Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Second tier influencers (100k followers) paying expensive hotels and private plane trips of first tier influences (1 mil followers), so that they can appear on their feeds, and gain new followers.
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Hansen: So in terms of quality, you could use a punch up right there. Ideally, that's up votes from quality people.
Lacie: Quality people?
Hansen: High fours. Impress those up-scale folks, you'll gain velocity on your arc and there's your boost.
somewhat similar appealing to google search the way to gaming instagram is by having famous people/big accounts/verified accounts comment and interact with ur account so you 1. appear in the activity for their followers 2. appear on the explore page for the potential new followers and more engagement, repeat ad nauseam
"organic growth"
This same calculus happens at all levels: trying to be part of certain groups (Stanford graduate, YCombinator graduate etc...) , join certain clubs (Founders who have raised a Series A, Forbes 30 under 30), impress certain people (Investors, Board Members) etc... to get where you want. Just change the players depending on what you want out of life.
So if making it explicit makes you feel bad, then you probably feel bad about how things work already.
To put it in millennial marketing pseudo-jargon: how many likes = 1 vote?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9x92nwGf_M
Now that he has seen Trump get elected, I am sure he knows it is possible.
There isn't much substance/ understanding/signal/meaning in buying a ride on the coattails of a superficial instagram "influencer".
Their emptiness in the case of the show is based on the emptiness of the people themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if such a system did wind up being fairly "empty" as you say (see: twitter, IG etc...), but that's a reflection on the users, not the structure of the system.
What I don't like is that the most hyper, overenthusiastic, over the top characters send a signal to kids that it's the only route up the ladder. It is not.
I just finished "Bad Blood", the book on Theranos. Given that it was a fraud, it was entirely empty. But it was designed to look substantial to Stanford deans and Valley VCs. Later the target shifted to other sorts of movers and shakers, including corporate titans and political bigwigs. They all got suckered, and some of them still don't know it.
I think Instagram influencers look shallow to me because their audience is people who value different things than I do. But I don't take that as a sign that I'm somehow better. Just that I have different weaknesses.
E.g., I spent years developing NeXT software because I drank the Jobs kool-aid. I didn't do that for hard-headed business reasons; I did it because the NeXT hardware and software was incredibly cool to young me. At the time, I would have smugly defended my choice as more rational than getting starry-eyed over a celebrity. In retrospect, I was wrong. I just fell for for something tuned for my weaknesses, just like we all do.
This is actually a great example that I think supports my point. Sure, maybe you got caught up in some hype. But at least you were improving your software development skills, which is something useful.
What usefulness is accomplished or what meaning is found by getting starry eyed over Instagram fame? Maybe you could make an argument related to minor photography or artistic skills that they use to enhance their account. But it's not very substantial -- most Instagram influencers don't become highly skilled photographers in the process.
I understand people have different values. But they still have to defend them and the meaning the values supposedly carry.
The utility of a skill is mostly based around societal value of said skill, not really much else. People get paid millions all around the planet putting balls in various receptacles, but such is the human need for entertainment and feeling good (even if temporary) is a business that is never going to go away. Warren Buffett has said he’s lucky enough he was born when being able to memorize and process lots of financial numbers could be extremely advantageous - maybe that may not be so valuable in 600 years while art is much more precious?
It's true that my particular weakness was related to an economically productive activity. But although I personally value production more than consumption, production isn't inherently superior; one without the other is just waste.
Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs because he was very good at manipulating both producers and consumers. The (modest) technical improvements of the iPhone over existing smartphones wouldn't have happened without the millions of people who bought the notion that a slicker device in slicker packaging with slicker ads was deeply better.
Instagram influencers are no more shallow than an Apple ad. And I'd say less, in that they have built up personal businesses by entertaining others and finding a way to monetize it. It's not my kind of thing, but it's not essentially different than the travel magazine business. In both cases people go places and get paid to performatively do fun things in a way that's funded by self-promoting merchants.
The thing is, these all aren't enforced by governments, but through social media and organizations. The popular one sesame credit in China is from the Alibaba group, not the Chinese government. In the same vein, Instagram is it's own platform, people can determine how much they think "followers" are worth and businesses can use their own discretion to decide how much to enforce their own policies based on others "social credit" or "followers"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/my-misadventure-with...
