6 ms·

'I'm sick of influencers asking for free cake'

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I get the feeling we are seeing the social media shake out start. The Facebook boycott was noticeable for brands that don't do well from that channel (ie the big winner in Facebook is Walmart - because facebook puts effort into tracking of a advert for an item results in that phone walking into a store and buying that item) So unless "influencers" can drive sales (and show they can) we will see more of this :-) Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-)
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That sounds awful.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    if you only see adverts that you would want to buy but did not know about before the advert, I would like that personally.
    - clouddrover 6y ago
      How do they know what you want to buy without extensively tracking and surveilling you? Why would you like to be surveilled all day, every day? What advert do you think would ever be worth that?
    - arethuza 6y ago
      The logical conclusion of this would seem to be a system where Amazon just buys the stuff for you it thinks you should be buying....
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        yes that is the logical conclusion if the logic also includes a provision that Amazon is always correct in its supposition, otherwise not so much. Also I might like to get ads from other companies than Amazon, maybe it should be other companies doing the buying then.... Also of course it would have to have your understanding of your personal finances baked in so that it would make the absolutely correct decision as to what you would like to buy, but are not sure if you can afford right at the moment. I mean I would like to get an ad for something I might like to get for my birthday and not buy it, you know the more I think about it I don't think the logical conclusion that you claim follows at all from what I stated...
        arethuza 6y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't being entirely serious there. I think I was getting cross thread contamination from a discussion on 1984 and was contemplating the ultimate consumerist dystopia...
        082349872349872 6y ago
        Speaking of cross thread contamination, I think the only person in Brave New World who budgets for anything is The Savage, when he pulls his peaceful Kaczynski at the end. (then again, I'm pretty sure soma overdosing means saving for retirement is not a thing.)
    - michaelt 6y ago
      Depends what the mechanism of operation is. If I tell you there's a home burglary every second, and home CCTV can keep you safe - have I improved your life? Or have I created fear in you, then charged you $$$ to feel like you did before you saw my advert?
      - true_religion 6y ago
        I'm not sure how the mechanism of operation has any effect here? Products like security cameras do a certain thing, and advertisements inform you of that thing. If that thing is risk avoidance, then you need to judge for yourself if its worth it. For example, consider advertisements for flu shots and other immunizations. They create fear, by informing people about legitimate risks. Then is it wrong to advertise optional immunizations? As an aside, I recently bought a Ring camera and later had an attempted burglary. The camera did its job, and woke us up for suspicious activity so our car wasn't stolen as a result.
        hyperdimension 6y ago
        No disrespect to you, but I've heard that "inform you about products you might be interested about" argument so many times it's starting to grate on me. Think back to the advertisements (I'm thinking about the ones in Byte magazine in particular right now [not sure if it was ever distributed internationally, but you can definitely find issues in the Internet Archive.] They showed maybe a picture of a product and paragraphs and paragraphs extolling the product's virtues. I despise the modern adtech industry, but I have zero problem with that old type of ad. They helped fund a magazine I liked; I was informed about a product I may not have known existed, and most of all, no one knew if I read the ad or not or how many words of the copy I read, how long I was looking at it, my sentiment while reading the ad... It was a win-win scenario. In fact, every now and then I even like to look at old back issues of those types of magazines, sometimes to just read the ads. That's not the type of advertisement I despise now. My main point is that the entire 'Oh, well ads on (e.g.) Facebook, they simply inform you about a new product for sale' argument people toss around in defence of ads now falls flat to me now. At its core, it's essentially a motte-and-bailey argument (if you haven't heard of that before, look it up; you'll see it everywhere.) The entire ad-tech industry is rife with click fraud, which begets endless and invisible tracking, data brokers, databases everywhere, analytics, ad auctions where they bid upon your eyeballs. That's when the media companies, the advertisers, and Google and Facebook frolic about the bailey. As soon as you accuse them of their secretive tracking and data collection, they run right up to the motte and tell you, "Well, hey! We're just trying to give you relevant and useful information about products you might not know about!" Well, that sounds reasonable. You acquiesce, and they run back into the bailey and continue to monetize your eyeballs. That's what I find most dishonest about modern ads. They claim to be performing a social good, but behind our backs they go back to collecting every piece of our being that they can measure. -- EDIT: I'd never install a Ring device, but I'd be being way too ideological to not have the empathy to say I wasn't glad your car was stolen. That's good to hear. :)
