The Peter Kravinsky effect — Influencers who elevate sales
If you were on Netflix recently, you might have watched a preview on home page of a cute looking high school movie called To all the boys I’ve loved before. The story looked like a very teeny romance and I chose not to watch it since umm..I am not a teenager or in high school anymore. But then started the whole buzz of it on Instagram and people were raving about Peter Kravinsky aka Noah Centineo.
We buy a product because we feel pulled towards it and form a connection with it. It can be nostalgia, a sense of accomplishment or even a feeling of elevated ego while buying a certain luxury. Sometimes you look at a product and think why the hell is it priced so high when there is an equally good looking un-branded version of it. Who promotes the product increases the cost of endorsement, thus increases the cost of production of the product. Margins are what the seller is most interested in especially after a brand has been built up over the years. Audience is so sensitive towards who is delivering the content. We live in a double standard world where weed and being gay is finally legal, but the stock of Tesla still dropped when Elon Musk took a puff of weed on a live podcast. Some people might not buy a certain product because it is being delivered by a person who doesn’t appeal to their tastes. Kim Kardashian might not have pulled off selling make up right after her video scandal.Nike’s biggest campaign this year featuring Colin Kaepernick saw backlash for days and the stocks are now on rise than before and paying off. The online sales of Nike have increased 31% since the campaign launch. This is how powerful a certain person can effect the image of a company. What we see is what we believe. Who is selling the product makes a hell lot of difference.
- Nike’s controversial ad campaign has drawn a surge in Instagram followers and likes on Twitter and Facebook.
- Nike added roughly 170,000 Instagram followers around the timing of the release of its ad campaign, Wedbush Securities said in a research note.
- Nike shares hit an all-time high on Thursday.
Source: CNBC
The main reason why niche influencers are so much in demand is because companies know that they can reach out to a large audience with less cost on social media and expect a higher return on investment. For a small to medium online retail or fashion companies, going to influencers seems to the safest best. Instagram’s algorithm works in such a way that you see what you most click in the home page. The year 2018 made changes to algorithm in such a way that it is harder than ever to reach out and make your post seen. In simple terms, if my main clicks on my page are posts that feature puppies, make up and clothes- these are the posts that are shown to me. So the more I click, the more that they keep changing and the more related content and hashtags will I keep seeing it in future. (It is an alien infinite wormhole, more on social media fomo and algorithms later).
So, who is Peter Kravinsky and how did he inspire me to write this post? Peter Kravinsky is the boyfriend of Internet and he is the main fictional lead in movie, To all the boys I’ve loved before. He drinks Yakult and mentioned it as his love interest’s favorite Korean smoothie drink on a school trip. Peter Kravinsky played by Noah Centineo goes all the way across downtown to get his love interest’s favorite yoghurt smoothie as he tries to impress her. According to Bloomberg, the Yakult’s shares are on the up, climbing 2.6% since the movie launched on the streaming platform.Just to understand the numbers of this phenomenon, I did some research of my own.
For the search term Yakult // Source: Google trends
Interest over time
The release date of the movie on Netflix is August 17th, 2018. Note the sudden increase in Yakult from August 17th.
Data like this will make us take better decisions about marketing and who to rope in for the campaign as a messenger. Every marketing move that a company makes directly affects it sales and no good marketing move has ever seen a dip in sales or a negative effect on the stock. Influencer campaigns are at its peak and its effects can be measured more than ever thanks -To all the data we’ve never had before. Pun intended.
