Your Kids, The Influencers

Author(s): John Lorinc

Source: Corporate Knights , SPRING 2015, Vol. 14, No. 2 (SPRING 2015), pp. 50-53
Published by: Corporate Knights Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44149841

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 Your Kids, The Influencers
Easily bought and enormously effective, teenagers with large social
media followings are proving the new power brokers of digital
advertising. But by enlisting young people as stealth messaging
mules, are companies crossing an ethical line?
By John Lorinc

or post on various social media platforms

dia marketing. With young people turning
student emailed the editors of The
away from Facebook, marketers focused
for the brands, but they also come forward
Last Varsity student
Varsity
year, with emailed a with
University a story
a thestory
editors idea of Toronto
idea about about
of The a awith offers to help news organizations like
on this huge demographic segment have
local food service company. The studentThe Varsity write articles promoting cer- turned to new, and ethically problematic,
hadn't written previously for the news- ways of reaching audiences that are spend-
tain products or services, typically without
paper, which is geared at the university's
disclosing their connection. "I find thating much more of their time on established
60,000 undergraduates, but he still got the
quite dishonest, because you're represent- or emerging platforms like Instagram, Twit-
assignment. After the piece ran, editorial ter and Snapchat. Unlike Facebook with
ing that ad as content," says Klein.
staff discovered the author was actually a Apart from the journalistic breaches, its unmistakable in-your-face promotions,
social media "brand ambassador" for the
Klein adds that she's struck by the terms these other platforms have become vulner-
company, and the newspaper decided of to those agreements - in exchange for pro-able to a stealthier type of marketing, one
pull the article from its website.
motional tweets or posts tucked into their that doesn't come tagged as advertising.
newsfeeds, these young brand ambassa- In the past year, according to Toronto
Editor-in-chief Danielle Klein says she
is deluged with online solicitations from dors often get freebees, and perhaps a social
bit media marketer Steve Tam, some
students who have struck promotional of cash or "résumé lines." brands have sought to establish marketing
deals with the marketers of products, lo-"That's a problem," she says. "It's sort of relationships with so-called "teen influenc-
cal clubs or other advertisers. Using their
tricking people." ers" - young people who aren't celebrities
personal social media accounts, they tweetWelcome to the wild west of social me- but have nonetheless built up such large