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) One way in which that scenario could arise is if advertising can effectively get you to buy whatever it's peddling, even if it's not in your interest to do so. I fear we're somewhat there already, and that it may only get worse.
- _Microft 6y ago
  > Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. Wouldn't it be easier if they shipped it directly to your place and debited your credit card automatically? /s
  - jankotek 6y ago
    Actually that would be amazing. But it has to solve privacy, cover cost of wrong items and never ship crocked fakes.
    - dividedbyzero 6y ago
      It would be terrible because without going through the decision process myself, how would I even know that what I got is what I would have chosen?
      - jankotek 6y ago
        In US you have 500 types of soda, but at the end it is just a soda. The same applies for tools, house stuff etc. There are more important things in life than decision process.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    A subscription might work. You pay us $x a month and we use AI-magic to decide which products to send you. But you'd have to have either a very good model or a very good way of handling returns.
    - dagw 6y ago
      Isn't that basically what book clubs and the like have been doing for at least 80+ years?
  - encom 6y ago
    This service already exists, and has predictably also gone bankrupt. LootCrate™ will ship you a selection of plastic garbage monthly! Very cool!
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) Firstly, the entire Web of the past 20 years is a failed experiment for that (or success, depends on your perspective). Secondly, to really reach this goal, imagine a web with 10x more invasive tracking than today's web...
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Just imagine where you can be directed to valuable high quality independent information about products you might be interested in without having to be strongarmed, manipulated, or cargo culted into spending your money on them. That might be nicer.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  > That might be nice :-) Only for the vendor, personally I don't want to see adverts that are more likely to influence my behaviour.
timwaagh 6y ago
I don't know, businesses seeming to expect free advertisements like some in the article feels a little bit disrespectful towards influencers. it's okay not to give away stuff and i never would, but I suppose the assumption that influencers will just put your stuff into the spotlight anyhow is likely mistaken.
- BozeWolf 6y ago
  As far as I understand, it is the other way around: The business does not ask influencers to make advertisements in return for free cake. No. The influencers ask for free cake in return to make an advertisement. I have heard this before from a befriended (fairly new and "hip") restaurant owner in Amsterdam. Weekly requests come in from influencers for free diner (Approximately €150,- per person). But they wont come alone of course.
  - thomasz 6y ago
    I seriously do not understand the moral indignation. It the business does not feel like the influencer will generate enough sales, it can simply refuse or ignore the request. Others might appreciate the chance to get in front of many eyeballs very cheaply.
    - Hitton 6y ago
      I too don't understand why people don't like spam.
    - scoutt 6y ago
      You might not be interested in advertising in some kid's instagram, while at the same time you get 30 emails/day asking for free stuff. Often if you deny it or don't answer you also get a rant about how famous the influencer is and how you will repent for not going along. I have a friend that has a Piadina[1] restaurant. I have seen the emails first hand. They even have a big sign in the front door in the lines of "Influencers: no free meals". Edit: Yes, they also show off in person. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piadina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piadina
chrisseaton 6y ago
Did she pay for this news article about her cakes, or get it for free?
- tomgp 6y ago
  I'm guessing the BBC journalist and photographer got some free cake, so I guess it just depends on the 'influencer' in question.
- frequentnapper 6y ago
  I didn't realize one could pay to be featured in a news article on BBC, but then again I'm not such a cynic.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > I didn't realize one could pay to be featured in a news article on BBC I don't believe you can - that was the point I was making, if you missed it.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      You can, but you have to be rather more rich, powerful, and well-connected than a cake reviewer.
  - staz 6y ago
    Famous article about that by the cofounder of ycombinator http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- code_scrapping 6y ago
  Both comments are in poor taste. The point of the article was not about the quality of the product (cakes) but about a model of small-time abuse in which she has first-time experience. She is allowed to state the situation and give an opinion. Secondly - comparing BBC journalists to people selling personal lifestyle as a product is insulting. Journalists are in obligation do declare "opinion pieces" if they're writing them, while influencers are basically only doing opinion pieces, and have a business model of convincing manufacturers that their opinions is worth paying for. Their positive opinion is probably worth just a bit more money (yes, that's also an unsubstantiated insult, I just like to blend in with the crowd here).
netcan 6y ago
What a strange world. Whatever about the cake shop, being an aspiring "micro-influencer" sounds awful.
- btrask 6y ago
