I think it comes from just a pure love of shiny people. I tell a story about laying about at my home when I was growing up in Rondebosch and my brother walking past - I was probably on about my fifth hour of MTV. He looked down on me and said, "Feeding your mind again, Gill?" and I said, "You know what, when I'm managing big artists and Sony BMG, you can laugh then."

The definition of an influencer, for me, is somebody who can elicit an action in other people through their own actions, beliefs and opinions. 

I always tell everybody who wants to be an influencer that they actually have to be something which they can influence on. So you've got to be good at something. 

There are four ways that an influencer can make money. The first, I would say, are campaign-based sponsored posts and partnering with the brand - which has a certain start and end date and an objective and a couple of KPIs built in.

I've done work with a client, winemakers out in Wellington - the Bosman family. They brought a grape into South Africa over 20 years ago and nurtured it. It's the Nero grape, which is quite common in Europe but they were no Nero vines in South Africa. They wanted to link their brand or this Nero wine to a personality to say "If Nero was a person, this is who it would be". They asked me to find that person, and I instantly thought of Thapelo Mokoena, the South African actor. 

For startups that don't have a massive marketing budget, influencers are a very viable marketing route, especially if you want to use your customers as influencers. The best thing about using your customers as influencers is that they know what the product offers because they've already bought it. 

When handling personalities like influencers, they are creatives. They've gathered a following and they have a bit of a crown on their head. One of the things I teach at my school is don't be a prima donna. As much as you are special, you're replaceable. You really are.

I think the brief is probably one of the most important parts of an influencer marketing campaign. Without being too dramatic, if the influencer gets it wrong and they've produced this piece of content that they now have to run by you for approval and you reply, "I'm not really feeling that and it doesn't really bring my brand ethos through, etc" - that's your fault.

I think it would be best for the influencer to advise me on what platforms they do better on. Some platforms like TikTok would be better for video, while other platforms like Instagram are better for stills. Twitter would be for text and starting engaging conversations.

The question I get a lot from companies is, "We've got this campaign and we want to make it go viral so we're bringing influencers on board to make it go viral". I say the only way you can make a campaign go viral is to make content that people want to share.