Keith Weed has invested in Australian influencer marketing specialist Tribe.

“What I love about Tribe is their ability to provide creative at scale, while significantly reducing the cost,'' said the former Unilever CMO.

The news follows Tribe’s U.S. launch earlier this year, on the back of £5.7 million Series A funding round.

While influencer marketing has been subject to integrity issues in recent years, Weed has consistently backed Tribe’s model.

“The whole area of fake followers and fake engagement is one of the bad parts of influencer marketing. It doesn't surprise me. There’s always a few bad apples, a few bad actors in every new industry," Weed told The Drum.

“What’s great about Tribe is it ensures their platform and the people working on it are clean.”

Tribe founder Jules Lund said the platform’s model, working with micro-influencers, means that the “future of influencer marketing is far more authentic than its past”.

He added that the model is also more nimble: “A brand can now mobilise 1,000 micro-influencers with less energy than it did to work with a talent agent or supermodel.”

Lund said Weed’s “unparalleled expertise will help us understand how to better serve an industry that gets more exciting by the day.”

Tribe works with 44 of the top 100 global brands, including Unilever, L’Oreal and Marvel. Since launching in the U.S. market three months ago it has amassed a network of over 10,000 U.S. based influencers and some 50 local clients, including Procter & Gamble, Logitech as well as Unilever.