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PUBLIC RELATIONS
Wednesday 12th August 2020

Influencers and saving the high street

Brands and agencies are only scratching the surface when it comes to how to deploy influencers to help the ailing High Street.

By Alec Harden-Henry, Commercial Director, Influence Network.

It’s a photo of someone in a shop, wearing a mask, clutching a bright pink bag, surrounded by shoes.

You can take your pick of the tried and tested COVID-19 language to describe it. It is ‘the new normal’. Someone ‘supporting the local economy’. By wearing a mask they are ‘doing their civic duty’. In the caption there is talk of everyone in the shop ‘miss[ing] the human contact’ and, of course, ‘social distancing’.

What’s really remarkable about the photo though is that it is of Wendy Nguyen, a US influencer who has been paid by the retailer Nordstrom to physically go to one of their stores to ‘detail post-pandemic protocols and boost the allure of visiting’, according to a New York Times article.