What is the Future of Influencer Marketing?
Developing new opportunities in influencer marketing for MerchLabs.
Summary
MerchLabs offers a turn key merchandise solution for a variety of online influencers including Shaun T, Jenna Marbles, and Dante Basco. Their team asked for designers to present several opportunities for business expansion, with a focus on one concept with immediate viability. This main concept became CanU.
Project Duration
4 weeks
Team
4 Industrial Designers
Contributions
All sketches, charts, and hand drawn wireframes
Secondary research
Major contributions to insights & opportunities
Challenge app initial concept
Final concept visualization & mockups
Final presentation wording & visuals
MerchLabs came to us asking the question, “what will the future of influencer marketing look like?” How can they stay ahead of the game?
MerchLabs is a complete merchandise solution for online influencers looking to take the next step with their brand.
In such a competitive market, MerchLabs wants to stand out and set trends in the influencer marketing space.
Research began by meeting directly with the core MerchLabs crew and some of their influencers in order to gain insight.
We then split off into teams to conduct secondary research and identify opportunities.
Finally, our research was filtered down into our most important insights and the resulting opportunity we determined most important.
Research Insights
More diverse ways to interact with influencers.
Increase in video content and live content.
Increased popularity of “bite sized” content.
Increase in crowd funding and online donations.
Increase in contextual media.
Increasingly difficult to produce original content.
Increasing demand for authenticity and honesty.
Opportunity
Solve the problems of both the influencer and the followers by providing a new platform that facilitates follower engagement and encourages community based creativity.
Early on it became obvious that authenticity was a key factor in influencer marketing.
People want to connect with their favorite influencers on a personal level, they want to share their experiences, and feel they are a part of something.
However, as their follower base grows, influencers struggle to create original content and make money without giving up the core of who they are.
“I want to show you guys fashion stuff and family… I’m worried hey who wants to listen to that, but that’s part of me.”
Steve Cook, Bodybuilder
With these insights and opportunities in mind, designers collaborated to develop new business opportunities for MerchLabs that could satisfy the needs of every stakeholder.
Finally, the team settled on the most promising concept, inspired by trends like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
The app is a social media platform where fans can interact with influencers and brands in a more authentic environment.
Once settled on a viable concept, we turned to visualization of the concept.
Although we were not tasked with designing an actual product for MerchLabs, it was important for us to be able to communicate the concept of the app with convincing visuals that could inspire the MerchLabs team should they choose to develop the opportunity further.
This visualization began with some simple hand sketches to settle on the basic needs of the design before moving on to a rough digital draft.
CanU aims to connect influencers with their fans in a unique way by allowing them to create new content together.
Inspired by viral video challenges such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, the app encourages influencers, brands, and fans to interact in a whole new way.
How does CanU work?
With the app, followers can challenge their favorite influencers to do fun tasks. The influencer will choose from the top voted challenges and post a reply to any challenge they like with a photo or 20 second video clip.
The system model allows for influencers, brands, and fans to come together in one creative space.
The basic model has fans paying for subscriptions on a per-influencer basis to challenge and interact with their favorite personalities.
Microtransactions are also present in the form of Challenge Stars, which can be purchased to add on to challenges in order to increase their visibility to the influencer and voters.
As a service, CanU solves the problems of influencers, brands, and fans.
Fans are able to take part in a more authentic interactive experience with influencers.
In turn, influencers are provided with a crowd-sourced pool of ideas for content and learn what it is their fans are interested in seeing.
Finally, Brands are given an avenue for interacting with both influencers and customers in a unique manner that feels more natural.
