Cool kids, Hipsters, Hippies and Trendsetters. Every generation, upon reaching young adulthood, is entitled to its own voice. Generation X had grunge punks and raver kids. The 80’s had hair metal and hip hop. The 60’s and 70’s had hippies, and the 50s had greasers and hipsters. But it should never be forgotten that it was my generation—the filthy millennials—who would be the first to reach adulthood during a time when the internet was not just an invention, but one that was widespread.
As such, the voice of the youth was not one that was confined to any particular city, or scene, or venue. While avowedly, millennials can probably be best understood by the re-invention of the hipster craze, and the corresponding establishment of the streetwear craze, our greatest cultural contribution would be the concept of the ever-elusive “influencer.”
While no, I will not say that we came up with the terminology, the concept of influencer celebrity-status had existed long before Instagram was ever a serious medium. But unlike the Instagram stars of the present day, influencers did not run powerful personal brands out of a single social media channel—they ran blogs, wrote guest articles, took interviews, and fielded collaborations. While some examples did exist, few influencers of the millennial era were “famous for being famous,” but instead, were influential for their real, and tangible, contributions to “cool kid culture.” Examples of millennial-era influencers were Big Sean, Pharrell, Nigo, Mike Giant, Ryan McGinley, Sean Stussy, James Jebbia, Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Insa, Virgil Abloh and plenty more that I don’t have the space to mention. All of the listed influencers would keep inventories of their work on blogs, or actual online storefronts where their products would sell out. Media outlets such as Complex, Hypebeast and High Snobiety would post their updates—and the hype cycle would continue. The people we were looking to as influential weren’t necessarily other millennials: Most times, they were hip Gen X-ers that were giving us something to look up to. We also didn’t call them influencers—millennials called them tastemakers.
I mean, seriously?… Influencer? The term sounds about as clumsy and inelegant as a newborn fawn. But I get it: an in-fluencer is to in-stagram? Amirite?
I still think It’s stupid but, I get it.
With the rise of Instagram, Generation Z has also begun to enter adulthood—which has rung in a new type of influencer. While millennials have proven that the concept of the digital influencer has existed for some time now, being an influencer today means something materially different than what it did even ten years ago. It means engaging with specific platforms, in specific ways, to achieve specific types of results.
Considerably, influencers are specific to Instagram. There are no cultural tastemakers that exist on Facebook in any authentic capacity. Twitter profiles are difficult to monetize, YouTubers are referred to as “Creators,” and TikTok influencers are referred to as “Stars.” The influencer in 2020 is not one that blogs, or fundamentally exists between multiple social channels, but rather, is one that is specific to Instagram.
In terms of how they engage with their audience, the influencer’s preferred medium is pictures and video—which is in line with what most people know about video being the most engaging content type on the web. It is also why Instagram—and the influencer, by extension—can be powerful additions to a marketing strategy.
In an ideal world, the intended result of paying an influencer is that he or she will drive sales to the product that they are promoting. But this is where the world of hiring them can get a bit hazy: The market for Instagram influencers is very inefficient—so there is no going rate for an average number of follows or likes. If that weren’t enough, such metrics can be BOUGHT. Additionally, Instagram is a platform with piss poor analytics tools hardly befitting of the tens—or even hundreds—of thousands of dollars that are being poured into promoting a single product. Finally, brands are beginning to see that more times than not, influencers do not provide the level of real-world ROI necessary to justify their cost. In other words: most people who proclaim themselves to be influencers are usually overpriced, or not actually influential at all.
Mind you, these things have nothing to say for the rising cultural nuisance influencers are becoming due to their contrived expectations of getting handouts and free shit.
Look: there is absolutely nothing wrong with free shit. Free shit makes the world go round. But for those who don’t already know, let me make this point loud and clear: free shit is earned, not given. When the former happens, businesses make money to further expand operations and brand awareness, while influencers get steady streams of cash for fancy vacations and avocado toast. In the end, all parties walk away more or less “happy.” But when the latter occurs, and free shit is given instead of earned, brands lose money on marketing spend, as well as merchandise. Recent news would suggest that the latter happens quite a bit, and not only to established brands—but also mom and pop businesses.
There is an explanation for how we got here. I don’t think it’s so simple as: “BeCuZ InFluEnCerS ArE lAzY.”
I think the problem that I have with Instagram influencing aren’t those that do it in a committed and professional fashion—but rather, those who have convinced themselves that being an influencer is as simple as getting an app, being cool, and churning followers. Keep in mind, people wouldn’t think this way if some haven’t already succeeded doing it.
In my mind, the veracity of this practice makes the average influencer a fairly low-value proposition asset to a marketing strategy—and more likely, a basket of liabilities considering that there tend to be few barriers between the personality of influencers, versus that of their brand. Additionally, while influencers are often touted and billed as an evolution on the ever-elusive “tastemakers” of the millennial era, I would argue that Instagram influencers are fundamentally a devolution of the tastemaker. Compared to the influencer, tastemakers would arrive with fully developed products, a multi-channel promotional presence, and an open eye for cross promotion and cross-collaboration. While tastemakers may have been comparatively difficult to get the attention of, once you got it, a single line from them could mean the world to a new brand. Then there is the aspect of tastemakers being able to provide much clearer metrics, so advertisers could more easily see what it was that they were paying for. Inversely, the accessibility of Instagram influencing means that many on the service have the convenience and luxury of arriving with nothing well before developing products that generate value. Additionally, because influencing is not driven by any kind of curative mindset, most influencers will plug anything—which ultimately cheapens the value of their follows, and the idea of influencing as a whole. Finally, because Instagram followers and likes can literally come from anywhere, and don’t actually mean much of anything when it comes to measuring engagement or potential click through value—advertisers are more likely to be sold a bill of goods, than any measurable results.
