“Literally like the mafia”: Paris Martineau on influencer marketing

We grew up surrounded by commercials, right? On TV, at the movies, on the radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and at sports arenas. So we know when we’re being pitched to. Or do we? Can you spot a paid influencer on your social media feeds? Always? Really? Influencer marketing is a whole new world of selling, and the norms and standards are still, um, let’s say, “under construction.” Wiredstaff writer Paris Martineau explores some of the details in this November 2018 article.

Martineau,  “Inside the price war to influence your Instagram feed”

1. What is influencer marketing? Why is it considered problematic? How well does Martineau explain the concept and its associated problems? Point to examples from the essay to support your conclusion.
2. What is Martineau’s purpose in writing the article? Is it simply a drama with a happy ending about a 21^stcentury entrepreneur’s struggles to launch her product in a new frontier of online marketing? Is it an exposé of questionable online business practices using the example of one company’s struggles in order to illustrate the need for more regulation and oversight? Both? Neither? Is Martineau’s purpose clear? Why or why not? Explain your conclusion.
3. Martineau likely assumes that her readers are already familiar with several marketing-related terms such as “pre roll ads,” “expected reach,” and “affiliate links,” since she doesn’t explain or define them. Should she have explained the terms? Would her essay have been stronger or better if she had? Why or why not?    
4. In documenting the launch of Lashify and its experience with social media influencing, Martineau communicated with numerous people who were involved with the events in one way or another. In her essay, she uses many direct quotes as well as summaries and paraphrases. How well does she identify who said what? What devices does she use to frame the words and ideas of the individual sources? You may want to consult Chapters 2 and 3 of your text as you respond to this question.
5. As Martineau states, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued rules requiring the disclosure of paid endorsements on social media. Are those rules always observed? Should they be? What about silent product placements? We’re accustomed to seeing them in movies and on TV—the same brand of soft drink in nearly every scene, or cameras that focus for extra seconds on a car logo during a chase, for example, and those placements are uncontroversial and unremarkable. Should we have the same casual attitude for Instagram and YouTube posts? Write an essay presenting your opinions on disclosure for paid influencing, whether by explicit product endorsement or by silent product placement.

Comments

[Dean Joannou]

I think Instagram has had a very interesting effect on advertising. It used to be that in order for a person to make money advertising a product they would have to rely on outside factors. For example, an actor would need to establish fame or a degree of popularity with the help of an agent or others who would seek out advertising opportunities with brands/companies that wished to take advantage of the actor's fanbase in order to advertise their product. Now, a person can establish an Instagram following in the 100,000's or even millions completely on their own and have a totally direct way of advertising a product to their followers. No expensive time slot needs to be purchased like in the case of television commercials, nor is advertising limited to the amount of pages in a magazine. If one has a large social media following, advertising opportunities are endless.

[Dean]

Influencer marketing is a new popular form of advertising where companies, whether they are startups or well established brands, seek out instagram users with a large following to advertise their products. Brands used to rely on paying for time slots during television programming to air commercials advertising their product or paying for ad space in a magazine or newspaper. Now, there is a very large pool of social media personalities with follower counts in the 100,000’s to millions who can serve as a whole new platform on which to advertise. In the case of this article, the company is a startup called Lashify which sells fake eyelashes. The company’s founder is informed that in order to secure an influencer with enough status to get her company off the ground, she would need to pay as much as $50,000 to $70,000. This is not feasible for her brand new business venture. Additionally, dealing with instagram users and their associates, who mostly do not come from trained business backgrounds, can present its own problems. Television networks and magazines have been involved in advertising for decades, whereas the instagram app only began being developed in 2010. Companies regularly find themselves in situations where the instagram user won’t fully hold up to their end of the deal, or may not post their sponsored post at the agreed upon time between the two parties.

