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Under the influence: understanding cautious influencer marketing and relations

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Under the influence: understanding cautious influencer marketing and relations

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UNDER THE INFLUENCE:
UNDERSTANDING CAUTIOUS INFLUENCER MARKETING AND RELATIONS

by
Kristine Bruun-Andersen
_______________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ANNENBERG SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS)

May 2021

ii

Dedication

This thesis would not have been possible without the incredible support of my parents, my sister,
my partner, my close friends and University of Southern California Faculty. Thank you for all
your love, patience and words of encouragement throughout my educational journey.

iii
Acknowledgments
I would first like to acknowledge my thesis supervisor, Robert Kozinets, Professor of
Journalism and the Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations at USC
Annenberg and Business Communication. He was always willing to provide guidance and
answers to my questions about my research and writing. His class at USC, PR 499: Influencer
Relations, and the guests who spoke about this industry, provided essential knowledge and
understanding of this field. My thesis process was not traditional and took many revisions in
order to express correctly the message I was trying to achieve. He was beyond patient and
allowed me to work at my own pace, providing revision after revision, while I also balanced
life’s unexpected trials and tribulations.
I would also like to thank the content creators involved in the research of this thesis.
Without their essential participation, the interview portion of this thesis could not have been
successfully conducted. I would like to thank the two readers on this thesis, Professor of
Journalism, Aimei Yang, and Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Ulrike Gretzel.
Finally, I would love to express my gratitude to my dad Erik, who provided the financial
support for me to complete this thesis when it didn’t seem possible, my mom, Karoline who
always made me feel like I could do it, my sister Karley, for inspiring me with her own studies
and my partner Jack who stayed up with me many late nights over the last year - encouraging me
to move forward. This accomplishment would not have been possible without each and every
one of you.

Thank you,
Kristine Bruun-Andersen

iv
Table of Contents
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii
Preface ......................................................................................................................................... viii
Terms: ............................................................................................................................................ ix
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter One: Influencer Relations and Marketing Ethics .......................................................... 8
Influencers vs Traditional Advertising ................................................................................................. 8
Web 2.0................................................................................................................................................... 18
Types of Influencers .............................................................................................................................. 20
Difference Between Influencer Relations and Influencer Marketing .............................................. 33
Chapter Two: The Risks of Influencer Marketing for PR Practitioners ................................... 36
Difference Between Traditional Advertisements vs. Influencer Brand Deals ................................. 36
Psychological Risks ............................................................................................................................... 38
Legality Risks ........................................................................................................................................ 50
Chapter Three: Avoiding Risks Between Influencers and Marketing ....................................... 56
Risky Relationships between Brands and Influencers ...................................................................... 56
Chapter Four: Conclusion—Calculating Risks with Precaution in Influencer Marketing ..... 67
Concluding Thoughts ........................................................................................................................... 68
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 72
APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................... 82
APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................................... 88
APPENDIX C ............................................................................................................................. 111

v
Table of Figures
FIGURE 1 CASEY NEISTAT YOUTUBE VIDEO COMMENT BY VIEWER GIVING THEIR OPINION ON
NEISTAT’S INTENTIONS WITH HIS BRAND PARTNERSHIPS. ........................................................ 5

FIGURE 2 CASEY NEISTAT YOUTUBE VIDEO COMMENT BY VIEWER SPEAKING ON NEISTAT’S USE OF
PROFESSIONAL CAMERA EQUIPMENT ........................................................................................ 5

FIGURE 3 WEB 2.0, SOCIAL MEDIA AND CREATIVE CONSUMERS .................................................. 19

FIGURE 4 TIERS OF INFLUENCERS .................................................................................................. 21

FIGURE 5 COMMENT CAPTURED FROM SHAY MITCHELL’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL ON HER VIDEO
TITLED, “HOW I LAUNCHED MY BRAND.” ............................................................................. 23

FIGURE 6 COMMENT CAPTURED FROM SHAY MITCHELL’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL ON HER VIDEO
TITLED, “HOW I LAUNCHED MY BRAND.” ............................................................................. 23

FIGURE 7 COMMENT CAPTURED FROM SHAY MITCHELL’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL ON HER VIDEO
TITLED, “HOW I LAUNCHED MY BRAND.” ............................................................................. 24

FIGURE 8 TWEET FROM @SHANEDAWSON AND @NETNOBODY ON TWITTER, JANUARY 2018. ....... 26

FIGURE 9 TWEET FROM @SHANEDAWSON ON TWITTER JANUARY 2018 ........................................ 27

FIGURE 10 CLIPPING TAKEN FROM LAURA LEE’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL ON VIDEO TITLED “BIGGEST
MAKEUP GIVEAWAY EVER! $2,000 WORTH OF MAKEUP”. ................................................... 29

FIGURE 11 INFLUENCER ATTRIBUTES CREATED BY KRISTINE BRUUN-ANDERSEN THROUGH
SECONDARY RESEARCH EXAMINING ASPIRATIONAL, AUTHORITATIVE AND PEER INFLUENCER
BEHAVIORS. ADDITIONAL RESEARCH DRAWN FROM EDELMAN’S, “10 TRENDS INFLUENCING
2020.” ................................................................................................................................... 32

FIGURE 12 TWITTER VERIFIED BADGE SCREEN GRABBED FROM POLICIES AT WWW.TWITTER.COM 41

FIGURE 13 SCREEN GRABS OF PHOTO AND COMMENTS TAKEN FROM @AVITAL ON INSTAGRAM .... 42

FIGURE 14 MOLLY BURKE YOUTUBE VIDEO SPONSORED BY THRED UP. ....................................... 44

FIGURE 15 STRUCTURE AS AN ELEMENT WITH MESSAGING FACTORS OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS,
CONTENT QUALITY, SOCIAL VALIDATION, AND MAJORITY INFLUENCE. .................................. 46

FIGURE 16 CONTENT AS AN ELEMENT WITH MESSAGING FACTORS OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS,
PRODUCT DEMONSTRATION, PERSUASIVE PRICING, AND RECIPROCITY. .................................. 47

vi
FIGURE 17 LANGUAGE AS AN ELEMENT WITH MESSAGING FACTORS OF FRIENDSHIP, SCARCITY, AND
BODY LANGUAGE. .................................................................................................................. 48

FIGURE 18 INSTAGRAM PHOTO TAKEN FROM @JETTINJACK ........................................................... 59

FIGURE 19 INSTAGRAM STORY TAKEN FROM @JOELLE_FLETCHER ................................................ 60

FIGURE 20 INSTAGRAM PHOTO TAKEN FROM @LUKESABBAT DURING HIS BRAND PARTNERSHIP
WITH SNAP INC. 2018 ............................................................................................................. 63

vii
Abstract

This thesis examines the risks marketers face when employing social media influencers
and proposes ways to ameliorate those risks. Those ameliorations include studying the
psychological processes behind trust and persuasion, remaining up to date on FTC guidelines for
influencer marketing, and casting a savvy eye on others’ use of influencers. This thesis identifies
major types of social media influencers and identifies the marketing strategies at which each type
excels. This analysis is complemented by primary research based on interviews with social
media influencers, demonstrating from a practitioner’s perspective the reasons why consumers
trust influencers. Influencer contracts and the morality clauses associated with them reveal the
ways in which marketing professionals seek to reduce the risk associated with influencer-based
campaigns.

viii

Preface

The basis for this thesis stemmed from my own personal interest in social media
influencers and how they their evolution has affected entertainment, media, and marketing. As
the world moves further into the digital age with the help of social media influencers, there will
need to be a greater understanding of the impact influencers have on brands and marketing
professionals, both good and bad. It is my passion to help in understanding just how impactful
social media influencers can be and why this form of marketing should not be used without
caution.

ix
Terms:
Glossary of Terms
Social Media Influencer
Influencer, Content Creator, Source, Sender

One who watches or follows Social Media Influencers
Viewer, Follower, Audience, Receiver, Consumer, Customer

Consumers
Any person exposed to influencer marketing and thereby considered a potential purchaser of the
product advertised.

Target Market
Any portion of the overall population identified by geography, psychographics, demographics, or
other criteria as being especially desirable consumers of marketing content.

1

Introduction
“Welcome to a new era of marketing and service in which your brand is defined by those who
experience it.”- Nivedra Varma
1

Marketing professionals must create messages that appeal to a highly skeptical consumer
public.
2
Social media and how it has changed marketing based on its participatory nature
presents a new channel for messaging. From the political graffiti scrawled on the walls of
Pompeii to the far-reaching mass media of radio and television, advertising has always made use
of the technological tools available to it. These modes of advertising were unidirectional:
marketers created the ads, and consumers received them. The internet, and specifically social
media, has changed this dynamic fundamentally. Increasingly, consumers are not asked simply
to respond to messages describing a product or service. Instead, they are invited to participate
directly in marketing campaigns.
Celebrity endorsements have long been highly effective tools for building large consumer
communities and fostering brand awareness. As with advertising, the social media has
fundamentally altered the relationship between marketers and the public figures with whom they
partner on marketing campaigns. This alteration affects both traditional celebrity endorsers, who
lend their faces to brand messages created by marketers, and influencers, who create or are
perceived to create brand messaging themselves. Influencers represent a new type of

1
Varma, Nivedya. “Leveraging the Power of Social Media to Garner More Customer Reviews.” MarTech Series, 31
July 2018, martechseries.com/social/social-media-marketing/leveraging-power-social-media-garner-
customer-reviews/.

2
Insights in Marketing, Consumer Skepticism of Advertising and Marketing. Retrieved January 25, 2020
from https://www.insightsinmarketing.com/media/1064/consumer_skepticism_of_advertising_and_marketing.pdf

2
independent, third-party endorser capable of shaping audience’s attitudes through blogs, tweets,
videos, pictures and the use of other social media channels.
3
Traditional celebrity endorsements
seek to burnish a product’s reputation by simple association with celebrities whose fame is
sometimes only loosely connected to the product itself, but who represent a strong “fit” with both
the product and the tightly controlled brand messaging behind it.
4
Michael Jordan’s endorsement
of Nike products, for example, was directly related to his success as a basketball player; his
endorsement of Coca-Cola was less so, but several campaigns successfully associated Jordan’s
reputation for health and vitality with Coca-Cola’s products.
Influencer-based marketing enlists social media personalities who in many cases have
become noteworthy through their social media expertise, authority-building, self-branding, or
self-promotion, shared through social media vehicles such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter,
Facebook, and Twitch. Some influencers are celebrities in their own right. Others, including
nano-influencers who may have as few as 1,000 social media followers, are notable within small
circles representing narrow market niches. This approach allows marketers to connect with
consumers both more widely and more intimately. Unlike their traditional counterparts, social
media influencers promote brands directly through their documented personal experience
(however carefully managed that documentation might be). Along with a greatly increased sense

3
Freberg, K., et al. Who are the social media influencers? A study of public perceptions of personality. Public
Relations Review (2010), doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.11.001
4
Schouten, Alexander P., Loes Janssen, and Maegan Verspaget. "Celebrity vs. Influencer endorsements in
advertising: the role of identification, credibility, and Product-Endorser fit." International journal of advertising 39,
no. 2 (2020): 258-281.

