ABSTRACT
Digital influencers became a crucial tool for contemporary brand communication. Extant literature has emphasized, albeit in a fragmented way, the importance of the use of criteria from the individual, the content, and, to a lesser degree, the audience to select digital influencers. Nevertheless, most of the studies deal with isolated aspects regarding criteria, and the literature still lacks an integrative perspective on how to select digital influencers for marketing campaigns. In this chapter, we explore this gap by connecting the isolated elements present in the literature and developing an integrative framework that considers criteria from the Individual, the Content, and the Audience for selecting digital influencers – the “ICA framework.” Methodologically, we adopt a qualitative perspective, interviewing 21 practitioners in the field of influencer marketing. We show how the choice of criteria for selecting digital influencers is a consequence of two different communication logics operating in the management team, namely a public relations logic and a media logic, and we illustrate how this framework works with one case of influencer marketing. This chapter contributes to the literature on influencer marketing by proposing the ICA framework for selecting individuals for influencer marketing campaigns.
