Electric Artists CEO Mark Schiller burst a bit of social media hype this week in a conversation with HuffPost Tech's Bianca Bosker.
Schiller, who said he is "really passionate about the concept of influence," cast doubt on the idea of influencer marketing as a way to inspire consumers to action.
"This idea of influencer marketing can be very tricky," he said. "Just because somebody has a score of X doesn't really mean that suddenly they're going to be the best person to market your product for you, so I think that if you try to find shortcuts it gets very tricky. Unfortunately there is a lot of hype out there."
Schiller said that what he focuses on is how marketers and advertisers can create influence so that people take action.
"A lot of marketing now can be put out there and people can love it," he said. "The question really is: is it compelling them to actually take an action and do something? I really look at influence as a critical component in the marketing mix, and making sure that there are certain strategies that complement traditional advertising and some of the things that we do."
He says the most important thing for any brand or agency is passion.
"I know it sounds strange," he said. "How do you create passion? I think it starts with the actual creators themselves. Not everybody is passionate about the work that they do, and if you can find an agency that's passionate about the products that they're marketing, it comes across and they start to infect the passion of others....If you don't have passion, you really have nothing, because then you really just have another ad, another message, another piece of noise in the channel."