TL;DR socialite of unknown authenticity (but definitely real confidence woman) scams a bank, luxury hotels and restaurants, private air charter company, and the author of that article out of several hundred thousand dollars. Did not get the $20M she was hoping for, though.
There's talk of a movie deal, so, her brazenness might be rewarded after all.
For example, could you build a following traveling the country by interstate in a Fiesta, staying at Motel 6 and eating at Waffle House? It wouldn't cost Motel 6 and Waffle House almost anything to comp a few waffles and otherwise-unoccupied rooms as an experiment, if they aren't doing similar things already.
Well, here are some ways:
1. They have an incentive to be honest* (e.g. they would be punished if they weren't), e.g. lawyers, engineers, family members
2. They seem like just honest people, e.g. the Dalai Lama?
3. They say or do many other things that you agree with and your values seem aligned, e.g. politicians, athletes, some corporate leaders
4. They are a lot like you, except slightly different, so you trust them implicitly because you would trust yourself
Influencers can hit a bit of all those notes.
At this early point, it's probably easier as an influencer to actually find a place that they like and think are good, rather than just taking cash to promote something they don't believe in. Later on that may change.
Influencers do have a reputation, if they keep sending people to garbage, eventually those people will notice, so they have something to lose.
Some influencers are really good at certain things that people admire (e.g. game influencers), and a lot of influencers go for that 'just a regular person who is your friend and let's go on cool trips together' feel.
But note that these same points are potential reasons to distrust, e.g. an influencer who has hit it big and plans to exit the business anyway may find it more worthwhile to start shilling since their future reputation doesn't matter to them.
I trust (some) people I know, because I know them.
I think influencers have more of an incentive to be dishonest than to be honest. If they tell a hotel "I'll promote you to all of my followers if you give me a week's stay" and then they go on to tell their followers "This place is crap, stay away", that's going to reduce their future business.
If they tell their followers to go to a crap hotel, then they can just say "Oh, it must have changed since I was there". And indeed, by revealing themselves to the hotel beforehand, they've tainted the experience, the hotel is going to treat them differently.
Aspiring to be famous for something, like being a great musician, no longer seems to be thought a necessary component.
the most famous musicians are not the greatest musicians, the relationship is largely arbitrary
That's cool but the old world where if the food isn't awesome the writer will say "THIS FOOD WAS BAD" was probably better.
Talking about things that you like is fun and from what the poster stated, they benefit from trying new things and building a following. One of my coworkers does this for beer and has a a small following more interested in the minutiae of beer stuff than commerce.
The problem is a matter of trust... when the advocate decides to cash in, the nature of what they write can change dramatically.
As someone who only reads restaurant reviews in the hope that they'll be bad (I blame over-exposure to AA Gill), I find this whole social media 'influencer' thing deeply boring. Bad reviews are the fun type!
This sounds so 20 years ago, when people were afraid to type credit cards or personal information into the internet.
Do they really though? People are told and trained all their lives to want escapism. That their lives could be better if they drank X, drove Y and wore Z. It's a natural side effect of branding and advertising. It's not enough to sell to the people who actually need your product, you have to convince others that they want it too.
Consumerism is not a natural human mechanism. It's a hack of commerce and something we've only really been exposed to —in any scale— for the last couple of hundred years.
By showing people what it's like to vacation in a Fiesta, Motel 6, and Waffle House you'll drive traffic to luxury hotels.
All of my experiences with mid-to-high end hotels seem like an exercise in bilking you at every turn so you can pretend you're wealthy, and hotel staff that are artificially polite at best, indifferent and uncaring at worst.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbjw-VrJCUb8PTGoiDI2UMw
Hey, that's me!
2+ years, 80,000+ miles and 35+ countries in Africa living out of my Jeep. I've just passed the half-way point and am really looking forward to the Cape to Cairo run North.
You're right - there are all types. Glamorous, selectively documenting lifestyle types, and others focusing on the craft of it, and others on living that way full time. And there are dozens more trying the same thing all the time, motivated by the earlier batches. I find it all a bit fascinating.
He's been walking from China to Europe on and off for a few years now. He's currently walking through Iran.
He has some amazing interactions on the road, it's incredible how many people stop to talk to him, or give him food (or in one case, try and rob him at gunpoint for his watch).
One thing I like about his blog and journey is that he doesn't seem to be documenting a lifestyle, or push a philosophy on anyone. He just enjoys walking.