  Yeah, really. I don't think young people are really doing this for free food, I think the main reason is that they want to feel appreciated and treated well for once in their lives. Edit to add: Walking into a store and asking for free stuff because you're So Important is a power trip. It's a small chance to act like a celebrity. But just think of all the kids pinning their hopes on the slim chance of being Influencers because they don't have more promising opportunities. It's sad.
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    > they want to feel appreciated and treated well for once in their lives. If being internet famous is the same as being irl famous, then you would probably have to say the same about actors, TV presenters , musicians, street performers, radio djs etc. I don't think it's a cry.
    - btrask 6y ago
      If someone pretended to be a famous actor (etc) in public, I would say they probably weren't very happy with their own life. Somehow with influencers, this has actually become a "trend." I think it ties in with Instagram travel posts, hiring grounded private jets for 10 minutes to take selfies in, etc. For Gen-Y/Z, it's like you have to pretend to be rich and famous, or else you're nothing. And from the other end, their parents see them as daycare units while they go about their jobs. There's no on-ramp to society anymore, just fake it til you make it. How is a young person who isn't in tech or finance supposed to be appreciated these days? I'll tell you how: they offer to advertise for local businesses to their friends ("followers"). There isn't even a major war for them to die in.
- MrDresden 6y ago
  It honestly scares me to hear my nieces and nephews, all around the 10 year old mark, talking about aspiring for internet fame more (and in some cases exclusively) than any other actual profession or healthy aspiration. And the education and affluency of the family has no bearing on this, which scares me even more. That this need for wide audience social acceptance is so ingrained in humans that no matter the nurturing environment that the kids grow up in, they will still heavily latch onto this as anything worth aspiring for. Obviously they will not all (or even any) attempt to go this route when they grow up, yet I can't help wonder if this is closing off some part of their minds to all the other paths in life which wont get them direct public audience appreciation.
lordnacho 6y ago
It seems like a doable side project to generate a bunch of followers with their own names, faces, posting history, and relationship graphs, even for a beginning student of ML. It wouldn't surprise me if one had already done this in order to get freebees like the ones discussed in the article. There's probably already serious efforts to weed out such people.
- dmurray 6y ago
  The hard part isn't the ML. It's automating account creation etc without getting shut down by Twitter, Instagram, etc, all at a lower cost than the businesses who already sell social media followers at rates like $5 for 8,000 [0]. [0] https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/05/16/buying-twitter-followers-cheap-price-friendship https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/05/16/buying-twitter...
freetime2 6y ago
An influencer sending a cold email asking for free cake seems pretty analogous to a company like Yelp making a cold call looking to sign up a restaurant for premium features. Or in decades past the Yellow Pages reaching out to local businesses to sell ad space. I suppose the difference is that traditional advertisers are looking to be paid in money, while influencers are often looking to be paid in free goods and services. Also, while I have never dealt with an influencer personally, it sounds like many of them may come across as unprofessional or lacking courteousness (to be fair, many traditional salespeople do too). It's a seemingly glamorous career with a low bar to entry, which probably attracts a fair amount of hacks. I would have to imagine that the most successful influencers out there do tend to favor monetary transactions, and can afford to hire dedicated sales people to handle their business dealings.
- darkcha0s 6y ago
  Some of these influencers messages are a lot kinder than the ones trying to sell me remote developers on linkedin...
tallanvor 6y ago
Outside of certain niche areas, there doesn't seem to be any real evidence of "influencers" having measurable impact on sales. The strongest areas where they can make a difference is in makeup, styling products, and some fashion brands, but you really have to look hard at the demographics in order to figure out if your products are going to fit in the market that the "influencer" is catering to.
- AndrewDucker 6y ago
  Influencers seem to work well in their own niches. Gamers can influence other gamers to buy gaming tech. Computer people can influence people to buy computer services. But that's because they attract the right market. If you're watching a gaming video the chances are you're at least theoretically interested in gaming technology.
- slightwinder 6y ago
  No, marketing is doing this for decades, it definetly works. The overall problem is more that most Influencers are laymen with no clue about proper marketing, and so are the people who fall to their ploy. Influencers can have significant impact on sales in every area, if they wield their fame rightful. The real problem is that most influencers are only fame for themself, their personality, the entertainment they offer, but hardly for their expertise in any specific area. So the crowd they gather is to diversified to be useful for a specific product, outside of generic stuff. But you see the effects more clearly when you look at tech, gaming or weeb-stuff, where people who are fame for their general expertise or specific expertise in some game, tech or weeb-area.
