Disruptions in our professional life have become more frequent since the infamous COVID-19 pandemic. I’d like to tell you a time when I experienced change and disruption in my professional life and after creating a “revisioning” of what I have told. 

Unemployment rates jumped dramatically in 2020, I found myself included in this statistic. Through pure necessity and persistence I found myself a new position as an events and functions manager. This new role had almost no structure as I soon found myself looking after the front of house, wedding planning, staff, menus, administration and countless other responsibilities. In over my head, and to make matters worse I was studying full time. I became frustrated having to juggle daily operations with angry brides wanting to dance at their wedding. I expressed to my new boss that it might be a good move to employ another person to look after the restaurant managerial duties so I could focus more on events, administration and marketing. My role felt like multiple jobs in one and I didn’t believe I was being paid enough. Frustrated, stressed and stretched. I did want what was best for the business as I grew fond of the people I worked with, however, after this conversation I knew that I wasn’t going to get the support, structure or raise I felt I needed and the business needed to run seamlessly. After 4 months of working there, I handed in my resignation.

The absent but implicit is a concept by Michael White to help us explore in the direction of “what the problem is not.” Maggie Carey describes this as “double listening.” The expressions of distress I used to describe the experience include “In over my head” and “frustrated, stressed and stretched.” I also mentioned how my boss wasn’t listening to the requests I had. The resistance I expressed, speaking up to my boss and eventually refusing to accept the work environment’s negative impact on my wellbeing are all responses. Initially after speaking to my boss I was hoping for a structured solution to running the business together, but when I didn’t receive this, I knew that I wanted to put my happiness before financial stability. Upon reflection I gave value to a supportive work environment. It’s important for me to do my very best in any job environment so when I felt overloaded beyond my pay bracket and that my time wasn’t respected it emphasised the value I held for fair work distribution to maintain a standard in my work.

Previously I have worked in really positive and supportive work environments that allowed me to feel helpful and set a standard of how I deserve to feel in the workplace. I never understood how important this was until I was in an alternative environment. Workplace ethos mostly revolved around recognition and reward. Speaking up for mistreatment was not something that I had to do to exercise. 

Re-membering this story with a close friend (someone in my club of life) they reassured me “feeling valued is important.” They saw how “unhappy” I was and when I mentioned that “sometimes I felt like quitting meant that I’m not resilient” they responded that they felt even resilience had limitations without an available solution. This perspective gave further insights to my time at this particular job. It allows me to see the developments that I have made since this experience and even during this disruption. People that are close to me help shape my own opinions about myself as I know they are people who understand why I live my life and make decisions the way I do.

We are not passive, we create a framework to understand our choices to act. In this instance I chose what I valued – fairness- over my job. A perspective that I didn’t have until viewing my story through the lens of some of Michael Whites theories in the works of Maggie Carey as you can find linked. These narrative therapy practises assisted me in recognising the hidden story and values that I held behind my previous working experience and recounting the experience with someone in my club of life assisted me in shaping my own opinions around why I responded in the manner I did.

References 

Carey, M, Walther, S & Russell, S 2009, ‘The Absent but Implicit: A Map to Support Therapeutic Enquiry’, Family process, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 319–331.

Russell, S & Carey, M 2002, ‘Re-membering: Responding to Commonly Asked Questions’, International journal of narrative therapy and community work, vol. 2002, no. 3, pp. 23–31. http://narrativepractices.com.au/attach/pdf/Remembering_Common_Questions.pdf 

Re-Authoring Teaching, 2015, Maggie Carey – Double Listening, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyKkavEYHS4 

Hello to the teaching team, fellow students of BCM313 and anyone else that has stumbled into the depths of my blog. In relation to a skill that I have learnt, from somebody that supervises at a mini golf facility, I could have gone down many avenues. For instance my paramount putting skills, impeccable interpersonal skills and creative crisis management (for when the 6 year olds birthday party goes downhill). But today I wanted to look at something from my unpaid life that has taught me the most.

I have been an avid scuba diver for about 6 years now with an advanced open water licence under my belt. Now the skill here I would say is less so obtaining the certifications and more so what I have learnt through this hobby.

Two things in this world that don’t come naturally to me are staying calm and trusting myself. Two things that are absolutely vital whilst scuba diving for your own safety. The failures that I have undergone under 30 meters of water have forced me to work on these qualities and attributes that don’t come easily. I have had learn that panic cannot be a first response once to certain situations and that I have entire responsibility over my wellbeing.

