Who Influences the Influencers? By Christopher Morency. "For decades, top tier editors, stylists, photographers, and buyers were the leading cultural gatekeepers to taste. They were the early adopters, dictating trends for the following season. But influence today has become democratized, with digital influencers flipping the scale of whose validation matters most. According to Business Insider Intelligence, the value of the influencer economy is predicted to be worth between $5 and $10 billion in global ad spend by 2022. With the barriers to entry having been dramatically lowered, the landscape has become homogenized with a skyrocketing number of online influencers implementing formulaic growth strategies. Influence, now at its saturation point, is becoming increasingly difficult to quantify and trace. Those that have actually driven it for decades, however, never left." "While our study found that brand-owned channels such as websites, physical stores, and mobile apps are still among the top five sources of inspiration for the population at large, the younger and more forward-thinking cohorts increasingly move away from brand-owned channels and skew towards offline encounters and the people they follow on social media." "...power is in the hands of the audience they need to be speaking to most: individuals whose style everyone admires in their digital and everyday lives, the friend who makes the best recommendations, the first to a trend and the first one out, the person who is part of the machinery that pushes culture forward — the Cultural Pioneer." "Cultural Pioneers represent the “innovators,” those who embrace new ideas and commodities even before early adopters. Consider them the people who your favorite influencers are actually being influenced by."