Digital advertisement through the use of influencers is the fastest-growing online marketing channel (Foster, 2019). Many influencers/bloggers establish strong, loyal relationships with their readers; many of which follow them for several years, and celebrate important life events with them, such as weddings or childbirth. The influencers make their money by attracting advertisement deals. By building their brand name, these will be larger and more influential over time, and it is not uncommon to see influencers release their brand/collection where the sales are particularly successful mainly due to the fact that their name is vouching for it.
Adding all this together, you cannot argue against the marketing power of influencers. However, is it possible to create a personal connection with millions of followers, attracting advertisement revenue, lead in major modeling campaigns with the largest fashion brands in the world – without even existing?
Lil Miquela is an example of an artificial influencer. Lil Miquela looks similar to a human, but still not similar enough to be mistaken for a real person. She has 1.6 million followers on Instagram, where she is living the life of a normal 19-year old Instagram influencer – posting about her life. Furthermore, she has released music that is streaming on Spotify, with over 150 000 monthly listeners. Furthermore, and was recently seen kissing supermodel Bella Hadid in the newest Calvin Klein commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2jdb3o2UtE), blurring the lines of reality and fiction. Her estimated net worth is approximately $6 million (QT Harrison, 2018). And yet, she doesn’t exist at all.
Lil Miquela is the “head-star” of the Los Angeles start-up Brud, which is also the creator of the online profile Blawko and Bermuda. The three profiles are all targeted to specific types of followers as they present a very different personality in their profiles. Lil Miquela is a typical edgy, yet mainstream influencer; she has an amazing fashion sense, is at all the cool events, is suffering from the same teenage problems as all her followers and has a certain interest in social issues. Her opposite, Bermuda, is trump-voting, rich and boasts about spending her dad’s money (Tiffany, 2019).
What is interesting is how specific the personalities of the influencers are portrayed. Brud knows their target audience so well that they can create millions of loyal followers of something (someone??) that don’t exist at all. By growing a large customer base, the advertisement revenues they can obtain are massive. These virtual influencers are just as cool and trendy as the typical online influencer, presenting a lifestyle of amazing outfit, ravish parties, workout, music and so on. If you are in the target group, chances are high that you will find yourself scrolling through the profile of Lil Miquela and suddenly finding yourself envying the life of a virtual character.
We might question the social impact of this and whether it can create unhealthy standards for youth, however, we cannot any longer question the immense marketing power of virtual influencers.
References:
https://quharrison.com/artificial-influencer-lil-miquela/
https://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/influencer-marketing-for-businesses/
Wow, this is something completely new to me. I did not know that this was going on! Thanks for the news 😀
This brings to mind quite some questions though, especially ethical ones as you touched on. When does it become too much? And to what extend does this just reemphasize how social media portrays the ‘best life’ that’s literally some teams imagination. It is quite concerning. Yet on a technological front, I think that the use of this technology with maybe some well done CGI and Deep Learning could cause quite some ‘fake news’ type scandals that would otherwise be mainstream. People are of course free to follow what they want to online, and I think there are quite some cool applications for businesses here. Watching ‘business mascot’s’ come to life after being created to cater to the audience their big data scientists have found. It somehow shows quite some dehumanization of what ‘real connection is’ and I think that, even though profitable, these are concerns especially for feeble minds that cannot differentiate that which is real from that which is not.
Hi Caleb! Thanks for your comment!
It does indeed bring forward a lot of questions, also on the whole nature of social media. Platforms used by millions of people to create an online “best life” and basically sell that idea to your followers. However, when it is possible to successfully sell an idea of a life that doesn’t even exist – the person living the life doesn’t even exist – yet people (1.6 Million of them even!!) are very willingly buying it. Doesn’t it say something about a strange willingness to accept the fake?
The technology behind Lil Miquela is indeed also impressive, as she looks very real (and I am sure they could have made her even more real if they believed that would sell better). However, in my opinion, the most shocking about these artificial influencers is not the technology used to make them, but people´s willingness to follow the content of a non-existing person. I completely agree with you, this can have very strange consequences for the people who are not able to differentiate the real from the fake.
Interesting read Hedda!
I was aware of the marketing power of influencers but I did not know of the existence of artificial influencers like Lil Miquela. This read definitely broaden my horizon of what technology is capable of! I think the fact that she’s living like a normal teenagers with normal teenager’s problems is the main driver that attracts the audience since people are curious in nature and would like to know the life of an artificial influencer. Talking about influencers, nowadays there are a lot of influencers who are portraying a total different life on social media than the actual life style. For example, recently there was a news about how a landlord revealed the messy house of one of its tenant because she did not pay the rent while she always portrays a luxury lifestyle on social media where she buys a lot of luxury brands, going to parties and so on. What is your opinion regarding these kind of influencers who are portraying a fake lifestyle to attracts followers and the followers who follow these influencers?
Hi Ann! Thank you for your comment.
I think it is definitely very common for influencers to portray one lifestyle and life something completely different. I believe that the world of influencers is in general very fake! Which is fine if the consumers understand that they are sold a dream – I mean advertisement, in general, is also completely fake. However, many people are not aware of this (and especially young people who are also more easily influenced) since the way the message is communicated seems so much more personal, and then I think it can become quite dangerous.