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Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

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Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#231

Post by tenpies »

obelix_ wrote: post #211
sanderjd wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that better?

Cause now if NASA needs some extra funding they just need to convince Kim Kardashian (or whoever replaces her day after tomorrow on the top of the pyramid) of its importance. It's going to happen. Just watch.

The alarming thing is that after seeing the Kanye & Kardashian empire get more political, I can very much picture a future where we have Kanye is president in 2020 or 2024.

To put it in millennial marketing pseudo-jargon: how many likes = 1 vote?

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#232

Post by davidmurdoch »

goatherders wrote: post #105

My GF has 18000 followers and gas worked hard for her brand to be meaningful as an influencer. She isnt just posting a picture sitting next to the pool. As a result she gets a number of things comped at hotels and restaurants, sometimes without even asking.

Yup. My wife has only 7000 and still gets an annoying amount of emails (at least for a busy mom of 2) from brands wanting to send her product for "collabs". Hotel comps would be nice!

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#233

Post by devonkim »

dwaltrip wrote: post #197
wpietri wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it more empty? I think it's easy to say something is empty when you're not the sort of person it's optimized to appeal to. I just finished "Bad Blood", the book on Theranos. Given that it was a fraud, it was entirely empty. But it was designed to look substantial to Stanford deans and Valley VCs. Later the target shifted to other sorts of movers and shakers, including corporate titans and political bigwigs. They a…

> E.g., I spent years developing NeXT software because I drank the Jobs kool-aid. I didn't do that for hard-headed business reasons; I did it because the NeXT hardware and software was incredibly cool to young me. At the time, I would have smugly defended my choice as more rational than getting starry-eyed over a celebrity. In retrospect, I was wrong. I just fell for for something tuned for my weaknesses, just like w…

What value does all this social media stuff produce? It’s affecting how companies promote products and services. If you don’t have a social media strategy as a multinational, you’re possibly going to miss out on a rather important demographic for consumer goods (not really important necessarily for FIRES businesses... yet). All these skills are going to be in large supply in the future when previously marketing was somewhat more Byzantine than a vaguely organic, democratic process.

The utility of a skill is mostly based around societal value of said skill, not really much else. People get paid millions all around the planet putting balls in various receptacles, but such is the human need for entertainment and feeling good (even if temporary) is a business that is never going to go away. Warren Buffett has said he’s lucky enough he was born when being able to memorize and process lots of financial numbers could be extremely advantageous - maybe that may not be so valuable in 600 years while art is much more precious?

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#234

Post by charlesdm »

zaarn wrote: post #229
charlesdm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who can actually afford this will just go on holidays by themselves with no thoughts about the “influencers” whatsoever, also because by the time you can afford such lifestyles you widen up to the obvious commercial intents of these influencer “recommendations”, making their “review” purpose moot. Isn't the idea to follow people who, for example, travel to cool places that you might not have considered? Perh…

To my knowledge influencers rarely travel to "cool" places. They travel to family friendly, safe places. And safe in multiple meanings in both "people are safe here" and "this place is safe for me as influencer since noone will be offended". My family used to travel a lot and we went to a lot of family-unsafe places at times (like in-the-wilderniss campsites in southern africa where you can't leave the RV because the…

I'm not disagreeing with what you say, because I too think the places you describe are often cool. However, they're also very much outside of the comfort zone of most people.

For example, on average I would assume most women prefer a romantic getaway to the Maldives over climbing a volcano in Iceland. And most people with kids likely won't be going on a month long roadtrip through Africa or South-America.

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#235

Post by wastedhours »

CamTin wrote: post #5

I wonder why the strategy of these "brand personalities" has to be limited to "luxury" type branding. For example, could you build a following traveling the country by interstate in a Fiesta, staying at Motel 6 and eating at Waffle House? It wouldn't cost Motel 6 and Waffle House almost anything to comp a few waffles and otherwise-unoccupied rooms as an experiment, if they aren't doing similar things already.

You could, but it misunderstands luxury marketing.

The difference between "luxury" marketing and even "premium" (or mainstream) marketing are the former's efforts to influence people who are never going to buy or use the product.

