Influencer marketing is here to stay because of the way millennials consume information, says the founder of a PR firm who recently launched a social infuencer management division.
Rock-it Promotions founder and president Debra Goldblatt-Sadowski has officially launched influencer division Fourth Floor Management, though she has been advising and representing a small group of Canadian bloggers since late 2014.
Unlike previous generations, millennials are “looking for recommendations from their peers,” when it comes to discovering new information, Goldblatt-Sadowski says. “They’re looking for authentic ways to connect and they like the idea [information is] coming to them from a trusted source.”
That’s why influencer marketing, which “has been a little bit of the Wild West over the last couple of years” as people wondered whether or not it was a phase, is definitely going to stick, she says.
Rock-it Promotions founder and president Debra Goldblatt-Sadowski.
Fourth Floor Management – so named because Rock-it Promotions’ first two offices have been on the fourth floor of buildings – started with men’s style and travel blogger Alexander Liang and Justine Iaboni, founder of the travel and style blog Jetset Justine.
“We wanted to do it quietly. I needed at least a year to test it out. Slowly the word got out and people started to call me,” she says.
The division now represents eight Toronto and Vancouver-based influencers and has secured deals with brands such as HBC, American Express, H&M and BMW.
Influencers have “stumbled upon this incredible new age of digital advertising and media” and need help in understanding why they’re so valuable and what brands want. For their part, brands are always looking for people who are going to represent their brands well and engage their audiences, she says.
Fourth Floor Management will generally take on clients with more than 20,000 Instagram followers. Liang, its biggest client, has 102,000 Instagram followers and 107,000 Twitter followers.
So far, Goldblatt-Sadowski and one employee are dedicated to Fourth Floor Management out of Rock-it’s close to 30 employees.
“It’s very time consuming. I think people are going to be really surprised at how much work this is,” she says, when asked about the raft of influencer firms and divisions that have opened in recent months.
