- 20/02/2019
- Category: Commentaries
The advent of social media spawns a multitude of new enterprises. These enterprises rely on the accessibility that social media provides for conducting their businesses. Of all these enterprises, the business of influencer is one of the most influential in changing how companies advertise, and consumers behave. Influencers are social media personalities who advertise goods or services in exchange for monetary compensation. These individuals can range from ordinary bloggers to passionate professionals, to world-famous celebrities. There are 2.62 billion of people that actively using social media in 2018, influencers became a must-have marketing tool for any company to be able to grow.[1] Nowadays, the study said there are many brands indeed budgeting a portion of their marketing for sponsoring influencers, and it’s increasing every year. [2]
Source: Influencer Marketing Hub[3]
Influencers and How It Works To Support Consumerism
Instagram is one of the most popular social media in the world, boasting 700 million active users in April 2017, and daily “likes” of up to 4.2 billion.[4] Several reasons make Instagram influencers are very popular nowadays and boosting up the consumerism. Firstly, is the humans have a tendency to listen to experts.[5] Therefore, expertise and power is significantly influential. For example, if we are sick, we go to the doctors. And if our pipe is broken, we call a plumber. Even if we don’t personally know these people, we trust them because they are experts in their particular field. Influencers who specialize in a specific area of expertise (such as make-up) have a degree of additional power compared ordinary social media users on how they sway public perception. Their influence will be amplified if they have a high number of followers. People will follow what most people do. This condition is called social proof, which occurs when an individual has difficulty in determining a specific behaviour, they will assume that other people have a better knowledge of what to do.[6]
The second reason is because people tends to listen to handsome/beautiful people.[7] Thus, attractiveness is an important key to influence the people. We assume that people who look socially desirable also possess socially desirable behaviors/traits. Any advertisement we can find on TV tends to show celebrities and models who are good-looking. This situation is also why celebrities and models can easily amass a huge following in social media.
And last but not least, is it’s relatability. As humans, we identify with people who belong in the same category as us.[8] These categories include race, religion, or sexual orientation. “Oh my god, they are so me!” can be a phrase to describe modern social media influencers. Influencers’ social media presence, which can include posting selfies, foods, or places they visit, helps ground them to reality. These posts make them seem more human and ordinary, not a distant individual whose lifestyle and social life different from ours. Our behavior changes to accommodate the behavior of people in our perceived group, which is exactly what influencers want us to do.
Fyre Festival: An Example of False Advertising
Influencers also came with its ups and downs. The most significant advantage is it lowers barrier of entry for advertisements. Anyone (exceptionally good-looking people) can become an influencer. All they need are discipline and diligence in engaging their followers. Posting on social media costs practically nothing compared to the money influencers gain from sponsorship deals. The blurring of social media and advertisement also came with its share fair of consequences. To the untrained eye, it would be challenging to discern regular posts and ads, especially if the poster doesn’t disclose that their post is an advertisement. This challenge creates a legal limbo in which influencers aren’t susceptible to the accusation of false advertising, as “sharing” and “advertisement” can only be discerned based on intention. For example, the case on point is Fyre Festival.
Fyre Festival is an example of how influencers take advantage of the legal loophole of social media advertising. Advertised as an “immersive music festival” on its promotional video, Fyre Festival promises guests to be treated with two weeks’ vacation in a private island in the Bahamas, complete with gourmet food, musical performance, and luxury villas. The event was promoted heavily on social media by celebrities such as Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, with a promotional video featuring bikini-clad girls on tropical islands.
Fyre Festival ended in a disaster, with all musical talents canceling before the festival being held, refugee tents as guests accommodation, and packaged food.[9] The event canceled after a day, and the festival organizer hit by multiple lawsuits claiming millions of dollars.[10] The failure of Fyre Festival has ruined the lives of its promoters, its concertgoers, and business owners related to the organizers. The influencers, however, aren’t affected.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines on influencer marketing demand that influencers publicly disclose their post as an advertisement.[11] However, on the promotional material for the Festival, only one influencer disclose their connection to the organizer. The FTC only issues warning on this violation of transparency, which makes cases of false advertising from social media highly likely to happen in the future.
In the UK, influencers are legally obliged to disclose if they are doing an advertisement by using #ad in their post. If they fail to do so, they may be prosecuted for breach of consumer protection law.[12] Transparency should be the norm in influencer business. Any aspiring influencer should make a case for transparency, which although not legally demanded, ethically necessary.
The phenomenon of influencer demonstrates how digitalization of socialization makes the commodification of our daily life possible. The brands we use for clothing, for amenities, for transportation, and cooking, represents our identity, and that’s how influencers distinguish themselves from each other. On a more significant level, it promotes consumption that isn’t based on necessity but based on role models that we establish ourselves. Furthermore, it hollows out each’s authenticity as their choices are guided not by their independent thought, but by influencers who demand their attention. In this information age, the only way to remain authentic is to be happy with what we have now. As Matt Haigh once said, “To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.” [13]
Editor: Lia Wulandari
Read another article written by Faadillah Fayyadh Aidad
[1] The Remarkable Rise of Influencer Marketing [Infographic]. Available at: https://influencermarketinghub.com/the-rise-of-influencer-marketing/. (Accessed on February 16, 2019)
[2] Ibid.
[3]Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Raven, B. H. (1965). Social influence and power. In I.D. Steiner & M. Fishbein (Eds.), Current studies in social psychology (pp. 371–382). New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston.
[6] Social Proof in Digital Success: What is Social Proof and how to leverage it for your success. Available at:
https://devumi.top/social-proof-in-digital-success.html. (Accessed on February 15, 2019)
[7] Houston, V.; Bull, R. (1994). “Do people avoid sitting next to someone who is facially disfigured?”. European Journal of Social Psychology. 24: 279–284. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420240205.
[8] Turner, John C., and Penelope J. Oakes. “The Significance of the Social Identity Concept for Social Psychology with Reference to Individualism, Interactionism, and Social Influence.” British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 25, no. 3, 1986, pp. 237–252., doi:10.1111/j.2044-8309.1986.tb00732.x.
[9] Fyre Festival, a Luxury Music Weekend, Crumbles in the Bahamas. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/arts/music/fyre-festival-ja-rule-bahamas.html. (Accessed on February 17, 2019)
[10] Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Charges Against Individual For Defrauding Investors In Digital Media Company, William McFarland Made False Representations to Investors in Fyre Media LLC and the Fyre Festival
Available at: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-charges-against-individual-defrauding-investors-digital. (Accessed on February 16, 2019)
[11] Three FTC actions of interest to influencers. Available at: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2017/09/three-ftc-actions-interest-influencers. (Accessed on February 16, 2019)
[12] Marsh, Sarah. “Social Media Stars Breaching Rules on Promoting Brands, Watchdog Says.” The Guardian, Guardian News, and Media, 5 Oct. 2017, www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/05/social-media-stars-breaching-rules-on-promoting-brands-watchdog-says-instagram-twitter.
[13] Haig, Matt. Reasons to Stay Alive. HarperCollins, 2016.
