Under the Influence- How to Fake Your Way Into Getting Rich on Instagram

by Trey Ratcliff

  Step 9: Look Like an Influencer

  In business, the savvy often tell their junior colleagues to “dress for the role you want.” Well, the same is true if you want to be an Influencer. I stumbled across a website a few months ago that offered all the props you need to take the perfect Instagram photo. I know, it sounds like something straight out of The Onion, but I wish I were being satirical. Their Instagram Influencer Starter Pack shown below includes a Mohave fedora hat, an Aztec blanket, a set of fairy lights, and a kerosene lamp. I haven’t tested it, but I’m pretty sure that kerosene lamp is battery powered.

  This online store offers a popular package that includes all the goodies you need to be a proper Instagram Influencer. There are a few of these stores online, including several that sell Influencer Halloween outfits.

  There are lots of reviews for these packages on Tomorrowland. One reviewer, who is “verified,” named K***n, gave this package five stars. In their review, they said, “I’ve been taking pictures for a while now but I just wanted to spice it up a little :) So, I went ahead and bought this pack and I have to say it was one of the best purchases I’ve done towards my hobby. I love playing around with these props to get the best shots and now I can imitate some of my favorite creator’s shots too! I’m so happy. Thank you Tomorrowland!” Classic K***n.

  Another review of this Wanderer pack shows how people have become fully immersed in what the reviewer described as the “Instagram game.” This one from E***e—also verified—said, “I was skeptical of the pack at first but went ahead and took the leap. I have to say, it was one of the best decisions I’ve made. I love all four pack items. Definitely a boost to my Instagram game and now people look at me differently when I go out and shoot with these props. It’s like I’ve become a professional. I love it!” When they say, “I have to say that,” it sounds so serious, as if, perhaps, they really had to say it, otherwise it would remain unsaid.

  Well-known photographer Nicole S. Young lamented the lack of originality that this sort of approach can lead to. In an email to me, she said, “Social media makes it too easy to create your own online persona, or even zap away any hint of originality that may have existed.” I completely agree with this. She went on to say, “I love that more people are able to discover their love for photography and visual art through websites like Instagram. I just hope that this type of progress does not prevail at too great a cost.”

  My friend @harimaolee grabbed a lot of attention for using the fairy lights in an over-the-top Instagram post on a first-class seat on an airplane. The photo received a decidedly mixed reaction, ranging from, “This sort of staged nonsense is a joke. Nobody travels like this!!” to “Oh wow this is amazing! Love the lights.” Personally, I think it’s a creative shot and reminds me of the best kind of Saturday Night Live “commercials” where I’m laughing at the absurdity right before that moment when I’m not sure whether it’s a real ad or not. Anyway, the Internet was abuzz with this photo, and soon the storm in a teacup was picked up by a bunch of reporters looking for the latest thing to be outraged about.

  This could have been one of my self-portraits because this is how I usually roll on @cathaypacific. But, in all seriousness, please contact me, Cathay Pacific.

  As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I thought I’d take a moment to set the record straight since this media backlash happened to a friend.

  Most people, including the media, assumed that “Harimao Lee” was the model in the photo. That’s some crack reporting because I’ve actually met “her” and taken photos with “her” all over Hong Kong—and the person behind @harimaolee is a guy. The @harimaolee Influencer account is run by a gentleman named Simon, who wakes up with his set of Y and X chromosomes, slams a beer, and then goes out to take kick-ass photos. Aside from having a cheeky sense of humor, he’s a very talented photographer, and I admire his artistic eye. So, if you’re going to use one of the Instagram clichés (I’ll share lots more of them in chapter 7), go for it like Simon does and don’t settle for trite photos, even if they ruffle a few feathers.

  Step 10: Contact Brands Directly and Sign up with an Agency That Represents Influencers

  So, you’ve invested a lot of time into creating this Instagram account. You have content (probably featuring fairy lights and spandex leggings), followers (most of whom are bots), and lots of comments (probably with a lot of emojis).

  Now you want to make some money. You want some brands to sponsor you. How do you do it?

  Start by sending out dozens (or hundreds) of emails to brands that interest you. Ask for free products and cash in exchange for you mentioning them to your “followers.”

  Seem like a lot of work? If you want someone to do all this work for you, reach out to some agencies.

  Agencies that connect Influencers with companies to work with, known as Influencer Marketing agencies or Digital Influencer agencies, are taking over from traditional PR firms. These agencies act as intermediaries between you and sponsoring brands. The good ones can set you up with deals and partnerships with well-known brands in exchange for money, experiences, or swag.

  These agencies are not hard to find. After a short search on Google, I found at least 50 “Instagram Influencer Agency” websites. More than 420 new Influencer agencies opened in 2017, double the number that launched in 2015.33 This is becoming a bit bigger than a cottage industry, and why wouldn’t it be, with billions of dollars flowing into the Instagram Influencer system?

