alarming stats and bad news. While over-information (and thus, anxiety) about the virus is lurking just around the corner, popular Instagram accounts and news feeds are choosing to stay positive (no pun intended). In fact, “Good News” Instagram feeds are thriving right now: accounts like tanksgoodnews, goodnews_movement and thedailyst goodnews are keeping those good vibes flowing with their streams of heartwarming and optimistic happenings, and Gen Zers are showing great appreciation in these uncertain times.

Yet it takes more than just a cute story to keep the spirits lifted and the people correctly informed, and influencers seem to have realized it. Right about now, a new creative collective called The Social Good Club is setting up its plans and tools to ease audiences through quarantine and isolation. This new hub for creators counts on some of Gen Z’s favourites, such as vanlifer Jennelle Eliana, explorer Mario Rigby, hair artist Makeba Lindsay, Youtuber Luke Corns, and many more. Their final goal? As TSGC’s founders (vlogger Louis Cole and entrepreneur Brandon Kaufer) told Tubefilter, they want to “team with experts in various social impact areas to create content for a better, more sustainable world” starting from “tools, resources, curriculum, guided breathwork, virtual dinner and meal preps, Facebook Live roundtable discussions with experts, and more.”

It feels safe to say that influencers worldwide have taken the proactive side when it comes to facing the Coronavirus emergency — with some embarrassing exceptions, but we won’t be debating here about people launching obscene “Coronavirus challenges” or giving unfounded dietary suggestions to fight the virus.

But what about branded content and sponsored partnerships? Surely, some economic fields, such as travel and tourism, have been strongly affected by the emergency, and influencers working in these fields are suffering from lack of gigs and proposals. Fashion influencers are also rethinking their content and communication, proposing more “real” stories and pictures, engaging in personal conversations with their followers, re-negotiating with their partners the way they present the sponsored products (no street photos, ça va sans dire).

Because yes, people are still following influencers for products, even in times when shopping may seem frivolous and out of context. Influencer marketing agency Obviously reported that, in the last two weeks of March, there has been a 76% increase in daily likes on Instagram posts with hashtag #ad and a 22% increase in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 in Instagram campaign impressions.

Is this promising news for the future of influencer marketing after COVID 2019? It’s too early to tell. Yet these data may elicit a couple of thoughts:

• Influencers are creating stronger bonds with the audiences by showing their “human” side and providing both entertainment and useful tools to survive the quarantine
• Gen Z influencers are demonstrating their technical capabilities and skills when it comes to creating original content from home, even without huge productions to sustain them
• Brands could combine all of this knowledge to sponsor content that “sparks the conversation” without “being the conversation” themselves, which could end up being tone-deaf in this situation (who wants nonessential products pushed in their face when outside life itself seems to be cancelled?)

So, what do you think will happen next? Are there any initiatives by Gen Z’s influencers that you think may work better than others in these crazy times? Have you got any ideas about what the future of influencer marketing will look like? Tell us about it, we’re curious to know & eager to help!

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This is part of YAD — Understanding Young Audiences Digest: a free monthly digest on young audiences for VOD and TV professionals. We’ve analysed millions of data points and we don’t mind sharing some of them — if this could help channels and commissioners to reach Gen Z, by understanding their needs, behavioural traits and intrinsic cultural values. 

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