The ‘Ordinary’ Instagram Celebrity
Celebrity product endorsement is a marketing technique that we are all familiar with. It has used over and over again and works because advertises lead us, the consumers, to believe that we can be just like our favourite celebrities if we use and consume the same products as them.
Social media has adapted product endorsement with stars receiving cold hard cash or free goods just for mentioning a brand on their pages. The ultimate for companies is a plug from an international star such as Kim Kardashian who with 14 million Instagram follows reaches more people on social media than all of Australia’s fashion magazines accounts combined.
But, recent trends have seen ordinary people now becoming Instagram celebrities with all the royalties attached. The latest social media craze has seen these ordinary Australians being offered expensive gifts, holidays and cash prizes to endorse products on their popular Instagram accounts.
Advertisers are targeting people who have a few thousand followers to post photos of and with their products.
I have seen this happen with my fitness enthusiast friend who has 25000 Instagram followers. She receives many products such as active wear, swimwear and heath food from various advertisers who simply ask for an instagram post and tag in return. On a large scale, Jen Selter a US fitness fanatic whose impressive gym routine and rear assets drew over 3 million Instagram followers, completely changed the product endorsement game by securing a line of fitness products in her name.
This raises the question of why brands would want to associate themselves with ordinary people? What is it that ordinary people have that celebrities don’t? I think the answer is quite simple. Ordinary people have credibility, ordinary people have authenticity and ordinary people are just that… ordinary.
Media and cultural studies writer Graeme Turner invented the ‘demotic turn’ to describe this current convergence of celebrity and the ordinary person. The ‘demotic turn’ can be used as a means of “referring to the increasing viability of the ordinary people as they turn themselves into media content through celebrity culture, reality tv, DIY websites, talk radio and the like”.
This new form of product endorsement is being seen by advertisers as successful as now consumers are hearing the product messages from others just like them. This brings the word of mouth marketing techniques into play and allows
consumers to connect more with the product and the person endorsing it. Social media endorsements allow brands to effectively target and reach consumers likely to buy a brand or product. This has allowed social media endorsements to become more efficient at driving sales compared to some traditional advertising outlets.
So what’s the big deal?
There are many negatives associated with this form of product endorsement. In order to achieve ‘instagram celebrity’ status, users are going to many lengths such as buying ‘fake’ followers to attract advertisers to their page. ‘The Inevitable Bite of Buying Followers’ recently stated that no matter how you look at it, you can’t downplay the importance of followers and likes. Followers attracts other followers and gives people the impression that what you are saying must be important. This is resulting in
advertisers being misled and thus not achieving any results from the advertising. The downfall of social media marketing is that the return on investment is not an easy thing to determine, it’s not easy to measure, it’s not easy to argue and it’s not easy to prove. What is easier to determine, measure, argue and prove is the investment in traditional media.
There is also an interesting legal side to this type of advertising with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) mandating the disclosure of paid or sponsored content. But this isn’t a new law. The ACCC points out that although there are no specific consumer laws governing social media in Australia, consumer trade practices legislation that prohibits businesses from making false, misleading or deceptive claims about their products has been in place since the 1970s and these laws apply to social media in the same way they apply to any other marketing channel.
It appears that as consumers, we more easily trust ordinary people to tell us about a product than a celebrity. We can more easily relate to them and thus are more likely to be interested in a product they are telling us about. Maybe it is just as simple as hearing about a product from a friend, just this time it is on the social media stage.
