Tough times for influencers. Now the army of content creators is in crisis

The best synthesis of the “influencer marketing crisis” phenomenon – which has already been around for some time but became evident later the case of the Bud Light beer can personalized by a transgender creator who brought down the sales of the brand in the US of the new conservatism – is from Giovanna Ferrero, head of digital strategy at the Salone del Mobile and former manager of Havas and WPP. When I ask her why a system that has grown non-stop for ten years and which until three months ago in Italy had a turnover of around three hundred million euros has begun to show deep cracks and real social revolts, a case for all of the masses of insults followed at trip of a group of influencers to the Shein factoriesa Chinese brand symbol of ultra-fast fashion that has been aiming for years to be listed in New York amid complaints and controversies over the working conditions of its factories, replies that TikTok has changed the cards too much of an already uncertain board, which the algorithms of the platforms change so quickly and in such an unpredictable way as to impose a constant adaptation of the contents, that not all sectors can benefit from the value of creators and high-end fashion is certainly one of them and that, after all, the only way to really verify the conversion rate of one of these creators is to associate it with a discount code or a verification link. Apart from the non-secondary aspect of a media model where, for the first time in history, it is not the container that dictates the law but the distributor, which would be as if the newsagent next door determined the contents of this article, if we could life the first advertisers of the nineteenth century, let’s say the partners of the Ayer agency in Boston in 1830, could only agree with Ferrero: after all coupons inserted in newspapers they are an advertising gimmick of the same era as the first “image” advertisements (theirs was for a piano), so why be surprised if instead of a magazine from which to cut out a slip to be sent alternatively to the company, to the nearest shopkeeper or to the magazine itself the code provided by a human coupon is entered on Instagram or TikTok, which in addition to offering the discount, talks, moves, laughs and entertains.