How SKY (Comcast) Implemented an Influencer Strategy that Outperforms

CreatorIQ: Which aspect of influencer marketing campaign execution matter most for success?
MK: For us, campaign success comes down to authenticity. I think it’s really important that if somebody is talking about content they’re consuming or about the product we’re selling that they truly mean it. I think it’s all very well working on transactional basis but for us it’s about building longer-term relationships so that outside of those campaigns, they are talking positively about our brand. We are really aware we are living in a digital age where consumers are consuming streamed content and that’s kind of what we’re up against and so for us it’s about not competing in that space but about bringing consumers more of what they love but on the platforms that they want to be, through the people that they trust as opposed to just us talking about ourselves all the time.

CreatorIQ: What do you think makes content resonate with audiences?
MK: For me, the pieces that’s resonated with the audience will have a really high engagement and by high engagement I don’t just mean likes. I mean that their followers are commenting on the post, there is a conversation taking place and they are actually authentically talking about the shows that we have launched for example. In a day and age where so many people are buying likes or they are just buying a “thumbs-up” emoji next to an Instagram post, that doesn’t really provide any value to a brand so for us it’s really about sparking that conversation so moving away from the vanity metrics and looking at when there is a conversation actually taking place.

CreatorIQ: How do you think about share of voice and sentiment?
MK: In terms of metrics, we try to monitor as much as we can so obviously Sky are a traditional broadcast media company and so they are used to operate in traditional media terms so for us to prove our value to internal stakeholders it means talking to them in a way and in terms that they are used to consuming so we still look at things like reach but more importantly we are starting to focus on engagement rates and if we’re looking at Instagram Stories, click-through rates, how many people have actually swiped up, how many people have mentioned the brand and then over the longer term, we’re doing a bigger piece of work to see how many people were talking about Sky traditionally over a 6-month period and then in the same group of people, how many are now talking about them as a result and also with our competitors so that we are able to benchmark those results.

CreatorIQ: How do you articulate success to your partners?
MK: Articulating success is demonstrating how many people have actually engaged with a piece of content, how many of those people have turned around and have showed an intent to purchase or to watch a show for Sky and also having a look at if you can try and do siloed campaigns where there are no other external factors which can be hard to do but there are some where we can it on as a passion project and we can clearly demonstrate the results of how many people watched a show or how many people signed up to a website for example as a results of it.

CreatorIQ: How does influencer marketing compare to your other marketing channels?
MK: Influencer marketing works really well against all of our other channels. Comparatively, in terms of its cost it’s benchmarked pretty much against our media buying teams but that doesn’t even allow for the additional value of those recommendations coming from people that the audiences trust and it’s really hard to put a metric against that. But we know, for every £1 spent, it outperforms most of our other channels.