Social Soup announces new influence director, Pete Hong

The Influence Group’s Social Soup has announced the appointment of Pete Hong as influence director.

With over a decade of experience in content marketing and social media, Hong joins Social Soup from We Are Social, where he led the Samsung global account. His resume also includes roles at Domain, Storyful, and Volvo Car Group. 

Social Soup managing director, Katie Palmer-Rose, said Hong’s appointment reflected the significant shift in how both brands and consumers think about influence and influencers.

“The world of transactional, paid for post influence is over. It has been replaced by more authentic connections between influencers and their communities,” she said.

“Influencers need to be high quality and representative of the brand, and content strategies need to align to overall content narrative and brand strategy.

“Pete heads up the division of Social Soup which is leading the standard in professional influence. This is even more important now when people are searching for the human side of a brand and wanting to understand how it represents a diverse and values driven message. Influencers are the face of this, so it is critical they are vetted correctly and engaged thoughtfully throughout a program,” she said.

Hong’s role includes engaging with and vetting influencers, creating content-led paid strategies, and measuring influence performance.

Palmer-Rose said: “Driving new ways of measuring influence that matter is a key part of his role, including building ‘action’ based metrics and engagements that ensure influence doesn’t end with a piece of content.

“What are the key measures we need to look for and what does true impact and success look like? This will challenge conventional influencer measures to build on what has been established and look at not just reach and engagement, but success more broadly.”

The Influence Group director and Social Soup founder and CEO, Sharyn Smith, said: “Pete’s role is further evidence of how we are leading the market in professional influence and investing in setting the standard for the industry in terms of best-practice benchmarking

“His experience and passion for paid across a multi-platform scope ensures he is creating new products around ‘creator content-led paid strategy’ that can be tailored to achieve action or reach and create a long tail of advocacy and genuine influence.”

Of his new role, Pete Hong said: “Across my career, I’ve built Facebook pages – and audiences – when every brand wanted a Facebook page. I created mobile apps when every brand wanted an app. I’ve created emojis, jingles, TV shows, even made a dance go viral.

“I’m excited by the evolving world of influencer/creator marketing and the creator economy, and very excited to join the Social Soup team. The brands that can harness the power of their actual consumers and co-create brand meaning are the ones that will have success in the future.” 

The addition of Hong follows the appointment last month of Chris Burt-Allan as Social Soup’s first creator director.

Social Soup is part of the marketing and strategic consulting business, The Influence Group, which also owns the strategic consulting and insights company Pollinate. 

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Top Image: Pete Hong and Katie Palmer-Rose