Tortillas posing as pancakes: the problem with brands & influencer marketing
A smiling young woman, sitting on a throw with her own face on it. Bunches of pink balloons. A bottle of Listerine on the bedside table. You know what I’m talking about. This particular viral storm needs no introduction. It was even on BBC Breakfast this morning.
I have a lot of complicated feelings about what’s happened here, both personal and professional. And I don’t want to waste time going over ground that’s been widely covered already. I especially don’t want to talk about the individual influencer involved. She is not personally responsible for why this has blown up in her face. The real issue is not her ad — but the entire industry set up around influencer marketing.
This is my view: The misuse of influencers in marketing has created a toxic, ineffective bubble that is likely to burst — taking out people’s livelihoods in the process. But it can be salvaged, if marketers develop a strategic understanding of the role that influencers should play in their campaign plans, and work with their agencies to recruit these influencers accordingly.
Here’s what we’ve got wrong. Using influential people in advertising is nothing new. What’s changed is the type and nature of influence.

If you hire a famous actress to star in your ad — let’s say Keira Knightley, promoting Coco Mademoiselle — you are signalling that you are a luxury product endorsed by the A-list. But she’s not just lending her star power. By giving her a script and art directing the set, costumes etc, you are using her skills as an actress to tell a story about who the Coco Mademoiselle woman is — daring, sexy and rebellious. You then use mass media in places that both the potential Coco Mademoiselle woman will see, several times, as well as the people around her. This helps build a brand that everyone understands. It is memorable and evocative, meaning that when you next want a perfume, you are more likely to think of that brand.
This scenario works because Keira is a celebrity who acts for a living, and we all know at a glance that her role in this is doing a job. The lines are clearly drawn. The commercial appears in the ad break, or on a billboard. It’s regulated by the ASA, to protect consumers. There is a whole team working to ensure the message is right, that it does the job of selling perfume.
Influencers are similar to celebrities in that they have built a following, and have groups of people who are interested in what they have to say. But the scale and nature of their followings are very different to that of a celebrity. Their audiences are smaller, more niche, often skew younger. Most of them are not household names. They have grown their following update-by-update, sharing their lives and opinions and creative work in a way that makes people feel connected to them and invested in their lives.
This is where marketing comes in. Historically speaking, the roots of today’s influencer marketing are in word-of-mouth, not celebrity endorsement. They are a mum in your NCT group, recommending a car seat. They are your geeky little brother, who knows the difference between Android and iOS. They are the best-dressed person in your office, who always seems to look effortlessly stylish. Except you know them from the internet, not ‘real life’. They mean something because they are real people, with a connection to you. They are supposed to be the anti-celebrities. Their endorsement only means something because it’s not an ad.
The problem is that, quite rightly, no-one wants to flog the products of major companies for free. And no-one with a carefully created online presence — one that is deeply and intimately connected with their own identity — wants to give up control of their output to a brand. But lots of people DO like the idea of escaping the rat race and being paid big money for being their individual, creative selves online. So brands have responded by both paying influencers and giving them control.
This has resulted in what can only be described as a hot mess. In the worst scenarios, marketers who don’t understand the role of influencers hire agencies to recruit 20 Instagrammers or YouTubers to promote a brand. Less strategic/scrupulous agencies focus on the target of hiring 20 influencers, rather than the real work of creating marketing that sells the product. Influencers take the money and do the best they can to fill the shoes of celebrity, agent, strategist, art director, copywriter, production, media, market research and legal.
And the risk is that you might get a hodgepodge that weakens the influencer’s output and decreases their credibility, and even worse, fails to boost the brand or sell any product. How can it? Influencers are talented people when it comes to building an audience, but they’re mostly inexperienced and have no training in creating advertising or marketing strategy, nor do they have the access to an audience large enough to make a proper dent in brand perception.
I have been in too many evaluation meetings where the results produced by influencer marketing are incredibly small… and this is explained away as it being hard to measure (it’s not), or even worse, not mentioned at all as no-one wants to admit it, or look like they’re too old to understand social media. I have not seen a convincing case study that demonstrates that at a brand level, influencers have made a difference. (If you have one, please send it — I would be honestly delighted to be proven wrong).
And to be clear: I am not blaming the influencers. I am blaming those responsible for hiring them to do the wrong job. I am blaming those who give them too much money and responsibility based on the fact they’re good at content production and audience building rather than getting people to build commercial brands that help sell products.
Brands and advertisers have created a bad business model that’s putting a strain on young creatives trying to make a living doing an impossible job in a toxic marketplace. And when the environment is toxic, it’s people who get poisoned. The influencer behind Listerine has received abuse and death threats. Others are suffering from mental health problems that are exacerbated by the constant pressure to build and maintain a level of social presence that will attract enough traffic to get bill-paying influencer work. The blurred lines between personal and commercial make the public irritated and angry, undermining the influencer’s chance of making a long-term living.
Doom and gloom, right? Not necessarily. I think there are two ways in which we could improve the situation and move forward.
First of all, brands need to recognise the role that influencers should play in their campaigns. They are not brand-builders, but they ARE great recommenders, connectors and demonstrators. If you recruit them strategically and work with them constructively, they can amplify and build advocacy, rather than trading cash for posts (and forcing them to pretend that they really, really do love your brand of anti-freeze/clothes steamers/contraceptives and wouldn’t promote it if they didn’t). Cut ties with ‘instasham’ influencers who are taking your money and providing no value.
They could also consult on how your brand can reach and appeal to audiences that you want to connect with but can’t. Perhaps they can work alongside people who are qualified and experienced in building brands. Advertising creatives typically work in teams and are supported by a whole team of other specialists. Why can’t influencers work this way too?
Secondly, if you’re representing a brand with big buying power, you need to use your advertising budge to help change the social media ecosystem. Influencers are a core part of this ecosystem. They may not be useful in selling washing power for you directly. But they do create content that gets people to keep scrolling through Instagram or binge-watching YouTube, which draws the audiences who look at your washing powder ads (and then buys it).
Social media platforms such as Instagram do not recognise this. They’ve mostly failed to properly support or reward the creators who draw millions of visitors to their platform. If you consider them to be a partner or channel for your brand; you need to tell them to sort out their ecosystem and pay the people responsible for driving traffic and building their business.
My concluding thought is this: I have tried to be positive and marketing-focused in this post. But I also have genuine worries about how in social media, the personal has become commercial. Becoming ‘insta-famous’ is now considered to be a legitimate career goal. Social media has transformed some people into living, breathing billboards for big companies, with their most intimate moments being sold to FMCG brands. And with every candy-coloured, airbrushed post that we ‘like’, we are endorsing a world-view that says happiness is buying the right products, that everyone is a brand, and that you are no-one unless you have 10,000+ followers.