iamben 6y ago
I think we've all seen enough of these stories to know that influencers take the piss etc etc - and articles like this always get coverage because we love to be outraged, but I don't know why more businesses haven't adapted. My brother works for a brewery - they often get influencers asking for free beer. They respond - "yeah absolutely, of course. Pay for this order, here's a code to give to your followers. When we've covered the costs of your order we'll refund it and send you some extra stuff." Some people take them up on it, others don't. Which I assume separates the wheat from the chaff.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  That sounds like a great way to handle it. Of the people who take them up on that offer, how many manage to generate sales? How many generate enough sales to actually cover the costs?
  - iamben 6y ago
    I've just asked him for you. To paraphrase - most people take them up on it (nothing to lose). Some people never place an order, lots of codes are never used. Some have been used many, many times - but often they'll then go on to find them on the voucher code sites (at which point they'll usually just bin the code).
- brtkdotse 6y ago
  In Sweden, influencer deals have been deemed as exchange of services by the tax authorities. In the example above the influencer has taken payment for rendered services in the form of goods. If there isn’t a corporate entity formed, that’s getting taxed as income.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    I'd expect the same in any tax regime. If someone gives you something, that's income. Exemptions are usually small. Are you saying something specifically relevant to the deal above where the influencer doesn't receive any freebies until they've brought in some sales?
lovethyneighbor 6y ago
Influences are very important to society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAAVLcMzr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAAVLcMzr4
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
I've seen a company spend as much as $80K for an influencer to make videos of its products, even though some of these videos broke 1M views very little of that engagement made it back to the sales chart. The big view counts are because the viewers like the individual, not really because they care what product they're talking about.
- binarymax 6y ago
  Also important to remember that a “view” doesn’t mean someone watched the video at all. On a 5-10 min video they may have watched 30 seconds of it. A view is basically as worthy as a click - not much at all.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  Everybody keeps saying that about advertisements yet advertisement is big business and has been since forever. When was the last time you or anybody you know turned on the tv or went to the cinema to view ads?
aaron695 6y ago
If a TV station wants an interview of you in your cake shop do you say smeg off you have to pay me for my time, which might be travel, overtime, prep and the products the cast might consume? I guess some people might. Whatever, that's up to them.
- coopierez 6y ago
  It depends on how much you value the advertising you get from it. In this particular case, the "influencers" didn't bring in any revenue, so they stopped giving out free samples to them. I suppose you have to decide who is giving who the favour.
nix23 6y ago
Oh look free Marketing, thanks BBC, her instagramm: https://www.instagram.com/angesdesucre/ https://www.instagram.com/angesdesucre/
- freetime2 6y ago
  How do you know she didn't pay the BBC with free cake?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    All the people mentioned in the article probably paid BBC with money.
    - nix23 6y ago
      That sounds even more plaussible!
mrweasel 6y ago
I'm honestly more surprised by how few followers the influencers need to be able to do it for a living, 180,000 followers seems rather low. The "professional" influencers likely isn't the issue, I suspect. If you're doing social media for a living, you don't care about free cake, you want money. The problem is more likely to be the wanna be influencers, with a few followers, who just want free stuff and forget that they need to pay taxes on their free stuff, and correctly label it as an ad.
ChrisRR 6y ago
Most of the time they're not even influencers, they're "influencers" If you've only got a few thousand followers, most of whom would also be begging for free stuff, or don't live near the restaurant you're claiming to advertise, then you're not an influencer.
- FindMySocks 6y ago
  They are an influencer, but they're deemed a micro-influencer. These are still an important target for marketers to hit, as often micro-influencers have a more supportive and interactive userbase.
marketingPro 6y ago
I run a website that would appear to have a ~100k to 1 million visitors/yr if you looked it up on Alexa. That said, the difficulty to funnel someone into clicking a link is insane and unpredictable. Influencers may have 1M followers, but the visitors are not there for the human. They are there for the eye candy, the comment section, or information. An advertisement is none of these. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to funnel someone who is barely interested in the content they are subscribed to, to buy something from an Ad. But hey Nike figures out a way to turn this into profit.
deleted 6y ago
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lumberingjack 6y ago
Most women these days have no clue how to bake a cake or how hard it is not to bake from a box so of course they're completely neglecting the time and work it takes to do that. Maybe somebody should try educating them about that we could call it "home economy"