3
of personal connection with consumers, this gives influencers an unprecedented opportunity to
target the niche audiences that traditional celebrity endorsers find difficult to reach.
5

These characteristics make influencer-based marketing highly effective, but also can
allow for unforeseen obstacles when putting brand messaging into the hands of an influencer.
Marketing strategies built around influencer endorsements can encourage far more effective
community building than traditional celebrity endorsements. At the same time, marketers must
find a balance between harnessing an influencer’s natural ability to relate to their consumers,
while also making sure influencers are upholding a positive brand reputation. Some influencer-
based campaigns require influencers to adhere to scripts written by marketers or with their input.
Others might specify only the number of product-related posts to be shared. However narrowly
defined the terms of a marketing agreement, and however completely an influencer honors those
terms, their activity away from a given campaign may run counter to the campaign’s messaging.
This risk is directly related to the rewards sought by marketers: the extraordinary multichannel
social media activity that makes influencers such effective promoters also exposes marketers to a
constant stream of threats to brand perception.

Casey Neistat doesn’t look like central casting’s idea of a marketing professional. But he
ought to. Neistat is a filmmaker, YouTube creator, producer, director and co-founder of the
social media company Beme: a living definition of “social media influencer”. In 2008, after
producing a series of short films, Neistat earned a $2 million contract with HBO to produce an
eight-part television series. The Neistat Brothers, produced with Neistat’s real-life brother Van,

5
Ledbetter, Erin. “The Change in Influencer Marketing from PR Strategy to Media Strategy.” Carusele. N.p., 03
Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.

4
brought him for the first time into the public eye. Capitalizing on the exposure, Neistat began
posting short video clips daily to the then-nascent YouTube, becoming one of the platform’s
most successful video bloggers, or vloggers. His YouTube channel now has more than 10 million
subscribers, and he is followed on Instagram by 3.2 million people (2019).
6
These efforts had a
decidedly commercial angle: Neistat’s many brand partnerships include one with Nike in 2012
that generated a then-extraordinary 790,000 views in just one day.
7

Social media influencers like Neistat are changing the way that consumers engage with
products, which in turn is changing the way we think about marketing campaigns. But not
always for the better. For example, Neistat’s brand partnership with Samsung in 2017 produced
decidedly equivocal results. Neistat agreed to devote part of his vlog to promoting Samsung’s
products, particularly the cameras included in Samsung’s latest flagship smartphones. His vlog
featured beautiful sequences purportedly filmed on a Samsung phone. All video related to the
brand partnership was identified as being sponsored by Samsung, but did not reveal that it was
filmed with the help of expensive professional equipment and shot by a professional
videographer.
8
This rankled many of Neistat’s followers, who observed that the videos appearing
on Neistat’s channel did not honestly represent the results achievable by an average consumer
equipped only with the smartphone being promoted. The audience’s reactions were generally

6
10 YouTube CREATORS TO WATCH. (2016, 06). License! Global, 19, 151-152,154,156,158,160. Retrieved
from http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-
com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/1812187649?accountid=14749

7
Berkowitz, J. (2012, April 11). How Director Casey Neistat Went Rogue with Nike's New Ad. Retrieved February
23, 2019, from https://www.fastcompany.com/1680524/how-director-casey-neistat-went-rogue-with-nikes-new-ad

8
Toit, W., & Wouter. (2017, June 23). Casey Neistat Hides an Ad Behind His Vlog. Retrieved February 23, 2019,
from https://fstoppers.com/commercial/casey-neistat-hides-ad-behind-his-vlog-180810

5
negative.
9

Figure 1 Casey Neistat YouTube video comment by viewer giving their opinion on Neistat’s intentions with his brand
partnerships.

Figure 2 Casey Neistat YouTube Video comment by viewer speaking on Neistat’s use of professional camera equipment

The result was an audience impression of manipulation and deception both of Neistat and
of Samsung that directly undermined the goals of the brand partnership. Less than a week after
Neistat posted the video, he appeared in an interview on Philip DeFranco’s channel where he
talked about the ad. DeFranco is also a YouTuber with over 6 million subscribers. Neistat
admitted that he understood why people may have felt mislead, and DeFranco also confessed
that he has even had to make adjustment to, “the way we introduce sponsorships to the show [his

9
Toit, Wouter du, and Wouter. “Casey Neistat Hides an Ad Behind His Vlog.” Fstoppers, 23 June 2017,
fstoppers.com/commercial/casey-neistat-hides-ad-behind-his-vlog-180810.

6
channel].” “How can we be as transparent as possible,” said DeFranco. “While also providing for
the brand.
10

In Neistat’s case, rather than associating Samsung directly with consumers’ desire to
produce videos on par with those created by a vlogger they admired, the campaign drew attention
to the very things—professional equipment, technique, and experience which ultimately
suggested to consumers that the Samsung camera may not be good enough on its own. A
campaign designed to foster community around Samsung’s brand achieved, for many consumers,
exactly the opposite. The campaign’s impact on sales is difficult to gauge, but sales of the
Samsung Galaxy s9 (and its Casey Neistat Edition), the first to be released following the
campaign, were deeply disappointing.
11

The Neistat-Samsung debacle illustrates the risks marketers take whenever they hire
social media influencers. Those risks didn’t result in legal trouble: Neistat and Samsung provided
all the information and disclaimers required by law. The greater danger often lies, as it did in the
Neistat-Samsung example, with the hardening of consumer skepticism against products
promoted by poorly conceived influencer-marketing campaigns.
This thesis explores the differences between traditional advertising and influencer
relations, the reasons why influencer-based campaigns are so appealing to marketers, and the
legal risks and threats to brand reputation associated with influencer marketing. It concludes by
weighing the rewards associated with influencer-based marketing campaigns against the risks

10
DeFranco, Phillip, director. A Conversation With Ep. 1 - Casey Neistat Responds to Controversy & Backlash,
Reveals Beme's Future. Casey Neistat Responds to Controversy & Backlash, Reveals Beme's Future 8:32-
10:52, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=uevoGGrcaeM.

11
https://bgr.com/2018/07/19/galaxy-s9-sales-q2-vs-q1-bad-news/

7
they may incur. This thesis is organized into four chapters focusing on influencer relations for
marketing purposes, the risks associated with an influencer marketing campaign, how to avoid
these risks, and finally, how to understand these risks with precaution by offering insight on the
future ethical questions around influencer marketing. Each chapter provides its own sections to
help support the claim, from ethics of traditional journalists, and psychological strategies to
legality and analytics. This thesis examines influencer relations from the perspective of
marketing professionals, public relations practitioners, viewers and influencers themselves. It
provides context around why influencer relations are used and what challenges come with this
new marketing strategy. Primary research is included in an appendix providing firsthand
experiences with social media influencers and their relationships with brands. This thesis
concludes by asserting the importance of influencer relations while also establishing an area of
ethical standards associated with influencer marketing for advertising purposes. It leaves in
question what the future of influencer marketing holds without a code of ethics and
acknowledges that influencer relations may be a better route for using influencers in paid
promotions until such a code exists.
While preparing this thesis, I conducted both primary and secondary research. Secondary
research included books, case studies, academic-journal articles, influencer blogs, and lectures
and other publications from the public relations, marketing, and advertising industries. Primary
research included analysis of content published by social media influencers, followed by
interviews with them. These interviews were transcribed and recorded as Appendix A; portions
of these transcriptions appear in Chapter Two. The research methodology for this thesis can be
found in Appendix C.

8
Chapter One: Influencer Relations and Marketing Ethics
“Without trust, there can be no creative freedom” – Lynn Serafin
12

In this section of the paper I will talk about the relationship between marketers,
influencers and their consumers. I will do so by examining the differences between traditional
media and social media in order to get a better grasp on what this new type of marketing is and
how it differs from how things have been done in the past. I will examine what marketing looks
like in a Web 2.0 world when using the five different types of influencers and classifying them
into their different professional categories. Understanding the professional types—aspirational
influencers, authoritative influencers, and peer influencer—reveals the most important attributes
of influencer marketing. I will evaluate the importance of these attributes—reach, relevancy, and
trust—to understanding the difference between influencer relations and influencer marketing.

Influencers vs Traditional Advertising
Ethical Considerations for Traditional and Social Media
On April 28, 2003, The New York Times acknowledged that one of its reporters had
plagiarized materials from other publications, fabricated information, lied about his whereabouts
when on assignment, and broken promises of confidentiality to sources, violating in the process a
host of professional journalistic standards.
13
For some time before resigning in disgrace, Jayson
Blair had been researching stories not by performing original journalism, or in many cases even

12
Serafinn, Lynn. The 3 Components of the Creative Process Part 1 – Consciousness. 2012.
13
Elizabeth Blanks Hindman. “Jayson Blair, The New York Times, and Paradigm Repair.” Journal of
Communication 55.2 (2005): 225–241. Web.

9
by traveling to the locations in which he conducted his putative research, but by reading other
publications and adapting their details for his own stories. He passed off the results as his own
work, never crediting the original sources.
Professional journalists working in traditional media are bound by the Society of
Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) Code of Ethics, which identifies four principles as the foundation
of ethical journalism:
• Seek truth and report it
• Minimize harm
• Act independently
• Be accountable and transparent
14

When Blair’s transgressions came to light, the Times abided by the fourth of these
principles by releasing a front-page account of the affair, titled “Times Reporter Who Resigned
Leaves Long Trail of Deception,” which documents inaccuracies in at least 36 of the 73 articles
Blair wrote for the Times.
15
Along with the institutional consequences felt by the Times, Blair’s
actions had severe repercussions for several Times employees. Blair resigned from the Times and
has not returned to journalism; Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald M.