Doing the exact same thing with very small refinements, over and over. It's not that glamorous, but I reckon at 1M+ subscribers he is doing quite a lot better than many obscure luxurious lifestyle personalities.
Sounds great.
He was in a Chevette, not a Fiesta, and the hotels were off-brand but it's the same idea. A typical passage:
Afterwards I retired with a six-pack to my motel,
where I discovered that the bed, judging by its
fragrance and shape, had only recently been vacated by a
horse. It had a sag in it so severe that I could only
see the TV at its foot by splaying my legs to their
widest extremity. It was like lying in a wheel-barrow.The problem is that those things are not difficult to obtain, and so any following you would have would be shared by 100K people just like you. To be interesting, you'd have to have some unattainable quality in addition to eating at Waffle House, such as being a multi-billionaire, or an extremely successful actor/actress, or a Turner Prize winning artist.
Of course, this would end up with custom $250K Fiestas, Motel 6 starting a curated luxury brand, and Waffle Houses with chefs and monthlong reservation lists. The reason why a flow of money for nothing comes from luxury branding is pretty obvious. The cash is coming from people who spend large amounts of money casually, in a way that can be significantly influenced by the people they follow on Instagram.
With the right brand, right audience, and right production value, anything's possible. Influencer marketing can be finicky, though. A successful campaign requires authenticity – most audiences can see right through paid promotion. I think there's a different dynamic when a brand approaches a creator vs. a creator approaching a brand.
I think a lot of these self-proclaimed "influencers" seek out "luxury" type branding in an attempt to get free stuff they otherwise probably couldn't afford or to create content around a lifestyle which seems unattainable to their audience and therefore draws more views/clicks/shares/virality ("If only I could live like that one day") – mostly Internet junk-food.
The difference between "luxury" marketing and even "premium" (or mainstream) marketing are the former's efforts to influence people who are never going to buy or use the product.
A lot of a luxury good's status comes from the "halo" given to it by all of us who'll unlikely use it - thus giving it the allure to the people who have the money.
So, in essence, it's more important for a luxury brand to have mass market penetration, than it is for a premium product. For example, Aston Martin needs you to know it's an unattainable symbolic brand, and does that through mainstream marketing (like Bond product placements, YouTuber videos etc...) more than BMW does (who're selling to a premium audience who will buy on product rather than perception).
TL;DR: perversely, it's in everyone's interests to use influencers more for the luxury industry than the rest of the industry, and why it's seeing the abuse it is.
It seems to me that the target market of these “influencers” is teens with little to no money that spend hours looking at these “influencers” exactly because these pictures are as close as they’re gonna get to that luxury lifestyle.
People who can actually afford this will just go on holidays by themselves with no thoughts about the “influencers” whatsoever, also because by the time you can afford such lifestyles you widen up to the obvious commercial intents of these influencer “recommendations”, making their “review” purpose moot.
In my social circle people who spend days & nights looking and sharing the influencer pictures can’t actually afford any of that even if they wanted to. Those that can afford it don’t give a damn about the influencers.
As for Instagram influencers: who are the people staying in these hotels? Sure, a lot of them are likely to be the sort who read the FT or the Economist, but a good chunk of them are going to be honeymooners, for example, who I'd imagine are exactly the sort who would look to Instagram for ideas. Likewise there are obviously people in their 20s who could afford to stay in these places, and not all of them spend their time on HN. I'd guess Instagram is as good a place as any to reach them.
Isn't the idea to follow people who, for example, travel to cool places that you might not have considered?
Perhaps seeing one of those pictures pop up where influencer X spends a while in a Maldives resort might actually get you interested to go check it out yourself?
My family used to travel a lot and we went to a lot of family-unsafe places at times (like in-the-wilderniss campsites in southern africa where you can't leave the RV because there is snakes and wild animals outside or climbing up several vulcanoes in iceland and I mean 'climb' not 'walk up a slope')
Those are actually cool places.
For example, on average I would assume most women prefer a romantic getaway to the Maldives over climbing a volcano in Iceland. And most people with kids likely won't be going on a month long roadtrip through Africa or South-America.
Because a romantic getaway is far cheaper than Iceland or Africa. It's not because it's outside their comfort zone, it's because they can't afford it. The average woman (or man) can barely take enough vacation days, let alone pay for it.
If you cannot make a decision between the Four Seasons and the Conrad or whatever, some random guys food porn or gush about the bellman may tip you.
