Jon Brodsky | Source | CEO at YouNow
Jon Brodsky
Jon is the Chief Executive Officer at YouNow, a live streaming social media platform where you can watch and engage with influencers and friends. He was the Chief Executive Officer, USA for finder.com, one of the largest comparison sites on the planet. They focused on educating our users on the best financial, insurance, shopping and travel decisions the users can make, and they helped their thousands of corporate clients find people that are genuinely interested in becoming their customers.
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KOLs are the latest way that advertisers are trying to cut through the clutter of social media and remind me a lot of how high school fashion works: one cool kid decides something is incredible, and even though that kid is often a jerk, everyone else decides that thing is also excellent. But, of course, brands could never know someone was a jerk in high school, so they just took the money and ran. The spats we see in China are a little more nuanced than that but are the same basic idea: brands spend a fortune on their image, and while their image may intersect with that of a KOL, it's never going to line up completely. So brands either need to get comfortable with this or have their employees be their only influencers because there is no middle ground in which a KOL will steadfastly hold a brand's line - that makes them inauthentic and will cost them their following.
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Should brands in China rely less on KOLs? | Digital | Campaign Asia
SOUNDING BOARD: Following a recent controversy in China involving top KOL Li Jiaqi, industry experts weigh in on escalating brand risks and whether this will spark a reduced reliance on KOLs.
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