This portends to one distinct, and perhaps unpopular, conclusion: While influencers might currently be a part of the marketing mode, I think they’re a bubble waiting to pop—assuming that the influencer bubble hasn’t popped already.
I am not saying that the value of an influencer is zero, but I am not saying that the average value of an influencer post is worth more than several thousand dollars either. Mind you, this is not hate: I have distinct reasons for believing this.
The first is that most influencers can’t prove that they are influential. While there most certainly are Instagrammers who drive sales for brands, part of what makes them successful is that they also represent very targeted audiences that have been cultivated over the course of years of impassioned content making. I think it is important to bring up passion in all of this because usually the most successful influencers on the platform are very passionate about what they do—whether that is photography, yoga, health foods, fashion, makeup or any of the other things that influencers cover on Instagram. But here is the kicker guys—these people would be doing this even if it wasn’t making them money! Part of the reason why the best influencers have the audiences that they have, is because their audience draws value from the content that is being produced by the influencer.
The problem with influencing today, however, is that many attempt to build their following before they have content—or even an idea for content. To make matters worse, these people are characterized by a fairly wide degree of numerical success. While some people successfully churn up a couple thousand followers, others can churn up tens, or even hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers—through serial follow-unfollowing, twitter spam, and for many young women, dating platforms such as Tinder.
Aside from some of these tactics being utterly deplorable (particularly the usage of dating platforms), the profiles that end up benefitting to the tune of thousands of followers don’t actually provide marketers value. Why? Because while there are numbers, there is no actual “there” there. This speaks to the second reason for why I believe influencers are a bubble waiting to pop—far too many of the aspirational contingent of influencers lack any sort of demographic focus. If I am wanting to sell a product, more than likely, I have a target customer in mind. Reaching that target customer requires for me to utilize the people, places and platforms that are typical for such a demographic group. If I want to hire an influencer to plug my product, part of how I am measuring their value is based on the degree to which a particular interest, or group of people, is being represented within their follower base. If a profile has tens of thousands of followers, but really no clear direction as to who these followers are, or even how they demographically break down, then the profile, for all intents and purposes, is worthless. Sure, the content on the profile may pick up a couple thousand likes for a shirtless mirror-selfie photo, or a few bullshit comments on a picture of them splayed out on the beach in a thong bikini, but none of these results actually portend to any kind of mintable product. Of course, these people could be fitness, or swimwear, influencers—but if that is the case, these profiles would need millions of follows considering that being influential in either of these focuses is about as realistic for the average person as being an NFL Quarterback, or a Victoria’s Secret Supermodel.
What is real or unrealistic, however, is irrelevant. The most crucial aspect of it all is that most influencer profiles have been created not out of a passion for any kind of skill, but out of a passion for influencing. It’s almost as if those prioritizing audience over content are completely forgetting where the money they earn even fucking comes from. Along with taste making, influencing goes by another name: Marketing. If you are picking up Instagram with the distinct purpose of becoming an influencer, then understand that you are first and foremost a marketer who uses their personal brand to sell products. I understand that is not as sexy as say, calling yourself a guru. but if you aren’t selling your services or pursuing a professional career track that exists outside of Instagram, then you are not actually an influencer in that field—you are a marketer.
I think the irony of real (you know, the actual gurus amongst us?) influencers is that they do not need Instagram to stay in business. Sure, Instagram is an accelerator, or a lead generator—but being those things is materially different from being the same as the influencer’s “business.” Why does this matter for those who want to influence? Because if your business model is entirely subject to the goings on of Instagram, then its success is entirely subject to the same goings on in kind. How does this manifest itself? Maybe it affects the approved dimensions or run times for video content. Maybe it affects the highest resolution of photos that you can upload. Maybe it affects the word counts of your posts, whether or not you have to label your content as advertising, or the algorithm for what people even get placed in front of them altogether.
The point is that unlike tastemakers, an influencer’s existence entirely hinges on the mercy of an arbitrary system that they rely upon to survive. In that regard, it is much like a job, but is it a business? Questionably. I’m sure if I said “no” outright, that would leave a lot of people pissed off.
I think it is a business, however, insofar as the fact that Instagram does not pay their influencers for the content they produce—businesses that are on Instagram do that instead. As such, influencers most typically need to employ their own deal making apparatuses to earn the money that they want. Rates are not guaranteed by Instagram.
The part where it is much akin to employment, however, involves the fact that the sheer nature of influencing—on any platform—renders the content creator as an extension of the greater platform’s marketing efforts. In other words, platforms like Instagram and YouTube do not exist because of influencers. Many times, the influencers exist because of them. Furthermore, they are not essential to the success of these platforms: Instagram and YouTube were successful long before influencers arrived on the scene. This also means that if such platforms wanted to, they could use their consumer data to engineer and astroturf influential content creators—thereby rendering today’s influencers as a middle man that can quite necessarily be cut out.
This also means that in many cases, if a creator is de-monetized, de-prioritized, or outright shut down, their fan base has nowhere to go where they can continue to view content. Usually, they end up somewhere else within the content platform. It also means that many times, de-monetized creators who rely on the revenues generated from these platforms are devastated to the point of relying on donations in order to keep the lights on—which ultimately places the cost burden of content creation on the viewers instead of on the platform which the viewers are driven to.
At this point, if I have made social media influencing sound like a hell scape that is rife with operational and financial liabilities on both sides for businesses and creators, I apologize. In reality, for all of the problems that social media influencers have, as well as the social media channels that they correspond with, they are still a useful tool nonetheless. I think my greater point is that relying on social media—whether as a business or an influencer—probably shouldn’t be your only tool.
No Comments