The Department for Education has defended spending more than £700,000 on influencer marketing to promote teaching careers and childcare support, arguing it is a more effective way to reach modern audiences. But while the tactic has sparked political debate, former Bee Network brand lead and BrandXYZ founder Jo Taylor argues the real question isn’t whether government should use influencers – it’s whether it’s choosing the right ones.
Full disclosure before I start. I’m married to an assistant head of a primary school, so I have a vested interest in this topic that goes well beyond my day job.
There’s been a lot of noise recently around the Department for Education reportedly spending £700,000 on influencers. What’s slightly confusing the conversation is that these aren’t the same thing. The activity involving Gemma Collins actually took place back in May, whereas the £700,000 figure has only just been reported, which risks them being bundled together as one single campaign.
There have also been suggestions that Gemma Collins herself wasn’t paid for her involvement. Whether that’s true or not almost misses the point. For me, she was still the wrong choice of influencer for the job.
Predictably, the debate has split into two camps. Those calling it a waste of taxpayers’ money, and those saying government is finally catching up with how modern communications actually works. As ever, the reality sits somewhere in the middle.
Let’s start with the uncomfortable bit
Like it or not, influencers work. They reach communities that traditional channels don’t, and they do it faster, more cost effectively, and with far better measurability.
There’s plenty of data to back that up. Some studies suggest influencer campaigns can deliver up to 11 times the ROI of other digital activity, and engagement rates for micro‑influencers often sit between 3 and 7 percent, compared to sub‑2 percent for larger, more broadcast-style content. On top of that, trust plays a huge role. Around 70 percent of people say they trust recommendations from individuals over brands, which is ultimately what drives behaviour.
That matters even more when you consider the channels you’re trying to use. If you’re serious about reaching younger audiences or those not actively exploring teaching as a career, platforms like TikTok come into play. But TikTok doesn’t work in the same way as traditional channels. Reach is driven by creators with established audiences, not by organisations posting occasionally. The DfE doesn’t have a native TikTok presence with a built-in following, so if it wants to show up meaningfully in that space, influencer partnerships are realistically the only way to do it.
When you compare all of that to out of home, the contrast is pretty stark. OOH still has a role in building awareness, but in reality it remains a channel where you’re estimating exposure rather than properly measuring impact. And when you’re trying to influence something as significant as career choice, that difference starts to matter.
But the choice of influencer matters. A lot.
The issue here isn’t the use of influencers itself, its relevance.
Using someone like Gemma Collins might generate attention, but attention isn’t the same as impact. If there’s no credible link between the person and the profession, the message starts to lose weight very quickly. You might get reach, but you risk losing trust, and without trust, behaviour change becomes much harder.
Where this does work: micro, local and representative
In my experience, influencer marketing works best when it’s targeted, local and rooted in real communities. Micro and hyper-local influencers tend to outperform bigger names not because of their scale, but because of their credibility.
They reflect the audiences you’re trying to reach, they understand the barriers those audiences face, and they communicate in a way that feels real. That’s particularly important in public sector campaigns, where the goal is often to engage people who don’t respond to traditional messaging.
There’s also an important inclusion point here. If you’re serious about recruitment into teaching, you have to represent the full breadth of the profession and the people it serves. That includes SEND parents, specialist educators and those working in more complex environments. Micro-influencers are far better placed to tell those stories in a way that feels authentic, because they’re often living that reality themselves.
The data backs this up as well. Smaller creators consistently deliver higher engagement and are perceived as more trustworthy, which ultimately makes them more effective at driving action rather than just awareness.
This isn’t theoretical
This is something I’ve seen first-hand. During my time at TfGM, and across other public sector and non-profit campaigns, we used influencer strategies to reach audiences that other channels simply couldn’t.
It wasn’t about jumping on a trend. It was about using influencers as part of a broader, insight-led approach. And importantly, we could evidence the impact. We weren’t just looking at impressions, we could see where engagement translated into real-world behaviour.
That’s the bit that often gets lost in conversations like this.
“Why not just use real teachers?”
It’s a completely fair question, and there absolutely is a role for real teachers in this kind of content.
But content alone doesn’t guarantee reach. Social platforms prioritise formats and creators that audiences already engage with, and that changes how far your message travels. People engage with people first, institutions second.
It’s not ideal, but it is the reality of the environment we’re working in.
The bit no one is talking about
One thing that’s notably missing from this debate is actual outcome data.
There’s currently no publicly available evidence showing whether the campaign has increased teacher recruitment, which makes it very difficult to judge its effectiveness either way. At the moment, the conversation is centred on the spend and the tactic, rather than the result.
And to be fair, that kind of data isn’t always immediate. Career decisions take time, and attribution is never straightforward. But without that transparency, it’s very easy for the debate to become driven by opinion rather than evidence.
And the bigger context matters
The DfE isn’t doing this for the sake of it. Teacher recruitment and retention is a genuine and ongoing challenge. Targets have been missed in multiple recent years, and significant numbers of teachers continue to leave the profession annually.
At the same time, it’s important to be honest about what campaigns like this can and can’t do. Focusing on recruitment alone doesn’t address the underlying, systemic challenges within the education system. Issues around workload, funding, support and retention aren’t solved through marketing. At best, activity like this helps strengthen the pipeline.
In that sense, it does risk becoming a sticking plaster on a much bigger problem. But that’s a different conversation entirely.
Devil’s advocate: what else could £700,000 have done?
On paper, £700,000 sounds like a big number. In reality, spread across a national education system, it becomes relatively small. It’s unlikely that amount would materially shift the problem at school level if it was simply redistributed, and it certainly wouldn’t solve the long-term pipeline issue.
Looking at alternative marketing routes, LinkedIn is often suggested, particularly for targeting career switchers. It does offer strong targeting, but it comes at a cost, with CPMs often sitting between £30 and £60 depending on the audience. That limits scale quite quickly, and it doesn’t necessarily reach younger or less traditional audiences.
OOH would have delivered broad reach, but with limited ability to measure impact. Paid social without influencers is scalable, but increasingly easy to ignore without a trusted voice behind it.
So the question isn’t really why influencers were used. It’s whether they were used in the right way.
The bottom line
Influencer marketing in the public sector isn’t the problem. Poor choice of influencers, more likely.
If campaigns like this are going to work, the focus needs to be on relevance, locality, authenticity and proper measurement. Big names might generate headlines, but it’s smaller, trusted voices that tend to drive meaningful change.