A lot of a luxury good's status comes from the "halo" given to it by all of us who'll unlikely use it - thus giving it the allure to the people who have the money.

So, in essence, it's more important for a luxury brand to have mass market penetration, than it is for a premium product. For example, Aston Martin needs you to know it's an unattainable symbolic brand, and does that through mainstream marketing (like Bond product placements, YouTuber videos etc...) more than BMW does (who're selling to a premium audience who will buy on product rather than perception).

TL;DR: perversely, it's in everyone's interests to use influencers more for the luxury industry than the rest of the industry, and why it's seeing the abuse it is.

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#236

Post by wpietri »

dwaltrip wrote: post #197
wpietri wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it more empty? I think it's easy to say something is empty when you're not the sort of person it's optimized to appeal to. I just finished "Bad Blood", the book on Theranos. Given that it was a fraud, it was entirely empty. But it was designed to look substantial to Stanford deans and Valley VCs. Later the target shifted to other sorts of movers and shakers, including corporate titans and political bigwigs. They a…

> E.g., I spent years developing NeXT software because I drank the Jobs kool-aid. I didn't do that for hard-headed business reasons; I did it because the NeXT hardware and software was incredibly cool to young me. At the time, I would have smugly defended my choice as more rational than getting starry-eyed over a celebrity. In retrospect, I was wrong. I just fell for for something tuned for my weaknesses, just like w…

I'm sorry, but it doesn't support your example. I would have been making software regardless. Instead I earned less and learned less applicable skills than I would have had I not been suckered by the Jobs reality distortion field. It was a significant harm to me, and it wasn't the last time I fell for the "cool" of a technology.

It's true that my particular weakness was related to an economically productive activity. But although I personally value production more than consumption, production isn't inherently superior; one without the other is just waste.

Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs because he was very good at manipulating both producers and consumers. The (modest) technical improvements of the iPhone over existing smartphones wouldn't have happened without the millions of people who bought the notion that a slicker device in slicker packaging with slicker ads was deeply better.

Instagram influencers are no more shallow than an Apple ad. And I'd say less, in that they have built up personal businesses by entertaining others and finding a way to monetize it. It's not my kind of thing, but it's not essentially different than the travel magazine business. In both cases people go places and get paid to performatively do fun things in a way that's funded by self-promoting merchants.

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#237

Post by CyberDildonics »

dorfsmay wrote: post #195
CyberDildonics wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has little to do with that. The exposure is what counts. Put a picture of a nice hotel and say it's name. Now you have an ad that went out to 100k people. The person is mostly irrelevant, a hotel just wants people to know it exists.

I can't help but wonder the percentage of those 100 k people who are likely to book in an expensive hotel.

How is that different from any other advertisement?

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#238

Post by 83 »

21 wrote: post #62
swampthinker wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, completely off topic. I can't believe your username was available up until 2016, kinda jealous.

When I picked this one there were quite a few more 2 digit usernames available. I didn't even write a script, looked for them manually. Go grab em everyone :)

Thanks for the heads up :)

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#239

Post by kop316 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #216
kop316 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent that was what "Anthony Bordain - Parts Unknown" did. He frequently was in very nice places, but he would also go to hole in the wall places that always looked incredible.

They looked incredible because he had scouts and fixers setting up the places before he went there. If you know some of the developing countries he filmed in, it is quite obvious -- and rather disappointing -- just how inauthentic his local encounters were.

Heh, interesting. Do you have a source for that? I would be curious to read more into it.

Re: Luxury hotels are being inundated with requests from self-described influencers

#240

Post by mcintyre1994 »

fredley wrote: post #73
21 wrote: post #34

I've seen something which I think is even more interesting. Second tier influencers (100k followers) paying expensive hotels and private plane trips of first tier influences (1 mil followers), so that they can appear on their feeds, and gain new followers.

This is straight up Black Mirror (season 3, episode 1: Nosedive ) Obviously the whole point of that episode was to imagine Instagram in its darkest future, but it's scary how much of it is becoming real, and separately with the roll-out of social credit scores in China. Scary stuff. --- Hansen: So in terms of quality, you could use a punch up right there. Ideally, that's up votes from quality people. Lacie: Quality p…

At least Klout died.
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