Article

Influencer marketing has some serious ethical issues

Influencer marketing is powerful. In recent years consumer trust in classic media has dropped. In the search for profit, a new business model has emerged on social media.

Nataliia Vdovychenko

Published date

29/01/2019 - 15:45

Courses

Online writing and publishing

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Read time

9 minutes

sjAt least once in life,Being online you certainly encountered influencer marketing. You swiped through the news feed, when you saw this post with a girl talking in her room in front of acamera sharing her experience about the new product that you've thought of buying. She seemed so enthusiastic and genuine smiling to her followers, being all sweet and friendly. How could she even possibly lie to you or do harm? It was until the moment when you scrolled further and saw the word “ad” under the enthusiastic post. This little insignificant detail makes it fair, but you had this light feeling of disappointment in your stomach What if the product ist good? Or what if the post wouldn't have marked at all?

In recent years the consumer trust towards the classic media started dropping. People are fed up with the traditional commercials appearing everywhere they go. The straightforward offer to buy something, fit in one minute on the TV, causes lots of irritation and fails to gain trust in the product. In the search for profit, new type of business model emerged with the recent growth of social media. But what are the ethics of blogging? How do we, ordinary viewers, can differentiate between the commercial content and agenuine, ‘friendly' blogger advice? hat are the risks and downfalls of such type of marketing?

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Influencer marketing

When blogs were first introduced in the late 90-ies, many were enthustic about th new accessible tool of sharing one's thoughts. For the first time, authentic opinions could be shared and accessed by anybody with working internet connection (Drushel German, 2011). However, time, blogs started loosing their 'authenticity'.

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Influencer marketing allows for many opportunities. Blog-, or vlog monetization is a desirable path for many young people, who choose it as their career. A great deal of money earned by bloggers is due to profitable commercial contracts. Blogging, as well as vlogging, is a relatively new niche which prove to be quite effective in terms of product representation. Such commercial cooperation is profitable for both influencers and brands.

Digital influencers are believed to be more powerful in terms of brand representation with their niche communities in comparison to traditional celbrities (Jiménez-Castillo, et al., 2019). Bloggers and vloggers address the public straightforwardly, building a network of followers with whom they share their everyday doings and talk in the comment sections. The actors look like your girlboy next door, who would not advise you something bad, harmful, or with a lack of quality. However, it is not quite true.

Bloggers nowadays have quite some power over the audience that follows them. Among all the social media marketing activities available for use, "[...] firms are increasingly turning to digital influencers to endorse their brands because influencers connect the intended target audience with brands while maintaining a direct communication with their following" (Jiménez-Castillo, et al., 2019). This choice is based on the belief that "influencers have the power to persuade consumers to buy the endorsed brands" (Jiménez-Castillo, et al., 2019). Throughout the carefully constructed messages, influencers impose their authority on the public, gain trust and build a net of lookalike wannabees.

Marketers have specific terms to describe the process of how bloggers attract new customers for athe brand by broadcasting the commercial message “Influencer marketing is an approach that identifies and targets influencers in a market. Influencers make up communities called Decision-maker ecosystems, which revolve around a decision-maker.” (Brown, Hayes, 2008). This approach has been conquering the market in recent years.

Neutral and ‘friendly’ messages of bloggers, which sound like they want to give you a piece of life-changing advice, contain commercials that sometimes do not seem as such at all. Many fans are likely to purchase the product that which was so kindly presented by their favorite blogger. What they do not understand is that bloggers are not quite responsible for the goods they promote.

In fact, thousands of influencer commercial messages have been created by the brands. In the process of terms negotiati, the client can provide a long list of details of the product appearance in the post of the blogger. Such can include the positioning of the product, the color palette, and even preferred filters.

he main question, are there any ethics of influencer marketing? Is there a line which they cannot cross to break the trust or the well- being of the consumers?

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The FYRE case: expectations met reality

The documentary by Netflix, named "FYRE: The greatest festival that never happened" is a case in pointpartly shows the case of this article. It highlights the limited responsibility of the influencers. The documentary public event which appeared to be a scam but was widely promoted by social media stars to attract consumer attention. Influencers sometimes do not have any understanding of the nature theof the product or its quality.

