At The Drum Awards Festival, Marianne Fakinos, global influencer lead at WPP Media for The Coca-Cola Company, shared her insights on the delicate balance required in influencer marketing between technological advances and maintaining authentic human connection. Fluent in the language of creators and with over a decade of experience, Fakinos views AI as a valuable tool that enhances efficiency but insists it cannot replace the genuine understanding that comes from truly engaging with communities. According to her, AI supports efficient moderation and aids content creation, yet the personal connection essential for standing out in social storytelling stems from human insight and empathy.

Fakinos emphasises that the real challenge in today’s fast-paced social media landscape is not producing content in high volume but with clear intention. Brands should prioritise quality over quantity, focusing on content that resonates authentically with their communities. She highlights the power of user-generated content and influencer partnerships to keep brand narratives genuine and relatable, but stresses that these must come from real, thoughtful relationships. In her view, smart, insight-driven content not only connects with people but also protects brand integrity and fosters long-term engagement.

When discussing cultural relevance, Fakinos advises brands to avoid the trap of chasing viral trends superficially. Instead, she encourages looking at larger shifts in community behaviour and engagement patterns, which offer a richer understanding of evolving audience needs and new ways for brands to participate meaningfully. Fakinos also praised TikTok as a uniquely immersive platform that goes beyond trends, serving functions as a search engine and social commerce hub, making it ideal for forging authentic connections. Additionally, she points to digital audio as an underutilised format that allows brands to reach audiences with intimate, emotionally resonant storytelling when attention is at its highest.

Her role at WPP Open X, managing Coca-Cola’s global portfolio, requires navigating the intersection of art and science to balance scale with authenticity while integrating media, creative, and social efforts. Fakinos describes this as both the biggest challenge and most rewarding aspect of her work, with the most exciting outcomes seen when insightful, human-centred campaigns spark genuine magic with audiences.

WPP's broader efforts mirror Fakinos’ philosophy. The global marketing giant has deepened its partnership with TikTok by integrating Symphony, TikTok’s generative AI tools, into its AI-enabled platform WPP Open. This alliance offers WPP teams early access to innovative features such as AI-generated avatars, AI-dubbing translation, and video generation. The aim is to boost content creation efficiency while delivering highly personalised, localised brand messaging that resonates with diverse audiences. This move underscores WPP's commitment to leveraging advanced AI to reimagine storytelling and influencer marketing, aligning technological capability with the authentic connection Fakinos champions.

While AI influencers, like Lil Miquela, demonstrate how virtual personalities can successfully cultivate brand narratives and loyal communities by embodying clear identities and emotional depth, experts caution that AI can only complement—not replace—the nuanced human touch that drives long-term engagement. Industry insights reveal that balancing automation with authenticity is crucial as AI tools enhance influencer marketing tasks such as content editing, scheduling, audience analysis, and trend prediction, enabling brands to operate more efficiently while crafting campaigns that genuinely resonate.

In sum, the evolving social media and influencer marketing landscape demands that brands pair cultural awareness with curiosity to understand the intricate ways consumers interact—whether streaming, scrolling, searching, or shopping. Combining this understanding with thoughtful use of AI tools can deliver strategies that are both scalable and deeply human, a balance that Marianne Fakinos exemplifies in her leadership at WPP and that the wider industry increasingly seeks to perfect.

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Source: Noah Wire Services