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The Anxiety of Influencers

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Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#51

Post by snowwrestler »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #10

What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers. Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch? Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...

One of the few named brands in the story is a fried chicken place. You don’t have to be rich to afford fried chicken. But fried chicken is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

And it’s an industry that is deeply dependent on advertising to maintain brand awareness and segment the market. All fried chicken tastes basically the same, so customers choose stores based on brand attributes.

Are you a Popeyes, KFC, or Chick-fil-A kind of person? Influencer marketing helps you figure it out and remember which place is the most desirable for you.

This sort of thing works on many people, but teenagers are especially susceptible to it.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#53

Post by lupire »

nradov wrote: post #49
redisman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be rich to buy luxury goods. In fact most of them are bought by people who can't afford them but desperately want to own them. There's credit cards, parents, using all your disposable income on them since you don't pay rent, etc.

Right. The people who can actually afford $500 shoes aren't the ones buying Balenciaga sneakers that look like clown shoes. Actual wealthy people are generally not easily influenced suckers.

Yes they are, but they can afford to buy everything nice, not just a few ridiculous things.

Also, poor people aren't buying Lambos and crashing them.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#54

Post by seattle_spring »

Swizec wrote: post #41
seattle_spring wrote: post #3

Wow, the subject influencers in the article were insufferable just to read about. I can't think of any group I have less empathy for than them. The world would be such a better place if the concept of an "influencer" completely ceased to exist.

In tech we call them thought leaders. DevRels if they’re not self-employed. Are they so bad?

Oh God, those are even worse. My LinkedIn feed is garbage largely because of people like this.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#55

Post by lupire »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #30
dylan604 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every large corporation has an annual advertising/promotional budget. They hire ad agencies and PR firms to handle that work. These agencies would be the people I'd expect hiring/paying the influencers. I'm sure they have a group of young fresh out of college employees that do nothing but scour the web for influencers keep tabs on their followers, the type of content they produce, etc. When a campaign comes along, th…

I meant from the customer side who is spending the money, because kids generally don't have that much discretionary income.

There are a million children in the USA whose parents are millionaires.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#56

Post by inreverse »

peteretep wrote: post #50

> According to a poll released in 2019, some 54 percent of Americans between the ages of thirteen and thirty-eight would, if given the chance, become a social-media influencer. A whopping 23 percent believed that this term already fit them. EDIT: Jesus, this article is the gift that keeps giving: > Later, when I ask Chase [about the veracity of the video he] explains that the video must be legit because “it’s gotten…

I would love the source for this. It seems too ridiculous to be true unless they're using a non-standard definition of 'influencer'.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#57

Post by thaumasiotes »

snowwrestler wrote: post #51
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #10

What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers. Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch? Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...

One of the few named brands in the story is a fried chicken place. You don’t have to be rich to afford fried chicken. But fried chicken is a multi-billion-dollar industry. And it’s an industry that is deeply dependent on advertising to maintain brand awareness and segment the market. All fried chicken tastes basically the same, so customers choose stores based on brand attributes. Are you a Popeyes, KFC, or Chick-fil…

> All fried chicken tastes basically the same

How many places have you had fried chicken in?

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#58

Post by Applejinx »

rvz wrote: post #14

> You’re trying to impress everyone who watches the video, and you want everyone to like it. This is where the race to the emotional rock bottom starts. What if those influencers become irrelevant in 10 years time and are replaced by another generation? The key here is to expand to other ventures. The ones who stay on the same platform for years will gradually become irrelevant.

What do you mean 'if'? They're about as disposable as toilet paper. They are created to be disposable and nothing is moderating that impulse at all.

Hell, back in the times of Motown they made the child stars go to school. This is in some ways less organized than, but also less moral than, the music business and the film industry.

And that takes some DOING, to be worse than the music business and the film industry. I think it's the decentralization that does it: platforms that are very algorithmic, distributed, with nobody to claim responsibility for anything.

In the absence of oversight or obvious control we're supposed to see the true nature of what all this stuff becomes when it's free of top-down control.

We are, and it's Lord of the Flies, but for celebrity children. It's not far off child abuse, but with a nice little disconnect between what happens and how the situation's created.

These kids aren't the product, they're the Soylent Green. They're there to die for the algorithm.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#59

Post by redisman »

datalus wrote: post #39
rvz wrote: post #14

> You’re trying to impress everyone who watches the video, and you want everyone to like it. This is where the race to the emotional rock bottom starts. What if those influencers become irrelevant in 10 years time and are replaced by another generation? The key here is to expand to other ventures. The ones who stay on the same platform for years will gradually become irrelevant.

This is what I keep thinking about. I feel it’s going to get even darker on the internet when these influencers have to begrudgingly hand the reins over as they get traded in for the newer models.

Hasn’t that been happening for a long time already? We’ve had social media and reality tv for over a decade now and plenty of people have fallen from their pedestal. The truth is that the cycle keeps getting more vapid and depersonalized so these kids will be tossed aside and forgotten very quickly.

Re: The Anxiety of Influencers

#60

Post by didibus »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #10

What I don't understand is why brands throw so much money at very young influencers. Are they specifically targeting young rich kids who spend big on products/merch? Seems like a small demographic for a $15B projected market...

I think they might have older followers as well.
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