- 28/05/2024
- Category: Commentaries
Author: Mario Hartanto
Editor: Arifatus Sholekhah
“This product is not really working on me exactly.”
That being said from one of beauty influencers in Indonesia whose doing #Deinfluencing content. #Deinfluencing is the type of content that consists of influencers telling their audience not to consume a certain brand or product. The origins of this trend comes from the audience’s scepticism about influencers and their paid content. One of the famous controversies is brought by Mikayla Nogueira mascara’s review content that speculates circling around her using fake eyelashes while promoting one brand’s mascara. This #Deinfluencing trend has recently exploded, especially in video-based platforms such as TikTok. It was showed by the #Deinfluencing type of contents on TikTok that has reached 484 millions views worldwide per May 2023 itself.
The Potential of Influencers
Social media has evolved its role from space for sharing experiences to driving business. Data from Good Stats in 2023 shows that global e-commerce revenues reached $3.4 trillion, of which $500-$629 comes from social-commerce. With the potential that the social media market has, influencers’ role become pivotal to affect consumers in purchasing patterns. Influencers themselves are a person or figure on social media who has a large or significant number of followers. Influencers use social media to promote or recommend one’s product or experience. Data from Marketing Dive in 2020 shows that 44% of Gen-Z make purchases based on influencer recommendations on social media.
Influencers have the ability to bring persuasive messages with valuable information, including product reviews or informative content with personal touch to create pleasant experiences for their audience (Syailendra, et al 2024). This marketing technique is called e-WOM (Word of Mouth), where positive or negative statements made by actual or former customers are available to multitude of people via the internet (King Robert et al., 2004).
Influencer’s succession in affecting people determined by authenticity and audience-relevant representations (Syailendra, et al 2024). This authenticity is what drives audiences to trust influencers because they have forged a personal relationship through the content shared. The personal relationship built because the content is relatable like genuine recommendation from a friend and audience are not perceived as a target for solely financial gain such as traditional advertising.
#Deinfluencing as a Tool for Building Trust
Consumers have certain expectations when it comes to their everyday products such as toothbrushes for cleaning the teeth, conditioner for nourishing hair, etc (Krisnamurthy and Kumar, 2015) . Marketing helps brands to deliver the message of their expectations fulfilled using the products that are being promoted. The problem comes when brand claims adhere to what consumers want or called ‘Overclaim’. Overclaim in marketing means an indictment over a product that goes beyond what the actual product does, even comes in a deceiving message (Ramli, et al 2018). The example is the overclaim over make-up, food, or consumable goods that have claim in benefits and chemical ingredients. This overclaim can bring up bigger issues such as distrust from consumers, circulation of misinformation, and could even be subject to law charges (Mary, et al 2014). In Indonesia itself, the consumer protection law, especially towards deceiving advertisement contained in Indonesian Laws (UU) No. 8 Tahun 1999 article 17 point 1. To prevent and minimize the overclaiming in marketing, deinfluencing works through building honest opinions.
The emergence of #Deinfluencing is not a new phenomenon since content creators have tremendous pressure of being scrutinised or held accountable online. #Deinfluencing content serves as a tool for building trust from influencers to their audience. The trust comes from honest curated reviews that influencers give to their communities of people. Usually the narration comes from ‘Don’t buy this mascara, but I love this one.’ and encourage the audience to shop thoughtful and intentional. Honest reviews are needed by consumers to help them understand the products and situate them better when doing decision-making (Tsekouras, 2017). Research from Thuy Tran (2020) shows that brand’s purchase intention strengthens along with many honest product reviews arise in the internet.
Misinterpretation of #DeInfluencing Campaign among Indonesia’s Influencers
In Indonesia itself, the #Deinfluencing trend has been rising among local beauty influencers. Many influencers join the trend by debunking the overclaim towards marketing messages and encourage their audience to be more wiseful in consuming products. Unfortunately, many Indonesian content creators misinterpret the trends. Rather than encourage audiences to be more selective in spending products, local influencers choose to expose products that doesn’t work for them without understanding the ingredients and claims. For example, on skincare routine every skin type reacts differently to its ingredients. Every skin type such as normal, oily, dry, sensitive, or the combinations needs different skincare ingredients in order to gain the benefits of using skin care. This misinterpretation affects negatively because the content still promotes the audience to buy other products that might work, instead to remind them about being conscious when it comes to product consumption. The misinterpretation issue can be a lesson for influencers in Indonesia that they have the power to shift how the audience thinks on a daily basis. Especially when it comes to #Deinfluencing content, influencers have the opportunity to change the audience’s consumer behaviour from full consumerism to a selective one.