[Matthew Lenczewski]

Although influencer marketing is not a new concept within the industry, it has become wildly popular in the past few years. As the world around us becomes more technologically advanced, influencer marketing has made its way to the forefront and companies are devoting more time and effort to the tactic than ever before. It's interesting to see that people in the industry don't care about the product they only care for who is influencing it and sales. They should take the time out to make the product the best they can make it but they really don't.

[megan Kremer]

influence marketing has become a very large part of advertising for companies today. Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy in which the focus is placed on an influential person rather than social media as a whole. Companies orient their marketing activities around these influencers. Often times however, influence marketing involves paying large sums of money to these influential people in return for positive reviews on their accounts. There are many problems with influence marketing. One problem that Martineau points out is that marketplace operators and influencers often buy followers and use other tactics to "boost their perceived influence". This results in brands shelling out thousands of dollars to influencers who are not reaching an audience the company was perceived they had. Overall I feel that Martineau did explain the concept and the problems that are associated with it well. She had first hand experience with it so she was able to go into detail about what really happens with influence marketing.

[gavin yang]

I'm agree with this article. I believe influencer marketing have been their for many years. Because the change of customer behavior, the way of manufacturer publicity their product need to be changed too. The result is influencer marketing, it will change traditional advertising ways and become mainstream little by little.

[gavin yang]

I believe influencer marketing will cause a lot of negative affect also, It force those small manufacturer use money large among of money to pay for advertising and less money on improve their product.This situation may cause those manufacturer who try to provide good product be knock out of competition be of those fake "review" from influencer marketing.

[Monica]

I agree with the article influencer marketing has been seen all throughout social media one of the most seen would be Instagram. This social media goes throughout the whole world advertising beauty products to perfumes to clothes and many other products. As to companies they have to pay a large sum of money to influencers just so they can say good things to society about the product that is being advertised. I believe this has had an impact to society and yes it seems to be just like the mafia you have to pay a price in order to get something established and selling.

[Bethany Peschken]

I never realized how popular influencer marketing was. Now that I think about it, nearly all of the YouTube videos I watch are sponsored by a company-- usually a small or newly starting up business. How expensive it is to hire someone to promote a product was most shocking to me.

[Autumn Norton]

From Paris Martineau's article "INSIDE THE PRICEY WAR TO INFLUENCE YOUR INSTAGRAM FEED" the main concept is how much influencers are getting paid to make a brand known. It was said that since the use of social media has been going up, the prices influencers are giving to brands for their endorsements have gone through the roof. I agree with the articles claim that associating a brand name with a famous person's name is crucial but why fork over so much money for it? It was said that the earrings went "up to $20,000 for what appeared to be a single review or video" (p16). I believe if a product is really being bought by the influencer, then a brand deal should happen. Not the brand reaching out to the creators looking for them to act like they use and like the product. When that happens it ultimately skews the review the influencers is giving off, therefore falsely representing the product to the viewing audience. Overall, I agreed with what the article was saying about the marketing for products in the social media world, the cost are just out of this world.

[Megan]

This article was really enlightening about social media influencers and brands. A lot of social media influencers are seen as friends or someone that their followers can look up to. When they promote things followers and fans will automatically think they are the best resource for an opinion because they are basically that fans idol. In the business industry, many of these influencers are paid tens of thousands of dollars to promote a product. I believe that this kind of business is shady. Instead of honest opinions and reviews, popular creators on youtube are sellouts and only say what they are paid to. When you think of Youtube stars such as Jeffree Star, Manny MUA, and even James Charles, you believe everything they say about makeup and certain beauty products. It's upsetting that peoples idols aren't really telling the whole truth about products when we trust them completely.

[Dante G.]

