The original influencers

Long before the internet, influencers got people to support war and bacon.

Today, I come to you with an interesting tidbit I recently learned from Michael Serazio, a communications professor at Boston College.

Serazio wrote a fascinating book, The Authenticity Industries: Keeping it “Real” in Media, Culture, and Politics, about how authenticity (or, often the guise of it) is a powerful force behind efforts to influence us. In the book, he wrote about how the influencers we know today are working from a playbook that stretches back to the early 1900s.

Serazio shared a few examples of influencers from long before the internet:

• During World War I, the U.S. government enlisted community leaders “to rally support by delivering hawkish talking points at movie theaters, restaurants, and town meetings.”

• A public relations specialist “got hired by a bacon company and coaxed thousands of physicians into recommending it to patients as part of a healthy breakfast.”

• Avon and Tupperware tapped “local women’s networks, leveraging their friendships and get-togethers.”

• Endorsement deals meant brands sold products through the familiarity of celebrities.

As Serazio pointed out, the strategy was supercharged with the rise of social media:

None of this, of course, was meant to feel like advertising, because it was delivered from a trustworthy third-party rather than the benefitting entity. By midcentury, communication studies established the “two-step flow” theory of influence, whereby media persuasion trickles down, secondhand, through opinion leaders to most of the population. Seventy years on, this basic premise underpins one of the fastest-growing segments of the marketing industry.

The two-step flow theory states that “ideas often flow from radio and print to opinion leaders and from these to the less active sections of the population.” Though the theory originated in 1948, you can see how it functions in modern-day influencer marketing.

Thanks for reading.

Eric