14
SPJ Code of Ethics - Society of Professional Journalists. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2019, from
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

15
Barry, Dan, et al. “CORRECTING THE RECORD; Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of
Deception.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 May 2003,
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-
deception.html.

10
Boyd resigned soon thereafter, as a direct result of their failure to recognize or address Blair’s
transgressions.
16

Social media influencers, being bound by no code similar to the SPJ’s Code of Ethics,
rarely suffer consequences as grave as those felt by the Times and its employees in the wake of
the Blair scandal. Take for example Logan Paul, a social media influencer whose YouTube
channel boasted 20 million subscribers. In January 2018, Paul posted a video to his channel titled
“We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…”, in which Paul finds a corpse hanging
from a tree in Japan's Aokigahara forest, laughs, and asks it “Are you alive, bro?”
17
The video,
which was posted without age restriction, received 6.3 million views in 24 hours before Paul
removed it and issued an apology claiming that the video was intended to raise awareness of
suicide and its warning signs. YouTube executives were not impressed by Paul’s response,
declaring via Twitter on January 9, 2018 “that suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a
driving force for views.” Anna Akana put it perfectly: "That body was a person someone loved.
You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness."
18

Nearly 750,000 individuals signed an online petition calling for Paul to be banned from
YouTube.

16
Steinberg, Jacques. “Executive Editor of The Times and Top Deputy Step Down,” New York Times 5
June 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/05/national/executive-editor-of-the-times-and-top-deputy-step-
down.html

17
YouTube punishes Logan Paul for 'suicide forest' video. (2018, January 11). CNN Wire. Retrieved from
http://link.galegroup.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/apps/doc/A522331316/AONE?u=usocal_main&sid=AONE&xid=3b1d
7eb2

18
YouTube (YouTube). “Suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views. As Anna
Akana put it perfectly: ‘That body was a person someone loved. You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera
and claim mental health awareness.’". 9 Jan 2018, 21:50:56 UTC. Tweet.

11
YouTube issued a separate apology stating that the video violated its terms of service.
19
It
then took punitive measures against Paul, first by placing him on a three-week suspension from
posting content. It also removed the Google Preferred designation from Paul’s channels; Google
Preferred is a designation that helps advertisers identify YouTube’s top-performing channels.
YouTube then issued a Community Guidelines strike against Paul; channels that receive three
strikes in a three-month period can be banned from the platform. Paul’s scheduled appearance on
the YouTube Red series “Foursome” was canceled, as was production on a sequel to his
dystopian movie “The Thinning”, which had been the first film ever produced by YouTube.
20

After a three-week hiatus, Paul resumed posting content, though YouTube continued to
withhold the Google Preferred designation from his channel, which denied him the opportunity
to monetize his videos at the highest possible rates. On February 9, 2019, YouTube pulled all
advertising from Paul’s videos following another violation of its terms of service, this one caused
by a video of Paul using a taser on two dead rats.
21
YouTube has since reinstated advertisements
on his videos, but Paul himself estimates that the controversies cost him $5 million overall, a
figure that is otherwise unsubstantiated.
22
Indeed, Forbes estimates that Paul still earned $14.5
million in 2018 from revenue streams including his YouTube channel and a popular clothing

19
Alexander, Joshua. “Logan Paul in the Suicide Forest.” University Wire 5 Feb. 2018. Web.

20
YouTube’s darker side.(VITALS)(Brief article). (2018). Contemporary Pediatrics, 35(2).

21
Abromovich, Seth. “Logan Paul Would Like One More Chance: ‘I Hate Being Hated.’” Hollywood
Reporter, 31 October 2018, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/how-youtubes-logan-paul-reveals-plan-
redeem-himself-1156187.

22
Ibid.

12
line.
23
As an example of his continuing popularity, other videos filmed by Paul during his trip to
Japan have garnered more than 24 million views combined, worth roughly $90,000 in
advertising revenue to Paul, and tens of thousands of dollars to YouTube.
24

The Blair and Paul controversies illustrate vividly the different ethical standards to which
traditional- and social media content creators are held, and the different consequences that befall
stakeholders when those standards are breached. While Blair’s transgressions caused wider
outcry and had more dire consequences for Blair and his superiors at the Times, Paul’s behavior
was still considered egregious by many of his followers who typically visited Paul’s videos
expecting to watch prank and comedy content. Fellow Youtuber with 63 thousand subscribers,
Zoe London, shared her concerns about the unprecedented video among Paul’s viewers when
tweeting, “I can’t even imagine some of the conversations some parents have had to have with
worried or frightened and upset kids all over the world.” She followed up her concerns for young
viewers by posting the phone numbers for organizations that offer advice and support for people
in emotional distress.
25

Blair, for all his violations of basic journalistic ethics, was never subject to civil action by
a party seeking to demonstrate that he had done them actual harm. Blair’s journalistic misdeeds,
then, are ones of misattribution and misrepresentation of himself as a primary reporter. They are
not ones of outright mistruth: Blair’s deceit does not render the content he plagiarized untrue,

23
Robehmed, Natalie. “Highest-Paid YouTube Stars 2018: Markiplier, Jake Paul, PewDiePie And More.”
Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 2 May 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/12/03/highest-paid-
youtube-stars-2018-markiplier-jake-paul-pewdiepie-and-more/#43ce6579909a.

24
Wright, Mark. “Logan Paul's Japan YouTube Videos Make up to $90,000 despite Dead Body Controversy .” The
Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 11 Jan. 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/11/logan-pauls-japan-
youtube-videos-make-90000-despite-dead-body/.

25
“Logan Paul: YouTube Body Video Draws Furious Reaction.” BBC News, BBC, 2 Jan. 2018,
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42539715.

13
unethically reported in its original instances, or indeed much changed, either in substance or in
context, save for its byline. His ethical failures were measured against a widely accepted
professional code, reflective of the dominant mode of journalistic thought since Walter
Lippmann, which itself reflects the ethical standards on which newspapers and other traditional
news vehicles have built their reputations and sustained their businesses.
Paul’s Aokigahara video presents greater complexity in understanding his real motives
from his video. From many viewers perspectives, it mocks a suicide for commercial gain. After
the immediate backlash, Paul removed the video from his channel and issued an apology video in
response to the criticism where he said, “The goal with my content is always to entertain, to push
boundaries, to be all inclusive.”
26

Japan does not prohibit the activities shown in the video but based on the negative
response from many of his viewers, they were not expecting to see this type of material on Paul’s
channel. In traditional media coverage, reporting on the dead has become more prominent and, in
many cases, it serves as a source of proof that the events actually occurred. In Paul’s case,
laughing at a hanging body on a vlog channel which gained the majority of its following from
publishing practical jokes came off unwarranted by his viewers. Had Paul previously posted
videos with conversation around social issues, suicide, mental health or death, this video could
have been expected by his viewers. However, no previous videos had ever been posted to his
channel about such topics.
27
His guilt was established by publishing content for monetary gain

26
Farokhmanesh, Megan. “Logan Paul Controversy Highlights the Carelessness of Online Celebrity in the
YouTube Era.” The Verge, The Verge, 2 Jan. 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/1/2/16841260/logan-paul-
youtube-suicide-controversy-carelessness-online-celebrity.

27
Paul, Logan. “Logan Paul.” YouTube, YouTube, 2017,
www.youtube.com/channel/UCG8rbF3g2AMX70yOd8vqIZg.

14
that he knew to be “pushing boundaries” not a professional code of ethics. YouTube’s
community guidelines state that “[i]t's not okay to post violent or gory content that's primarily
intended to be shocking, sensational, or gratuitous.” YouTube representatives appealed to this
clause when explaining to reporters the reasons for Paul’s punishment.
28

Blair initially succeeded in his transgressions partly because he plagiarized from ethically
written source material. Blair lost his career, which is in stark contrast to Paul’s career that
successfully continued after a brief hiatus. In fact, Paul’s career flourished as a result of the
increased publicity with a clear gain of over 2 million subscribers since the scandal, as well as a
debut into the world of professional boxing. The Times did suffer a temporary diminishment of
its reputation, whereas YouTube continued to make money from Paul’s content.
This raises an interesting point that highlights the difference between both party’s
punishments. The discrepancy between the magnitude of each man’s misdeeds and the
consequences they suffered speaks directly to the distinction between traditional media and
social media. The SPJ code of ethics presents a strict set of written guidelines that all journalists
are expected to follow. With the establishment of this code, readers of publications like the
Times can expect to receive truthful and accurate information in most cases. Social media ethical
boundaries are still evolving, leaving room for negotiation and interpretation without a defined
ethical code. Although both The Times and YouTube are acting as platforms that provide general
rules and ethical codes, the accountability factor is different. The content published through the
Times is a direct representation of the Times, whereas the content published on YouTube is a
direct representation of the influencer’s channel. While YouTube still sets forth rules and

28
YouTube, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/about/policies/#community-guidelines

15
regulations, any breach of these guidelines affects the reputation of the influencer more than
YouTube itself.

Key Differences Between Journalists and Influencers
The Paul and Blair scandals highlight an important difference between society’s
relationship with the news media and social media influencers. In today’s day and age, anyone
can claim to be a reporter. However, it is important to highlight the intent of whomever is
reporting. The news covers dead bodies and killings, so what makes this different from what
Paul did? Who is considered a journalist? What are the ethical duties of a journalist to the
people? These are century-long questions that support the inevitable grey area that is journalism.
Influencers, especially those who have developed platforms discussing social issues that inspire
social change, are recognized by viewers as a legitimate source of reporting. YouTuber, Molly
Burke, with over 2 million subscribers, talks about her life as a woman who is blind. Her
community of viewers watch her videos and discuss disability, mental health and other social
issues. Burke’s channel is filled with videos titled, “My Top 5 Tips for Dealing with Depression”
and “The Turning Point: How I turned My Depression into Strength.”
29
If Burke had posted the
same video Paul had posted of the suicide forest would there have been a different response?
Today’s media is less about who is the reporter, social media influencer or traditional
journalist and more about the intent of the person publishing the content. If influencers like Paul
want to be able to post the same type of content that the news posts, in this case, dead bodies,
then his intent needs to be the same as that of a traditional journalist. Journalists have clear

29
Burke, Molly. “Molly Burke.” YouTube, YouTube, 2020, www.youtube.com/user/MollyBurkeOfficial.

16
ethical processes and these processes help uncover the intent behind their reporting. Journalists
earn their reputations by adhering to the professional standards enshrined in the SPJ Code of
Ethics and broadly expected of them by the public. Tools like the Potter Box, a model for
making ethical decisions developed by Ralph B. Potter Jr., exist to help journalists make
decisions by utilizing four different categories: Definition, Values, Principles, and Loyalties.
The process begins by first defining the situation objectively with detailed information relevant
to the ethical dilemma. It is followed by stating and comparing the different values that either
influence or discourage the moral question. Principles are then used to broaden the idea of the
values. The process then determines to whom the loyalty lies using these principles.
It is processes like this that differentiate traditional journalists from social media
influencers.
30
For Paul’s video to abide by traditional journalistic standards it would have needed
to educate the public, demonstrate loyalty to the public, demonstrate a loyalty to the truth and use
irrefutable facts not only in his intent to film and post but also his actions within the video.
Most social media influencers rise to fame simply by documenting their own lives and
interests, in ways not bound by a common ethical code. The ethical standards to which
journalists are bound allow them to claim credibility by association with the profession itself and
with the companies for whom they work. For social media influencers, the structure is much
more fluid. Legality, contracts and platform guidelines provide influencers with discrete
boundaries, but influencers rely much more heavily on self-branding and product promotion to
gain a following.