According to the article "Inside That Pricey War to Influence Your Instagram feed" There are a lot of mentions about the influence of social media marketing. That is through places like You-Tube, Reddit, and other blogs. According to the Sahara Lotti, the Lashify company CEO and founder, she was told by her investors to prepare to pay influencer's to speak positively about her lashes on Youtube and Instagram. She thought they were being dramatic. but they weren't. I think think what they say goes to mean that there is a lot of concern and misunderstanding within the realm of social media marketing and that although it is that way, it is still very important. She was told to expect to shell out $50,000 to $70,000 per influencer just to make her company known. I think that what this means is that social media marketing is expensive but that it is what it is and it is what you gotta do as a business to succeed in today's world. The article also mentions that Influences with millions of followers usually have management teams or agents dedicated to identify the best advertising deals. This goes to show that the field of advertising in business is a complex matter with many people involved. All in all, the realm of social media marketing according to this article is that it is expensive, involves many people, has a sense of luck to it, and takes a bit of brains to do successfully.

[Monica Ruth]

I agree with this article. Influencer marketing is horrible. You search one thing and all of a sudden, its all you see on your feed. As for paying people to influence the sale of their products, I try to always read reviews or comments on the product from real buyers, before I buy it. The paid influencers may offer a pretty package, but I want real life views, sometimes though, that pretty package is way to hard to pass up. I disagree with it being like the mafia. Maybe it is my lack of knowledge on the group. But I fail to see how influencer marketing relates in any way to the mafia.

[Boris]

I agree that it is a disadvantage that the influencer could be advertising just for the money. He should base it from what he really thinks about the product. Also I never Knew that "instagrammable" was a word.

[Miriam]

Influencer marketing has quickly overtaken all forms of advertising in the business world. Being relatively new, many of these influencers are using that to their advantage and hiking up their buy out prices. Through my experience using social media and seeing these sponsorships, I think that it is completely plausible that the influencers are using their power and fame to fund themselves and help a brand increase sales. Even though the prices mentioned, $10,000 up to $85,000, seem high, the outcome of companies integrating influencer marketing provides profits that well exceed the upfront payment of a few thousand dollars.

[Emily]

It is beyond unimaginable that there is such a high volume of money and trades being exchanged for such simple actions being fed to consumers. If influencers such as youtubers were allowed to disclose the amount of money they make from advertisements, our opinion on them would be a completely different story. The author's message was simply shocking just by the sheer amount of behind-the-scenes work that is done to sell products and the processes by which this is done. If the author were to use more "so what"s and "who cares", it would come across as a more call to action style which could definitely amp up the author's intended purpose and form a stronger meaning behind the words. Aside from this, there is a crazy amount of advertising that we witness every day that is only slowing becoming apparent to us recently due to these new restrictions on advertisement disclosure.

[Zac]

It is interesting how this is such a surprise to some people. Socity is at a point where everyone at a point in time is paying attention to social media. It was only a matter of time until these "influencers" became a major player in the economy. While these "influencers" are worth their asking price, due to their market value, but, when they start trying to take advantage of consumers something must be done. There should be a greater microscope being set on these "influencers" based on the fact that they can affect a product market so much.

[Brianna Holden]

Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing. This involves endorsements from influencer, organizations and people who have knowledge in the field of study. In the article “Inside the Pricey War to Influence your Instagram” Feed the author talks about how problematic influencer marketing is. Paris Martineau the authors of the article includes experiences from a Sahara Lotti. In the article Martineau explains how Lotti felt about the topic is influencer marketing, “At the time, Lotti found the suggestion absurd, bordering on offensive. She thought paying some random person on the internet tens of thousands of dollars just because they had a lot of followers was beneath her, so she brushed off the suggestion.” I believe you can say something that is problematic about influencer marketing is the lack of real support. If you don’t pay for you product to have your product talked up there’s a real possibility that either no influencer will promote it or will talk trash about your products. I feel Martineau does does a great job in explaining the concept and its associated point in the article. I liked how she used a personal experience for someone which helped bring to light the issues in influencer marketing.

