@badmotherpukka yeah I get that and I think that’s maybe part of the problem. It appears as if it costs nothing for the Instagrammers to create content. I mean, I have an Instagram account, right? It doesn’t cost me anything to post a pic up there. And if it gets 20 ‘likes’ I’m not going to go and sell those likes to the highest bidder.
Whether or not that’s a true reflection of the mechanics of it, that’s how it comes across.
Instagrammers aren’t media owners in the traditional way that a publication or a TV channel is a media owner. For a start, they’re co-opting someone else’s platform, so that’s a new model. And then, like I said, because of the conventions around social media and Instagram in particular, the most content on the feeds looks low production value (FOD’s elaborate montages excepted) and like it has been made at no cost.
The other thing I’d say is that all of this is only a problem (and this is something universal to advertisers and media owners across the board, not just unique to Instagram), if an advert doesn’t strike the right tone with the audience.
If I follow a mum vlogger, I absolutely don’t mind her being paid to give an honest review of the best organic weaning foods or to try nice nursing bras that don’t make you want to cry at the sight of them. Where it starts to jar is if she’s getting fitted out at Rigby & Peller for free, at that point she’s lost me.
And yes, unfollow is an option. But the entire blogger/brand/audience model is predicated on an emotional connection, isn’t it? Same reason people are loyal to Apple products their whole lives. Or are either ‘Nike’ or ‘Adidas’. It’s emotional and can’t be rationalised down to ‘if the brand does something you don’t like, just delete it off your radar.’ Because ultimately, sportswear is sportswear, smartphones are smartphones, mum bloggers are mum bloggers; the only real differentiation comes from the emotional appeal to the audience’s irrational side - ‘but I just like it!’
So, while people do go ahead and unfollow, it’s understandable that those who are disappointed to find the emotional connection they felt with a particular blogger’s ‘brand’ has been sold out, obviously they’re going to express that disappointment and it’ll have a negative reflection on that blogging brand.
Avoidance of that negative reflection should be any brand’s incentive to at least act like they’re not grabby, disingenuous or exploitative. That way the tacit agreement between audience and brand: we like each other because we’re for each other, can continue to exist.
But if a brand’s agenda is showing, people will flag it. And the onus is on the brand not to be cunty. I don’t think he onus should be on the audience to turn a blind eye.
You can’t build a brand on winning over an audience (or consumers), then do something to alienate that audience and tell them to bugger off if they don’t like it.