A skill to me is dissimilar to a talent. Acquiring skills take practice and patience where as talents are things that come easily to us. In a way learning to scuba dive opened the doorway to many transferable skills that I use in everyday life. I have a calm proactive response to issues that arise at work (especially when it comes to 6 year old birthday parties) and also to life, focusing on what I can do to amend a situation rather that “PANIC I’ve run out of air.” Self management like this has taught me to take a moment to breathe as a first response and when you can’t breath to find solutions.

For the time space of a week I experienced the brand Zaful as a follower of their instagram page as well as regularly checking their website for any changes. I watched how the brand communicated to their followers and checked both how often they would use influencers as well as the types of influencers they used.

The comprehensive influencer program is not only something that you are scouted out for but something that people over 2,000 followers can apply for. This gives Nanno influencers the option to promote the clothes by applying to receive free products, these influencers are usually required to post about the products. A lot of these posts can be seen in the Z-Me or the Zfgirl hashtag sharing the clothes that they have received. This side of Zaful’s influencers is more of a community based endorsement most frequently used by smaller creators. This particular way in which Zaful has created a small army of nanno influencer is also low cost and low maintenance for the brands resources as they aren’t having to create their own content or pay people to create it for them.

There are also opportunities that people are able to involve themselves as larger influencers, they have the opportunity to make a 30% commission off their sales as well as receiving free merchandise. This program is more targeted towards micro influencers thats on average have a following over 10k. To do this, pages must sign up to ‘First Grabber’ to verify their account, after this if they are high profile enough they receive things like discount codes for their followers and an amount of money per post. Micro influencer have to be managed unlike the nanno influencers as the deal struck with someone with a niche in fashion as 100k followers would be different to the contract between someone with 5k and a focus on travel.

Zafuls content

The content created by these micros influencers is shared to their own audiences as well as on the Zaful instagram page. As many of these influencers have high quality images and experience, Zaful doesn’t need to micro manage to obtain quality content. As can be observed here.

The other form of Influencer content that is used is when zaful uses a particular influencer to be the face of a new line of clothing or swimwear. This can by seen with as below Jessica Stockstill’s affiliation with a recent swimmer line that came out. During this association Jessica posted multiple images on instagram tagging Zaful as well reposting her followers who purchased through her onto a highlights reel. This kind of heavier interaction between influencer, brand and audience is the highest maitnence of influencer contact that I have seen Zaful use recently.

The week analysis period:

.“One generally needs to understand that the larger the audience, the less focused it is likely to be, and therefore the broader the offer will probably have to be”

Joe Sinkwitz, CEO at Intellifluence

Conclusion

What I have concluded through out this research artefact is that Zaful most commonly users micros influencers that suit the type of brand image they attempting to portray. Using Nano and Micro influencers is also an attempt to be viewed as a global brand rather than a Chinese based brand.

By focusing a large portion of their marketing on creating a comprehensive self managed endorsement opportunity for pages with above 2,000 followers as well as managing relationships with larger pages Zaful is able to outsouce content creation, reach their target market effectively and build their brand reputation through the words of their promotors.

Zaful effectively uses their influencers to achieve a high engagement level, it is important to note though that when a brand is endorsed by influencers, it is expected to achieve a certain quality otherwise influencers will begin to turn down these collaboration opportunities to save their reputation.

The influencer market is a 10 billion dollar industry with is relevance spreading to many corporations. These influencers are found across social media such as Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitch and now on TikTok. Influencers can be defined as a person with the ability to persuade potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media. 

Zaful has taken advantage of it’s online location by working collaboratively with these online personas to promote their product and shape perceptions that people have of the brand. From what I’ve noted whilst studying influencers, the way in which they endorse products acts like a word of mouth and feels reputable. Many influencers only work with brands that will enhance the relationship that they have with their audience.

Ismail in 2018 went into depth on defining social media influencers into four categories: Mega, Macro, Micro and Nano. These are all loosely determined by the popularity and type of influencer a company is working with. To gain first hand insight I decided to analyse an influencer in each classification.

Mega

Mega influencers are people who often have celebrity status and are more famous than influential. For example ‘Dwayne Johnson’ or Will Smith. The example I explored further was Kylie Jenner and her sponsorship with sugar bear sleep. Kylie has 200 million followers and initially rose to fame through reality TV. The Kardashians have built an influencer empire and have premium prices to promote products.

Macro

These influencers are a step down from the mega influencers. The main differentiating factor being they have at least 1 million followers but usually rise to recognition online, not through traditional media. These influencers usually have a following on multiple platforms. A few examples are people such as Emma Chamberlain and James Charles that are influencers for brands like Louis Vuitton and Morphe. The profile that I looked closer into was David Dobrik and his endorsement of g fuel energy in this example shown. These influencers also are more expensive to partner with and have a rather large reach.

