Dive Brief:

• Last fall, McDonald’s UK launched “Channel Us,” a YouTube influencer campaign geared toward a young demographic, but has ended the effort due to lack of interest according to Netimperative.
• The campaign was hosted by two UK-based influencers, but none of the nine clips posted this year reached 1,000 views.
• McDonald’s head of media and customer engagement said the fast food chain learned that creating content that people want to see is an “inherent challenge” in content marketing.

Dive Insight:

McDonald’s experience illustrates that influencer campaigns involve more than just hiring trendy creators and assuming branded content will connect with their fans. In order to whip up buzz and engagement, that content has to be compelling and relevant for the target audience first.

“We have learnt that content is really difficult and content with purpose is really important,"  Ben Fox, Head of Media and Customer Engagement at McDonald’s told The Drum. "Like a lot of brands, it is a challenge for us and we are looking at a lot of different ways we can pull people towards our brand to build affinity with other audiences.”

Brands remain interested in influencer marketing, with YouTube being a big platform in the field, and justifiably so: the Pepsi Max YouTube channel has some 120,000 subscribers, and Red Bull is another brand that's seen success on the video portal, per Netimperative.

Underscoring the value platforms place on influencer campaigns, both Facebook and Twitter have been actively luring YouTube creators to their live streaming video offerings, and Google recently acquired FameBit, which seeks to build a "democratized marketplace" to better connect brands to YouTube influencers.