Reply To: New Release – NI Circular $199 Full Price

[peter]

I like Cameron. We’ve had a few friendly emails. But he charges A LOT to do videos or “reviews.” Several years ago brands were paying $15k-$20k to get him to “review” their product. SPOILER ALERT: Actual reviewers are journalists that don’t do promotional videos for the brands whose products they review, accept free product, gifts or money, influencers AKA for hire product promoters do. I like Cameron, and think he’s excellent in this forum; I enjoy his videos. I just like to alert everyone that influencers are part of marketing and advertising budgets; they’re not treated the same as actual journalist reviewers, as it would be clear ethical violations if journalists were compensated in the same manner. These are solopreneurs — although some are part of influencer companies — who can make a lot of money from the brands they’re telling you that they’re unbiased reviewers of. If an influencer gets paid $20k to do a “review” video for a brand and says the product is awful, don’t buy it, do you think that brand is going to be giving him future payments of $20k for other products to review? Of course not. I can’t name names, but even a decade or so ago, big brands in the electronics space were paying major influencers upwards of $60K to “review” products. Most consumers don’t understand it, so I want to make sure  that this community is awre of this, because the business of influencing is a confidence game. Influencers convince their followers that they’re honest, then they approach brands to sell the influence they’ve built.

In the US, the FTC requires that influencers must state up front in videos whether or not they’ve received free product or other gifts, payments, or promises of other compensation or have family employed by the brand. I think the standard is excellent, but the enforcement is terrible. That said, there is presently an effort to tear these regulations, meant to protect consumers from deception, to shreds.  Numerous European countries have far stricter LAWS for this area than the US, as is almost always the case with US marketing-related regulations. But the lack of FTC enforcement has made it so, what easily could be estimated that 99% of influencers DO NOT follow the regulations, which I consider basic ethics; basic disclosures. Influencers want to hide how the system works because they realize if their followers knew they were getting paid a lot of money to do (faux) reviews, they wouldn’t be likely to trust them to be as honest. Final tip. Nearly every influencer follows the same format: state that they’re honest and unbiased. A good faux review isn’t purely positive. It will contain minor issues that aren’t showstoppers as a way for the influencer to build trust and have a higher conversion rate of sales for the brand.

Influencer marketing 101.

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