30
“The Potter Box.” OLCreate: Implementing Education 4 Justice in Your University: The Potter Box,
www.open.edu/openlearncreate/mod/page/view.php?id=148399.

17
The need to earn their own reputations without institutional backing encourages
influencers to use social media more liberally and variously than most traditional journalists.
Developing a reputation as an influencer requires a consistently high volume of publication,
usually to several different social media platforms. Influencers also cultivate an air of intimacy,
speaking in friendly tones on subjects of personal importance and often purporting to offer their
followers detailed documentation of their personal lives. The trust engendered by such nominally
friendly relationships between influencer and follower makes social media influencers especially
apt brand representatives: such representation often has more in common with a personal
recommendation from a friend than a traditional celebrity endorsement. A special report
published alongside the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that 63% of consumers aged 18 to
34 trust influencer marketing more than traditional brand advertising.
31

Journalists, by contrast, are expected to research and present their work objectively, with
no direct appeal to personal affinity with their audiences. Some journalists—newspaper
columnists, for example—may bring their personalities strongly into view in their professional
work and may even create something like personal brands. But such personal touches are
understood to be secondary to any journalist’s central obligation to present objectively
researched and rendered information.
These differences express themselves in the ways influencers and journalists are
compensated for their work. Social media influencers are generally paid through affiliate
marketing—fees paid each time a reader follows a link with which the influencer is affiliated—
and through brand partnerships, which compensate influencers directly for promoting products or
services. Journalists, of course, earn salaries or are compensated piecemeal for freelance work.

31
https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2019-
07/2019_edelman_trust_barometer_special_report_in_brands_we_trust.pdf

18
Although traditional media platforms are also advertisement supported, the difference is that the
influencer is receiving direct compensation from the brand or its representative (and may include
various forms of commission or affiliate marketing), whereas a journalist receives a one-time
payment or set salary for the content they produce. An influencer can adapt and change their
messaging in real time based on consumer reactions in order to generate more clicks or income
for themselves, whereas a journalist provides content that is generally fixed and not tied to
specific actions on social media. These differences must be accounted for when marketers or
public relations professionals decide which channels to pursue for a given campaign.

Web 2.0
Journalistic ethics are historically difficult to define and the evolution of social media in a
web 2.0 world contributed further to the difficulty in defining who is a journalist and what is
acceptable reporting.

The term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty in the O’Reilly
Media Web 2.0 Conference in 2004. Web 2.0 describes interactions between social media, and
creative consumers.

19

Figure 3 Web 2.0, Social Media and Creative Consumers
32

This relationship is illustrated in Figure 1. Web 2.0 can be considered the technical
infrastructure that enables the social phenomenon of collective media and facilitates consumer-
generated content, while social media focuses on content, and consumer generation on the
creators of that content. In other words, Web 2.0 is a term for enabling creation and distribution
of the content via social media. This is known as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-
generated media (CGM). It is content in the form of words, text, images and videos, generated by
social media users or consumers globally, which can create value from a marketing point of
view. It may be informal discussions about products and services, users creating structured

32
Pierre R. Berthon, Leyland F. Pitt, Kirk Plangger, Daniel Shapiro,
Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing
strategy,

20
reviews, suggestions and evaluations in texts or videos, or consumers involved in the promotion
or demotion of brands. Additionally, consumers can sometimes become involved in the
modification of proprietary products and services and the distribution of these innovations.
33

Taking into consideration the constant rise of ad-blocking software, based on PageFair’s report
of 30% yearly growth on ad block usage, marketers need to discover new ways to reach and
influence customers without relying on traditional display, search and social ads. This is why
social media marketing and user-generated content are rapidly becoming the most widely
preferred and efficient online marketing strategies.

Types of Influencers
Just like traditional media, influencer marketing presents its own set of unpredictable
outcomes. Influencers are not a monolithic group: they operate on a wide range of platforms, in a
wide range of markets, and on a wide range of scales. To accurately gauge the ethical propriety
of a given influencer, it is useful to identify the mode in which they operate, which we can
express as membership in a particular social media influencer type. Understanding which
influencers are used for marketing purposes helps explain which factors are most important to
consumer behavior. This understanding helps marketing professionals in choosing which
influencer is right for their campaign to avoid ethical dilemmas.
34
The figure below defines five
broad tiers of influencer and describes some potential benefits they may offer to brand partners.

33
Berthon, P., Pitt, L., & Campbell, C. (2008). Ad Lib: When Customers Create the Ad. California Management
Review, 50(4), 6-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/41166454

34
Sinkwitz, Joe. “Determining the Right Influencer Type for Your Campaign: Intellifluence Blog.” Intellifluence, 8
June 2020, intellifluence.com/blog/determining-the-right-influencer-type-for-your-campaign#reach.

21

Figure 4 Tiers of Influencers
35

Through understanding the tiers of influencers marketing professionals can easier
decipher which influencer tier to partner with on campaigns. Additionally, it is important for
marketing professionals to understand what the audience expects from each of the tiers.
Along with the tiers described above, social media influencers can be classified by their
professional styles. These can be grouped into three broad categories: aspirational-, authoritative-
and peer influencers.
36

35
“How to Find Key Influencers in Your Niche Using Social Media.” Orbit Media Studios, 21 Nov. 2019,
www.orbitmedia.com/blog/find-key-influencers-using-social-media/.
36
Caliber. (2017, July 25). Is influencer marketing ethical or legal? – Caliber – Medium. Retrieved February 23,
2019, from https://medium.com/@caliberi/ethical-and-legal-considerations-of-influencer-marketing-a-guide-
4037923663d7

22

Aspirational Influencers
Aspirational influencers seek to establish themselves as paragons of one or several
desirable personal qualities. This style is not limited to influencers whose fame rests on their
social media activity: when traditional celebrities such as actors and athletes endorse products,
they act as aspirational influencers. These aspirations have traditionally been accepted as
unfulfillable by consumers; aspirational influencers have historically been awarded a “greater
presence and wider scope of activity and agency than are those who make up the rest of the
population.”
37

This sense of unattainability is deliberately weakened among social media influencers.
For example, Shay Mitchell, an American actress, has more than three million subscribers on her
YouTube channel. In December 2018, Mitchell posted a video to her channel titled “How I
Launched My Brand.”
38
In the video, Mitchell discusses her travel-oriented brand, Beis: a
collection of travel bags she putatively designed.
39
She discusses the prototyping process, films
herself and her team at meetings, and concludes by celebrating the success she achieved through
launching her own brand. The video is presented as a how-to documentary and was taken as such
by many viewers. This impression trades heavily on the sense of personal connection common to
social media influencers.

37
Marshall, P. David. Preface. Celebrity and Power. By P. David Marshall. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997. x.

38
Mitchell, S. (2018, December 13). How I Launched My Brand | Shay Mitchell. Retrieved February 23, 2019, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M__ayZgBUTE

39
Beis Travel by Shay Mitchell | The Ultimate Travel Essential. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2019, from
https://beistravel.com/

23

Figure 5 Comment captured from Shay Mitchell’s YouTube Channel on her video titled, “How I Launched My Brand.”
Such expectations, of course, are unrealistic for most viewers. Mitchell had already
established a certain level of celebrity as an entertainer before launching her career as an
influencer: viewers without such an initial advantage cannot reasonably follow her example in its
particulars.
While Mitchell’s video is unlikely to launch hundreds of successful careers in clothing
design, it certainly seems to have helped her sales figures. The following comment is one of
many on the same theme:

Figure 6 Comment captured from Shay Mitchell’s YouTube Channel on her video titled, “How I Launched My Brand.”

Other commenters were more skeptical of Mitchell’s involvement with the design
process and her motives for commissioning and posting the video. They are skeptical, in this
representative case, of Mitchell’s real and implied claims that the video is anything but a
promotional vehicle for her own brand.

24

Figure 7 Comment captured from Shay Mitchell’s YouTube Channel on her video titled, “How I Launched My Brand.”

Like other social media influencers, Mitchell’s success depends on the willingness of
viewers to appreciate the commercial nature of her relationship to her audience. By encouraging
her viewers to consider themselves personally connected to her, Mitchell lends discussion of her
brand an implicit sense of personal recommendation. The same sense of connection would be
weakened were viewers to consider the full range of advantages leveraged by Mitchell but
unavailable to themselves. Faced with a choice between a nominally personal relationship with
Mitchell and a clear-headed understanding of that relationship, many viewers choose the former.

