Social Media Marketing and the rising phenomenon of web influencers on Instagram: Italy VS Germany. A neuro-linguistic and statistical analysis of captions.

Social media, that is to say websites and applications that enable users to create and share content and to participate in social networking, have widely influenced our lives and the way we communicate and have become a popular platform for marketing and fashion brands' advertisement. In fact, many brands post their latest products and updates as photos on different social networks to promote them and gain popularity. Nowadays, the new protagonists are social networks, in particular Instagram: posts, selfies, photo reportages, pure voyeurism. The communication that strikes and attracts us is the visual one, which does not need explanations, but reaches us directly and quickly. A picture is worth a thousand words, pictures fill our days and evoke a million emotions. Recently a new phenomenon is born: the so-called Social Media Marketing. Fashion brands start collaborations with online influencers, that is people with the passion for fashion who choose to share their own style on the web talking about news and trends started by fashion brands. One of the main functions of influencers is to promote brands and organizations and achieve a successful marketing campaign by taking high-quality photos of products such as clothes, accessories, make-up, and food. On the one hand, the aim of this thesis is to focus on fashion brands' Social Media Marketing phenomenon, particularly related to the case of Italian and German web influencers on Instagram; on the other hand, some posts will be presented in order to conduct a neuro-linguistic analysis of the captions through Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and a statistical analysis through SPSS software. The first part of the thesis presents the characteristics and novelties of Instagram and the rising phenomenon of web influencers. The second part focuses on the real figure of the fashion influencer through a comparison between Italy and Germany. The captions of some posts will be analysed so that it will be possible to understand the intentions of influencers and the effects on the public.