The fraud of the unsuccessful event was, and still is, partly blamed on the influencers, who were invited to participate in the promo campaign. By showing Instagram users appealing and beautifully staged posts, they mislead thousands into thinking that the actual festival would look like their edited videos. In a nutshell, the festival turned out to be a disaster with no proper organization. The festival team went bankurupt and was not able to provide any basic living conditions for thousands of visitors. Most of the people traveled to the event because they trusted appealing pictures on influencers' Instagram accounts.

Among many of the Instagram micro-celebrities, who promoted failed festival, only one tagged her post as an #ad. However, we can raise the question if it makes influencer marketing practices any better.

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Influencers vs. eceptive marketing

Those, who use social media fame to advertise products without actually specifying the nature of their posts, actually be blamed for deceptive marketing. "Deceptive marketing is the use of false and/or misleading information to capture the attention of the consumer through the usage of false information to persuade buyers into a business transaction that will not typically be beneficial to you but “yes” beneficial to the one doing the deceptive advertising." (M, 2019). Many influencers are being chased and legally blamed for this type of profiting.

Posting of ad without mentioning s advertisement nature, in many instances, is also regarded as deceptive marketing. The reason for this is because by hiding the type of the post the influencer lies to the customers. Sometimes, however, the companies themselves urge such a type of advertisement.

recent scandal connected to the inexplicit advertisement featured Dior. Around one hundred influencers worldwide at the same time published posts with a specific type of Dior bag. They did not mention the paid nature of their sponsorship, which resulted in many discussions and debates in the fashion world.

Deceptive marketing both legal and reputational consequences for influencers and brands. Even though Instagram introduced a 'paid sponsorship' button specifically for public figures, it is not very desirable to actually use it. This should give us one more reason to start thinking of blogging ethics.

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Blogging ethics

By now, there is no official set of rules that would describe the responsibilities the influencer carries. Famous bloggers are communicating information to millions of people, but do not have set limitations to their actions. What can be found online, are numerous sets of rules that vary both in number and in nature. Why, by now, in the golden age of blogging and influencer marketing, there is not yet a developed consent on something simple and basic?

There is more information on the blogging ethics, which is said to be based on the Code of Ethics for the Norwegian Press published by the Norwegian Press Association. hort version of the document looks like this:

1. It is your right to voice your opinion;
2. Be critical of everything, even your self;
3. Use your power to protect;
4. Tell the truth at all times;
5. Present your opinion as your opinion;
6. State your allegiances to stay independent;
7. Reveal your sources unless doing so can harm your sources;
8. Be critical of your sources and seek independent verification;
9. Always give credit where credit is due;
10. Always preserve the intended meaning of a given statement;
11. Give your opponent a chance to respond;
12. Admit and correct your mistakes immediately. (MOR10, 2019)

particular interest regarding the topic of this article is caught with the numbers 4, 8, and 9. Blogging is a job, however no contract is ever signed that would oblige bloggers to follow ethical norms. Since there is no legal agreement to these points, many influencers do not feel the need to follow them.

Another challenge appears when trying to regulate these issues internationally. The research by Toledano and Avidar (2016) shows the differences in relations to ethical practices different countries. The question is, whether it is even possible to establish a common ground on ethical practices among bloggers. In other case, if one countries makes itshave the regulations more strict than the others, influencers can all become 'travel bloggers' right away with searching for the place where deception in marketing is not subjected to law.

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Any consequences?

If the product is inexplicitly advertised by a famous blogger, it is more likely to attract the attention of authorities and then some legal actions could beare made to specify the commercial nature of the post. Otherwise, if we take into account bloggers with smaller audiences, they are more often left without the proper attention, and thus continue with inexplicit advertising practices. This might also lead to significant tax payment losses.

In society nowadays it is thought of as 'no big deal', if blogger does not use the product him- or herself regurarly and recommends it just as in any other commercial. It is a big deal and such attitude certainly has some consequences if the product is unhealthy, harmful, or simply is a scam. Bloggers do not usually hold responsibility for promoting low-quality products. But even less they are responsible for them if they do not officially advertise them.

Users need to be more critical of the information they see online. Double, or even triple check before making an order of 'that one cool product', recommended by a locally famous blogger could be one of such measures. Also, with the growing popularity of this type of income, it is high time we start seeing that most of the products we see online from influencers are ads, even when they do not mention it. And since there are still no legal consequences of such advertising, and no real customer protection from the bloggers' commercial deals, only the user can take care of safety.

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