Authoritative Influencers
Authoritative influencers are typically experts in a well-defined field who have
established credibility with a significant audience. Crucially, a person’s role as an authoritative
influencer is distinct from the professional capacity in which she established her credibility.
Successful influencers in this style attract followers who seek to mimic their expertise, both to

25
validate their choices as consumers and to align themselves with highly visible authorities.
40
In
some fields, this mimicry invites a high risk of ethical confusion and downright abuse. The
medical field is a case in point: even medical experts whose training and experience qualify them
to offer medical diagnoses run the risk of violating both professional standards. In the most
egregious of such cases, viewers who follow medical advice given by authoritative influencers
may suffer real harm. YouTube influencer Katie Morton, a licensed marriage and family
therapist who has almost seven hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube,
41
partnered with
Shane Dawson, whose followership exceeds 20 million YouTube subscribers,
42
to create a
docuseries on fellow YouTube influencer Jake Paul (Logan’s brother, who himself boasts 18
million subscribers).
43
The eight-part series, “The Mind of Jake Paul,” was posted to Dawson’s
channel in October 2018, where it attracted more than 50 million views and generated more than
$2 million in advertising revenue.
44

The series examines Paul’s life on and away from the Web and includes blunt
speculations from Dawson that Paul may have a sociopathic personality. To lend weight to these
speculations, Morton serves as an authoritative figure, appearing on camera to comment on her
observations of Paul’s mental health. In scenes where both Paul and Morton are present, she

40
Austen, J., & Spacks, P. (2013). Persuasion : authoritative texts, background and contexts, criticism (2nd ed.).
New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

41
KatiMorton. (n.d.). Kati Morton. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from
https://www.youtube.com/user/KatiMorton/videos?app=desktop
42
Shane. (n.d.). Shane. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/user/shane
43
JakePaulProductions. (n.d.). Jake Paul. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from
https://www.youtube.com/user/JakePaulProductions

44
Rosney, D. (2018, October 03). Shane Dawson and Jake Paul: How a YouTube series 'could be making millions'.
Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-45705129

26
poses as Dawson’s producer. Not until after Morton delivered her diagnosis of Paul, concluding
that he likely does not have a sociopathic personality, did she reveal her true credentials and
actual role in the series.
45
After the series aired, Dawson released a tweet stating that Paul was
aware that he was being diagnosed. However, fans still questioned Dawson’s methodology.

Figure 8 Tweet from @shanedawson and @netnobody on twitter, January 2018.

Whether or not Paul was aware of Morton’s role as diagnostician, her true role was not
revealed to viewers until the conclusion of the series. Intentionally or not, Dawson and Morton
painted a deceiving picture to viewers and may have deceived Paul even more. Millions of
viewers watched Morton seemingly violate the American Psychology Association’s ethical
standards, to which she is held professionally. Morton’s lack of consideration for Paul, displayed
most pointedly by her failure to disclose her capacity as a mental health professional, was a key

45
Shane. (2018, September 25). The Mind of Jake Paul. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bpkr91p2xY

27
conceit of the series.
46
Dawson received backlash for capitalizing on a dramatized version of a
serious condition.

Figure 9 Tweet from @shanedawson on twitter January 2018

As in Mitchell’s case, Dawson and Morton posted social media content predicated on the
trust invested in them by their audience while knowingly acting in ways that undermined that
trust. Morton’s role as an authoritative influencer was key to this misdirection. In reality, the
series seems to be a dramatized reflection of the viewership’s expectations. Thus, we can see that
at least one authoritative influencer has leveraged their expertise, including their mainstream
professional credentials, to create highly believable online personae whose actions violated
traditional codes of professional conduct.
47

46
APA Services. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.apaservices.org/index
47
Gologot, Corina. “Television Ethics: How Does it Work?” Agathos 8(1), 155-160. Retrieved January 25, 2020
from https://www.agathos-international-review.com/issue8_1/23.CORINA%20GOLOGOT.pdf

28
Peer Influencers
Peer influencers position themselves as average people whose large online followings are
not predicated on extraordinary achievements, rarified socioeconomic status, or professional
expertise, but on simple charisma instead. Because the basis of their influence is mutual self-
identification, peer influencers can be especially persuasive.
48

As of January 2020, YouTube and Instagram influencer Laura Lee had 4.46 million
subscribers on YouTube and 1.9 million followers on Instagram. Those figures, though
considerable, are markedly lower than her high point in August 2018, when she surpassed 5
million YouTube subscribers.
49
Her popularity declined sharply that same month and has never
recovered. The decline itself was occasioned by a scandal. Lee’s failure to recover her previous
subscriber levels, however, may be rooted in a disingenuousness whose signs were evident while
she was still adding followers. Those early signs concern us most here.
The popularity of Lee’s makeup and beauty videos encouraged her to found her own
makeup brand, Laura Lee Los Angeles, in 2017.
50
In a 2017 video titled “Biggest Makeup
Giveaway Ever! $2,000 Worth of Makeup,” Lee created 21 different boxed prizes for her
subscribers, each filled with samples from brands that had contracted with Lee to promote their
goods on her channel.
51
Lee introduced the video with the following quote:

48
McKinlay, A., & McVittie, C. (2008). Social psychology and discourse. Malden, MA ;: Wiley-Blackwell Pub.
49
“Laura Lee.” SocialBlade. Accessed January 25, 2020 from
https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/laura88lee
50
Laura Lee Los Angeles. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.lauraleelosangeles.com/
51
Lee, L. (2017, October 21). BIGGEST MAKEUP GIVEAWAY EVER! $2,000 WORTH OF MAKEUP &
MACBOOK. Retrieved February 24, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkiWFvTnbpA

29

Figure 10 Clipping taken from Laura Lee’s YouTube channel on video titled “Biggest Makeup Giveaway Ever! $2,000
Worth of Makeup”.

In one move, Lee leverages a collection of promotional items given to her free of charge
to increase her revenue stream in three distinct ways:
1. The promotion intends to increase Lee’s Instagram following, which in turn will
attract more brand partners;
2. With increased brand partnerships, Lee can charge more for each Instagram post
supporting a partnered brand; and
3. The promotion’s requirement that participants follow Lee’s channel and submit a
comment increase her followership and measurable level of engagement,
respectively, each of which are directly tied to the compensation she receives from
Instagram itself.
By offering as gifts items she received as promotional items, Lee is not behaving in an
explicitly unethical way. A similar dynamic characterizes regifting—giving as presents to third
parties items originally received as personal gifts—and no consensus has emerged on that count.
But as with regifting, Lee is on questionable ethical ground here. Her social media following is

30
predicated on a sense of personal connection that mimics genuine friendship. Leveraging that
sense to make an ostensibly friendly gesture—giving a present—without having invested any
personal choice or financial responsibility for the gifts, Lee’s gesture comes off disingenuous.
In August of 2018, a feud pitting Lee and three other beauty vloggers against a fifth led to
the widespread distribution of racially derogatory tweets Lee had written six years previously.
52

The details of the feud and of Lee’s tweets are not of central importance here. We are instead
interested in how Lee’s ostensibly personal relationship with her audience conditioned her
response to a professional crisis.
Fortunately, we have something of a control group. Gabriel Zamorra, one of Lee’s
partners in the feud, endured the same humiliation for the same reasons as Lee, but quickly
posted a 48-minute video apology that was widely accepted as sincere. He gained more than
200,000 followers the next day.
53
By contrast, Lee’s four-minute video apology was
overwhelmingly criticized for being self-serving and disingenuous, and she lost more than
200,000 subscribers in the days following its posting.
54
The fallout continued the next day, when
Lee’s major business partners, including all distributors for her makeup line, suspended their
partnerships with her.
55

52
Abad-Santos, Alex. “Laura Lee, Jeffree Star, and the racism scandal upending the YouTube beauty
community, explained.” Vox (2018, August 31). Retrieved January 25, 2020 from
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/28/17769996/laura-lee-jeffree-star-racism-subscriber-count

53
Ibid.

54
Sherman, Maria. “Laura Lee, Jeffree Star, and the Teary-Eyed Cynicism of YouTube Apology Videos”.
Jezebel (2018, August 24). Retrieved January 25, 2020 from https://jezebel.com/laura-lee-jeffree-star-and-the-teary-
eyed-cynicism-of-1828469444
55
TheBlast Staff. “YouTuber Laura Lee Dropped From Every Major Sponsorship Over Racist Tweet.”
TheBlast (2018, August 23). Retrieved January 25, 2020 from https://theblast.com/laura-lee-dropped-partnerships-
ulta-racist-tweet/

31
Lee rose to prominence as a peer influencer on the strength of her perceived relationship
with her followers. Even then, some of her actions gave observers reason to doubt that her
contributions to that relationship were entirely genuine. When crisis struck, those doubts were
confirmed, and both Lee and her business partners paid dearly for it.

Influencer Attributes: Reach, Relevancy, and Trust
Understanding the different types of influencers and how consumers engage with them is
an important process in creating a successful marketing campaign. When it comes to working
with influencers, there is no official one size fits all model. Some brands will prioritize an
influencer’s reach (follower/subscriber number) with the sole intention of gaining brand
exposure, while others will focus more on the influencer being extremely relevant to the topics
that matter at the core of the brand. The difference between the two approaches revolves around
the how, the why and the what. Based on the information provided about aspirational,
authoritative and peer influencers, I conclude that the first three most important attributes of an
influencer are reach, relevancy, and trust.

32

Figure 11 Influencer attributes created by Kristine Bruun-Andersen through secondary research examining
aspirational, authoritative and peer influencer behaviors. Additional research drawn from Edelman’s, “10 Trends Influencing
2020.”
56

56
Edelman. “10 Trends Influencing 2020.” Https://www.edelman.com, 2020,
www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2019-12/10_Trends_Influencing_2020.pdf.

R E A C H R E L E V A N C Y T R U S T
The number of people who
potentially see an influencers
content. The size of the audience
(followers), plus the number of people
who see the content through search
results or recommendations.
The level of alignment and similarity
between the influencer's values and
the brand's image. Relevance can be
either about the content that
the influencer creates or the audience
that they reach.
An audience must trust and respect the
opinion of the influencers that a brand
partners with. Without the trust
component, any results will be
superficial. A brand will struggle to see a
tangible business impact from their
efforts.