Travel magazines have been doing this sort of thing for decades.
Most teenagers can't afford a sports car but if you win them over they could wind up buying one when they are older and able to afford it.
I have seen the reverse backfire with traditional news. They would take all sorts of bullshit youth blaming and stupid moral panics and then wonder why people under middle age don't consider them worth reading or watching for free, let alone paying for.
That doesn't mean mom and dad got no money, though.
I happen to know a kid with rich parents and they frequently have to buy him stuff he discovered on instagram -- YEEZY shoes and whatnot.
I'm sure there are enough kids that'll bug their parents about planning their next vacation where some popular influencer were.
You meant to say "rich parents who frequently chose to buy him stuff", didn't you?
Now, I know for a fact that the feeds to influence buying decisions for smaller, cheaper stuff, such as cosmetics. It is not a long stretch to think that it also works for vacations. However, from what I heard, the brands that are most successful in selling out their stock are in the category of affordable luxury.
Their fans?
> Gullible teens with no money?
Probably. But gullible teens with no money have parents who have money and gullible teens with no money grow up to become adults with money. Hence why advertisers want to get to them when they are young. It's well known that earlier you can influence people, the more influence you can have.
"Influencers" is a new word for an old concept - people/institutions with a following.
Lebron James is an influencer. The Atlantic ( and its journalists ) are influencers. Tom Hanks is an influencer. Why do you think advertisers spend so much money on them?
A small thought experiment now, say I run a restaurant and both Tom Hanks and Lebron James go on national television and declare it their favorite place to eat, what happens? I'd say starting the next day I'm going to be flooded with reservations despite the fact that the talents that make them famous have nothing to do with their ability to judge food.
Influencers are influencers because a large group of people act collectively to give them influence. The reasons why people give influencers such influence is varied but as a business owner all that really matters is how much that influence may be worth monetarily.
I think they are doing pretty well for themselves but they never seem to have anything interesting and original to say.
Why should I trust him on coffee machines any more than some hot girl in a bikini on Instagram?
Which is why this stuff works for premium mediocre products. Stuff that is more expensive, but still within the reach of the middle class.
But their followers cannot afford 1000 dollar a night hotels. So if I was a luxury hotel, I'd tell them to fuck off.
But if I was a cupcake shop, I'd let each of these influencers eat whatever they wanted for free.
What you say is true of Paris, Aman hotels, some Four Seasons properties, African safaris, most of the Maldives, and a handful of other places and hotel operators.
It's not true of many others, some of which are surprising: Mauritius, Vienna, much of Asia (esp Japan and Thailand), much of South America, most of India, a lot of Italy, and even French Polynesia.
Then again, it's a 5-star hotel, so service will generally be good (and that is worth something in my view).
Alcohol is also factor in some way with many decisions - it probably doesn't come as a surprise to non-drinkers just how expensive a weekly habit can get. It also helps to be able to work on spreadsheets and compound interest calculations whilst staying strictly sober. ;)
Overall in the end, it's still the same old phenomenon; advertising, but carried through a newer medium. TV infomercials, print ads and telemarketing used to be big, but that's passé now.
Perhaps what I find more interesting about the OP is how there are still so many businesses with informal processes when it comes to promotion - even something as a simple as an up-to-date Google Maps listing can sometimes go neglected.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/arts/music/fyre-festiv...
But it doesn’t seem to have impacted her career any
You have to trust someone.
Following someone, and knowing them are different things.
> like their work
Which often is "selfies in different places"
> and recommend only a few places?
That they convinced to let them stay, visit, or eat for free...
Consider also that the alternatives are heeding the hotel itself or a booking engine or a travel agent. As was said, if you're going to be influenced by someone, why wouldn't it be someone whose veneer of life you'd at least tangentially followed, someone who might typically have similar interests to you (surfing, outdoors, fine dining, etc). It might be an imperfect filter of the products being offered, but at least there's a non-zero chance that they rejected poor offers or didn't write enthusiastically about the ones they didn't love.
I think it's short sighted to write off some of this.
Influencers do work for that certain demographic though, to an extent. Contiki, who offer group travel packages for the 20-something year old market who just want to go on a bar crawl through Europe or Asia, use influencers a lot to sell their product. They're just in the right price bracket where they can say "look, for only $4000, you too can live this kind of lifestyle".
