What exactly does a beauty influencer’s manager do?

We take a look into the business of influence to understand how it really works

You can love them or hate them but you can’t ignore digital influencers. At a recent launch of a beauty brand in a luxury mall in Mumbai, I witnessed something I’d never seen before. Two teenage girls couldn’t contain their excitement on seeing one of their favourite influencers in person at the event—they were on the other side of the cordoned-off area, of course—and they broke down owing to the excitement and joy. I’ve noticed this level of love and appreciation for actors before, but never for an influencer, especially not one I didn’t recognise (how do you possibly keep track of every single “big” name?).

Just like traditional celebrities have a hardworking team of people responsible to make them look the way they are and make sure they crack the right projects and endorsements, it works the same way for influencers. They, too, have a manager or are on board with an agency—most of the established ones are, anyway—that looks after all of their work commitments, positioning them just right.

As the business of influence became more lucrative, it opened up new job roles. Today, influencer management is a complete industry in itself, which involves working with content creators for brands, and with brands for content creators. Here, we dive into what it takes to bring a beauty content collaboration to life, and what brands and influencers alike can do better.

Are influencers important to help build beauty brands?

This may seem like a rhetorical question but it is one worth asking. Should you be taking serious beauty advice from an individual or a certified dermatologist? This has been debated for far too long, and the right answer to it is striking balance and being mindful of the advice you actually decide to follow as a consumer.

“It's not just about product usage and recommendations but community, content and conversation that maybe gets sparked every time a new piece of content is put out on social media,” says Prantik Ghosh, PR and influencer manager, RAS Luxury Oils. Having put together over 300 collaborations for the farm-to-face beauty brand in his year-and-a-half-long tenure so far, Ghosh naturally spends most of his time and energy working with digital creators. “I love to get on a call, catch up with talent and then discuss work. I have often been told that agencies or teams have an extremely transactional approach to these associations, and that really does not fly with me. When your talent is happy with the interaction, they will go the extra mile to put their best foot forward. Today, I can call many of them my friends. Work will always happen, but maintaining relations beyond a collaboration is far more gratifying.”

Praachi Kapse, founder of Peoplekind, has some of India’s biggest influencers on her roster, across categories. “Debasree Banerjee and Diipa Khosla are proof of the importance of influencers in beauty, having launched their successful beauty ventures under their own names,” she says. “If they were not important, they wouldn’t have started their own brands. They’re people who understand their audience, they’re considered authentic. You need to identify the language of the influencers you manage, what their audience is looking at from them, whether someone is looked at as the go-to person for lipstick recommendations or for their flawless, dewy skin. It’s important to marry what the audience is looking at and what the influencer is known for.”

“I always think about if I were in the place of a follower, what sort of information would I want to know, whether it’s a treatment or a product,” says Natasha Patel, a digital content creator with a special focus on beauty and a following of 115k on Instagram. “Transparency is very important to me. I always make sure to have a caveat saying that I have XYZ skin type and this is why it has worked for me. You aren’t a dermat, you don’t have a degree. At the end of the day what you’re doing is based on personal trials according to your concerns."

Which beauty influencers are worth betting on?

“Follower count is more important from the perspective of mass appeal,” explains Kapse, confirming that it is not the most essential factor for every collaboration. “When we get a talent on board, we ask ourselves if we are consumers of their content, because otherwise you’re simply making cold calls for a client. We should be that invested in them, to look at them for advice. All our clients are conversation-starters who share information or do AMAs (Ask Me Anything) with their audience to understand what they’re looking for, which is of prime importance.”

“While everyone's wish list is to work with the biggest influencers for maximum awareness–and I love working on some of those as well–for me, personally, it's always two things: An interesting face and the content benchmark they currently have on their social media,” says Ghosh, who is always on the lookout for new talent for RAS Luxury Oils, to ensure that their feed looks fresh every single day. “There is no sure-shot formula in the beauty space for what will work, so one must always keep looking and trying new things.”

“I think of influencers as olden-day billboards or ads you’d see in a movie theatre,” says Patel. “We have the ability to reach and impact so many people. It depends on the trust the influencer builds with their audience. People connect to people who are real, authentic, and who don’t do it for the sake of money or publicity but for the genuine love to share.”

What is the role of an influencer manager?

For Kapse, managing an influencer means looking into every single detail of every collaboration. “Everything from negotiating a rate to figuring out timeliness and possible advance payments, generating invoices, aligning shoot days and the concept earlier so the brand knows what to expect, brainstorming on the length and type of the content, deciding whether it will be shot on a holiday or locally, sharing insights after 24-48 hours and finally a debrief of what worked and what did not—we do it all.” On the other hand, for Ghosh, it’s more about having more than enough conversations each month to close the number he would like. “Hypothetically speaking, I'd have had 45-55 conversations with separate talents to close 20-odd collaborations in a month. It would start with a proposal of what we have in mind, followed by negotiations. Once this bit is closed, products are shipped and MOUs are sent, we move on to content generation. This is all a part of the content approval process and if everything goes as per plan, the collaboration is closed within 10-12 days since the initiation of the conversation. Sometimes it can also take months.”

What can brands do better?

One of the reasons why the influencer economy has developed a negative aftertaste is the loss of authenticity when branded content is in question. While a small number of influencers may ask brands for a script, in most cases, it’s brands micromanaging every aspect of the content piece, letting go of the influencer’s personal touch, which is what makes them click, in the bargain. Kapse agrees: “I hope brands stop doing the same cut-copy-paste job of campaigns with every influencer. Instagram is content; it’s an advertorial, not an advertisement. A lot of times you see the same content with influencers wearing the same colours, talking about the same things. I think the Instagram audience in India has grown up and they need more nuanced storytelling, so let's experiment more.”

Patel hopes brands start to view engagement as the most important factor of a collaboration as opposed to total number of followers. “Brands need to partner with the right influencers, the ones who are connecting with the audience on similar topics that match their target market. They need to listen before partnering because in return the influencer should be able to do justice to promoting their product. A problem I personally face is brands having a fixed brief for a particular campaign which could be an international directive or come from Indian agencies. What I would like to see is variety, a way to tell our own story while incorporating the brand. You’ve partnered with an influencer for a specific reason, so use that to your advantage.”

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