I get the feeling we are seeing the social media shake out start. The Facebook boycott was noticeable for brands that don't do well from that channel (ie the big winner in Facebook is Walmart - because facebook puts effort into tracking of a advert for an item results in that phone walking into a store and buying that item) So unless "influencers" can drive sales (and show they can) we will see more of this :-) Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-)

clouddrover 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That sounds awful.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  if you only see adverts that you would want to buy but did not know about before the advert, I would like that personally.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    How do they know what you want to buy without extensively tracking and surveilling you? Why would you like to be surveilled all day, every day? What advert do you think would ever be worth that?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The logical conclusion of this would seem to be a system where Amazon just buys the stuff for you it thinks you should be buying....
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      yes that is the logical conclusion if the logic also includes a provision that Amazon is always correct in its supposition, otherwise not so much. Also I might like to get ads from other companies than Amazon, maybe it should be other companies doing the buying then.... Also of course it would have to have your understanding of your personal finances baked in so that it would make the absolutely correct decision as to what you would like to buy, but are not sure if you can afford right at the moment. I mean I would like to get an ad for something I might like to get for my birthday and not buy it, you know the more I think about it I don't think the logical conclusion that you claim follows at all from what I stated...
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't being entirely serious there. I think I was getting cross thread contamination from a discussion on 1984 and was contemplating the ultimate consumerist dystopia...
        082349872349872 6y ago
        Speaking of cross thread contamination, I think the only person in Brave New World who budgets for anything is The Savage, when he pulls his peaceful Kaczynski at the end. (then again, I'm pretty sure soma overdosing means saving for retirement is not a thing.)
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Depends what the mechanism of operation is. If I tell you there's a home burglary every second, and home CCTV can keep you safe - have I improved your life? Or have I created fear in you, then charged you $$$ to feel like you did before you saw my advert?
    - true_religion 6y ago
      I'm not sure how the mechanism of operation has any effect here? Products like security cameras do a certain thing, and advertisements inform you of that thing. If that thing is risk avoidance, then you need to judge for yourself if its worth it. For example, consider advertisements for flu shots and other immunizations. They create fear, by informing people about legitimate risks. Then is it wrong to advertise optional immunizations? As an aside, I recently bought a Ring camera and later had an attempted burglary. The camera did its job, and woke us up for suspicious activity so our car wasn't stolen as a result.
      - hyperdimension 6y ago
        No disrespect to you, but I've heard that "inform you about products you might be interested about" argument so many times it's starting to grate on me. Think back to the advertisements (I'm thinking about the ones in Byte magazine in particular right now [not sure if it was ever distributed internationally, but you can definitely find issues in the Internet Archive.] They showed maybe a picture of a product and paragraphs and paragraphs extolling the product's virtues. I despise the modern adtech industry, but I have zero problem with that old type of ad. They helped fund a magazine I liked; I was informed about a product I may not have known existed, and most of all, no one knew if I read the ad or not or how many words of the copy I read, how long I was looking at it, my sentiment while reading the ad... It was a win-win scenario. In fact, every now and then I even like to look at old back issues of those types of magazines, sometimes to just read the ads. That's not the type of advertisement I despise now. My main point is that the entire 'Oh, well ads on (e.g.) Facebook, they simply inform you about a new product for sale' argument people toss around in defence of ads now falls flat to me now. At its core, it's essentially a motte-and-bailey argument (if you haven't heard of that before, look it up; you'll see it everywhere.) The entire ad-tech industry is rife with click fraud, which begets endless and invisible tracking, data brokers, databases everywhere, analytics, ad auctions where they bid upon your eyeballs. That's when the media companies, the advertisers, and Google and Facebook frolic about the bailey. As soon as you accuse them of their secretive tracking and data collection, they run right up to the motte and tell you, "Well, hey! We're just trying to give you relevant and useful information about products you might not know about!" Well, that sounds reasonable. You acquiesce, and they run back into the bailey and continue to monetize your eyeballs. That's what I find most dishonest about modern ads. They claim to be performing a social good, but behind our backs they go back to collecting every piece of our being that they can measure. -- EDIT: I'd never install a Ring device, but I'd be being way too ideological to not have the empathy to say I wasn't glad your car was stolen. That's good to hear. :)
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) One way in which that scenario could arise is if advertising can effectively get you to buy whatever it's peddling, even if it's not in your interest to do so. I fear we're somewhat there already, and that it may only get worse.
_Microft 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. Wouldn't it be easier if they shipped it directly to your place and debited your credit card automatically? /s
- jankotek 6y ago
  Actually that would be amazing. But it has to solve privacy, cover cost of wrong items and never ship crocked fakes.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    It would be terrible because without going through the decision process myself, how would I even know that what I got is what I would have chosen?
    - jankotek 6y ago
      In US you have 500 types of soda, but at the end it is just a soda. The same applies for tools, house stuff etc. There are more important things in life than decision process.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  A subscription might work. You pay us $x a month and we use AI-magic to decide which products to send you. But you'd have to have either a very good model or a very good way of handling returns.
  - dagw 6y ago
    Isn't that basically what book clubs and the like have been doing for at least 80+ years?
- encom 6y ago
  This service already exists, and has predictably also gone bankrupt. LootCrate™ will ship you a selection of plastic garbage monthly! Very cool!
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) Firstly, the entire Web of the past 20 years is a failed experiment for that (or success, depends on your perspective). Secondly, to really reach this goal, imagine a web with 10x more invasive tracking than today's web...
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Just imagine where you can be directed to valuable high quality independent information about products you might be interested in without having to be strongarmed, manipulated, or cargo culted into spending your money on them. That might be nicer.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
> That might be nice :-) Only for the vendor, personally I don't want to see adverts that are more likely to influence my behaviour.

