“We are all continuously being influenced and we are all influencing continuously. We are the voice of marketing and the receivers of marketing. We are employees and customers. We are real people.

We all know this to be true and yet we seem to rarely act on it. Whether it’s email, social, programmatic or influencer marketing, the default strategy is all too often spray and pray. Send enough crap and some eventually sticks.

That’s why I loved the opening keynote to Wave 2017 conference last week. The conference was kicked off by Brian Solis, laying out why Influencer Marketing 1.0 was dead.

Checklist influence has led to influence diffidence and, as Brian argued, ‘it simply wasn’t working any more. Behind every screen, every expression and impression, is a human being . . . not a consumer . . . and, as marketers, we need to understand this truth.’

‘If you judge influence as the ability to cause effect or change behaviour, then we’re simply not scoring a ‘home run’ often enough. Customers are smarter; they understand the difference between the authentic and the fake and they understand that they are now the influencers.’

‘This means we are now in the age of Influence 2.0, one where we are all trying to reach audiences who have audiences of their own. We can no longer rely on Influence 1.0 and buy our way into an ecosystem that has become, and will increasingly become more so, cynical.'”