How will brands navigate the social media and marketing landscape in 2024?

Marketing and content leaders see tremendous opportunity in the potential efficiencies facilitated by technology and the ability to provide audiences with better, more personalized experiences that foster higher levels of trust in brands. We believe that there is. However, issues around security, transparency, rights ownership, and brand management need to be addressed.

This was the focus of a recent roundtable discussion hosted by The Drum and Brandwatch about influencer marketing, artificial intelligence (AI), the end of third-party cookie data, and key trends heading into 2024. We discussed. How will this impact audience trust and shape social strategy in the coming months?

Towards the maturity of influencer marketing

As influencer marketing becomes more routine and established as part of the regular marketing cycle, put in place clear guidelines and regulations to provide brands with the quality assurance they need, especially in categories such as financial services. The need will arise.

Looking ahead, we expect influencer marketing to gain even more attention in 2024, in part due to its relative affordability as marketing budgets tighten.

Eduardo Bertrao, global head of social media governance at HSBC, said brands with limited campaign budgets can “start with influencer marketing” to create content and then expand with social advertising. “And make the most of the money you spend there. This may still be a drop in the ocean compared to a substandard budget.”

Rachel Courtney, Head of Social and Content at Virgin Media O2, highlighted the effectiveness of building long-term relationships with influencers. This is something her own team is working on with a specific annual budget. They formed a term partnership and over the years, they became known as friends of the brand. ”

The session also considered the impact on brand trust when influencers espouse controversial views on broader world events. “If you’re building a relationship with an influencer, you want to vet, do social monitoring, and look back at their accounts. You want to go deep,” said Arnaldo Smet, director of marketing communications at CNBC. .”

Britvic Robinsons Fruit Chute brand manager Osasere Aimiuwu said these checks and balances play a key role in building a trusted connection between the brand and its audience. Especially when working with brands that target younger audiences, it’s important to “be clear about your values ​​and align with those influencers.”

All-in-one tools like Brandwatch Influence that allow marketers to build, manage, discover, and measure influencer campaigns will be a key part of the toolkit for navigating this space in 2024.

Building trust in AI

Emerging technologies, especially AI, will play an increasingly large role in influencer marketing, and content creation more generally. Issues of regulation, voice reliability, and control have re-emerged as key issues in 2024 and beyond.

The importance of generative AI and the assessment and protection of intellectual property (IP) was high on the agenda, especially given the potential to accelerate social listening and rapidly generate content.

Tejal Patel, Cisco’s senior director of global digital media, said: “Generative AI allows us to summarize listening insights more quickly, increasing efficiency. It also extends our keyword identification, allowing us to create more relevant content faster.” It just makes our job a lot faster.”

Helen Chapman, head of strategy at brand and social influence agency We Are Futures, said it was important to avoid violating rights and undermining the trust of young people who are early adopters of artificial intelligence. We work with our clients to use AI safely and legally, in ways that are safe and legal. love. This is important, she said, “especially as financial services clients seek ways to leverage AI to improve the financial well-being of young people.”

The issue of bias built into AI algorithms by humans was identified as a theme by Nick Taylor, Director of Product Marketing at Brandwatch. Rather than fearing AI, the real trust issue is that people “don’t understand the power of what they have and how to leverage it.” Let’s say you’re asking an AI to perform a task, and the AI ​​has some pretty scary inherent biases. That’s a very big problem. ”

However, the potential to use AI to democratize creativity and content creation will more than compensate for the challenges involved. Pippa Scaife. said NBCUniversal’s Vice President of Global Growth Strategy. “If we take a more human and controlled approach and think about how this complements what we’re already doing, rather than overtaking what we’re doing, it opens up a world of wonders. A range of opportunities. ”

Claire Huang, vice president of social media at ITV Studios, agreed. “Gen AI will become increasingly important. It makes life easier, but it still requires human intervention and ensuring that the guardrails of the software used are thoroughly checked. is important.”

The slow death of third-party cookie data

When Chrome retires third-party cookie data in 2024, advertisers may increase their reliance on first-party data and focus on the associated privacy and regulatory issues.

Companies will also face challenges in developing their own sources and eliminating silos within the company to achieve this. Sebastian Born, head of media for HP’s North West and Central Europe, said: “Different databases from different organizations, such as marketing, sales, and reporting, operate in silos, and they need to be consolidated into one to facilitate first-party targeting.”

Creating a more coherent structure that connects these teams will be the challenge in the post-cookie world. Also, social media platforms like TikTok to provide social commerce as a direct connection between brands and consumers while establishing high levels of security to protect the privacy of younger audiences. may be given more importance.

It was fitting that the debate ended on this topic, as it highlighted both the future potential of brands and the trust issues they must address. However, there is no doubt that advertisers who build strong, direct relationships with their customers through influencers and AI-driven content will have significant growth opportunities in the coming years.

To learn more about the biggest trends marketers should focus on in 2024, check out the Brandwatch 2024 Digital Marketing Trends Report.