timwaagh 6y ago

I don't know, businesses seeming to expect free advertisements like some in the article feels a little bit disrespectful towards influencers. it's okay not to give away stuff and i never would, but I suppose the assumption that influencers will just put your stuff into the spotlight anyhow is likely mistaken.

BozeWolf 6y ago
As far as I understand, it is the other way around: The business does not ask influencers to make advertisements in return for free cake. No. The influencers ask for free cake in return to make an advertisement. I have heard this before from a befriended (fairly new and "hip") restaurant owner in Amsterdam. Weekly requests come in from influencers for free diner (Approximately €150,- per person). But they wont come alone of course.
- thomasz 6y ago
  I seriously do not understand the moral indignation. It the business does not feel like the influencer will generate enough sales, it can simply refuse or ignore the request. Others might appreciate the chance to get in front of many eyeballs very cheaply.
  - Hitton 6y ago
    I too don't understand why people don't like spam.
  - scoutt 6y ago
    You might not be interested in advertising in some kid's instagram, while at the same time you get 30 emails/day asking for free stuff. Often if you deny it or don't answer you also get a rant about how famous the influencer is and how you will repent for not going along. I have a friend that has a Piadina[1] restaurant. I have seen the emails first hand. They even have a big sign in the front door in the lines of "Influencers: no free meals". Edit: Yes, they also show off in person. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piadina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piadina

chrisseaton 6y ago

Did she pay for this news article about her cakes, or get it for free?

tomgp 6y ago
I'm guessing the BBC journalist and photographer got some free cake, so I guess it just depends on the 'influencer' in question.
frequentnapper 6y ago
I didn't realize one could pay to be featured in a news article on BBC, but then again I'm not such a cynic.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > I didn't realize one could pay to be featured in a news article on BBC I don't believe you can - that was the point I was making, if you missed it.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    You can, but you have to be rather more rich, powerful, and well-connected than a cake reviewer.
- staz 6y ago
  Famous article about that by the cofounder of ycombinator http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
code_scrapping 6y ago
Both comments are in poor taste. The point of the article was not about the quality of the product (cakes) but about a model of small-time abuse in which she has first-time experience. She is allowed to state the situation and give an opinion. Secondly - comparing BBC journalists to people selling personal lifestyle as a product is insulting. Journalists are in obligation do declare "opinion pieces" if they're writing them, while influencers are basically only doing opinion pieces, and have a business model of convincing manufacturers that their opinions is worth paying for. Their positive opinion is probably worth just a bit more money (yes, that's also an unsubstantiated insult, I just like to blend in with the crowd here).

netcan 6y ago

What a strange world. Whatever about the cake shop, being an aspiring "micro-influencer" sounds awful.

