SINGAPORE: Brands should invest in long-term relationships rather than quick wins when working with online influencers, according to an executive at Rémy Cointreau.

Rachel Tann, a Senior Marketing Executive at the luxury drinks brand, said partnering with online influencers – particularly in Asia's celebrity-driven culture – can be a successful way of driving sales.

However, she said brands must take a longer term view, or risk the partnership becoming a short-lived experiment, and she offered four key pieces of advice for success in brand building initiatives with online influencers. (For more, read Warc's exclusive report: Four tips for working with online influencers: How Remy Cointreau won in Singapore.)

Tann's advice for marketers covered common pitfalls when starting out with influencers, how to choose the right partners, how brands can allow creative freedom for influencers, and tips for building authentic content.

"For [Cointreau], the strongest relationships we have forged with our influencers have been those where they are as invested in the project as we are," Tann said.

"Ask them not what they can do for you but what you can do for them to take that step further, what you can do together."

Cointreau invited a fashion designer, food blogger and travel photographer who each epitomised the "Cointreau woman" to co-create localised digital content in a year-long campaign for the Singapore market.

Primarily carried out on Instagram with offline activations, the campaign appealed to Cointreau's target audience of white collar, female professionals with high disposable income in their mid-twenties and thirties.

The results were encouraging – Cointreau's ROI was 1:30 in terms of PR value and the campaign had a reach of 62 million in both print and digital combined.

A bonus also came in heightened sales, which were up by three times for the first two influencer-curated events.

Data sourced from Warc