33
Difference Between Influencer Relations and Influencer Marketing
Once a marketing professional understands which type of influencer would be best for a
campaign, they must then understand which strategy is best for executing the campaign itself -
influencer marketing or influencer relations. Clarifying the fundamental differences between
influencer marketing and influencer relations allows us to examine different instances of
influencer marketing and clearly differentiate the benefits of influencer relations from the risks
associated with influencer marketing.
Influencer Relations vs Influencer Marketing
To understand the difference between influencer relations and influencer marketing, it is
important to first understand the fundamental building blocks that compose the two. As
traditional advertisements continue to lose effectiveness, online channels have led to the
emergence of the use of influencers for marketing campaigns. Technically, anyone can be an
influencer, although some are more influential than others. Influencers have the ability to
influence opinions and behaviors to varying degrees. Some influencers may be influential by
default of the position they hold in their particular community, and others are deemed influential
simply by sheer reach due to the number of followers they have on their account. Marketing and
public relation practitioners typically measure the success of a campaign by statistics; reach,
sales, impressions, engagement, etc. Therefore, the number of followers a person has is often a
large qualifying factor when choosing an influencer for a campaign. Many influencers with large
followings have an audience of engaged followers for their personal brands. However, just
because they have a large following does not mean they are the right influencer for a brand
campaign. The difference between influencer marketing and influencer relations is how the

34
brand and influencer relate to each other. Just because an influencer has the ability to influence,
their specialty or what they are known for might not be relevant to every brand.
Influencer marketing tends to be short term, transactional and driven by numbers,
especially number of followers, in order to reach a bigger audience group. However, if this
influencer is not an organic advocate of the brand or the type of product the brand is selling, the
relationship between the brand and the influencer is more about what the influencer is getting in
exchange for the brand promotion, rather than the affinity for the brand or product itself.
57
For
many marketers, this strategy can work. A brand might see a large increase in clicks to their
website, or maybe an increase of followers on their own social media just by the volume of
people that might see the influencer’s posts.
The more difficult question surrounding influencer marketing is uncovering if more
traffic actually leads to more sales. On the other hand, brands who utilize influencer relations are
choosing an influencer for their campaign that is already an advocate of the brand. These are
influencers who may already be a customer, or who are genuinely passionate about the product
or company historically based on the content of their page prior to the partnership.
Influencer relations focuses less on the number of followers an influencer has and more
on the content and relationship they have with the brand. Influencer relations is all about
identifying those individuals who are noted for their ideas and insights in a certain field, and who
already have established a relationship with the particular audience similar to the one being
targeted from a brand marketing perspective. Although influencer relations may still provide the

57
Alicia Russell - Head of Content Marketing at Onalytica. “Influencer Marketing Vs Influencer Relations- What's
the Difference?” Onalytica, 12 Feb. 2019, onalytica.com/blog/posts/influencer-marketing-vs-influencer-
relations-whats-the-difference/.

35
influencer with payment or compensation, these partnerships tend to be ones that grow over time
together and in many instances result in a fair exchange of value for both the influencer and
brand.
In summary, influencer marketing relies on an individual who has a large following on a
social media platform and a brand pays them to promote a product for them. It is more akin to a
media buy with the hopes to make sales by reaching the largest amount of people as possible.
Influencer relations are implemented to actually harness an influencer’s organic relationship with
their followers, even at a smaller scale, to make sales based on genuine brand advocacy and
influence.
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In this section I explained how influencers differ in their approach to become successful
in campaigns, now I will discuss why these approaches can be problematic for marketers.

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“Influencer Relations 101: How Influencers Are Changing the Way We Connect With Our Audiences.”
ELEMENT, goelement.com/blog/influencer-relations-101/.

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Chapter Two: The Risks of Influencer Marketing for PR Practitioners
“Don’t trade in your integrity for influence.”- Richie Norton
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In this section of the paper, I will discuss the risks associated with implementing
influencer marketing in a campaign. I will do so by examining the psychological responses and
messaging factors that become a part of consumer behavior when exposed to influencer
marketing as opposed to traditional marketing. I will also address legality in influencer
marketing and what terms and conditions are upheld and ignored by brands and influencers.

Difference Between Traditional Advertisements vs. Influencer Brand Deals

Traditional advertisements seek to create distinct and attractive brand identities, whether
implicitly through positive messages about the subject product, comparatively, or through
oppositional comparison. It is generally understood that advertisers try to create exaggerated
associations between products and lifestyles; some advertisements even foreground this general
knowledge to humorous effect. The audience for traditional advertisements, in other words, has a
useful perspective on their purpose and tactics.
Brands have learned to be strategic when using social media influencers to avoid seeming
disingenuous to the influencer’s audience. The result may be akin to well-executed product
placement in an action film or sitcom: positive messages are conveyed about a product to
audiences who might be unprepared to take those messages with the grain of salt afforded by the

59
Norton, Richie. Power of Starting Something Stupid. Manjul Publishing House, 2014.

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formal nature of traditional advertisements. But that analogy falls somewhat short. Aspirational
and peer influencers encourage a sense of personal connection between themselves and their
followers; authoritative influencers encourage a sense of trust. Some followers may understand
the nature of seeing content that is accompanied by “#ad” or “#sponsored”. Followers may even
be aware that the influencer is being paid; However, the organic and familiar delivery of the ad
amidst similar content that is not commercially driven, such as posts from friends and family,
short circuits some of the healthy skepticism about product promotions that people have built up
with their “persuasion knowledge models”.
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Astute brands tend to partner with influencers whose content already mirrors similarities
to their own products. For example, if a fitness company wanted to pay an influencer to post
about their new weight machine, the company would be wise to find an influencer who already
posts about working out regularly. Even though the audience knows the new weight machine is
an ad, they are already persuaded to believe the machine is a good machine just because that
influencer has organically posted about working out in the past. Although the ad was disclosed,
numerous studies have shown that people’s self-control strength is limited and after an initial act
of regulating thoughts, emotions, or behavior, one’s performance on a self-control task will
suffer.
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If a person has regulated themselves to expect a certain type of content from a particular
influencer they are more likely to self-persuade themselves to buy the machine.

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Marian Friestad and Peter Wright Journal of Consumer Research Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jun., 1994), pp. 1-31

61
Tessitore, Tina, and Maggie Geuens. “PP for ‘Product Placement’or ‘Puzzled Public’?” International Journal of
Advertising, vol. 32, no. 3, 2013, pp. 419–442., doi:10.2501/ija-32-3-419-442.

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Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is an effective way to influence consumer opinion. Nielsen’s
Global Trust in Advertising report for 2015 concluded that “[t]he most credible advertising
comes straight from the people we know and trust,”
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citing the 83 percent of survey
respondents who “completely or somewhat trust” recommendations from such sources. These
recommendations are considered valuable because they are given freely and with an informed
consideration of the recipient’s interests. The recommender has nothing to gain in these
exchanges but a happier acquaintance and a burnished reputation, each of which depends on
accurate information delivered in good faith.
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The simulacrum of intimacy cultivated by social
media influencers mimics the personal relationships that make word-of-mouth advertising so
effective, allowing influencers to trade in much of the trust that makes personal
recommendations credible. Influencers often downplay the financial arrangements behind such
recommendations or fail to address them altogether.

Psychological Risks
“I Trust the Human Behind the Keyboard,” Phenomenon
In his Meno, Plato provisionally concludes that the foundation of virtue is innate, and that
virtue cannot be taught.
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Locke and the Empiricists, on the other hand, asserted the tabula rasa,

62
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2015/global-trust-in-advertising-2015/
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Wissman, B. (n.d.). Word-of-Mouth Advertising Definition - Entrepreneur Small Business Encyclopedia.
Retrieved February 23, 2019, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/word-of-mouth-advertising

64
Pinker, S. (2004). Why nature & nurture won't go away. Daedalus, 133(4), 5-17. Plato. (1985). Plato:
Meno. R. W. Sharples (Ed.). Aris and Phillips.

39
holding that our minds at birth are like clean cognitive slates, and that we learn all we do,
including virtue, through experience.
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Subsequent philosophers have operated within the poles
established by Plato and Locke. Most notably, Kant turned the question of innateness to one of
epistemology: how do we know what we know? How, to look at it a different way, do we know
what to trust as genuine knowledge and what to write off as misleading?
Trust is the foundation of all human connections. Whether we are born with an innate
capacity for trust or learn it through experience, our identity as social beings depends upon it.
The Web places new demands on our ability to gauge the trustworthiness of others and to choose
how much trust to invest in whom. The Web allows us to present ourselves freely and honestly,
and also to misrepresent ourselves and our interests more fully and convincingly than ever
before.
The very capacity of the Web to facilitate personal and commercial misrepresentation
creates a central role for trust in any online exchange: trust is the Web’s primary currency. This
applies equally to economic activity on the web, including marketing activity. Consumers on the
Web must choose with whom they will invest their trust; as I have seen, no source of advertising
is trusted as thoroughly as word of mouth. Social media influencers depend on that dynamic to
demonstrate their worth to brand partners. That worth, in turn, depends on the reasons why
followers trust influencers.

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John Locke, An essay concerning human understanding (1847).

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Ethos, Pathos, Logos
Aristotle’s trio of artistic proofs—ethos, pathos, and logos—have come to stand as
valuable guides to the art of persuasion. Aristotle observed how the professional persuaders of
Athens plied their trades in law courts and government. His triad of factors are part of his attempt
to describe how credibility, emotion, and logic, respectively, contribute to persuasion and the
development of trust.
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Viewers seek out social media content that is interesting to them; viewer attitudes toward
the creators of that content go a significant way toward establishing that interest. This speaks
directly to the ethos of an online item, the character represented by the speaker (in Aristotle’s
time) or the content creator (in ours). A typical influencer cultivates a highly charismatic ethos
across platform; peer influencers rely on this charisma as their primary demonstration of
credibility as well, but all types of influencers base their appeal largely on an ethos of charisma
and competence. Ethos also appeals to the receiver’s interpretation of credibility. When a viewer
feels that an influencer’s brand and image seem reasonable, even under scrutiny, the viewer is
more likely to be persuaded by the influencer. The identity-verification badges found on many
social-networking sites are common examples of appeals to reason. Instagram and Twitter each
offer a blue checkmark on accounts verified by the platform’s administrators to be accurate.
67

66
Demirdogen, U., & Demirdogen, U. (2010). The Roots of Research in (political) Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos,
Logos and the Yale Studies of Persuasive Communications. International Journal of Social Inquiry, 3(1), 189–189.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1322715647/

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About verified accounts. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2019, from https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-
your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts

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This can be a helpful way to distinguish posts made from a celebrity’s personal account from
those made by a parodist, but they might also lend a convincing air of legitimacy to accounts
whose owners are not known to a given viewer: the blue dot, after all, means that the account
owner is generally considered important enough to merit such clarification, and that material
posted from the count is important enough that confusion with another source would cause
significant problems.

Figure 12 Twitter Verified Badge screen grabbed from policies at www.twitter.com

When an influencer shares personal information, or purports to, viewers respond by
viewing the relationship between themselves and the influencer in commensurately personal
terms. Aristotle describes pathos as a mood or tone of speech that appeals to the audience’s
passions and emotions.
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Avital Cohen exemplifies an ethos and pathos typical of many
successful influencers.
Cohen is a 23-year-old Israeli Instagram influencer with 1.4 million followers.
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She
shares fitness tips and workout regimens on her Instagram page and appeals to a health-

68
Fletcher, J., & Jago, C. (2015). Teaching arguments : rhetorical comprehension, critique, and response .
Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

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🌸𝑨𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝑪𝒐𝒉𝒆𝒏 (@avital) • Instagram photos and videos. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2019, from
https://www.instagram.com/avital/

42
conscious audience. In September 2018, Cohen posted a 2014 photo taken when she weighed 92
pounds, juxtaposed with a recent photo showing her at 116 pounds. Her stated reason for the post
was to illustrate the effects of a previous eating disorder, and to celebrate the results of her
successful struggle against it.