btrask 6y ago
Yeah, really. I don't think young people are really doing this for free food, I think the main reason is that they want to feel appreciated and treated well for once in their lives. Edit to add: Walking into a store and asking for free stuff because you're So Important is a power trip. It's a small chance to act like a celebrity. But just think of all the kids pinning their hopes on the slim chance of being Influencers because they don't have more promising opportunities. It's sad.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  > they want to feel appreciated and treated well for once in their lives. If being internet famous is the same as being irl famous, then you would probably have to say the same about actors, TV presenters , musicians, street performers, radio djs etc. I don't think it's a cry.
  - btrask 6y ago
    If someone pretended to be a famous actor (etc) in public, I would say they probably weren't very happy with their own life. Somehow with influencers, this has actually become a "trend." I think it ties in with Instagram travel posts, hiring grounded private jets for 10 minutes to take selfies in, etc. For Gen-Y/Z, it's like you have to pretend to be rich and famous, or else you're nothing. And from the other end, their parents see them as daycare units while they go about their jobs. There's no on-ramp to society anymore, just fake it til you make it. How is a young person who isn't in tech or finance supposed to be appreciated these days? I'll tell you how: they offer to advertise for local businesses to their friends ("followers"). There isn't even a major war for them to die in.
MrDresden 6y ago
It honestly scares me to hear my nieces and nephews, all around the 10 year old mark, talking about aspiring for internet fame more (and in some cases exclusively) than any other actual profession or healthy aspiration. And the education and affluency of the family has no bearing on this, which scares me even more. That this need for wide audience social acceptance is so ingrained in humans that no matter the nurturing environment that the kids grow up in, they will still heavily latch onto this as anything worth aspiring for. Obviously they will not all (or even any) attempt to go this route when they grow up, yet I can't help wonder if this is closing off some part of their minds to all the other paths in life which wont get them direct public audience appreciation.

lordnacho 6y ago

It seems like a doable side project to generate a bunch of followers with their own names, faces, posting history, and relationship graphs, even for a beginning student of ML. It wouldn't surprise me if one had already done this in order to get freebees like the ones discussed in the article. There's probably already serious efforts to weed out such people.

dmurray 6y ago
The hard part isn't the ML. It's automating account creation etc without getting shut down by Twitter, Instagram, etc, all at a lower cost than the businesses who already sell social media followers at rates like $5 for 8,000 [0]. [0] https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/05/16/buying-twitter-followers-cheap-price-friendship https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/05/16/buying-twitter...

freetime2 6y ago

An influencer sending a cold email asking for free cake seems pretty analogous to a company like Yelp making a cold call looking to sign up a restaurant for premium features. Or in decades past the Yellow Pages reaching out to local businesses to sell ad space. I suppose the difference is that traditional advertisers are looking to be paid in money, while influencers are often looking to be paid in free goods and services. Also, while I have never dealt with an influencer personally, it sounds like many of them may come across as unprofessional or lacking courteousness (to be fair, many traditional salespeople do too). It's a seemingly glamorous career with a low bar to entry, which probably attracts a fair amount of hacks. I would have to imagine that the most successful influencers out there do tend to favor monetary transactions, and can afford to hire dedicated sales people to handle their business dealings.

darkcha0s 6y ago
Some of these influencers messages are a lot kinder than the ones trying to sell me remote developers on linkedin...

tallanvor 6y ago

Outside of certain niche areas, there doesn't seem to be any real evidence of "influencers" having measurable impact on sales. The strongest areas where they can make a difference is in makeup, styling products, and some fashion brands, but you really have to look hard at the demographics in order to figure out if your products are going to fit in the market that the "influencer" is catering to.

AndrewDucker 6y ago
Influencers seem to work well in their own niches. Gamers can influence other gamers to buy gaming tech. Computer people can influence people to buy computer services. But that's because they attract the right market. If you're watching a gaming video the chances are you're at least theoretically interested in gaming technology.
slightwinder 6y ago
No, marketing is doing this for decades, it definetly works. The overall problem is more that most Influencers are laymen with no clue about proper marketing, and so are the people who fall to their ploy. Influencers can have significant impact on sales in every area, if they wield their fame rightful. The real problem is that most influencers are only fame for themself, their personality, the entertainment they offer, but hardly for their expertise in any specific area. So the crowd they gather is to diversified to be useful for a specific product, outside of generic stuff. But you see the effects more clearly when you look at tech, gaming or weeb-stuff, where people who are fame for their general expertise or specific expertise in some game, tech or weeb-area.