Micro

These influencers have anywhere from around 2k- 1M. There is no clear definition of exactly when a micro influencer graduated into a macro influencer. At the lower end of the spectrum micro influencers tend to have a niche more of a niche audience. This kind of audience is great for targeting a more concentrated target market. Despite not having as much reach the micro influencers tend to be the best to work with. Anna Seavey is the example that I decided to go with. She has over 300k follower and works with brands such as bondi boost, her main focus being fashion.

Nano

This for personas that have around 1,000- 5,000 followers and status influence usually in the community. This can be anyone from a pastor to a community leader. A prime example of this is within the Wollongong community there is a ‘community leader’ night scene of Wollongong is ‘The Beast,’ if you ask students from the local university most of them will have head of or met ‘The Beast.’

I thought to tie in the influencers by looking into a Nano influencer- @brittlam that promoted the same gummies that Kylie Jenner the Mega influencer did. This is a great example of why using influencers from all over the spectrum is vital. Brittany smaller following are much more likely to isten to what she promotes as even though she has less reach she is seen as more trustworthy.

Conclusions

The main thing I have drawn from observing this different classifications of influencer is that number of followers aren’t always the main thing to focus on. It is a strategic decision to focus on micro influencers as their audiences are usually refined and therefore companies can reach their particular target market in the most concentrated way.

References

Haenlein, M, Anadol, E, Farnsworth, T, Hugo, H, Hunichen, J & Welte, D 2020, ‘Navigating the New Era of Influencer Marketing: How to be Successful on Instagram, TikTok, & Co’, California Management Review, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 5–25, viewed 6 November 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=heh&AN=146409051>.

Ismail, K, 2018, ‘Social Media Influencers: Mega, Macro, Micro or Nano’, CMS Wire,  Simpler Media Group, Inc https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/social-media-influencers-mega-macro-micro-or-nano/#:~:text=That%20shape%20can%20be%20split,are%20really%20far%20more%20nuanced  

This blog post is the first in a three part series. We will be continuously exploring he implications of the brand Zaful using online influencers. Ecommerce stores are on the rise and have been used more frequently due to the current global climate. Shopping centres became hot spots for Covid-19 and people started turning to their computers avoid these places.

Prefacing this information It is important to recognise that I will only be publishing the evidence as deemed ethically appropriate, anonymity of those not financially affiliated to Zaful (eg: comments, reviews, smaller influencers) will remain anonymous. Rachel Winter and Anna Lavis “Looking, But Not Listening?” assisted in drawing ethical guidelines around digital ethnographic studies for this process.

Stephen Coomber in his study on branding, stressed the complexities of this notion being far more than just a image signifying ownership. Coomber highlights, in a definition of branding, that it is about creating a mutually acknowledged relationship between supplier and buyer. Coomber also goes into the importance of branding over the product. I thought this was something important to keep in mind whilst deconstructing the WHY behind Zaful use of influencers online.

From looking at Zafuls website I recognise that everything is cohesive and each image intentional. The experience of going through all the pages was overwhelmingly saturated with content. The brand is selling not only fashion but a particular image. I will go further into the Instagram image during section three of this blog series after we explore the depths of the Influencer world, but this was just as evident on instagram. This complements what I learnt about branding being less about the product and more about the communication between buyer and seller. By the images Zaful presents online I can only assume that their main target market is 18-25 year old women and its this perfect image that sells these products to the target.

To gain more insight I went to the recent reviews that Zaful has had to understand how the products are received by customers. They were however overwhelming negative, as a qualitative research it is more important to find out the why.

References

Coomber, S. (2002) Branding. Oxford, United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons, Inc (ExpressExec Marketing). Available at: https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=66767

Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics 2020, Vol. 15(1-2) 55–62 © The Author(s) 2019, Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1556264619857529 journals.sagepub.com/home/jre

ZAFUL Expanding Multi-Country E-commerce Portals and Exploring Global and Local Identity’ 2019, FRPT – Ecommerce Snapshot, p. 9, viewed 31 August 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=135720890&site=ehost-live&gt;

Bendure, V 2019, ‘Using Influencers to Market Goods and Services’, Audiology Today, vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 60–61, viewed 5 November 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rzh&AN=139763081>.  

Hongtao Yao & Yiyuan Zhang 2013, ‘Explore the New Mode of Chinese Clothing Brand E-commerce Marketing through Data Analysis’, Advanced Materials Research, vol. 821–822, pp. 750–754, viewed 3 November 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=inh&AN=14437441>.