“I budget dedicati all’influencer marketing they will not decrease, but will probably have started again between multiple smaller creators instead of being destined for large operations with a single influencer”: Roberto Esposito, CEO of DeRev, a company specializing in digital strategy and communication, had told us said so, last January (Who)talking about how the Ferragni case would have affected the way of communicating through social media.
Those words, now 4 months old, have proven prophetic: companies continue to spend a lot on influencer marketing, which in Italy it employs almost 500 thousand people and has an estimated value of around 350 million euros, but they do it differently. This is demonstrated by the case of Pantene, which chose the little-known Havi Mond to replace Chiara Ferragni (22 thousand followers against 29 million), and this is confirmed by an in-depth analysis that we have always asked DeRev about 4 categories of influencers on Instagram starting from the breadth of their communities.
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instagram: a post by model Havi Mond
Tenfold growth of small compared to large
The analysis concerned creators fra i 100mila e i 500mila followers, between 500 thousand and 1 million, between 1 and 5 million and over 5 million and the data for the period January-April 2023 were compared with those for the period January-April 2024.
The trend is evidentwas also evident last year but this year it has become even more acute: the influencers in the two smallest bands have better performances both in the growth of followers and in the so-called post interaction, which measures the degree of interaction generated by all posts published in the period, regardless of daily frequency. As for 2023:
influencers in the 100-500 thousand and 500 thousand-1 million ranges recorded a post interaction (respectively) of 4.23% and 3.08% and one follower growth by 6.21% and 2.93%;
the influencers in the 1-5 million and over 5 million ranges they stopped (respectively) at a post interaction of 2.73% and 2.79% and at a follower growth of 1.66% and just 0.97%.
This year it’s going even worse for larger profiles: post interaction almost halved compared to smaller ones and community growth well below 1% (just 0.11% for creators with over 5 million followers), compared to even growth of 10.79% for the 100-500 thousand range and by almost 5% for those immediately under one million.
Which creators are doing best
It is true that the higher you go, the more difficult it is to climb again, because it is physiologically complicated to maintain the same growth rate as you reach your ceiling (which is there for everyone), but it is also true that it is one thing not to grow or to grow little and another to decline. Which is something that’s happening not only to Chiara Ferragni.
According to DeRev data, in 2024 there are numerous social media celebrities who are contracting in terms of followers on Instagram: Ferragni had grown by 3.21% in 2023 and is now decreasing by 1.55% and Fedez went from +1.48% to -2.05%, but the same fate also happened for Belen Rodriguez (+0.22% in 2023 and -0.15% in 2024), Giulia De Lellis (+0.71% in 2023 and -0.3% in 2024) e Gianluca Vacchi (-0.71% in 2023 and another -0.4% in 2024). Among the large or medium-large profiles, the few to grow are those of Geopop (over 2.4 million followers and an incredible +113.76% in 2024) and the food blogger Aurora Cavallo, with a community of over 1.1 million people and which this year has almost reached +20% growth.
Conversely, there are many relatively small creators who are getting noticed in terms of follower growth, like the journalist Francesco Oggiano of Will (almost 150 thousand followers, +26.39% in 2024), Francesca Florio and his jurisprudence pills (about 350 thousand, +82.46%), the good one Piero Armenti with the trip to New York (photo at the top of the page, close to 600 thousand followers, +15.23%), Engineering Italy (which is close to 700 thousand followers, +33.91%) and Sonia Peronaci, who is now about to reach one million and in the period considered has grown by 10.64%.
instagram: a post by the lawyer Francesca Florio
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The real reasons for Pantene’s move
As we anticipated in January, and as the numbers now confirm you can clearly see if you frequent social media, these are the creators that companies are looking for for their communication: not giants with tens of millions of followers but “smaller ones, who have a more profiled audience and allow brands to intercept a more targeted and therefore more interesting target”. In recent months, a further trend has been added, the effects of which will probably be seen later, according to DeRev experts: “They are emerging and establishing themselves profiles curated by a team of people rather than by an individual or a single creator, which helps to give a better message of professionalism.”
So Is it for these reasons that Pantene chose Havi Mond? No, what the Swiss company has done is yet another thing, which the numbers don’t say but in some way you can imagine. What happened, according to a widespread interpretation, is that Pantene got scared and were so shocked by the backlash of the Ferragni case that they decided to take a leap back 10-15 years: Mond was not chosen for activity on social media, which is objectively insignificant, but for the absence of it. Probably from a catalog of models, as was normal in 2010-2015. A total reverse, and a distancing from influencer marketing, which can only be understood in relation to what happened with the Ferragni case: other companies have perceived the danger of getting close to such big influencers, Pantene experienced it and paid for it firsthand. And he probably doesn’t want to have anything to do with that world anymore, at least for now.
@capoema