Do you follow on Instagram?
If you don鈥檛, you should. Fairly or unfairly, it crudely (and cruelly) dives right into the dark heart of what we鈥檝e always known about influencer culture.听
It鈥檚 obsessed with short-termism, reactive rather than reflective and for marketers鈥 convenient. It鈥檚 a shortcut to getting PR, impressive impressions and engagements on social channels, while the long-term link to uplift in sales or brand awareness is often less convincing.
In the last decade influencer marketing became such an irresistible alchemy that we perhaps forgot about the harder truth of the real impact it was delivering.听
We have all, in some capacity, had to engage in it. It鈥檚 now an essential part of the 21st century marketing rule book (albeit a modification of the use of celebrity in advertising .听听
But in its current form, even influencer marketing has evolved from those innocent days of the early 2010s. We鈥檝e gone from using straight up influencers to micro-influencers, activist influencers 鈥 hell, even virtual influencers.听听
Brands found a way to utilise the numbers that digital 鈥渃elebrities鈥 were racking up 鈥 first on Facebook, then on Instagram and now on TikTok.
Far from household names, a large proportion of these influencers were people whom most had never heard of but some lived their lives by.
As brands scrambled to use the clogged influencer industry, they also became influencers themselves. So did agencies, and inevitably many of us soon came to see ourselves as mini industry influencers on LinkedIn and Clubhouse.听
There鈥檚 no need to look at me like that鈥 I鈥檓 just as guilty as you are.听
We are all part of this strange and undefined ecosystem.听
But when everyone is an influencer, does the empire of influence begin to crumble in on itself?听
And in 2021, after all the bullshit of Covid, are audiences finally questioning the foundation on which the influencer economy is built?听
If the brilliant HBO documentary is anything to go by, perhaps we are finally starting to question the emperor鈥檚 new clothes with a little more depth.
The film is essentially a social experiment, taking random people and trying to make them 鈥渇ake famous鈥 鈥 with incredible results. By buying followers and engagements for budding 鈥渋nfluencers鈥, the filmmakers were able to attract real brand interest with one protagonist, 鈥 who had 357,000 followers at the time of writing 鈥 promoting mattress brand Awara and fitness class booking app ClassPass, among others.听
Beyond the expos茅 on the hollow core of the brand-influencer axis, Fake Famous.
also tries to understand where the influencer road might lead in the long term 鈥 for those influencing and those profiting from it.听听
In both cases, it looks like the end of that road may be fast approaching. Especially if we all ask ourselves some harder questions.听
The age of influencer has got all kinds of weird in the last few years, to the point of it beginning to eat itself.听
Especially when influencing has collided with activism. Communal causes combined with dogged individualism doesn鈥檛 really seem like it can fit together, does it?听
Perhaps the most farcical instance of this is the ongoing 鈥渨ar鈥 between two influencer activists:听 Chidera Eggerue (aka ) and
Yes it does sound like a Victorian bare knuckle fight, but it鈥檚 a long-winded and excruciating dull story, 听
In short, Eggerue helped spark a boom in pop-activism literature with her book What a Time to Be Alone in 2018. White influencer/illustrator/author (and I鈥檓 sure a lot of other things), Florence Given released a best-selling book two years later called Women Don鈥檛 Owe You Pretty.听
Both authors in part got their book deals due to their sizable and highly engaged followings on social, and were signed to the same .
Yet when Eggerue saw similarities to her book in Given鈥檚, all hell broke loose. She mobilized her army of fans by posting 鈥渞eceipts鈥 on her Insta stories as proof of plagiarism. It was relentless.听
Whether Given had plagiarised Eggerue鈥檚 work began to completely overshadow the causes and issues on which both authors had built their audiences.
Confused? Bored?听Me too.
These influencers became so wrapped up in their own soap opera that they forgot what made them influential in the first place.听
All over the internet, this story is repeated in different forms and across different niches.
In the trenches influencers are battling for survival. It's gory, gruesome and boring us all to death in the process.听听
Meanwhile, the real people of influence are doing something else entirely.听
Those with real global clout, the handful of 鈥済enerational icons鈥 who have shaped and reshaped culture, are starting to look past 鈥渋nfluence鈥 and embrace 鈥渓egacy鈥.
From Drake to Rihanna to Beyonc茅 to Lebron, and even 鈥渘ewcomers鈥 like Marcus Rashford, Stormzy and Michaela Coel, pop culture icons are trying to cement their reputation for posterity beyond their original sphere of influence.听听
No longer just athletes, musicians or actors, these people are beginning to replace brands and agencies themselves.听
, Abram Brown detailed how rapper Travis Scott has become 鈥渃orporate America鈥檚 brand whisperer鈥 by stopping being just a 鈥渃elebrity鈥 and taking on the role the best agencies usually do for brands: connecting them to a new generation and selling to them.
The Michael Jordan 鈥溾 meal in 1991 was the brainchild of McDonald鈥檚 and its agencies. But the of 2020 was the invention of Scott and the team around him.听
This is by no means an isolated incident. The smartest and most influential are actually transcending influence and taking power and control 鈥 dictating the rules of the game.听
In other words, the smartest influencers are now running influencer marketing, and perhaps redefining marketing itself.听
Others are looking beyond corporate influence and trying to cement their legacy in the societal sense, whether that is Lebron James, Marcus Rashford or Selena Gomez.
Some brands are starting to take radical measures reacting to this new landscape.听
Luxury fashion brand Bottega Veneta account altogether, effectively saying bye to four million followers in the process.
Whether this is a call to go back to basics and use its core product to market to its 鈥渂uying鈥 clientele or something grander remains to be seen. But it does mean influencer marketing is mutating in the post-Covid era.
For my two cents, this is the perfect moment to reflect on why we pump so much time, energy and ultimately money into short-term gains when it comes to influencers.
Do they really gain the business results we are after? , even Nike is beginning to streamline its approach to athletes. After decades of spread betting, the brand is dropping stars like Neymar and Lewandowski in favour of next-gen talent like Mbappe and Haaland.
There is a clear exhaustion of influencer culture among many audiences, but in turn, a warm embrace of a new generation of creative and influential people doing things differently.
The rules are being re-written in favour of a new chapter in how truly influential people want to engage with brands and the world as a whole.
It probably makes sense to write a new kind of chapter for ourselves too, and really look hard at what it is we鈥檙e after when it comes to being influential.
Celebrity endorsements will probably remain for the next 250 years, but how we innovate with them will be the marker of success in the rest of our lifetimes.
Well at least that鈥檚 the take of the un-influential try-hard author of this article who needs to
Ravi Amaratunga Hitchcock is co-founder of Soursop