It's the budget-luxury brands that get the best value for money out of influencers. When people splash out a bit of money, they'll look at the successful influencers and say "I want to be like them", and buy the stuff that they're shilling, trying to buy the lifestyle.
Personally, I wouldn't go on a Contiki tour if you paid me, but there are people who enjoy that kind of travel. There are even travel companies that sell packages specifically designed so you can get as much Instagram material as possible, in an attempt to become an influencer yourself. It's a vicious, self feeding cycle.
In fact, my girlfriend who uses social media a lot more than I do says she knows like dozens of girls from college who are all wannabe influencers. There is a huge social media rat race currently going on which is why Facebook is making 40 billion dollars a year.
[0]: https://www.recode.net/2017/8/2/16081086/instagram-snapchat-...
I know with those examples they are selling their own products, but I'm sure there are some more Linus Tech Tips style makeup influencers that she follows that impacts her buying decisions with her disposable income.
In the end, all this is is just ad sales: I have alleged access to customers who want your product but don't know yet. I can share your company or product w/ them. They trust me. It will influence them to become your customer. Give me X."
And worse than that, many times those requests come with a price tag on top of providing the company's product or service for free.
And really it's no surprise given how social media works. Now any "idiot" can gain a following or an audience over some set of topics, or philosophy, or style, and gain a following that tunes. I say "idiot" less as a derogatory thing and more as a "every Joe or Jane" kind of thing who persists and is focused. Any following of people that tunes into something, anything, can often be cajoled into seeing or experiencing some mention or ad about an unrelated thing and that causes some %-age of that group to pay attention and some %-age of those that pay attention to potentially investigate further and possibly become paying customers of some company or product they didn't know about before. Certainly not rocket science and definitely not new.
What we're seeing here is merely a temporary fashion/trend that tends to focus heavily on luxury hotels and envious-appearing travel experiences.
Influencers, especially the more popular ones, help inform consumers about a product/service/experience.
The only thing an influencer has is their followers and most influencers really are careful to not advertise products that they don't believe in themselves.
https://www.facebook.com/WhiteMooseCafe/posts/20484067421065...
Which is harsh, but fair.
I see this pattern a lot in coder twitter. The people with big follower counts that are always tweeting about their amazing coding and love of software development are not the ones building stuff. Even if their feelings are genuine, the excessive self promotion is quite ugly and makes me doubt everything they say. They are not people I want to trust or follow or listen to
Finding people who are well-respected in their space, actively create high-value content for their audiences, and can find ways to organically share a brands message are where the real value lies. Combined with trackable promotions, this can be very effective when executed properly.
Apparently a lot of people even sent in emails along the lines of "I don't usually use a tripod, but I totally would if you sent me one for free".
Of course, the post went on to say that they don't send them free tripods, because it would benefit nobody. The photography isn't going to magically start using a tripod because they got one for free, and the company wasn't going to get very good exposure from a photographer who has no experience shooting with a tripod.
Who wouldn't want to get luxury hotel stays for free, have brands send you free stuff, or get paid to promote something? It's an incredible deception and many are falling for it.
> "We have to filter out influencers who have basically bought bots. There's a lot of those these days."
[0] http://blog.fohr.co/post/2017/9/20/searching-by-verified-aut...
If they really didnt want to be inundated with these requests, they only need to cease acting on all of them until the message gets out.
Stanford is doing that with their new Redwood City "campus", an office park five miles from the main campus. No professors. No students. No researchers. No labs. All administrators. "Stanford units that will have at least some employees at Stanford Redwood City include Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; School of Medicine administration; Office of Development; University Human Resources; University Libraries; Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning; and Residential & Dining Enterprises."
"The first phase of construction at Stanford Redwood City will include four office buildings, indoor and outdoor dining areas and plazas, a child care center, a glass-atrium fitness center, a parking garage, a landscaped greenway, a 2.4-acre park and a sustainable central energy facility."
It's Stanford's version of a luxury center for influencers.
(As a Stanford alum, I consider this embarrassing.)
Hmm, close enough.
[1] http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Sh...
I think you are wrong, they are more rock stars or sports celebrities.
I have a relative doing something with restaurants. Made some iOS app/ website and put pictures, 1-2 line reviews there and on sites like FB, instagram etc. With about couple of months of effort, he was able to mooch off 1000s of restaurant meals along with dozen of friends and family members. His total vocabulary about food is 'amazing', 'awesome', 'tasty', 'yummy' when using with spellcheck of course.
