Uncovering influencers “undercover” ads
Reviewing the effortless way influencers promote products
Selecting an influencer to promote your brand is no easy job. However, choosing the right one could improve your marketing efforts. This is the case of Curveez, an online shapewear store. The company vision is to boost confidence by enhancing customer beauty with the help of shapewear. The company is based in Miami and to enter the Puerto Rico market they chose local influencer Melissa Guzman, also known as Guzmely.
She is widely known as the wife of the world champion boxer Miguel Cotto. Guzmely has an audience of 276k followers and according to StarNgage she ranks #8 as a fashion influencer in Puerto Rico. She is an entrepreneur and has a line of hats and bandanas. Her charisma is based on her transparency and modesty, even when everyone knows the couple’s net worth is around millions. I believe Guzmely is the proper influencer for the brand. She is very open about her body type and the use of shapewear. Even before pairing with Curveez she was offering tips on how to enhance the figure with the right combination of shapewear and clothing pieces.
The brand selected Instagram and Guzmely as their strategy to appeal to Puerto Rican women. The campaign consists of normal women, doing normal things and feeling confident by using Curveez products. Reviewing the following posts I see the “undercover” way Guzmely is talking about a Body Slimming Gel and wrap effortlessly by combining a normal daily routine such as cleaning the house:
On the first post Guzmely uses a layback informal approach where she is performing a house chore, then includes a women empowering quote and a question to engage followers. After reading and engaging with her post she punch users at the end with the name of the product she is using in the picture and the brand tag to its Instagram account. You almost can’t detect she is promoting a brand because of the selected approach.
Mark Schaefer in chapter nine of his book Marketing Rebellion, defines influencers as anyone who posts content that gets shared. Also categorizes them into celebrities, macro-influencers, professionals, micro-influencers, and brand advocates. Guzmely is in the celebrity category since she became famous when her husband won some boxing championships. After that, she used her celebrity status to grow her social media and becoming the influencer she is today.
Influencers plan and create the conversation around the product with the goal of selling, different from the word of mouth where the product is mentioned without the intent of selling, just because it was liked very much. This may explain why the post Guzmely used an indirect approach had a better engagement since it can be interpreted as word of mouth.
Certainly, influencers can promote products in a humanistic way where followers feel identified and invited to talk about the product. In this example Guzmely asks a question about who is cleaning the house like her, inviting her followers to engage with the post. This technique is her “undercover” way of capturing attention and promoting the product she used in the picture without actually talking about it.
Bibliography
Guzmely Cotto. (n.d.). Instagram. Retrieved April 2021, from https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/
Schaefer, M. W. (2019). Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins (First ed.). Publisher Services.
Top 1000 Fashion Instagram Influencers in Puerto Rico in 2021. (n.d.). StarNgage. Retrieved April 2021, from https://starngage.com/app/global/influencer/ranking/puerto-rico/fashion
