Will the TikTok ban spell the death of the influencer?
Craving what we don’t have has been a compulsion long before the surge in social media marketing-fueled consumption. Once upon a time, our material desires were cultivated through in-person interactions, in-store shopping, or word-of-mouth. Not long after, face-to-face became face-to-catalog, with consumers flipping endlessly through product pages, before television ads intensified their appetite for more, using fictional characters and celebrity actors as aspirational models for who the customer could become. Then came the internet, setting the stage for E-Commerce domination, in which instant gratification features like affiliate links and expedited search fed into budding shopping addictions.
Nowadays, the lust for clothing items, beauty products, and wellness supplements is mixed with a fascination in the lives of people online with millions of followers who agree a person they’ve never met is trustworthy and intriguing. They’re Instagram and TikTok famous, but they’re not exactly A-listers. They share everything from aspects of their day-to-day to details on their outfits, all while contributing to a stream of short-form video clips and photo logs. They’re privy to the dynamics of elite social clubs with exclusive invites to brand events, fashion runways, movie premieres, and music festivals. They’re people who inspire creativity but more so motivate imitation. These are the influencers; the individuals paid to feed a mass of hungry consumers.
Influencers have been around long before the term was coined, predating the digital platforms where they currently thrive. In the past, they came in the form of it-girls and royal favourites, they were the tastemakers of their time and dictators of what was en vogue.
