Facebook & Instagram To Take On Retailers With Army Of ‘Fluff & Puff” Influencers

First up it was Amazon who moved into the Australian retail market now Facebook and Instragram want to have a crack at driving direct sales using an army of fluff and puff personalities.

They are hoping that big brands such as Sony, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Lenovo in the Consumer electronics market, who are all moving to sell direct, will invest in their online “influencers” many who don’t have a clue about the product they are spruiking claim the experts.

In a clear case of I’m paid to plead and plead I shall for a free gift or cash Facebook and Instagram are set to ramp up so-called influencers to shift goods.

And when it goes pear shaped these so called influencers seem to change tack.

Take Kendall Jenner who after taking the money and jumping into a product publicity stunt suddenly “felt bad” about appearing in a controversial Pepsi advert in 2017

Kylie Jenner, who has 133 million Instagram followers now makes her fortune largely through her own cosmetics brand which she markets on the platform.

Pepsi announced days after Jenner started spruiking the questionable soft dring that it was yanking its latest advertisement.

The move came within 24 hours of the ad’s release, after it attracted ridicule and an outcry among critics.

Facebook, which owns Instagram and Whatsapp, said this week that the future of shopping would depend on “influencers”.

There appears to be no signs that people are growing weary of being told that a product is nice by someone whose only qualification is being famous.

As one person said at CES “Bugger the fact that influencers have no knowledge of a product in the CE Space. Todays product spin is all about fakes, a facelift, fake boobs and a body that gets noticed.

Author Malcolm Gladwell introduced the world to the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something in his 2008 book, Outliers. So if you apply that to culture, we are still very young by the time we have watched 10,000 hours of television, Dr McCracken says.

The key for influencers is to offer something more than a bare endorsement, he says. The promoter, product, and customer must all be better off, which is a tall order.

The BBC said that TV presenter Jameela Jamil called Kim Kardashinan “toxic” after she promoted a dieting lollipop last year.

“You have to really research a brand and work out what they are about before you work with them,” she said.