Feel like I'm nearly done with Bum...

[futuristic1]

Anyone else follow doesmybumlook40 and feel that the last few weeks/months in particular have just descended into some sort of manic, Davina McCall circa 1998ish, QVC channel?

Avon was on the market stall today - 3 for a pound, lovely and shiny take one home for your mother love. Three for a pound.

Free lipstick with that?

Everything with her is an advert now. Barely any non-PR/sales content.

Endless hyper vocal modulation on stories, actual screeching a lot of the time - who can put up with that?

And please stop fingering your eyes - that's not going to improve your eczema.

And the psychological issue with jeans, particularly skinny jeans.

The big dresses and skirts - I know all the other insta-mental mums are plugging these endlessly too - why?

Big dresses on tiny women.

BoHo will not make you look young - although it will make you look as though you work in a charity shop and get first dibs on the donations - if that's what you want to look like.

Bum is evolving a new enhanced 'fake forgetfullness' thing on stories which enables her to fill endless seconds restarting the same sentence without ever getting to the end or actual saying anything anyway other than, where are my sunglasses and aren't other people annoying and look at my spot, or I'm not wearing makeup, look at my eczema, watch me poke around my eyes with a long nail... yeuuch!!!

I don't know whether to feel sorry for one of the richest women on instagram that it has all descended to this or disappointed in myself for continuing to watch

Mind you, it could be going car crash, and I suppose that's worth watching for - the first instagrammed breakdown... they'd probably fake one anyway just for the stats..

That's another annoying thing.. trying to get people to contact them to boost the 'follower engagement' stats...

What's your fave lippy? message me now

Do you prefer this one or that one? message me now

Like Pavlov's dogs

Can anyone remember where I left my keys - message me now

I used to like Kat and I thought her advice was good, she had some nice ideas and the posts saved me a lot of footwork. But of late it all seems to be a bit manic and the paid partnerships just make me question it. The big dresses and skirts - so many, and so pricey! She does acknowledge gifts, but I wonder what the deal is - do you have to be photographed with it a certain number of times?

I think Bum is just going a bit mad for the money at the moment.

John Lewis seemed to get a bit of a raw deal from her last week on their denim/jeans sponsorship - cause she doesn't like jeans - why did she take the money?

Anyway, she's gone from a distinctly 'upmarket' brand to 'any brand'

From Hush to Avon and Tesco.

If I was Hush or John Lewis, I'm not sure I'd see her/or Avon and Tesco as the ideal bedfellows for my brand.

You can't be all things to all people because you just end up being nothing to anybody.

But you know, it must be great, it's like being a mini-celebrity and people are just flinging stuff at you - just some of it's shit and that's the stuff that sticks if you're not careful.

I really, really liked her early persona - now it's all contrived and ranting at me like a demented teen

I'm not deaf - stop fecking shouting and I'm not a teen and teens don't buy wht you're promoting, so learn to talk to me properly.

84000 followers isn't that many. There's been a few insta threads recently about transparency and she has improved. But it (insta fame) is a bubble that's going to burst soon.

The Avon leather jacket didn't even look good in the pictures. Have all bloggers been given a Hill & Friends bag?

The jeans thing in JL was ridiculous. Kat has always looked well in both skinny and straight jeans - it was mainly what she wore in her early days of blogging along with big necklaces, scarves and jackets.

Now she’s done a u-turn and implying she can’t/doesn’t like wearing denim.

Her love fest with all things maxi is crazy - on her sun holiday last Halloween, she seemed to spend her time in billowing maxi dresses, some with long sleeves and rather than look like anything remotely effortless stylish, she just looked over-heated and sweaty. Probably be the same with her Corfu holiday.

I think that 84000 is a lot for her genre, I’m not sure that there are many /any of the 40 something Mum fashion bloggers that have more than this but I might be wrong

I think this thread is mean spirited. I like her. I do agree that she needs to step away from the maxi trend though.

The sooner this insta-advertising bullshit goes away the better. It’s no different than following a TV or side of a bus advert.

Good god, the shrieking on instastories. Every morning is a new shrieky drama and the hand thing to emphasise just what a NIGHT.MARE it all is. GAHHHHHHHHHHH

Every item of clothing is the same. Psychedelic Edwardian nightgown - Floor-length, long sleeved, high necked, polyester crazily patterned nightmare? TICK ✅

I used to enjoy her stuff but it is all just #ads interspersed with shrieking

She seems like a nice woman playing a part for hits, I suspect partially driven by being taken on by the Gleam people. She’s been brainwashed. I can’t blame her for taking sponsored content, she has to earn a living, but it seems to be at the expense of good quality content and isn’t curated to her ‘brand’ or (probably) readership.

