In an interview with Marketing Brew, Hill House and Communité both came out swinging at metrics measuring influencer marketing campaigns. Surprise: creatives don’t want to be held accountable for their work.

Gems like, “CPM is wack” from Danielle McGrory, founder of Communité or amazing oversimplifications by Hill House Home’s CEO Neil Diamond such as, “followers don’t matter.”

It’s not new to hear creatives look down on measurement and metrics as irrelevant. They see their work as art and therefor impossible to quantify. Then of course there is this curious selection criteria:

One of Diamond’s favorite influencers of the 13 selected for [..], not only because she is Hill House’s first trans influencer, but also because…

Wow. I understand the desire to pander to the trans community because of their relatively outsized voices, but can we go back to choosing creators for their creativity alone? I sincerely don’t understand what someone’s gender identity has to do with their work. What I do know is that when a marketing agency says they’re looking for “marketing appeal”, they are really just saying “trending subculture.”

I don’t know what Neil is talking about, but no one looks at “follower count” as the deciding metric to choose an influencer. It’s particularly disingenuous coming from someone in the industry, because he surely knows better.

When we look at influencers, we look at their reach including engagement levels. Micro-influencers are particularly interesting because of the high engagement levels and trust levels with their followers.

We also know that it is more effective to have 10x microinfluencers with the same level of follower count than 1 influencer with 10x the follower count. This is, simply because of engagement.

So, Neil saying follower counts don’t matter is of course true, but also bullshit because no one is making that argument anyway.

Those guys keep talking about content creators and calling them influencers because it’s convenient. Hill House are not hiring influencers, they are hiring content creators to get really cheap freelance work with some minimal distribution.

This is admittedly a brilliant strategy that was put in focus due to the pandemic, but will likely continue to grow. Why? Cause people crave authenticity and you have a much better chance to uncovering authentic amazing talent with a wider net.

Not all content creators are influencers and not all influencers are content creators. It’s really not that complicated a concept. You can be an influencer and not necessarily create any meaningful content.

To put it in an easier way to digest, content creators are focused on their content whereas influencers are focused on engagement. Every now and then you come across someone who is both, and those are stars in their own right.

What’s Wrong with Metrics?

One word: vanity. Clients can sometimes insist on certain metrics that don’t make sense outside of vanity. This can be frustrating to agencies who find it would penalize them unfairly. It doesn’t always have to be this way though. We could, *gasp* actually measure things that affect the bottom line. I mean, isn’t that why we’re doing all this?

I would be very wary of any agency that completely rejects accountability by claiming they are “wack”. Any successes such an agency may have would be nothing more than a fluke. The “gut” instincts of one executive that is not possible to scale nor replicate. Hill House Home and their likes are causing more harm to the industry than they realize.

By rejecting accountability without offering an alternative, they are a breed of agencies that I find troubling.