iamben 6y ago

I think we've all seen enough of these stories to know that influencers take the piss etc etc - and articles like this always get coverage because we love to be outraged, but I don't know why more businesses haven't adapted. My brother works for a brewery - they often get influencers asking for free beer. They respond - "yeah absolutely, of course. Pay for this order, here's a code to give to your followers. When we've covered the costs of your order we'll refund it and send you some extra stuff." Some people take them up on it, others don't. Which I assume separates the wheat from the chaff.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
That sounds like a great way to handle it. Of the people who take them up on that offer, how many manage to generate sales? How many generate enough sales to actually cover the costs?
- iamben 6y ago
  I've just asked him for you. To paraphrase - most people take them up on it (nothing to lose). Some people never place an order, lots of codes are never used. Some have been used many, many times - but often they'll then go on to find them on the voucher code sites (at which point they'll usually just bin the code).
brtkdotse 6y ago
In Sweden, influencer deals have been deemed as exchange of services by the tax authorities. In the example above the influencer has taken payment for rendered services in the form of goods. If there isn’t a corporate entity formed, that’s getting taxed as income.
- dmurray 6y ago
  I'd expect the same in any tax regime. If someone gives you something, that's income. Exemptions are usually small. Are you saying something specifically relevant to the deal above where the influencer doesn't receive any freebies until they've brought in some sales?

lovethyneighbor 6y ago

Influences are very important to society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAAVLcMzr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbAAVLcMzr4

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

I've seen a company spend as much as $80K for an influencer to make videos of its products, even though some of these videos broke 1M views very little of that engagement made it back to the sales chart. The big view counts are because the viewers like the individual, not really because they care what product they're talking about.

binarymax 6y ago
Also important to remember that a “view” doesn’t mean someone watched the video at all. On a 5-10 min video they may have watched 30 seconds of it. A view is basically as worthy as a click - not much at all.
wodenokoto 6y ago
Everybody keeps saying that about advertisements yet advertisement is big business and has been since forever. When was the last time you or anybody you know turned on the tv or went to the cinema to view ads?

aaron695 6y ago

If a TV station wants an interview of you in your cake shop do you say smeg off you have to pay me for my time, which might be travel, overtime, prep and the products the cast might consume? I guess some people might. Whatever, that's up to them.

coopierez 6y ago
It depends on how much you value the advertising you get from it. In this particular case, the "influencers" didn't bring in any revenue, so they stopped giving out free samples to them. I suppose you have to decide who is giving who the favour.

nix23 6y ago

Oh look free Marketing, thanks BBC, her instagramm: https://www.instagram.com/angesdesucre/ https://www.instagram.com/angesdesucre/

freetime2 6y ago
How do you know she didn't pay the BBC with free cake?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  All the people mentioned in the article probably paid BBC with money.
  - nix23 6y ago
    That sounds even more plaussible!

mrweasel 6y ago

I'm honestly more surprised by how few followers the influencers need to be able to do it for a living, 180,000 followers seems rather low. The "professional" influencers likely isn't the issue, I suspect. If you're doing social media for a living, you don't care about free cake, you want money. The problem is more likely to be the wanna be influencers, with a few followers, who just want free stuff and forget that they need to pay taxes on their free stuff, and correctly label it as an ad.

ChrisRR 6y ago

Most of the time they're not even influencers, they're "influencers" If you've only got a few thousand followers, most of whom would also be begging for free stuff, or don't live near the restaurant you're claiming to advertise, then you're not an influencer.

FindMySocks 6y ago
They are an influencer, but they're deemed a micro-influencer. These are still an important target for marketers to hit, as often micro-influencers have a more supportive and interactive userbase.

marketingPro 6y ago

I run a website that would appear to have a ~100k to 1 million visitors/yr if you looked it up on Alexa. That said, the difficulty to funnel someone into clicking a link is insane and unpredictable. Influencers may have 1M followers, but the visitors are not there for the human. They are there for the eye candy, the comment section, or information. An advertisement is none of these. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to funnel someone who is barely interested in the content they are subscribed to, to buy something from an Ad. But hey Nike figures out a way to turn this into profit.

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lumberingjack 6y ago

Most women these days have no clue how to bake a cake or how hard it is not to bake from a box so of course they're completely neglecting the time and work it takes to do that. Maybe somebody should try educating them about that we could call it "home economy"