In the lobby, there was a giant touchscreen and one of the icons was "social media".
I tapped it, and it said "Our Instagram account is currently offline."
I've never managed to get free WiFi properly working on a plane or train.
Your friends aren’t interesting enough for that. So you follow some professional entertainers, influencers.
And that’s it. Now you can be marketed to.
Everyone else is busy following other people that they don't know. Why? I dunno, ask them.
But keep in mind, other words for "influencer" would be "blogger", "streamer", "content producer". Have you never found a cool channel on Youtube that has enjoyable content? Maybe humour, or crafts, or lets play walkthroughs of video games? Boom, those are influencers. We're all spending time watching other people (be it a streamer on Twitch or a movie start in a blockbuster movie), and brands are willing to pay money to ensure we see their products while we do it.
My partner is learning how to make soap (surprisingly interesting hobby) so she follows a number of different soapmakers on social media to learn more about their recipes, tips and tricks, see cool designs. And also, if one of those soapmakers she respects strongly recommends some range of fragrance oils, or whatever, she's likely to consider them closely when she buys some. Think maybe a craft supply company would be willing to throw some money (or at least free supplies) at someone who will recommend them?
There's nothing new here; celebrity endorsements date back to ancient Rome if not even earlier; gladiators were paid to endorse consumer products. If people will watch it, someone else will pay to advertise in the background. :)
I subscribe to a dozen Youtube channels - mostly educational - not just "cool". My question/point was about Instagram. Not much educational value from a photo of a girl in a bikini at a pool ;)
Alright, but obviously the most popular channels on Youtube are entertainment not educational, so you understand that most people are using these mediums in a way that's quite different to you, right?
Any even those "educational" channels are being run by what a marketing exec would think of as an influencer. Just because you're watching some guy build a coffee table out of reclaimed lumber (or whatever) doesn't mean someone isn't willing to pay money to make sure it's being done with a specific brand of power tools, in case you decide to buy one just like you saw in the video.
> Not much educational value from a photo of a girl in a bikini at a pool
My partner follows a number of Instagram accounts devoted to specific hobbies she has, such as soapmaking, or animal rescue/wildlife rehabilitation. Instagram is about way, way more than just "girls in bikinis". But again! Many of the people looking at girls in bikinis on Instagram are women wishing they looked like that; if the model posts about how some (probably fraudulent) supplement helped her, you don't think that'll cause a direct boost in sales?
Anything with eyeballs looking at it is worth slapping an ad on. And given how many people are looking at Instagram every moment of every day, obviously it qualifies. If it's not a great platform for you, that's fine (I don't even have the app installed, so I'm totally in agreement), but given Instagram is apparently well over 500m MAUs, that says more about us than Instagram. :)
You've already said you follow some content creators, so you're familiar with the mechanism. What's left to understand?
Six months ago, I bought a Penny Skateboard because I discovered they were a "thing", thanks to Casey Neistat's videos. I don't even particularly like that YouTuber, but find his "content" fascinating and videos a pleasant way to burn time.
I don't aspire to be like Casey Neistat in most ways - I'm not even interested in making YouTube videos. First class flights don't intrigue me, because I handle economy just fine and like flying in any form. If I saw him in the street, I'd probably say hi but I wouldn't ask for a selfie or shoutout.
So why did I buy a Penny board - something one might associate as only being for children (some people feel this way about bicycles too) - why was I "influenced"? Because I discovered that there exists a third option to skateboards and longboards (both of which don't really enamour me because the former are too noisy and the latter are too large). Penny boards, on the other hand appear inoffensive but are challenging and thus rewarding to learn. Plus, they're not expensive - so I figured, why not give it a go and see if I can learn a new balance-skill especially since it's not something everyone can manage?
Next, I saw a pre-Christmas sale, said "yolo" and just went for it.
I'm glad I did go for it because not only have I learned something that some people will never be able to learn, but I'm still continuing to improve more than 100 hours later while others my age decide to stay on their couches, or almost worse: sign up to boot camp-style ongoing gym memberships so they can hit the meat market on a Saturday night or beach weekend.
Like with any business, it's a numbers game. You might not feel directly influenced and you very well may not be, but most people still will have tried Coca-Cola at least once in their lives.