This thread reads as unkind in parts.
If you don’t like, then unfollow.
I wonder how many of us, really, wouldn’t take the sponsorship offers / the freebies / the opportunities this crazy world of blogging / social media has offered her?

I've never heard of her but just had a look. What gets me is if you have 84k followers how come the amount of likes is so low relatively speaking. I wouldn't be paying people to do a paid partnership with that many likes on their photos.

Personally, I couldn't do Instagramming, no matter what crap they gave me or however much money.

That sense that people were looking at me in the supermarket... I'd end up assuming someone knew who I was and create some palaver and find myself splashed across the Daily Mail pages of hate in some Instagrammer shrieks 'Do You Know Who I AM? at sickly tot, PR disaster sensation.

But it's a business and if you take the smoothies, then you've got to take the roughies too! ;)

I definitely prefer it (like any rational adult would) when I'm spoken to in soft, nuanced tones, and not patronised or shrieked at.

The problem for grammers is when it feels like I'm watching a permanent ad break on TV with no programmed to go round it.

The Grammers lure us in with voyeurism really, a chance to see how other people live and we all accept that the cost of that is (like TV) adverts, but when the balance goes askew and we end up getting all adverts and no personal insight then there's very little value in it for the viewer and then we get disgruntled.

Of course, like TV, if we don't like it, we can just turn it off.

And for those who don't like people discussing Grammers, - it's like the TV review pages, if you don't like people criticising, don't read 'em.

I do think Kat is one of the most transparent of the bunch and listens to constructive feedback without getting cagey/defensive.

I have a totally different body shape to here and look like a bit of a knob in floaty maxis. I do prefer her blog page to her insta.

The blogging seems to have gone by the by for many, replaced by the instant hit of Stories.

I can see why - I mean blogging is just much more labour intensive and the 'return' is less measurable.

It's all about the stats in the end and converting your follower engagement into spondulux.

Actually Kat is still a fairly regular blogger.

I used to love the blog.
But now,I read only occasionally and rarely look at Instagram.
I loathe Stories, all contrived rubbish and I too thought it is a poor attempt to sound like Trinny.
I’m afraid the floaty maxi trend is not for me, I used to like a lot of what Kat wore but I never do now.
Obviously though I appreciate that it’s big business and part of me gets that, but I don’t want to read about the latest premiere that’s been gifted,or holiday or spa day etc etc .
It’s that that has put me right off.

This is really mean in places. No need for personal comments about her dh.

I do agree with the ad thing though. I used to love her blog and insta because I used to trust her fashion judgement I guess.
Now I feel conned I think. None of what she recommended was her was it? Just what she was paid to say.

Same as fashion lift and the others I guess. I feel tricked by them all.

I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say I feel tricked.

Certainly I feel wearied when I watch the hyper-personality gushing at me as though I'm just an unquestioning open maw, desperate and willing to believe everything they say.

The notion that Kat would (in any other world) electively choose to pay for and wear Avon products is laughable and although I could choose to laugh at that - it's just not funny.

Because she's actually taking the piss out of me as a consumer.

She's addressing me, as a follower of her media, as a fucking muppet.

She may as well say to me 'You're not worth my attention. You're not worth me going out of my way to find and sell you products which I/you are interested in.'

She may as well be saying to me 'you are so fecking stoopid you'll buy any old shit I put in front of you, ha ha ha' - no disrespect to Avon intended.

And you know, oddly enough, I don't respond well to that form of address.

If I wanted to watch QVC - I'd watch QVC. I don't. (other shopping channels are available)

On another note, and one would be insane to expect it to last, but she's seemed 'quieter' on the last selection of stories. Perhaps it's being out in public.

If she's back next week, poking herself in the eye with a 6 inch nail, and screeching at me about her fecking invisible spots or sweaty nylon running gear, I'll call it a day.

My bum will no longer look interested in this ;-)

You’re acting as if I, as a consumer, has no free will though. I’m not going to buy a lilac biker jacket from Avon just because Kat is promoting it if I don’t like it.

I don’t really see how it’s different from any other form of advertising as long as the things on Insta are declared as ads (which they now are in the majority). Reese Weetherspoon advertises Avon too. I don’t believe she uses it either. But if she wants to get paid for promoting it, fine that’s up to her. I’m not going to buy something just because Kat or Reese or whoever suggest I should.

