There’s been a lot just lately about going through influencers to talk to your audiences.
That all sounds a bit abstract on the face of it.
What does that mean exactly?
It means Jeremy Corbyn being interviewed by grime star JME in the run-up to the General Election.
It also means a YouTuber being invited by NATO as part of a Press trip to sensitive exercises.
I stumbled across this when listening to Emily Unia reporting from the trip on ‘From Our Own Corespondent.’ I listen to iplayer a lot when I’m working.
Eastern European comedian and vlogger Mircea Bravo was asked along to shoot his take on the exercise.
What was his take?
It was camp airline steward safety run-throughs on the Army transport plane. It was joking about female soldiers wearing make-up on the battlefield. But as Emily says herself there was a logic to this.
Emily Unia “It turns out that Mircea Bravo is a well known Romanian prankster. He posts funny videos on YouTube and he has hundreds of thousands of fans. I watch the video he has made about NATO and the Romanian Army’s involvement.
“It’s subtle PR. There are soildiers wear yeti camoflage described as ‘professional players of hide and seek.’ The principle of collective defence is described as ‘All for one and one for all.’
But as the BBC reporter goes on, if the Romanian involvement in NATO needs to flourish in future generations it is by reaching those generations now wherever they are that will help deliver this.