  Most Influencers will use more than one agency. According to The Atlantic, “It’s not uncommon for Influencers to be signed up for more than five Influencer-management platforms at once, and some are active on as many as 10.”34

  However, not all agencies are legitimate, and some Influencers run into trouble getting paid for their work. The article called out one agency in particular, Speakr, that has been recalcitrant in paying its Influencers. This is yet another indication of how unprofessional and fly-by-night some agencies can be.35

  Because the importance of the Influencer is so new, it’s not surprising that many brands work with agencies rather than trying to approach Influencers directly. In addition to the promise of finding suitable Influencers to work with, an agency can make reporting on key metrics, such as ROI (Return on Investment), easier for the brand as well. Agencies will often collate the collected efforts of several Influencers they have recommended and put together a marketing report for the brand to share their results internally. Well, you know how much marketing managers appreciate a good PowerPoint presentation with big numbers to show their bosses. It’s quite possible that the numbers in these slick PowerPoints are based on faulty metrics, which leaves the actual ROI in question.

  Are Agencies Complicit?

  Fake Influencers run rampant while agencies are reaping millions of dollars in commissions. Agencies definitely stand to benefit from the Influencer game, which means that some agencies are either part of the fraud or clueless that it’s happening. Neither looks good.

  Are many Influencer agencies, like the ones who were scrambling to represent our fake account @genttravel, complicit? Probably. Many more have perhaps unwittingly played a role in defrauding brands out of significant marketing funds by representing fraudulent Influencers when they should have known better.

  When an agency reports the results of a campaign to a brand, the agency typically rolls up all engagement metrics—views, comments, and likes—into an engagement report that paints a pretty picture to keep their clients happy. These reports are designed to be shared within the brand’s company to illustrate how successful the Influencer marketing campaign has been.

  The vast majority of brands involved with this song and dance don’t have the time to do a deep dive into the details themselves to see if any of the numbers are legitimate. It’s why they outsourced to an agency, isn’t it? Most middle marketing managers nod their heads confidently and say, “Yes, absolutely” if questioned about the abs
olute truth of the numbers in the pretty report. But they really don’t know.

  I’m sure they want them to be true. They’ve probably spent months, if not years, convincing their bosses to invest in this new form of marketing. So, there’s a lot at stake for everyone. It’s true that social media Influencer marketing, when legitimate, has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of communicating brand messages. The trouble is that people sometimes bet on the wrong horse because the stats can’t be trusted.

  With real data, people can make better decisions. In business, bosses need to acknowledge the natural tendency for their employees to want to hide bad news or cover up uncertainty. When there’s a culture of assigning blame, people will resort to lying, cheating, and worse to avoid punishment and failure. It’s harder to create a culture where everyone is empowered to dig for and share the uncomfortable truths.

  Setting tangible and relevant goals for an Influencer marketing campaign could be one way to fix the problem, but it’s a slippery slope. Unlike marketing campaigns on many other platforms, with social media efforts, it’s very hard to track what’s called “attribution”—which marketing efforts resulted in which sales. It’s not as straightforward as counting direct referrals to a lead page or relying on cookies. So, instead of sales revenue, the success of Instagram marketing campaigns is measured by tracking and reporting engagement, which, we all now know, can be very easily faked.

  I wanted to do a little digging of my own to see how many agency-affiliated Influencers had used less than honest means to garner their popularity. When I visited several agency websites, I found only about half of agencies list their roster of Influencers.

  When agencies publicly list their Influencers, it’s easy to check these Influencers out to see if any of their metrics look suspicious, or downright obviously faked. You’ll see how to check in the next chapter.

  The rest of these agencies keep their Influencers behind a walled garden, so it’s much harder to check. Only brands get to see the list of Influencers, and even then, it’s only a partial list. The agencies will send a select number of Influencers to the client based on the job. For some of the work that I’ve done internationally, my company has received some of these pitch decks and gotten a peek inside the walled garden. I’ll share an example a little later about when we received a pitch to work with @amazingthailand.

  As an agency client, we have received plenty of agency recommendations to work with Influencers who have fraudulent accounts. Of the agencies we examined, we saw that anywhere from between 10% and 50% of their influencers were fraudulent accounts. It is important to note that some of these Influencers have only bought a portion of their following. But, for example, if you are working with an Influencer that bought 10,000 of their 100,000 followers, can you trust them? If they’ve proven themselves to be slightly dishonest in the past, can you trust them to represent your brand?

  Wearing my Influencer hat, I’ve yet to be contacted by an agency that I consider legitimate. As an Influencer, I make sure that I work directly with brands when I set up a partnership. I’m not against using an agency in the future, but I am still waiting to get a proposal from one that appears trustworthy.

  Agencies and Culpability

  I worked with an “Influencer” (gosh, I wish there was a punctuation mark for sardonic air quotes) in Asia who was paid $4,000 to make a few Instagram posts. She had worked through an agency and was happy with the arrangement. That is, until she heard the brand had paid the agency $15,000 for the job.