I think HeyDolly you're right. These are infomercials. They started off as independent style blogs by people with an interest in fashion, discussing styles and choices but have morphed into something else.

Why would anybody buy anything they didn't like simply because it was advertised? I'm not remotely suggesting that - that would be moronic!

Of course you have free will.

However, I watch Scott and Bailey by choice. But I cannot prevent the broadcaster from including advert breaks. I can just to leave the room, turn down the sound or record the programme and FF through the advert breaks.

The point is the advert breaks are clearly signposted so I can choose to ignore/avoid or engage with them.

But what if Scott and Bailey blurred those lines a bit and as they sat at their desks in Manchester Major Incident Team HQ Janet said 'I've got to get home early today from the forensic lab because the Avon lady is calling and Rachel said 'Are you getting some new make-up?' And Janet replied 'No, they've got this new jewellery and it's really brilliant.'
And Rachel who deeply admires Janet because she's such a good copper then said. 'Oh, could I come too?'

Would that cross any ethical boundaries or would that be okay?
Why couldn't newsreaders do it too?
At the end of a bulletin, Fiona Bruce could remark 'Thanks for all those message you've all tweeted me, this necklace is from Avon.
Would it be okay if they just had a little caption beneath #ad

And take Vogue, I don't consider that all of the products in there are personally endorsed and personally recommended by Edward Enninful but if he was in every picture, wearing every dress, spraying himself with every perfume, then I would think he was personally endorsing and recommending the products.

At what point would you draw a line between Reese Witherspoon simply advertising a product, appearing in tv adverts billboards, mags etc and alternatively giving a personal recommendation to you?

Or do you not draw any distinction?

The Guardian or The Times run loads of adverts every day, that does not mean that they endorse the products promoted in the adverts, does it? The difference is claers to most people.

Then consider advertorials - where the lines are deliberately blurred to make consumers believe what is in fact an advert is perceived as editorial and so an endorsement of some kind.

Bloggers rely on editorial/personal interest to recruit followers to whom they then advertise.

Going back to my Scott and Bailey example, which raise at least two issues. The television one where product placement in TV shows raises ethical issues and the one where Janet influences Rachel because Rachel admire her.

If I ask for a plumber recommendation from a friend or on Mumsnet, people would often be circumspect about recommending someone in case they let me down and it backfired and then their recommendation/advertisment for this plumber would potentially undermine their standing in my eyes.

You can't compare bloggers with national celebrities either. Most of them have gathered relatively small followings by appearing to be genuine, sincere people who do what they do for fun and enjoyment, and who like helping others. When you cross the line of virtual friendship into real world recommending in exchange for money (advertising) - you better make it clear or else you could be seen to be potential misleading your followers.(who might think you are still in a 'friend' relationship rather than a 'business' relationship)

There must be a clear distinction between any formal advertisement and the geunine personal recommendation or else there is an issue of misrepresentation, both in an ethical and in a legal sense.

Fundamentally though, the advertising thing is not my bugbear - I just want grammers to respect me enough to include a decent propertion of sincere/honest editorial content and not shout at me like I'm some dumbass who can't concentrate from more than 10 secs if they don't flick their fingers, wave their arms and generally act like children's TV presenters.

You're middle-aged.
I'm middle-aged.
Deal with it.
Sensibly.

Well in fairness to Kat, she is very transparent in the last few months (and she was to a point before) about what is gifted, advert, paid partnership, etc. It’s been very interesting seeing exactly what she’s bought or given.

Other bloggers - Chloelovestoshop, thefashionlift and so on should really follow Kat’s in being open about what they’ve been given.

For sure - what do you think is behind the reticence?

That when the followers see just how much content is sponsored, they'll fall away in droves?
This is quite possible. After all, who watches TV for the advert breaks alone.

There's got to be a lot more 'honest' editorial content or there's really no sincerity or value in the 'relationship' for the follower.

I mean, you can't even take the product reviews seriously.

Nobody would read film or book reviews if they didn't occassionally highlight a dud.

The ASA seem fairly toothless for the moment but it won't last

It could be the next big implosion like facebook and data selling and so on.

Every instagrammer done for breach of ASA guidelines! That would be some story.

A lot of these things go under the radar though cause it's just the 'little wimmin' playing about and spending their pin money.

But gravy trains have a habit of going off the rails.

Now, about all that shouting and screeching... ;)