How Influencing are the Influencers?

Remember the time when a celebrity would be the face of a product? Seems like ages back, right? Well, I still remember this bodywash advertisement that I saw back in the days. The scene started with a shot of a perfectly pedicured feet gliding into a bathroom. The feet would stop right in front of a porcelain white bath tub, when suddenly a silk bathrobe, preferably in a baby pink color or a champagne color, drops on the floor. With utmost grace the feet steps into a bubble bath with few rose petals floating around aimlessly. In the next shot, we would see something more than the feet. Slowly, and I mean really slowly, a long leg would comfortably stretch right out of the bubble. In this shot, you finally see the face attached to the body who owned those feet. She would pour the body wash out of the never been touched bottle on to a loofah and she would do this at a snail’s pace. Then with a Sphinx smile she would look at the loofah like it was Bradley Cooper. Her gaze would follow the loofah to her leg. She would then apply the body wash and voila! The secret to silky smooth skin is unveiled. If I took a bath at that pace, forget being on time, I would never make it out of the house. Imagine a racer taking a bath like that! The last shot was almost always a tagline and the celebrity holding the product like it was a fragile piece of porcelain antique, which would crumble at the slightest pressure. At the end of the advertisement the consumer would be lured enough to now buy the product, because we all want silky smooth legs. I definitely wanted to buy it but I also wanted the silk robe along with it.

Well, those days have almost gone, now it’s the influencers. Influencers are basically normal people on social media or the digital world with a lot of influence. Influence in this respect, indicates that, he or she will have a reach to a vast number of people, spanning not only through different age groups but also different geographical locations, just like you and me. Nowadays, celebrities approach influencers to promote movies, products, etc. Brands collaborate with them. Transitioning from being your neighbor to a influencer is quite tedious and is established through trust, continuous delivery of quality and perseverance.

So how did Influencers become this big?

This is my deduction, that normal people like us, we have difficulty relating to celebrities, who have a different lifestyle, different choices and just overall they are different. But an influencer is just someone who might be your neighbor, your friend, your relative, or just someone who was sitting beside you at the bar last night and you can relate to them. A celebrity would charge millions of dollars to just say a tagline and you might think that they are doing it for the money and are not really using them offscreen. Which might or may not be true. But with the influencers, they are just like your friend recommending a product to you because he or she has used it and found that it actually works. She would vouch for the efficacy of the product and you would vouch for her. Finally the result is that you would buy the product she recommended.

With the huge influx of youtubers and social media influencers, there was a dynamic shift from celebrities to influencers. People trusted them more, they would give you a deep dive into it, give you reviews and share what they like or dislike about a product, even have occasional giveaways, where the subscribers or followers would get free products. This shift was ofcourse noticed by the companies, it is then that they started sending PR packages to influencers with extensive reach to promote their products. Brands would often sponsor their videos or posts. With all these actions, soon Big Daddy started making its presence known, by Big daddy I mean Money Honey!

But when the money started flowing in, questions again rose in the minds of the followers that, were the reviews really honest? Or is it the bucks behind it that is doing the talking. Now there are many influencers who categorically mention that they are going to give a ‘honest’ review. An effort to win the trust back. This has also led many to migrate more and more towards smaller influencers or people who are starting out instead of following the big ones. Let’s face it, money does twiddle the mind and tickles the greedy devil in us.

Just like rest of the world, I also follow quite a number of influencers who I trust is providing the right information and honest reviews. But at the same time, I have unsubscribed or unfollowed many, because I have felt that they have become too commercialized and have started getting unrelatable.I would though say, that influencers are huge these days and some of them have followers as big as the population of some small countries. But money changes things, its easy to get swayed towards the green paper. Influencers who respect their followers for trusting them and remembering their roots is what keeps them grounded and ultimately relatable. I feel its very important for these youtubers or instagrammers or tik tok influencers or any digital influencer to respect their journey to maintain their originality and not get lost in the huge maze of money.

Reach, relatability, credibility and of course influence makes the full circle of an influencer and decides how big or small his or her influence is. The influence of influencers are not going away anytime soon but yes if relatability and credibility steps its foot out of the door so will the influence of the influencers.