Genuine Influencers or Genuine Liars ?

By: Jocelyn Torralba

Illustration Hotmart

How consumers shop online is changing, with the evolution of the and the emergence of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing involves well known bloggers, celebrities and public personalities that get paid to promote products all over social media. But the question is, how honest are they ?
Commercial businesses pay influencers to try their products and and post positive things about them.  Waist trainers, diet teas, beauty products, vitamins, clothes, etc are just some of the common items influencers promote.
Companies know these influencers have a huge effect on their audience. But do influencers actually care what they advertise? Or are they happy as long as they get their thick check. And do companies care if the celebrities and well known bloggers with a lot of followers actually like their products?
In a recent interview Kim Kardashian West told Ashley Graham that she turned down the opportunity to do a sponsored instagram post for one million dollars with Fashion Nova, a well known clothing brand that does a large amount of  sponsored advertising on Instagram.
But Kardashian West has done other sponsored post for other businesses such as Angel Curves where she promotes waist trainers by posting them on Instagram and Snapchat, saying she works out in them and they help her obtain her “hourglass body.” But waist trainers are not recommended due to health risks such as squishing organs, decreasing blood flow, deformation of organs and decreased breathing capacity.

Picture by Angel Curves Waist Trainer

It’s not the first time a Kardashian West has received backlash for a sponsored post. But does Kim care about what she advertises to her audience? Or does she just do it for the money?
Another example of potentially dishonest influencers are professional athletes that make commercials and convince their fans that they can be like them if they mimic their lifestyle, clothing, exercise routine, etc.
Lionel Messi is a professional soccer player who inspired an Adidas shoe called “F50 Predators” claiming “impossible is nothing.” What the commercial showed that when playing with the shoes he had designed, anyhing is possible. But wearing a pair of shoes will not make everything possible.
One of the most popular scams going around would be the popular Fit Tea detox treatment. Influencers that have a large following have promoted the tea on their social media accounts and a lot of young audience members purchase the tea, only to have negative reviews about their experience. The experience is not at all what the bloggers say it is, instead they end up with health issues such as nausea, diarrhea, potassium depletion, cramps, bloating and abdominal pains. These bloggers dedicate their time and money to looking picture perfect by getting surgeries, all the while claiming a tea that is supposed to detox helped them with weight loss. And, unfortunately, their audience falls for this scam. In a sense you could say that most of the influencers who promote the detox treatment like the money more than the sickness.