Answer: Influencer marketing.
Okay, let me clarify something.
The idea of paying people with huge amounts of reach to advertise your products isnt dumb.
Celebrity endorsements are a thing, and have been known to work wonders for brands.
Online influencers, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish.
Christ, just let it roll off your tongue.Influencers.
Its one of those words that sounds really grubby, doesnt it?
A bit likephalanges, ordongle.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Thing is, theyre very seldom actually influential.
At best, most are just really photogenic.
And the entire industry serves as a tool to separate clueless brands from their marketing budget.
Bloggers or blaggers?
Social media services have always shown an uncanny ability to raise the profiles of their most prolific users.
MySpace, for example, gave us Jeffree Star, who now owns a veritable cosmetics empire.
Some of this blagging is actually pretty brazen.
Sadly, thats since been deleted, but the internet never forgets.
Lets do some back-of-the-napkin math.
Dublin is a notoriously expensive city, witha chronic shortage of hotel rooms.
By and large, online influencers dont represent good value for money.
And thats when they actually follow through.
Quite often, they take the product and cash, and leave brands high and dry.
This is something thats rife.
This trend affects both small companies and huge global brands.
Sabbat got $45,000 upfront, with a further $15,000 upon the completion of the deal.
Obviously, he didnt come close enough to that, and now the PR firm wants its money back.
Fraud, glorious fraud
By and large, the influencer marketing space is rife with fraud.
I presume this is to convince brands that their advertising spots are performing better than they truly are.
The good news is that brands are increasingly aware of this.
We need to take urgent action now to rebuild trust before its gone forever, he added.
But unfortunately, some are still getting caught out.
Earlier this year, marketing agency Mediakixcreated two fictitious Instagram accountsfocusing on travel and lifestyle respectively.
The experiment was to see how far you could take a fake account.
Both accounts had a healthy amount of followers and engagement paid for, of course.
Its worth noting that this chicanery isnt limited to Instagram.
What the hell is an influencer anyway?
What is an influencer?
You dont have to look far for them.
I dont think these people cheapen the term influencer, because its already pretty much worthless.
However, I do find it more than a little bit sad that people aspire to be one.
Furthermore, the field is filled with the worst types of opportunistic and dishonest actors.
This happens on almost all social media platforms.
And, Im sad to say, this has done nothing to dent the stratospheric rise of influencer marketing.
But that doesnt mean I cant be grumpy about it all.
So, what can be done?
One idea is to have influencers abide by a code of ethics, similar to those journalists work under.
Im skeptical about that, because influencers arent journalists.
Theres no editorial process.
There isnt an editor-in-chief barking commands, and ensuring that everyone toes the line.
They exist solely to be tools for marketing products and services thats it.
So, perhaps the burden to fix influencer marketing lies on the shoulder of brands.
With influencer fraud now a $100 million problem, this seems like the most inevitable outcome.
