What’s the difference between a list of the top 100 most influential people in drinks and a list of the top 100 influencers? Potentially nothing – except labels. As we recognise, quite rightly, influential people in the drinks industry, we should also ask why “influential” is a compliment, yet “influencer” carries a sneer. The weight of contempt for influencers has resulted in a speedy rebranding, so that today we have content creators, digital communicators and brand partners – anything to escape the tarnished “influencer” label while still pursuing influence.
In an industry built on recommendation and endorsement, being influential is fine – so long as you don’t look like you’re trying. But if you’re primarily, actively trying to influence people, if it’s your day job… well, that’s a bit desperate, slightly gauche, and suggests you’ve not quite understood the rules of the game.
Yet I’ve seen wine explained with impressive clarity in a 90-second video and read Instagram captions with more pith and perspective than some editorials. Many influencers produce exceptionally high-quality content with enormous technical skill, and often extraordinarily quickly. Still, mention influencers in some circles and you’ll get eye-rolls or derision. It’s hard not to see that as a kind of gatekeeping – a rejection of what feels unfamiliar or threatening. Sometimes the negativity is couched in thoughtful language, but it can mask discomfort especially when the people doing the work don’t look like traditional gatekeepers or share their tastes, politics or lifestyles.
Many names recognised in this year’s Top 100 list are traditional influencers, or tastemakers, if you prefer – heads of, buying directors, broadcasters and so on. They work in mediums largely known and understood by their peers who are tasked with selecting them.
The less-familiar mediums many influencers use are often downplayed because those same peers don’t engage with them or understand them. But we must be careful about dismissing digital media and social channels as lightweight. I hadn’t consciously listened to a Taylor Swift song until a year ago. That doesn’t make her uninfluential, it simply demonstrates that I am not her target audience. (Meanwhile, news of a new Pulp album reached me almost instantly.)
In the drinks industry, if people are buying one thing over another because of your work, that’s influence by definition. It shouldn’t matter which part of the industry you work in. Yes, there are valid criticisms of the newer channels. Social platforms reward attention, not accuracy, and there’s little oversight when it comes to quality. Manipulative algorithms pressure creators to go viral and increase their reach rather than rewarding audience loyalty. The shelf life of great content can be brutally short, and engagement can be vast yet shallow. A social experiment I invented to demonstrate this is to try to remember three things you saw on Instagram yesterday.
But in our industry anyone who understands how to reach the right audience in the right way is doing the work. Sometimes that’s a 3,000-word long-form profile, or a slick reel, or a well-timed offer tapping into a cultural moment. All matter. All can be done well or badly.
Every channel of influence comes with trade-offs, but as [Canadian philosopher] Marshall McLuhan pointed out, the medium is the message. Print reaches one kind of drinker; TikTok another. Yet sometimes – and it’s important to remember in our increasingly over-simplified world – potential customers engage with both Reddit and traditional media. The drinks world is complex and so is influence. It’s worth remembering it doesn’t always come from familiar faces.
