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AMAA announces AIMCo

AMAA

AMAA announces Australian Influencer Marketing Council

The AMAA today announced the establishment of a new industry council for the Australian influencer marketing community under the banner of AIMCo (Australian Influencer Marketing Council) to support the channel.

The new council provides a platform for companies working in the influencer marketing channel to work within a collaborative forum to develop best practice standards.

AIMCo has outlined the key principles of its members as:

Commitment to transparency and accountability to engender marketer confidence and trust
Ensure good citizenship and adherence to agreed industry best practice and disclosure standards
Promote measures designed to drive positive marketing outcomes from Influencer Marketing

Over recent months the AMAA has been engaged in industry consultation with organisations working in influencer marketing to understand the issues and opportunities and develop the Influencer Marketing Code of Practice.

The process has involved meetings with over 45 organisations engaged in influencer marketing to determine the areas to be addressed. The code spans influencer vetting, advertising disclosure, contractual considerations including content rights usage and metrics reporting. A separate guide for buyers is also being created and metrics will be addressed in a detailed review in coming months. The final Influencer Marketing Code of Practice will be released following further industry meetings over coming weeks.

The AIMCo Guiding Council will be established from the participating companies. The Council will oversee the final version of the Code of Practice and facilitate ongoing industry discussion to address influencer marketing performance.

Josanne Ryan, AMAA CEO has said: “It’s been great to see the enthusiasm and commitment the influencer marketing community has brought to this process. The move to collectively embrace industry best practice and embed this into their business model signals the maturing of influencer marketing.”

John Broome, Chief Executive Officer of the AANA said: “The AANA welcomes this initiative from the AMAA and looks forward to reviewing the Code of Practice from the AIMCo Guiding Council. Influencer marketing is now a valuable tool in the marketing mix and we welcome the intention to build trust and confidence in its use through transparency, best practise and accountability.”

Ryan also said that Detch Singh of Hypetap was one of the earliest people to signal to the AMAA that the industry needed a means of coming together to address best practice. From there we connected up with others working in this space and it was the same message, ‘our industry is growing, and we need a unified approach to addressing marketer concerns’ so the AMAA has provided support in establishing AIMCo.

Detch Singh, Co-Founder and CEO at Hypetap commented “Bringing everyone to the table to openly discuss how we can improve our industry has been an invaluable process. We’ve advocated for best practice and standards for a number of years, as we know how important this is to harness the true power of influencer marketing as a channel. AIMCo is a positive step towards creating safer and more impactful influencer campaigns, and we’re pleased we’ve been able to play a leading role in this initiative alongside the AMAA.”

Patrick Whitnall, Head of Content & Sport ANZ, Publicis Media has also welcomed the move and said: “Over the past year our clients have questioned the trust and transparency of influencers, it made it important that we brought together the industry, across agencies, agents and vendors, to create a council to lead best practice and champion the business outcomes of this growing marketing sector. At Publicis Media we align and support transformative initiatives that reflect our values and desire for accountability for our clients. Our hope is that AIMCo creates an agenda of guidance and confidence around advertising disclosure, content usage and metrics for social media influencers”.

The AMAA will be joining a discussion panel at VidCon September 20 in Melbourne to discuss the industry’s engagement in establishing AIMCo.

The industry members who have been engaged in the AIMCo discussion for the development of the Code of Practice are: