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.
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.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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.