-- Michael Burry (The Big Short)
... and the atlantic and most newspapers, media companies and even this site. Welcome to the consumer economy where trying to "influence" consumers to consume is the name of the game.
Advertising is at the heart of everything in our society from technology to politics to news. We don't even realize it most of the time because it's all around us like air.
I'm really happy that I don't work on consumer products.
Those so-called "influencers" aren't really about serving their audience -- they strike me as just a scammy way to travel "for free".
If I can pattern myself 90% after someone that other people are imitating, those other people are virtually already 90% imitating me anyway, they just don't know it yet. If I can get them to remember my name, and a significant chunk to think that my 10% difference is in qualities where I'm superior to the person I'm imitating, I've at least carved out a niche, but I maybe on the road to completely replacing them.
Of course on a very small scale, this could just be amongst people at my workplace, or who go to my college.
Thing is, it works.
For sure a lot of them are pretty low effort and just do it as a side job, but I don't think it's as simple as just being attractive and I don't think a lot of them are as entitled as they seem.
It's all cut from the same cloth but at the end of the day, advertising works.
Sure, for the writers in order to maintain an illusion of objectivity. But none of them have policies on the publication/company taking ad money in exchange for positive reviews.
> Those so-called "influencers" aren't really about serving their audience -- they strike me as just a scammy way to travel "for free".
Nobody "serves" the audience. You develop an audience so that the audience can serve you. Also, it isn't "scammy". It's business and it's been going on long before social media.
Do you think tv execs put Bud Light commercials during football games because they love horribly watered down beer? Do you think X athlete chooses Nike over Adidas or vice versa because one treats their chinese slave laborers better? Do you really think matthew mcconaughey thinks lincolns are the best cars? Do you think steven spielberg or other directors use product placement in their films because they believe in all those products? Do you think newspapers run rolex ads in their papers because they really believe it's worthless to spend money on rolex?
No. The answer is the all these influencers push products that pay them the most. You and I would do the same if we had a following.
Also, those "reputable magazines" still sell ads to the companies they cover. There's zero difference here.
> Those so-called "influencers" aren't really about serving their audience
They're about serving their customers, ie, the brands. Some do a great job; others do not. And others, as discussed in the article, aren't even trying to provide marketing services and are just trying to scam a free hotel stay. Similarly, some ad networks aren't even trying to provide value to clients and are just trying to soak up advertising dollars, but that doesn't mean all advertising is a scam.
We must move in separate travel worlds. Within bicycle touring, travelers with established blogs very often accept free stuff, because this hobby requires a great deal of gear (and gear replacement) that isn't cheap. But this usually doesn't affect their reputability in the eyes of the community, especially when they review some of this gear negatively and note how it broke on the road.
Tech publications receive free stuff all the time too.
And for people like Casey Neistat - people send stuff to him unsolicited.
How do they know who she is then?
Ironically everyone of those followers wants to travel to that special unknown destination, only after somebody with one million followers posts about it.
This definitely is not limited to my niche of glass artists. There's a twitter account about the wider world of people who think artists have vast advertising budgets and lots of free time: https://mobile.twitter.com/forexposure_txt
I think these hotels are in a similar spot - it may be worthwhile advertising, or it may be a worthless request.
I think this will be another huge market for facebook when they eventually solve this. Proper tracking of influencer posts, verification of audience demographics, filtering out of time wasters would solve a lot of these issues.
I’m sure there are others.
That was basically one of my good friend’s wife’s job.
And perhaps more positive - Truthful Media: Information generated by people, in the 'open source' way that you can fully trust. Hard to believe, but almost necessary. A blockchain of real information sources and trusted information processors (aka influencers), who give opinions that can be traced back to facts.
I think that perhaps glamour and fantasy will always win out - reality is boring and human nature wont get us to choose facts when fantasy gets our attention much more
It's much more difficult to get subscribers than followers on Instagram. In addition, a lot of followers are typically on Instagram just to creep on young women and provide no monetary value except for just being another creep in their followers.
Basically, 100k followers on Instagram is a joke and is about equivalent to 25k subscribers on YouTube, only it earns less cash.
Do you think we could design an AI, maybe GANs and caption generation, to generate influencers like these? The hotels could pay the AI makers to use their images, and would solve their problem of actually having to host them.
Example: https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/ - 1.2m followers
(Predicted in the Gibson novel Idoru, and no doubt elsewhere)
I think he means, "poorly written".