Figure 13 Screen grabs of photo and comments taken from @avital on Instagram

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The post received nearly 100,000 likes and almost 3,000 comments from supportive
viewers. Many comments thanked Cohen and included similar stories from her followers. Cohen
responded to these comments. The exchange represented a strengthening of the bond between
Cohen and her followers based on the pathos generated by her tale of difficulty and her
empathetic response to similar stories shared by viewers. In the bargain, Cohen’s responsive and
sympathetic character supported the ethos of her online persona. None of this activity was
leveraged directly for commercial purposes, and there is no indication that Cohen acted at all
improperly; quite the opposite. But the bonds of empathy strengthened through Cohen’s post
and the subsequent online conversation encouraged the type of trust that unscrupulous or merely
incautious influencers can easily misuse.
Logos appeals to the receiver’s intellect and ability to reason logically.
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Molly Burke, a
youtuber who is blind, with over 2 million followers on YouTube posted a sponsored review of
her experience using, “Thred Up”. Thred Up is an online thrift store that provided Burke with a
credit to order thrifted clothing and share her items on her YouTube channel. Burke states in the
video that she prefers to shop second hand for environmental reasons. She also said that she
really loved the concept of Thred Up and that it is a great option, especially for those people who
do not have a disability. Although the review was generally positive, she also left Thred Up a
critique. “I shop through touch, so shopping online hasn’t been easy for me,” said Burke. “A
negative with Thred Up is that they do not include descriptions of products like regular online

70
Braet, A. (1992). Ethos, pathos and logos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric: A re-examination. Argumentation, 6(3), 307–
320. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00154696

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shopping does, so that is something I would encourage Thred Up to do to be more accessible.”
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Figure 14 Molly Burke YouTube video sponsored by Thred Up.

These rhetorical cues cultivate trust differently than the methods used in traditional
advertising. While traditional advertisements repeat the same appeals for trust with each airing,
and brands tend to build trust slowly, the central work of social media influencers is to

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Burke, Molly. “Molly Burke.” YouTube, YouTube, 2020, www.youtube.com/user/MollyBurkeOfficial.

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continually reinforce existing bonds of trust and develop new ones with each post. In response to
this constant and varied reinforcement, followers build positive expectations of the influencer.
Messaging Factors
The following figures categorize various messaging tactics used by influencers to
develop trusting relationships with their viewers. The circles list the three elements of
technology-mediated communication; the connected rectangles list examples of strategies related
to the elements commonly employed by influencers. These strategies combine to create a sense
of community that reinforces the bonds of trust between influencer and follower. Active viewers
often use influencer platforms as forums for interaction not only with the influencers themselves
but also with other viewers. Influencers can be instruments of mass persuasion based on their
reach. And like any large group, influencers’ followers can be difficult to steer. Thus, influencers
who do not heed the factors listed here run a significant risk of alienating their viewers or seeing
their communities turn against them.

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Figure 15 Structure as an element with messaging factors of social media platforms, content quality, social validation,
and majority influence.

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Figure 16 Content as an element with messaging factors of physical attractiveness, product demonstration, persuasive
pricing, and reciprocity.

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Figure 17 Language as an element with messaging factors of friendship, scarcity, and body language.

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Figures created by Kristine Bruun-Andersen through her primary research experience of being a
viewer, consuming top tier YouTube influencers and collecting primary data shown in the four
columns above. The three rows used to categorize primary experience were taken from Dr.
Ulrike Gretzel, the Director of Research at Netnografica, a market research company that
analyzes online conversations. Her analysis of structure, content, language and their definitions
comes from her lecture titled “The Science of Persuasion,” presented at the University of
Southern California on January 22, 2019.
72

72
Gretzel, U. (2019, January 22). The Science of Persuasion. Lecture presented at Lecture, Influencer Relations in
University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

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Legality Risks
Federal Trade Commission Guidelines
The most concrete proof of ethical marketing is its adherence to the legal rules and
regulations set forth by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Addressing advertising and
marketing, the FTC states that “under the law, claims in advertisements must be truthful, cannot
be deceptive or unfair, and must be evidence-based. For some specialized products or services,
additional rules may apply.”
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Influencers whose brand-marketing activities fail to abide by FTC
standards may be acting illegally. When a marketing agency works with an influencer, it must
take pains to ensure that the influencer follows all FTC guidelines when posting sponsored
content, and to indemnify itself in case the influencer fails to act legally.
Influencers must disclose their relationships with advertisers when sharing content and
reviews on their platforms. Even after the term of an advertising deal expires, any sponsored
content must continue to be labeled as such. These disclosure guidelines allow consumers to
distinguish between an influencer’s own original material and material created in exchange for
payment. Without a clear distinction between organic and sponsored content, it can be difficult
for an influencer’s followers to determine when they are being marketed to and when they are
simply engaging freely with a given influencer. It is unethical for an influencer to market
products or services to their followers without clearly disclosing that they are making a profit
from the engagement.
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73
Advertising and Marketing Basics. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://www.ftc.gov/tips-
advice/business-center/advertising-and-marketing/advertising-and-marketing-basics
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The FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking. (2018, August 08). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking

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The FTC’s endorsement-disclosure guidelines are fairly straightforward and center
around what the FTC describes at the four P’s:
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Prominence: Disclosures should be easily visible to consumers and written in a
reasonably sized font that stands out from a site's or image’s background.
Presentation: Disclosures must be easily understood by consumers; vague or overly
subtle language is unacceptable.
Placement: Disclosures should be posted in places where consumers would typically
read or view content. They should not be buried at the bottom of a page or within a lengthy post.
Proximity: Disclosures should be listed alongside the products or services being
promoted. The FTC has even developed specific rules for mobile platforms when it noticed that
the mobile versions of services such as Instagram often limit users to viewing no more than the
first three lines of a post, hiding from view any disclosures at the end.

FTC Infringement Example

In 2014, YouTube star, PewDiePie was paid along with other YouTube personalities by
Warner Bros. on the higher end of tens of thousands of dollars to promotes an upcoming game
based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.
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According to the FTC, Warner Bros. failed to
properly disclose the arrangements of this deal to its participants. As a result, the FTC charged

75
Full Disclosure. (2014, September 23). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://www.ftc.gov/news-
events/blogs/business-blog/2014/09/full-disclosure
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Spangler, Todd. “Warner Bros. Settles FTC Charges Over Payments to PewDiePie, Other Influencers to Promote
Game.” Variety, Variety, 13 July 2016, variety.com/2016/digital/games/warner-bros-pewdiepie-ftc-
1201811908/.

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Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for paying influencers to post positive gameplay review
videos of its game “Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor”. The sum of views for the sponsored videos
totaled 5.5 million, 3.7 million of which directly came from PewDiePie’s channel alone.
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The FTC expressed that viewers should know whether or not the information being
advertised to them is a genuine opinion of the sponsor, or a paid sales pitch. Plaid Social Labs, an
ad agency, was hired by Warner Bros. to come up with strategic gameplay videos to seem more
enticing to viewers according to the FTC. In addition to the tens of thousands of dollars paid out
to each influencer, Warner Bros also gifted a pre-release version of the game to them while asking
them not to publicly report any bugs they discovered. Warner Bros also told influencers to disclose
their partnership for the deal conveniently hidden in the description field of the videos instead of
clearly stated in the video itself.
This led to the decision by the FTC that Warner Bros purposely mislead consumers by
implying that all gameplay aired reflected the true views of the influencers instead of the
premeditated strategies planned by Plaid Social Labs.
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Influencers who fail, even unintentionally, to provide the proper disclosures are acting
unethically. Most social media platforms provide integrated tools that allow influencers to
disclose brand partnerships, and manually adding hashtags or other metadata such as #ad or

77
“The FTC Cracks Down on Warner Bros. and PewDiePie's Shady Influencer Marketing.” Contently, 5 Mar.
2019, contently.com/2016/07/11/ftc-warner-bros-pewdiepie-shady-influencer-marketing/.

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“Warner Bros. Settles FTC Charges over Influencers' Sponsored Social Media Posts.” The Fashion Law, 31 Mar.
2020, www.thefashionlaw.com/warner-bros-settles-ftc-charges-over-influencers-sponsored-social-media-
posts/.

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#sponsored can also go some way toward satisfying the disclosure requirement.
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The surest and
safest way for brands and the marketing agencies they hire to ensure that their influencer partners
are accurately disclosing the partnership to their audience is to contractually require influencers
to use several different disclosure techniques, including verbal disclosure.
The penalty for failing to follow FTC guidelines may include monetary fines for both the
influencer and the brand; in severe cases, these fines may exceed $40,000.
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Several major
businesses, including Sony Computer Entertainment America
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and Lord & Taylor,
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have
suffered damage to their reputations and their finances after failing to honor FTC disclosure
rules.
Influencers themselves may fail to appreciate the seriousness of FTC regulations,
especially those involving disclosure. “From an influencer perspective the FTC is annoying,”
said influencer Chas Laughlin in an interview conducted by Kristine Bruun-Andersen in October
2018.
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“If you go back and watch an Adam Sandler movie with a Subway sandwich in it - we all

79
Barnes, J. (2016). Social media ethics made easy : how to comply with FTC guidelines (First edition.). New York,
New York (222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017): Business Expert Press.

