On 23rd of April we visited Indieplace in Helsinki. Indieplace is Kaleva’s (a newspaper corporation) marketing agency which is focused in influencer marketing and it was founded in 2009. Company’s previous name, Indiedays, might be more familiar for most of us and well-known factor for example in Finnish blogs. Their head office locates in Helsinki but they also have activity elsewhere in Finland and abroad. Indieplace consists at the moment approximately of 20 employees.
Indieplace offers strategic planning, access to a network of influencers, inventing brand’s concept and producing it, interesting content and developing client’s know-how. They produce also video- and recipe content, brochures and they can also arrange photo shootings and events. One of their biggest events every year is the famous Inspiration Blog Awards.
Indieplace focuses on influence marketing, but what is it exactly? Shortly said, influence marketing focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. (Indieplace, 2018)
But who is an influencer? An influencer is a person who has remarkable power to influence people, preferably a great amount of them. They usually influence through social media or traditional media.
When you want to reach your current or new target group in a way that will not be forgot immediately, influence marketing is a right option for you. Indieplace is a pioneer in influence marketing and knows how to connect a brand to a right influencer and also how to create different, interesting and catchy marketing strategy. Influencer’s mission is to advertise this brand and the marketing strategy which has been set in their channels and boom, just like that, a brand can reach whole different target group and even a bread, toothbrush or washing powder can start to look a “must-have”-product in the eyes of a customer.
Nowadays Indieplace has done about 2000 co-operations with different brands, products and influencers. They have nearly 400 influencers in their network from different genres and Finland’s most followed influencers. Wide range of different genres and different types of influencers and their ways of using their impact creates beneficial advantages for Indieplace to connect right customers to right influencers. Common ways how influencer have achieved their title of being Finland’s most followed influencer are Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and blogs. Fashion, well-being, family, food, beauty and interior design are very popular genres in which influencers are focused on.
In a certain way, we all are influencers. We use social media, update it sometimes with funny dog photos and selfies, maybe some food pictures too. We pay attention to what people do and how they do. We might get influenced by some or our actions can influence others. But does that make us all famous and successful influencers? Unfortunately no, it is not that easy. A successful influencer produces unique and interesting content what makes him or her differentiate from others. An influencer must be active what comes to updating the channels in use and it really takes time and effort to keep up the level of your channels. And of course, it is obvious that the more followers you have in social or traditional media, the more influence you have.
Influence marketing has increased its popularity since 2013 explosively. These days mouth-to-mouth marketing has a big impact to consumers consuming behavior, so recommendations and feedback i.e. from a friend have a strong impact. Commercial links are pretty divisive, some people are OK with them but some might get really annoyed. Indieplace has to have a high level know-how of how to create influence marketing interesting and pleasant, not pushy and annoying because in the end, the purpose of commercial links is to create sales. Blog posts have always been found convincing, but lately Snapchat, Instagram and Youtube have increased notably their importance in influence marketing.
Data, numbers and measurability are important factors for Indieplace. Everything must be easily measurable and analysed to find out how is the influence marketing strategy functioning. Gorgeous and pretentious campaign is not enough and it has to make result, = sales. After all, marketing is a way of achieving bigger sales.
Indieplace has a long history in the business area and strong know-how of operating in the business. They have created a successful business which demand and popularity is growing all the time. Success stories like Olympus, Asus, Jordan, BioLuvil, Taika rye bread and many more keep Indieplace in the leading positions of influence marketing agencies.
It really was an interesting visit, full of new and exciting information. It was interesting to see and realize how much influencer marketing an individual can face daily through different social and traditional medias (sometimes even unconsciously) and how much influence it has in sales, marketing ways and customers’ behavior. Influence marketing has achieved a stable foothold in marketing strategies and it is here to stay!
I want to thank you Indieplace and especially Anne Häkkinen, the client director of Indieplace for having us at Indieplace. It was a pleasure to learn about such an important marketing way!
You can read more interesting info of Indieplace, its story and success from here: https://www.indieplace.fi/
