Abstract
This master thesis examines the effect of Nordic influencers on the public awareness of small brands. Specifically, of Remo, which is the brand of my autistic little brother and is used as a laboratory for the thesis. A Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) campaign was conducted on Instagram by cooperating with 10 Nordic Instagram influencers, in order to analyse the effects of a WOMM campaign. Through qualitative text analysis and qualitative research interviews, the study addresses five sub-research questions to examine the effect of WOMM on public awareness of small brands. The results of the study are interpreted through theories of Word of Mouth, e-Word of Mouth, Word of Mouth Marketing as well as social media communication. The findings show that in the case of Remo, the WOMM campaign increased the brand awareness of Remo. However this increase was limited to a small increase in follower growth, limited interaction and limited new orders. These findings are compared with the outputs of the interviews directed with collaborating influencers. The results of interviews suggest that the influencers consider themselves to be inspiring leaders of Instagram, and they are very selective when cooperating with brands in order to remain credible influencers. The key factors influencers consider when selecting a brand are money, followers and style. The brand should accept the demands of the influencers, the collaboration should meet the interest of the influencers’ followers and the style of the brand should match with the influencer’s style. The findings of the study were compared with the theories of earlier research. The overall result suggests that WOMM is more effective when well-established and planned campaign strategies are made prior to the campaign, which enables the brands to find the right influencers. However, WOMM can be challenging for small brands for several reasons, such as lack of sufficient revenue to pay for WOMM, lack of resources to create a well-planned WOMM strategy and lack of awareness to create credibility. The study suggests further research on reliability of WOMM in the 2010s, since the influencers mentioned that the collaborations affect their follower growth negatively.