50 ♦ Corporate ♦ Spring 2015 Illustration by Eleanor Davis

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social media followings that their feeds be- she came of age. "Honestly," she says, "like a lot experience more commercial.
come interesting to marketers looking to of young people, Facebook for me is like a util- In other words, the problem with the
reach specific audiences. ity, like a washing machine. It's a way of facili- social media business model may be the
It's a practice that has raised eyebrows, tating my life. It's nothing I'm excited to use." fact that there's a business model at all.
and not only with student newspaper edi- Then Baskin offers up this right hook Says Angelo Dodaro, a partner at bou-
tors. "People have to know they are being to social media marketers: "I ignore 95 tique digital agency Multivitamin Media:
advertised to," observes Chris MacDonald, per cent of Facebook advertising. There's "Young people who grew up with social
an associate professor of business who es- so much of it and none of it is clever." She media are running away from commer-
tablished Ryerson University's Jim Pattison mentions one aggravation - a proliferation cialization."
Ethical Leadership Education and Research of male cosmetic products on her feed.
Program. Marketers, he adds, "cant ab- "Why are you trying to sell me beard oil?"
solve themselves [of that obligation] by us- she laughs, speculating it's because she Alex Lee, a baby-faced Texan
ing a third party." clicks on hipster websites too often. "Their Or teenager. Alex are teenager.
they? Lee,In aInmatter
a Consider
of days baby-faced a matter the of case Texan days of
Cristina Onose, manager of public af- algorithm is clearly screwed up." last fall, Lee went from being an unre-
fairs for the Canadian Marketing Associa- markable 16 year old to an Internet phe-
tion, points to her organization's guidelines nomenon - one of those instant digital
Lee had become
for marketing to teenagers, as well as Ca- celebrities created by the law of exponen-
nadian and international regulations which "an influencer," tial growth.
require advertisers to "properly disclose" but not the Lee, who looks like a young Justin
their promotional activities. "Responsible Beiber, was working as a bagger at his
conventional
organizations advertising online are ex- local Target when someone snapped his
pected to be transparent about their adver- celebrity sort of photo. A couple of shares later, the im-
tising techniques," she says. influencer, like age was moving through the account of
But the reality, as student editor Klein a U.K.-based Instagram user with a large
a hip-hop artist,
observes, is quite different. These brands following.
a movie star or a
and their youthful ambassadors under- The law of viral growth clicked in,
stand that a positive tweet hidden inside an professional athlete. and within days, Lee's Twitter account
individual's newsfeed - a message that goes Rather, he was had hundreds of thousands of followers.
out to hundred or thousands of followers - Teenage girls started showing up at the
influential because
is "the best way to disguise" an ad. Target to ogle. The mainstream media
It's like a word-of-mouth endorse- he was a kid with a
soon detected the Alex Lee supernova on
ment... except that it's not. large following. the horizon, and interview requests from
CNN and the New York Times, among
he story of how social media adver- other media outlets, flowed in.
tising is morphing into a no-holds- Speculation about Target's role in the
barred marketing environment be- Alex Lee story spread almost as quickly.
gins with an unexpected twist: an exodus This teen breakup with Facebook hard- After all, the company's brand had just re-
of young Internet users from Facebook, the
ly indicates a mounting indifference among ceived the equivalent of a steroid injection,
original social networking giant. young people to social media. Other lessjust in time for Christmas. A Los Angeles
According to a recent survey of 7,200
commercialized platforms, like Instagram social media-marketing firm took credit,
students by U.S. investment bank Piper and
Jaf-Tumblr, remain as popular as ever, but the company denied authorship. To
fray, teen interest in Facebook has beenwhile
fall- the social media space in the past this day, the answer remains unclear.
ing precipitously. It found that 45 per cent
year or two has become increasingly popu- The more intriguing part of the Alex
of surveyed teens were using Facebook latedasby new entrants: Snapchat, Whisper, Lee story, however, started after that ini-
of fall 2014, down dramatically from 72 per
Vine, and Yik-Yak, all of them providing the tial whoosh of attention. Lee had become
cent just six months earlier. The drop was
kind of knowing and insider-y appeal that "an influencer," but not the conventional
Facebook alone delivered to those millions
so steep, reported Bloomberg, that "Face- celebrity sort of influencer, like a hip-hop
book stopped discussing teen usage on of its
early adopters a decade ago. artist, a movie star or a professional ath-
earnings calls after last year's disclosure
Ever since the early days of Facebook, lete. Rather, he was influential because he
alarmed investors." young people flocked to social media sites
was a kid with a large following.
(Of note is that Facebook, in an unusual because they promised a world free of adult In fact, Lee moved swiftly from vi-
and some say desperate move, launched a concerns and supervision. "I remember ral Internet celebrity to a celebrity teen
print and TV ad campaign in Toronto and that feeling of being part of something that influencer with something to sell. His
Vancouver this past February aimed at no one else was part of," recounts Tam. Twitter feed is now populated by pitches
building a stronger emotional connection Yet as soon as social media platforms for a new phone app as well as an outfit
that bills itself as a social media tour and
with young users. Marketing experts be- became popular and their popularity can
music festival. (He also has a website that
lieve it's a trial run of a planned larger cam- be quantified by analytics software, the ad-
paign designed to help stem its Millennial sells branded Alex Lee World products.)
vertising followed. Those revenues offered
and Gen Z exodus). the only way for social media companies to Young people with large followings
Morgan Baskin, a 19-year-old Toronto remain viable after their founders burned understand that social media thrives on
high school graduate, articulates her recent through angel and venture capital, but theclever, funny and ironic content - memes,
thinking about the social network with which presence of advertising also made the usergifs, or the tsunami of photos and mini-