[Matthew Smith]

Influencer promoting could be a new well-liked type of advertising wherever corporations, whether or not they are startups or well established brands, hunt down instagram users with an outsized following to advertise their merchandise. Brands accustomed have confidence paying for time slots throughout TV programming to air commercials advertising their product or paying for ad house during a magazine or newspaper. Now, there's a awfully massive pool of social media personalities with follower counts within the one hundreds to millions who will function an entire new platform on that to advertise. Within the case of this text, the corporate could be a startup known as Lashify that sells pretend eyelashes. The company’s founder is conversant that so as to secure associate influencer with enough standing to induce her company off the bottom, she would wish to pay the maximum amount as $50,000 to $70,000. This is often not possible for her different business venture. To boot, handling instagram users and their associates, who largely don't return from trained business backgrounds, will gift its own issues. TV networks and magazines are concerned in advertising for many years, whereas the instagram app solely began being developed in 2010. Corporations often notice themselves in things wherever the instagram user won’t totally interruption to their finish of the deal, or might not post their sponsored post at the arranged time between the 2 parties.

[Jennifer Landon]

FYI the search function on home page can't find this essay using "Paris Martineau" or the title.

[Corrine Dunn]

In the article “Inside the Pricey War to Influence Your Instagram Feed,” the author Paris Martinau is arguing that social media influencer endorsements open a new door to advertising that brings many concerns to both the consumers of the products and the companies paying the influencers. Her purpose in writing the article is to warn both the producers and consumers of these problems. Some of these concerns involving endorsements include the consumers are not being told that what they are seeing is an ad and the companies paying the influencers being exploited for not paying the influencers as much as other companies. She warns consumers that these high profile people are being paid to post with products that they may or may not actually like and are just doing it to get money. She references an investor who told a woman who was starting up an eyelash extension company that “if she wanted [the company] to succeed, quality didn’t matter, nor did customer satisfaction-only influencers.” This quote shows that companies are going to spend more money on this new way of advertising than the actual products that they are selling. She warns companies that they might be losing a large amount of money per influencer just to make their company’s name known. Martinau also argues that even if the company starts to make their name known, the influencer might be getting paid by another rival company more to talk about their product in a more positive way which can lead to being blackmailed, terrible reviews, and even death threats.

I agree with Martinau’s argument that consumers need to pay more attention to what they see online and think about how producers are paying a large sum of money to promote their products when they actually could be bettering the products. This reminds me of when I see these sponsored posts on instagram for products that are known to be scams but since the influencers reach a large audience they are still going to continue to receive business. Although, if these companies spent more money actually bettering their products, they may receive the same amount of business with how many customers they receive from the influencer posts. More companies are going to catch up with this trend of advertising which will hopefully allow consumers to see through the posts that are scamming people by paying influencers more. In general, I agree with Martinau’s argument about the problems that come along with social media influencers, but I think that producers need to realize that this is the new way of advertising and they need to budget their money to find the happy medium of influencer posts bought and actually bettering their products.

[Reyna Sanchez]

The influencer marketing has been growing over the years and many people in beneficiating from it. I agree with Martinau's argument about how people need to pay more attention to the products they are buying because there has been so much marketing that people need to make sure they actually work. I have seen influencers everywhere and it is incredible how many people want to become one of them because they are making so much money from it. It is amazing what is behind the adds we see on social media and knowing how people benefit from is really shocking. Sometimes when I look for a product on amazon, I find adds about that same product on Instagram. The connection between diverse web pages make people remember the things we should buy and we keep see them over and over again until they convince us to obtain them. I do not like this because it gets so annoying everywhere I go I see something related to that particular product. Essentially, it would be nice if influencers could be real and talk about what they think about a product based on their experience by using it, however I understand that they are getting pay to promote something, therefore they must agree with it whether they like it or not which is not really their fault but it is part of their job, but we as the customers are responsible to research the things we are buying because we are going to pay for it. Influencers grab our attention but it is our decision and people is not forced to buy things or to believe what other say. Part of critical thinking is to find answers and evidence before making a conclusion based on what others say. On the other hand, the life influencers have is like a job to them and they have become an important part of the economy because they are able to get people's attention and the more views they get the better they get paid, therefore they need to have a nice personality to gain people and I respect the way how they get admiration and respect form society

