Work from home, the kids have got it covered

Nothing could be more normal than teenagers lip-synching and dancing to their favourite songs or film scenes. But in the age of digital media, this has become a proven road to riches. Australia’s top three most influential influencers got their start lip-synching to other people’s tunes and posting the results online to build a following and develop their own brand. They now have tens of millions of followers who seek them out for wisdom on anything from dancing, fashion, families and parenthood to how to have a good laugh.

The Oz has taken a deep dive into the world of influencers to find out what this new generation of entrepreneurs is doing. What is clear is that influencers are now an established part of Australian society. Almost three-quarters of Australians aged 15 to 40 follow at least one influencer. And of those who follow influencers, a third follow more than 15. Health and fitness influencers are the most popular. Seven in 10 followers have bought a product, brand or service because an influencer has recommended it, making endorsement a valuable commodity. People see influencers as a source of entertainment and inspiration, and half of all followers would be an influencer themselves if they had the chance. Rather than firefighters and ambulance drivers, lawyers, doctors or aged-care workers, these are the role models many of today’s youth aspire to be. While it may be easy to dismiss the phenomenon as the pop star complex for millennials, there is more than that going on here.

Understanding the world of influencers puts a spotlight on how social media can help to generate new opportunities and styles of commerce, innovation and entrepreneurship. Australia’s 10 most influential can claim more than 140 million followers, more than five ​times our population. On TikTok, they have banked more than four billion likes, collected more than 15 million YouTube subscribers and helped to fuel a $14bn global industry.

Our list of influencers is not just a ranking of who has the most followers or likes. The Oz commissioned the foremost behavioural ­sciences think tank, The Behavioural Architects, to identify the six key drivers of influence: trustworthiness, attraction, relatability, expertise, content prominence, and content frequency. Global social media intelligence agency Storyful then measured Australia’s influencers against these drivers to determine their ranking. What we have discovered is that the kids lip-synching in the bedroom can go on to innovate in ways that push the boundaries of what once was possible. While many influencers have started out bringing attention to other companies’ products, an increasing number have made their fortunes developing products and services of their own. So, as an older generation learns the lessons of work from home via the pandemic, a new generation of workers has been doing it all along. There are big lessons to be learnt on how digital innovation has turbocharged the opportunity to boost productivity in a multidimensional workplace. But it also has put the spotlight on how, in an era of worker shortages, the digital-literate generation is unlikely to be interested in the menial tasks that are proving most difficult to fill.

As Helen Trinca observes, next month’s Jobs and Skills Summit needs to come to grips with the radically different work dreams of a new generation at the same time as it figures out the IR issues and wages crisis of the old world of work. The deeper issue for policymakers, Trinca says, is how the social influencer craze alerts us to a real shift in attitudes to work and institutions, none of which exercises the same attraction as in the past for many people. There also are questions about what sort of curbs society should put on the influencer industry. In a society that demands full disclosure, what responsibility is there on influencers to alert viewers to the fact they are being paid to promote someone else’s products? Should the rules of marketing directly to children still apply? It all makes the cash for comment furore of yesteryear that snared radio stars of the day Alan Jones and John Laws seem like child’s play.

As things stand, the digital landscape is a virtual regulation-free wild west. But as the industry grows, regulation is sure to follow. The list is a sure sign the nascent influencer industry has become mainstream and is a rich landscape full of animated go-getters. That’s something to sing about.