Spring 2015 ♦ Corporate ♦ 51

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videos on Snapchat, a platform that allows
users to converse using images that last for
only a few seconds. With highly engaged
followers, their feeds are perfect environ-
ments for promotional pitches.
"It s a new vehicle that is definitely pick-
ing up momentum," says Tam. Most will
never get past the sort of brand ambassador
stage. But others, he adds, have such huge
followings that they hire agents to negotiatelationship between brands and teen influ- constantly exchanging on their own feeds.
fees and arrange appearances. "Their par- encers is anything but even. "The advertis- Jack Harding, the director of user engage-
ents may not even know this is something ing people are supposed to know about the ment for Poolhouse, a Toronto advertising
that's happening." ethics of advertising, whereas you can't ex- agency and blog publisher, says some in-
This type of promotion is a relatively pect a young teen to be familiar with adver- novative marketers are establishing direct
new feature of our noisy media environ- tising ethical standards or think it through online relationships with social media users
ment. Despite codes of conduct promoted by themselves." who have tweeted or posted positive mes-
by advertising standards organizations, the sages or images about a client's brands. The
line between online editorial and advertiser brand - or its marketers - constantly scour
content has become increasingly blurry in sumers in new ways, brands may social media networks for favourable men-
recent years. Bloggers, for example, strike Besides also sumersalsobe betrying thinking
thinking in new theto ways, reach about brands young getting con- may the
about getting tions, and then reach out to unsuspecting
agreements with advertisers that allow
most bang for their marketing bucks. Its teens with offers of discounts or gifts.
brands to sponsor user forums in exchange one thing to pay a supermodel or a star ath- "Users are always shocked [when they
lete millions of dollars to promote a prod-
for invitations to events, samples and so on. get a message from a brand], but in a good
uct, and quite another to avoid those out-
But tweets and posts sent out by youth- way," says Harding. "When it does happen,
ful brand ambassadors or teen influencers lays by offering a few dollars or t- shirts to it's really unique. This conversation is some-
are stripped of all disclosure- related con-students with lots of social media followers. thing no one else has had before. It makes
tent, even though the brands marketing of-Increasingly, brands are opting for otheryou feel special and more connected to the
ficials likely vetted them. rapidly emerging tactics that hook youngbrand."
As MacDonald points out, this new re-
consumers with the kind of content they are Yet brands aren't just trading freebies for

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 mentions. Poolhouse, for example, publishes
a website called ThreeMillionDogs that of-
fers pet-related content and is funded by pet-
product advertising. To better engage younger
followers of the site, Harding, 22, started pro-
ducing very short videos to send to Snapchat
users. Hell grab a snippet of a Top 40 song
and lay it over one of the countless number of
funny pet videos circulating online.
One recent example: a clip of a dog lifting
weights with Britney Spears singing "Work
Bitch" in the background. When Harding
posts these snaps, they're not only passed
around; they generate new followers, new
videos and a dialogue with individual Snap-
chat users. Eventually, that Snapchat user
will receive an image of a coupon for prod-
ucts featured on the ThreeMillionDogs site.
The ongoing interaction, Harding ob-
serves, "builds trust. You now have a per-
son-based approach to putting ads in front
of people." (These ads take him a few min-
* utes to produce, and cost only his time. The
return on investment is significant when
compared to the enormous outlay required
for more conventional advertising.)
Snapchat has become all-consuming
for many teens, a trend identified early by
fast-food retailer Taco Bell. The restaurant
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chain is recognized as one of the first firms
neous. As she puts it, they feel like there's a
to begin posting snaps, typically quick-and-person, and a personality, behind the brand,
cheerful images that have a homemade which is precisely the point.
quality. Owned by PepsiCo, it has drawn Ultimately, the question is whether this
the attention of brand marketers because fast-emerging approach to social media ad-
of its especially adroit, youth-focused so- vertising is causing undue harm to the im-
cial media marketing methods. It was quick pressionable young people to whom it's tar-
to spot the fast-moving teen transition geted.toLike many teenagers, Baskin is media
Snapchat, and in 2013 took a gamble savvy onenough to understand the marketing
what was then a two-year-old and not yet imperative. If the content is clever enough,
fully evolved platform, says Harding. "They she says, "you don't care."
were on Snapchat six to 12 months before But Ryerson's Chris MacDonald says
everyone else." the stories of covert marketing at and by
teens should be ringing alarm bells within
Many others have since followed. Social
companies. Corporate social responsibility
media marketers are now intensively scru-
departments should be paying particular
tinizing the ephemeral culture of Snapchat
to better understand the platform's youth
attention, given their mandate to think be-
appeal as a kind of antidote to Facebook's
yond compliance and embrace the highest
relentless commercialization. standards of ethical conduct.
Advertisers, after all, are expected to ad-
here to all sorts of industry standards when
anecdote about Snapchat, hav- they promote their products in other more
Morgan anecdote ing recently
ing recentlyBaskin
foundabout
herselffound
totallyoffers Snapchat, herself an instructive totally hav- established media. What is it about social
absorbed with the snaps generated by the media that permits those rules to be tossed
organizers of Fashion Week in New York. out the window?
"I watched a ridiculous amount," she says, "If we're seeing problems," MacDonald
noting that the images - smart phone pho- says, "the blame has to start with the pro-
tos taken next to runways and at backstage fessionals and the adults who should really
VIP events - seemed authentic and sponta- know better." ||
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