I’ve been in social media for about 10 years now. I have a Bachelor of Journalism from Rhodes University and I’ve worked in agency, as well as a freelancer. I took a year off to go and teach English in Asia, and I am now a Digital Brand Manager on the corporate side.
I’ve worked with tons of brands from a wide variety of verticals, including beauty brands, FMCG, automobile brands, cell phone network brands and many more.
I love all things digital, love to learn and love to share knowledge as well.
Tell us a little about your role as a Digital Brand Manager, what would a typical day at work look like?
As Digital Brand Manager at Justine, no day is like another so a typical day would be impossible to describe. During the course of any given week I deal with a variety of parties from various departments within the business, as well as agency partners, including our creative agency, our media agency and our influencer agency among others. I spend a lot of time in meetings with various category teams to ensure that we are supporting each category with digital content to the best of our ability, while adhering to the strategy set out for the year, and ensuring key focus on relevant products. I brief all creative elements to the creative agency, and work very closely with the influencer and media agencies to ensure roll out of that creative. I’m also responsible for approving creative, presenting it to the category and exec teams and wrapping it all up with a post campaign report to showcase the results of each campaign.
Do you think a cohesive and creative Instagram Feed Design is still relevant to be considered for a campaign by a brand? And Why?
I do think that a cohesive and creative instagram grid is still relevant. It’s something that we have struggled with, gotten right and then struggled with again unfortunately, but we’re working on it. While there is probably a limit to the number of people who actually look at your grid, if someone does land on your page, they’re more likely to follow you if they see something that’s aesthetically pleasing rather than a jumble of stuff with no direction.
Is a large social media following the only thing you need to be considered for a campaign?
Wouldn’t that be easy haha! It’s definitely not the only thing we consider as you know that followers aren’t always legit
“As platforms and channels have grown, evolved and new ones have popped up, the approach to content has needed to evolve with them.”
What is your criteria for selecting an influencer for a campaign?
We look at a variety of factors when considering influencers for our campaigns. This includes but is not limited to:
– Total Reach (naturally it is something we check)
– Average Engagement rate
– Because we’re a beauty brand, we look at the % of followers who are female as that is our core target market
– The age group where the majority of followers sit as this is also target market relevant
– The % of followers who are located in South Africa as we are a South African brand, selling in South Africa
– And then I will look through the potential influencer’s feed as well to ensure that they have a feed that we would be proud to be featured in
– We also consider whether or not the person has recently worked with competitors as we like to have exclusivity on the category that we’re promoting through the influencer for a certain period of time.
How much would you say the approach to content has evolved over the last few years?
Significantly! As platforms and channels have grown, evolved and new ones have popped up, the approach to content has needed to evolve with them. Each platform has its own intricacies and therefore a one size fits all approach, which may have worked to a certain extent back in the day, is no longer advisable. While many of the big platforms have rolled out the same or similar features that the new platforms do as their primary format, each platform does certain things best. For example while you can do reels on Insta now, TikTok was where it really started and video content there is more easily discoverable, bit size and really pulls you in if you let it. Instagram Reels don’t seem to have the same effect – sample of one here I know so perhaps that’s not entirely accurate.