The wide world of influencers

Millions of people tune in every day to their favourite influencers. Some take note as 75-year-old Barbara “Babs” Costello — the self-proclaimed “internet mom/grandma you didn’t know you needed” — offers handy housekeeping tips like how to properly clean a garbage disposal. Others watch as popular YouTuber MrBeast buries himself alive for a week.

But behind this engaging and entertaining content is a world that followers don’t see on their screens. The world of influencers is filled with a range of behaviours and actors that move far beyond sales pitches into the worlds of activism, education, politics, public health and much more. Yet, with all the sensationalism and monetization, this is a world that few of us understand much about.

Robert Kozinets studies the ins and outs of this hidden world. He recently co-authored a textbook on the subject called Influencers & Creators. A professor at the University of Southern California, he teaches students about the fascinating cultural phenomena wrapped around this multibillion-dollar industry.

Message boards

Kozinets began studying online influencers long before the term existed. It was 1994, and the internet was new and exciting. At Smith, Kozinets did his marketing PhD dissertation on Star Trek fandom and discovered lots of online chatter about the sci-fi franchise. The fans he studied called the internet “a 24/7 Star Trek convention,” he recalls.

Soon, Kozinets was looking into other online communities. He studied coffee culture and gamers. With the arrival of social networks like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, some of the early mommy bloggers, for example, became the earliest influencers, sharing their parenting experiences and their favourite products with followers.

From those early days, an influencer ecosystem evolved, which today includes a broad group of players. There are many kinds of influencers: people, yes, but also pets and virtual influencers (more on that later). Then there are intermediaries who connect influencers with brand deals, talent agencies and influencer marketing platforms. “At the core of this commercial ecosystem is the relationship between influencers, their audiences and brands,” Kozinets says. Increasingly, people communicate and understand one another through the world of influencers and content creators, which makes it an important industry for researchers to study, he adds.

Becoming “influential”

It is perhaps easy to see why someone like singer Selena Gomez has become one of the world’s most popular influencers. After all, long before her influencer career took off, she already had a large fan base as a singer and Disney TV star.

But one needn’t already be famous to make it as an influencer, Kozinets says. Non-celebrity influencers, such as Swedish You- Tuber PewDiePie or pet influencer Mr.Pokee, have amassed many followers because they have built close relationships with their audiences. The secret sauce for successful influencers is trust. “When audiences trust your opinion, they’ll listen to you,” Kozinets says. But the term “influencer” can be misleading. Influencers, he says, “are not puppet masters controlling their audience. They are like trusted friends.”

Influencers build relationships with followers through a steady flow of content. That can be anything from posting nature pictures, to dispensing dating advice, to explaining how to repair old watches. Kozinets believes most successful influencers have one thing in common: they are multi-dimensional figures. “For Martha Stewart, it’s cooking, but it’s also home tips and her somewhat quirky personality,” he says.

Marketing match

A Goldman Sachs report estimates that the influencer economy — individual creators with their own brands and online audiences — was worth US$250 billion worldwide last year. It expects that value to nearly double to $480 billion by 2027. Marketers will help drive that growth as they look for ways to connect with the growing audiences that influencers attract.

“It’s a very, very important part of the way we’re doing business now and doing business going forward,” Kozinets says. “Social media has become such a part of our lives.”

Governments are also capitalizing on influencers. For example, Finland turned to influencers to get the word out about vaccines and masks during the pandemic. Governments recognize the ability of influencers to speak directly and easily to their viewers. “Influencers can translate corporate messages or government messages, which are written in corporate speak or a formal language, into a human language that reaches a certain group of people in a meaningful way,” he explains.

As influencers are increasingly relied upon to spread a message or sell a product, there is one thing brands often get wrong: They think they know more about the audience than the influencer does. “Sometimes the brand will give them something heavily scripted where they basically tell the influencer what to say. That rarely works as well as finding the right influencer for your message and letting them customize it,” Kozinets explains. He says brands should view the influencer as hired talent rather than a mouthpiece for the company.

“In the future, an influencer might license their likeness . . . So you could have a conversation with a Kim Kardashian chatbot . . .”

But as the influencer industry grows, ethical issues are emerging. Take children, for example. In Hollywood, there are strict laws about how many hours child actors can work per day. Child influencers, however, have no such protection.

“Some of these child influencers are making much more money than child actors in Hollywood, with no regulation at all. These kids are home-schooled and spend who-knows-how-many hours in front of a camera,” says Kozinets. “This is clearly child labour, in my view.”

There’s an even darker side to the child influencer industry. The New York Times recently published an investigation into moms who manage their influencer daughters. The article was headlined “A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men.”

In addition to exploitation, influencers can face gruelling work conditions. Posting regularly can mean working seven days a week, 10 to 14 hours per day. Indeed, few influencers make big bucks. Only around four per cent are considered professionals, meaning they earn more than US$100,000 a year, according to the Goldman Sachs report, which also found that 70 per cent of influencers’ income, on average, comes from brand deals.

“Most influencers are like your Uber driver. They’re members of the gig economy. If their brand deals dry up, they have to adjust by moving into other types of content production,” Kozinets says. “Influencers can be vulnerable. So, when companies play hardball with them, it’s not very ethical.”

Artificial stars

So what’s next for the influencer industry? Kozinets is watching the rise of computer-generated, virtual influencers. Lil Miquela, for example, is described as “a 19-year-old robot living in Los Angeles” and has more than 2.5 million Instagram followers. Barbie and Minnie Mouse have also amassed millions of followers and helped Mattel and Disney, respectively, expand their audiences.

The industry is likely to see more virtual influencers with artificial intelligence-driven chatbots attached as well as “digital doubles” of human influencers. “In the future, an influencer might license their likeness for what we would now call an authorized deepfake,” Kozinets explains. “So you could have a conversation with a Kim Kardashian chatbot that looks just like Kim and responds to you and remembers your name, and she could be recommending products.”

Looking ahead, Kozinets hopes to see more focus on diversity, equity and inclusion within the influencer world. That includes more representation for people with disabilities and equal pay for Black influencers. He also hopes to see more regulation and structure. “I’d love to see more dialogue and discourse around regulations,” Kozinets says. “This industry is still like the Wild West, and it shouldn’t be.”