Diverse or not?

: representation in influencer marketing from a perspective of race

Abstract

This internship report is based on curricular internship at Social Ninjas, a digitalmarketing agency. During the internship, lasting 6 months the primary work was done in managing influencer marketing, an observation was done early on, that there was a lack of representation among the influencers. This was found in a combination of looking through an influencer platform, and realizing talking to the internship company, that there was a lack of awareness about this subject, which was found interesting, when thinking about the shift happening in society currently talking about race. Correlating the lack of awareness with the lack of representation, the study set out to examine the current state of representation amongst non-white influencers in Portugal. Furthermore, to understand whatinitiatives brands can take in their efforts in becoming more diverse in their marketing strategy, ultimately to promote representation and diversity.It was an explorative study, set out to examine the subject based on a qualitativeapproach of semi structured interviews and a content analyse. The content analyse was done, to understand the current state of representation of non-white influencers. It was conducted based on the 100 top ranked beauty influencers, taken from a influencer marketing platform. Measuring this could be used as an indicator for the overall landscape.Furthermore, semi structured interviews was conducted with different actors in the industry, agencies, expert and influencer. Aiming to give an in dept knowledge about some of the issues within the industry, that effect the current state of representation and diversity.The internship report hoped to find a lack of representation of non-white influencers within Portugal. Supporting the initial observations done during an internship at a digital marketing agency. The findings hope to support that there is an issue within the influencer marketing industry in Portugal, when it comes to the way the industry promote representation and diversity, and further research needs to be done to examine and clarify the issues within the landscape as a whole.

Date of Award	5 Apr 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Carla Ganito (Supervisor)