At Honest London we have experienced working directly with influencers, working for influential people and even working in an INFLUENCER FOCUSSED AGENCY. Yes, that’s a real thing and wasn’t a fantastic experience.
We receive emails daily from young people (14+) in regards to our celebrity services asking if we can make them into an influencer: First of all, we don’t offer that service and no one should but we want to just state a few home truths for those who believe everything they see on social media as it can be dangerous to impressionable young people.
We’re going to stick with where you expect to find an influencer in the wild which is Youtube and Instagram, where consumers can watch their favourite “regular” people show their perfect lifestyle, home and relationships. Now if you read that last sentence and thought ‘oh please’, you’re probably older than the target audience of the average ‘show off influencer’ which is around 13-21.
What you see online usually isn’t real
To most, it’s quite obvious that an influencers life you see online is incredibly fake and everything is placed specially for a photo or video. You don’t really believe these people dress up in a fancy outfit with a million affiliate links to actually grab a Starbucks? After working with many, we can assure you the happy persona that’s familiar on screen is only seen when there’s a ring light, filter and camera in front of the person.
Although the right Influencer can be great for a brand and some can even be a good influence on the public… Sometimes… We can’t help but see what the majority of ‘lifestyle’ influencers can do to the young target audience. Hundreds of influencers flaunting a fake lifestyle that isn’t a reality, it comes across similar to reality TV yet a little more dangerous with the whole set up being “look, I’m just like you, so relatable and approachable”.
It’s very easy to be envious of the white decorated house, white company products and white furnishings inside. It looks amazing for the camera and best part yet... Majority of successful influencers (100k+ on Youtube) don’t even have to pay for half the stuff inside if they agree to show it off on their social media but they will want to hide this from their audience as much as possible. First of all, free stuff isn’t as cool as pretending to afford it and looking like you’re doing this for the free stuff (Let’s be honest, most are) won’t go down well with most.
Being honest is key
We believe it’s very important that influencers are truthful to their audience about what they purchase and do not. There are now laws in place to help this but of course, there are many loopholes.
Next time you click your favourite influencers Instagram, tap the image and see if brands are tagged. They’re not there to let you know where to buy them, they’re tagged because they’ve either been gifted/the influencer has an affiliate link for you to purchase so you can match with you favourite content creator while giving them 10% of your purchase.
We are not savvy on every influencer as it’s not of personal interest but we received a higher number of emails in the last week asking us to make them into influencers since a proposal of a British influencer, which from many sources seem to think the proposal was acted out/scripted/pre-planned.
Spoiler: Most likely was… An Influencer’s role is to make entertaining content to keep users engaged and wanting to buy merch and affiliate links. From experience dealing with them, it’s pretty normal to see an influencer having a pretty normal life off-camera and a fake magical life on camera. Real proposal off camera, fake one on camera for the views… Not saying this is the case here but we’ve seen this plenty before.
That proposal video
We watched the proposal video and we won’t mention names but it did disappoint us. The analytics of the account average 13-19 years old and the majority are female viewers. This video currently has nearly a million views and hundreds of comments wishing for a wedding proposal similar. It has a few pretty obvious slips to give away it’s most likely pre-planned and set up with a ridiculously unbelievable storyline. The Instagram promotion of the video features an engagement photo, lovely right..? Oh, covered in affiliate links, not so romantic. The affiliate links would usually take at least a month - 2 weeks to organise, not hours. We can’t again confirm/not confirm but from experience… This is standard practice.
The concern of this video (and many similar ones) is the young impressionable audience who will see this proposal and day-to-day lifestyle as normality. Influencer’s like to make themselves ‘the girl next door’, ‘your best friend’ and ‘one of them’. This is a very normal approach for one simple reason. It manipulates the young audience into thinking they are essentially ‘friends’ with the content creator and want to support their favourite Youtubers while dreaming of a lifestyle similar to what they see online. When they don’t achieve it, it’s not a nice feeling for them.
The reason we’re not impressed by the engagement video and many others similar (we’re picking on this one simply because the amount of disturbing emails we received) is the manipulation techniques used to make their audience believe this is potentially real, simply for money. A big life event in an influencers world is a prime opportunity to make money, get more deals and new fans… So the engagement has to be impressive to make Youtube Trending, therefore they have to entertain the audience.
The couple produced a Q&A which we hoped would be a little honest about what was provided for free/gifted/affiliate links in the video... Simply for their impressionable audience to see that it’s not a normal set up.
Disappointingly the only truth to come out was a fake scene in the engagement video of pretending to buy a ring from a very luxurious store which they came out and confirmed the ring was not from there, simply left the footage in to create a fake persona - why else would it be left in? It seems the audience picked up that the ring box from the proposal doesn’t match the stores so it had to be addressed.
The influencer couple decided to go full force on engagement related Youtube videos and Instagram posts alongside a merch launch to profit as much as possible while the account is being watched more than usual.
From a business perspective, it makes sense but from a fan perspective… Kinda sucks because it’s not honest, it looks greedy and removes that ‘I’m just like you’ persona.
Disclaimer: This of course could all be completely wrong about this particular video and it might have been the real/genuine engagement and the Instagram tags used could have been tagged to simply promote the brands. This is simply to open the eyes to young impressionable viewers.
The out of touch Influencer cycle
This particular influencer has participated in a very common career risking cycle.
First, gain a fanbase through being relatable at the start, hauls of cheap shops/fitness/regular restaurants/hobbies such as baking. This produces an engaged impressionable audience who can watch and see someone they enjoy on-screen and go and can afford that outfit or house item that was purchased. It makes the viewer feel excited that they’re on the ‘same level’ as this person they watch on their laptop/TV.
The common career risking mistake made is once the influencer begins to make money from social media, they forget who their original audience were and what content was previously enjoyed and transform their account into a wealthy show-off Youtube channel. Not so relatable.
Who doesn’t love to show off, right? But who loves watching people showing off… Not many… There are many cases where an account drops in numbers once wealth came in… The analytics are painful to look at. Authenticity is crucial for brands, celebrities and even influencers and it’s key to remember where you started.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we have absolutely nothing against successful people. It should be celebrated, it’s amazing that careers can be made through social media channels and we can see the value of an influencer for a brand.
We’re simply looking at this from a marketing/PR perspective (it’s our job) and there are historical failures from changing content so drastically (on any platform) and reasons for it.
For the classic out of touch Youtube cycle influencers, the original joy of watching that content creator is gone, merch is usually produced at a hellishly expensive price and certainly not what the original fans could most likely afford, making that content creator completely out of touch with their audience simply to try and make some extra money.
This leaves the influencers with a new and not so engaged audience and a high risk of losing their original audience who gave them the platform they’re essentially risking.