For years, advertising in Ghana followed a familiar path. A business with a product to sell would approach an advertising agency, develop a campaign, buy space or airtime in traditional media and wait for the message to reach consumers.
That model is changing. Today, a smartphone, a social media account and a sufficiently large or engaged following can turn an individual into a marketing channel capable of attracting brands and generating income from advertising.
From TikTok and Instagram to YouTube and other digital platforms, content creators are increasingly producing product reviews, demonstrations, lifestyle videos and promotional skits that place brands directly in front of audiences that traditional advertising has sometimes struggled to reach.
The emergence of personalities such as Serwaa Dosoo, Juliana Amoateng and many others reflects a broader shift in the advertising landscape, where the individual is increasingly becoming part of the commercial communication infrastructure.
According to Professor Kobby Mensah, a marketing professor at the University of Ghana, the rise of influencer marketing should not be interpreted as the death of traditional advertising. Rather, it represents another development in the wider field of marketing communication.
“Marketing communication is broad, including advertising, which is a sub-field of marketing communication,” Professor Mensah explained.
He said businesses now operate within what marketers describe as Integrated Marketing Communication, or IMC, which brings together several approaches including advertising, public relations, direct marketing and personal selling.
Social media and influencer marketing have subsequently become additional tools within that broader system.
This distinction is important because it changes the question from whether influencers are replacing advertising agencies to how businesses are reallocating their communication budgets among an expanding number of channels.
Professor Mensah believes influencers can take a portion of the market traditionally available to advertising agencies, particularly where businesses see measurable benefits from using individuals with established online communities.
“If you had 100% of the pie to yourself and your parents added another person to the household, you would naturally have to give up part of your share, perhaps a quarter of it,” he said.
The pressure, however, is likely to be more significant for smaller businesses, which may not have the resources to mount large-scale campaigns through established advertising agencies or traditional media. Influencer marketing can offer these businesses a more accessible route to consumers.
For consumers, Professor Mensah said, one of the strongest attractions is the ability to replay and revisit promotional content. Unlike a radio or television advertisement that may disappear once the programme or commercial break ends, a social media promotion can remain online, allowing consumers to return to it when they are ready to make a purchasing decision.
There is also the question of familiarity. Influencers often build relationships with their audiences over long periods, creating a sense that consumers know the person behind the recommendation.
Professor Mensah emphasised that this can make influencer marketing appear more personal and relatable than conventional advertising, which consumers may perceive as more deliberately staged.
The same familiarity, however, creates one of the industry’s biggest challenges: trust.
The professor warned that influencer marketing does not automatically provide the level of credibility traditionally associated with established media.
Traditional advertising, particularly on television, can function as a form of validation for a business because of the financial resources required to secure prominent advertising space.
“When you come on TV, the assumption is that you are wholesome,” he said, explaining that consumers may interpret the ability to advertise through expensive traditional channels as an indication that a company is established and capable of delivering what it promises.
That assumption does not necessarily apply to influencer marketing. The relatively low barriers to producing social media advertisements can also make the space vulnerable to businesses or individuals whose operations may not be as credible as their online presence suggests.
A consumer may therefore purchase a product because of an influencer’s recommendation only to encounter problems with delivery, quality or after-sales service. That creates a difficult balancing act for brands.
Influencers can provide reach, familiarity and highly targeted engagement, but businesses still have to consider the credibility of the platform, the influencer and the product itself.
For advertising agencies, however, the development is not necessarily a threat that must be resisted. Professor Mensah said the industry has already begun adapting.
“There are agencies that actually manage personalities like this,” he revealed.
Some advertising and marketing agencies, he explained, already manage influencers and incorporate them into campaigns, although consumers may not always know that an agency is behind the relationship.
The reason is straightforward: the perceived independence and authenticity of the influencer are part of the value being sold.
If audiences believe that every aspect of an influencer’s communication is controlled by a conventional advertising structure, some of the personal connection that makes influencer marketing attractive could be weakened.
The future of advertising, therefore, may not be a choice between the advertising agency and the influencer. Instead, it may increasingly be about how the two fit into a larger marketing ecosystem.
Large companies, according to Professor Mensah, are unlikely to abandon traditional advertising simply because influencer marketing is growing. Traditional media continues to offer broad reach, institutional visibility and a degree of credibility that businesses may still consider important.
At the same time, social media offers something different: direct interaction, persistence of content, targeted audiences and the ability for individuals to become powerful distribution points for commercial messages.
For Ghana’s advertising industry, the real transformation may therefore be taking place in the definition of who constitutes an advertising channel.
The advertising agency is no longer the only organised gateway between a company and its customers. Increasingly, a creator with a phone, an audience and the ability to produce persuasive content can occupy part of that space.
That does not necessarily make the advertising agency obsolete. It means the advertising economy is becoming more fragmented, more competitive and more dependent on understanding where consumers spend their attention.
As Ghana’s digital audience continues to grow, the brands that understand how traditional advertising, public relations, social media, influencer marketing and other forms of communication complement one another may increasingly determine where the industry’s money goes next.