  In this case, the agency had contacted the Influencer, as a headhunter would, and offered her a one-time agreement. The agency had never worked with this Influencer before. A standard agency contract usually defines what percentage of the money the Influencer and the agency will each take home, but none of this was clear to this Influencer. Most Influencers are too new to the business to ask these sorts of obvious questions, and agencies take advantage of them. The agency was also at fault, as they apparently did no research into the legitimacy of the Influencer. It was apparent to us the Influencer was purchasing followers, likes, and comments.

  I also talked to other Influencers that the agency hired and found out the rates they had been paid. Needless to say, the agency had been making out like a bandit.

  These are comments on a post by one of the Influencers I was subjected to work with while I was in Asia. The comments appear to be mostly from bots. A usual tip-off is the vagueness of the comments, crazy emojis, and copious use of the word “dear.” All these automated comments from non-humans bulk up the comment and like counters to make the “engagement” of the Influencer’s posts look more impressive.

  For agencies, there are a couple of competing factors at play that make this setup tricky.

  There’s so much demand for Influencer attention at the moment that agencies have an obvious incentive to try and scoop up as many Influencers as they can. Quality control falls by the wayside.

  It’s in the best interest of agencies to keep the financial details a secret—most of them are not transparent about who is making how much money.

  Agencies need to convince big brands that they—the agencies—are the best conduit for the brands’ marketing campaigns. They do this with suitably impressive numbers—real, or “enhanced”—to back up their assertion.

  These forces lead to the less-than-honest behaviors I’ve listed above. Personally, I’ve seen so much sketchy activity from agencies that I’ve become extremely cynical about the entire process. It seems clear to me that many big brands have strong legal cases against Influencer agencies, where they (the brands) have spent millions of dollars on vapor.

  There was a recent article in The Atlantic, about the market for agencies, that does a good job of summarizing the problem.

  But this very lucrative, very new market still lacks critical infrastructure. There’s no standard method of communication, no formalized negotiation process, and, often, no paperwork. Rates can range widely from brand to brand and are often hashed out entirely via direct message.36

  So, if you’re a wannabe Influencer who wants to work with an agency (or a brand), make sure you’re asking the right questions, understand your compensation package, figure out who the key players are, and get everything in writing.

  Automated Online Agencies

  Remember our fake Influencer, @genttravel? After we built up the account, we did approach a few agencies and received interest from many.

  With some of these agencies, we were able to transact entirely online, conveniently enough. Below is an example of one of the many we found. With this one, we simply applied online and waited to hear back.

  Then, a few days later, we were promptly approved. This, despite having bought 100% of @genttravel’s 100,000 followers, along with all the likes and comments for his posts. The agency did no diligence about our account.

  The agency sent us about a dozen paid post offers right away. All we needed to do to accept the first assignment was to fill out a quick form. We went ahead and began to fill it out just to see how easy it would be. We stopped before the very end. It was just an experiment after all, and we had no intention of committing fraud.

  This was one of the partnership offers we received from the agency.

  This is what the agreement page looked like.

  As you can see, if we had accepted this offer, Tane would have gotten a fancy new watch, in addition to some monetary compensation. The suggested compensation rate was $802 for a single post, but we could have asked for more. And there were countless offers like this one on their website.

  I feel bad for this watch company and for everyone else lining up to waste money like this. I frankly couldn’t believe how easy it was for us to scam the system.

  And this is a relatively small offer. As I’ve mentioned, it’s not uncommon for Influencers flashing larger numbers to make thousands of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, for an extended campaign made up
of a series of posts.

  Conclusion: Everything Is For Sale

  Currently, Instagram seems to be the most popular platform for purchasing followers, likes, and comments on the black market, and there’s quite a bit of money floating around to incentivize this duplicitous behavior. The problem is not restricted just to Instagram, although that’s what we’ve been focusing on. Users can also inflate all their other social media accounts to match, including piling on more Facebook post likes, Spotify followers, Pinterest re-pins, YouTube plays, LinkedIn connections, and more.

  As we’ve demonstrated in this chapter, using these techniques, it’s easy to deceive agencies and brands, into thinking you’re the real deal. It’s only a short step from there to earning money from this deception.

  It should be noted that it is not only individual Influencers who buy followers/likes/comments. Some brands and companies do it as well.

  Matt Hackett, one of the first employees at Tumblr and now a tech investor, says this kind of activity can be quite common. He told me that it sometimes makes sense for a less established e-commerce brand or startup to buy followers to look more legitimate as they build a following. There’s a lot of pressure to do that these days, as many potential customers will go look at how many followers a brand has. If they only have a few, he says, the company doesn’t appear very trustworthy.

  I often wonder why so many people are engaging in this sort of fraudulent behavior. Are all these people hardened criminals who have an evil core? I don’t think so. I believe they are rationally justifying their cheating behavior.