[Kylie Laux]

I agree with this article. In todays world we are surronded by technology, with that technology comes social media apps like YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. On social media apps there are people who accumulate a large following and become known as influencers and creators. If you start to follow an influencer on Instagram you may see a couple posts promoting a product and you may notice creators on Youtube and TikTok are sponsered by brands and products. Social media icons have a huge influence on so many people, hence the title influencer, and are successful at persuading many to buy a certain product. Influencers try to make a product seem appealing to younger people and make it seem like the product is essential to their lives. This type of advertising has become so important to companies that celebraties such as Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez can make up to 1 million dollars per sponsered post!

[Maya Sanchez]

I believe that social media marketing has had a large impact on consumers because influencers have a strong hold on the internet. Social media has grown exponentially the past couple years and there is no stopping it. There are so many platforms geared to all sorts of people, so everyone can have a social media they enjoy. As social media has grown, influencers have as well. On social media, an influencer could be any one in the world but they usually blow up for their relatability and how they seem like a friend to viewers. People not only enjoy their content but listen to what influencers have to say and will agree with them even if they are wrong. When companies started paying influencers to promote products it turned marketing to a whole new level. With there being so many platforms there are millions of influencers on multiple platforms that are able to reach millions of viewers. Marketing has touched social media and when social media stars advertise for a brand they are helping build a company. Since influencers are seen to have the magic touch in marketing they have learned their power and charge large amounts of money to companies to promote their brand. In “Literally like the mafia”: Paris Martineau on influencer marketing” Paris Martineau writes, “...in 2016 an endorsement from a top-level influencer would generally cost about $5,000 to $10,000; now, brands are expected to pay “well over $100,000 for the same placement.” In the ever growing world of social media, influencers have seen how they hold so much power over their viewers so they charge businesses a large sum for their promotion. People view influencers as friends and will take any’ advice’ they have to look like them. Influencers hold a lot of power over who buys what especially with how trends on the internet work now. When an influencer mentions a product they love, the internet will jump on it and make it trend. It will be sold out in stores, online, and people have to wait months for it to be back to purchase. Influencers are the new wave of advertisement and they have a huge influence on what the public buys.

[Michelle Liu]

The article “Inside the Pricey War to Influence Your Instagram Feed” by Paris Martineau illustrates the price war of advertisements by internet influencers. The ideas of Martineau are agreed upon. Due to the development of advanced technology, many kinds of social media are invented to meet the interests of teenagers and young adults. A large number of internet celebrities then appear and catch the awareness of the users of those social media with their good appearance, talents, or interesting original ideas. Those influencers may collaborate with each other to attract more users to follow their accounts. Those influencers usually have huge power as they have many followers and fans. Their followers consider those influencers as their friends because they communicate frequently by posting comments on the videos or the photos of influencers. So their followers may consider them worthy to be believed as they are their friends and they have been trusted by so many followers. Businesses catch these opportunities and ask those influencers to include advertisements in their posts. For example, some YouTubers can include advertisements directly in their video by introducing the benefits of a product or addressing they have used it frequently and discovered the product is worthy to buy. However, as those influencers have large power to influence people, it costs unbelievably high and it is frequent to have price competition of the same influencer among two same kinds of products by different companies. Some sole proprietorships may not have enough capital to buy an advertisement even though their products are really worthy to buy. Then their products may not be able to be discovered by consumers. However, some influencers may promote products blindly without truly considering the characteristics of the products as they have already received money from the companies and followed the requirements of the advertisement providers. Therefore, it is a good idea for consumers to verify whether the influencers are paid to promote a product before they want to buy it.