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FTC Publishes Inflation-Adjusted Civil Penalty Amounts. (2018, January 23). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/01/ftc-publishes-inflation-adjusted-civil-penalty-amounts

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Sony Computer Entertainment America To Provide Consumer Refunds To Settle FTC Charges Over
Misleading Ads For PlayStation Vita Gaming Console (2014, November 25). Retrieved January 25, 2020 from
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/11/sony-computer-entertainment-america-provide-consumer-
refunds

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Lord & Taylor Settles FTC Charges It Deceived Consumers Through Paid Article in an Online Fashion
Magazine and Paid Instagram Posts by 50 “Fashion Influencers” (2016, March 15 ). retrieved January 25, 2020 from
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/03/lord-taylor-settles-ftc-charges-it-deceived-consumers-
through

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Chas Laughlin (@chaslaughlin) • Instagram photos and videos. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.instagram.com/chaslaughlin/

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know he got a lot of money for that- but he didn’t stop in the middle of the movie and say oh hey
#AD.”
“To an influencer, FTC feels like a made-up group; they feel like the police of social
media, and I try to not talk negatively about them, but they really are annoying,” said Adande
Thorne (Swoozie) in the same interview.
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“I don’t like putting #ad on my video or #sponsor
because it doesn’t seem genuine to me. I understand there’s a lot of young people out there
watching, and you have to let them know when you're trying to sell them something, but I would
rather just say, ‘hey this is a sponsored video,’ than have to write on these specific things on my
post.”
“I’m completely fine with letting my audience know something is an ad, but it’s when the
brand starts to puppeteer the situation is when it gets frustrating,” noted Lauryn Evarts (The
Skinny Confidential).
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“Sometimes it’s not even the influencer who’s trying to not be authentic,
it’s the brand telling us what we have to say. My frustration comes from brands that come to me
for access to my voice and my community and then want to micromanage what I say. No one
knows how to better talk to my community that I’ve been talking with for the last 9 years
everyday than me”

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Swoozie06. (n.d.). SWooZie. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUKi4zY5ETSqrKAjTBgjM-g
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A lifestyle blog by Lauryn Evarts. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/

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In this section we learned why the use of influencers may pose legal and philosophical
risk to marketers and why it is important to take precaution when hiring an influencer for a
marketing campaign. Now we will learn how to avoid these risks.

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Chapter Three: Avoiding Risks Between Influencers and Marketing

“Call it buying an audience before they buy your product, call it influencer marketing, call it
what you like. At the end of the day as marketers we're all just trying to create conversations that
will ultimately increase our popularity in the online world - because we know that if we're the
most popular, consumers will come to us.”- Kirsty Sharman, Blogger at Social Media Today
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In this section of the paper I explain what precautions need to be considered to avoid
risks between brands and influencers. I will do so by conducting primary research of real
influencer contracts and partnership briefs to provide insights on how brands find acceptable
influencers for their campaigns and what their expectations are of influencer’s.

Risky Relationships between Brands and Influencers
Leveraging influencers’ relationships with their viewers can greatly enhance brand
engagement and generate increased revenue. Although it is difficult to measure the exact return
on investment for influencer marketing, a 2020 Big Commerce article said that, “nearly 90% of
all marketers find ROI from influencer marketing comparable to or better than other marketing
channels.”
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86
Sherman, Kirsty. “Social Media Today.” Twitter, Twitter, 2019, twitter.com/kirstycarrot.

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Bailis, Rochelle. “Influencer Marketing Statistics in 2019 (Trends + Key Takeaways).” The BigCommerce Blog,
24 Jan. 2020, www.bigcommerce.com/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics/#10-most-important-influencer-
marketing-statistics-for-2020.

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While an increasing number of marketers are spending larger budgets on influencer
marketing, there are very real ethical, legal, and commercial risks to consider. Social-influencer
marketing can be a dangerous proposition for companies who are new to the field. Many
influencers connect with their audiences on multiple social media channels, and brands wishing
to partner with them must be aware of the messaging and tone they use on each platform. No two
brands are the same; what works for one brand strategy may not work for another. Messages and
tones that are celebrated by one audience may be accepted with a shrug by another and seen as
offensive to yet a third. Brands may suffer collateral damage as well: an influencer’s messaging,
content, and tone may reflect negatively on a brand even when posting content is unaffiliated
with the brand campaign itself. Marketers hoping to retain influencers for brand campaigns
should carefully study their activities on all social media platforms and should assess any and all
of a given influencer’s online communications or representations as if they were part of the
brand campaign itself. In a significant sense, they all are. Such scrutiny may seem essential, but
it is often overlooked in summaries of best practices.
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Brands and advertising agencies typically hold their employees to strict codes of social
media conduct. These codes apply even when employees are away from their jobs, a reflection of
how significant even a slight and tangentially related misstep can be to a brand’s public standing.
As contractors, influencers are also bound to uphold brand standards.
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While many influencer
marketing partnerships include a morality or ethics clause as a part of their contracts, this is not
always the case.

88
Pampell, Jason. “Three Evergreen Best Practices for Influencer Marketing.” Forbes, 24 May 2019,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/05/24/three-evergreen-best-practices-for-influencer-
marketing/#6fe250c578dc
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Connec+S. “Your Influencer Contracts Need A Morality Clause.” 2019.

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The expectations of what a brand expects from their partnerships can be seen by
examining real contracts and content briefs from brands. The following contracts and briefs have
been evaluated as primary research in order to highlight the different approaches that brands take
when asking for deliverables over the course of a partnership. Each sample clearly highlights the
importance of FTC disclosures, however, the language around what a brand expects of the
influencer as an ambassador of their brand image varies. The samples show that paid
partnerships tend to have a tighter set of rules and regulations surrounding the voice and
behavior of the influencer, whereas gifting as a form of payment seems to have much looser
regulations.
Jack Weber, a social media influencer with over 65 thousand Instagram followers entered
a partnership with, “The Normal Brand,” an online clothing company with 54 thousand
Instagram followers. The terms of the contract were reliant on the gifting of free products to
Weber in exchange for 1 Instagram post, 1 Instagram story and the intellectual property
ownership of the influencer created content. After Weber signed the contract (found in Appendix
B), received free products, and completed his posts, The Normal Brand thanked him for his
participation via direct message and his partnership was completed. The Normal Brand included
no moral or ethical clause in their contract, nor did they give any request for post approval prior.
The Normal Brand expressed no limitations in terms of influencer conduct or content guidelines
prior or following the campaign with Weber.
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Weber, Jack. “The Normal Brand, LLC.” Santa Monica, 4 Mar. 2020.

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Figure 18 Instagram photo taken from @jettinjack

Joelle Fletcher, an Instagram influencer with 2.2 million followers entered a partnership
with, “Prose: Custom Hair Care”. Fletcher was paid to post five stories to her Instagram page,
talking about the haircare line. Prose provided Fletcher with their influencer creative brief which
detailed the terms and stipulations of the partnership (found in Appendix B). In the brief, Prose
clearly states that Fletcher cannot, “share negative feedback about Prose products”. The brief
also states that Fletcher cannot include competitive products in her ad or any other visible
branding or logos in the ad. These specifications help reduce the risk of unpresented influencer

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behaviors.
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Figure 19 Instagram story taken from @joelle_fletcher

Kelley Flanagan, an Instagram influencer with 820 thousand followers provided her
official contract with “Hidden Crown” hair extensions for the purpose of this research. The
contract (found in Appendix B), states that Flanagan must post one Instagram story with six
slides in exchange for 10,000 dollars and the product in October of 2020. In the contract, the
brand states that Flanagan will receive half her payment upfront once she submits her stories to
the brand prior to posting for approval. Once her stories are approved and she posts them live to
her page, she will receive the second half of her compensation. In section 8 of the contract titled,
“Cure Period and Termination,” the brand includes a morality clause stating that the terms of the
contract are void if Flanagan’s material “Contains material that is inappropriate, indecent,
obscene, hateful, tortious, defamatory, slanderous or libelous; Contains material that is unlawful,
in violation of or contrary to the laws or regulations of the United States or of any jurisdiction
where Content is created; Contains information known by Influencer to be false, inaccurate or

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Fletcher, Joelle “Prose Haircare LLC” New York, 6 August, 2020.

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misleading; Contains content that is, or may reasonably be considered to be, hate speech, or
promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes
discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
Contains material or content for which Influencer has been compensated or granted any
consideration by any third party; Disparages Brand, the Campaign, or any other person or party;
Contains material not consistent with the image and values of Brand; and/or i) Is inconsistent
with or inappropriate for this campaign.”
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Including a morality clause in the contract to protect
the brand’s image and the intention of the partnership keeps the brand in control of their
messaging by leaving little for an influencer to speak or act poorly in association with the brand
and still receive payment for their posts.
In addition to the above research, other influencer contracts and briefs from, “Brumate”,
“ButcherBox”, “Masimo”, “Care of”, “Winc” and Thrive Market”, (found in Appendix B) all
stay consistent with the above findings: when a product is gifted to an influencer, behavioral
clauses are less likely, but when an influencer is paid for product promotion, there is typically
some mention of influencer morality standards and FTC guidelines.
In the above examples influencers can be less beholden to the companies that hire them
than employees of those companies themselves. In fact, in Flanagan’s contract with “Hidden
Crown”, it is explicitly stated in part four (found in Appendix B) under, “Representation and
Warranties”, that the “influencer is not and shall not be deemed an employee of the brand…. The
influencer is that of an independent contractor… the agreement does not grant authority for
influencer to act for the brand as its agent or make any commitments for the brand.” While
morals clauses shown in the above research offered some protection against especially egregious

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Flanagan, Kelley “Hidden Crown Extensions LLC” Los Angeles, October, 2020.

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behavior, a brand may still be damaged by activities not covered by standard contract language.
Indeed, an influencer’s ability to excessively partner with several brands at one time can strain
their credibility and cause their value to brand marketers to decline.
93

Perhaps more significantly, severe restraints on the social media activity of influencers
can threaten to defeat the purpose of hiring them in the first place. Besides entrusting their
fortunes to people not directly associated with them, brands and marketing agencies also need to
be prepared for unethical business agreements between themselves and influencers. Luka Sabbat
is a case in point. Sabbat is an Instagram influencer with more than 2 million followers.
94
In
2018, PR Consulting Inc. (PRC), a New York-based public-relations firm, partnered with Sabbat
to promote Snapchat Spectacles on behalf of its client, Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc.
95

The $60,000 deal required Sabbat to wear the camera-equipped sunglasses in at least four
Instagram posts published in September 2018 while attending Fashion Week shows and parties
in New York, Paris, and Milan. Additionally, Sabbat agreed to PRC’s specifications of his posts’
content, location, and implementation of Instagram “swipe up” links. Sabbat was to submit each
post to PRC for approval prior to posting, and provide analytics about each post’s reach, the
comments it generated, the number of likes it received, and the overall number of views it
attracted within 24 hours of its publication. The agreement also included a morality clause where

93
Hedreen, Siri. “Has Influencer Marketing Peaked?” business.com, 17 August 2019,
https://www.business.com/articles/influencer-marketing-losing-influence/

94
Mr. Fallback (@lukasabbat) • Instagram photos and videos. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2020, from
https://www.instagram.com/lukasabbat/?hl=en

95
PR Consulting - brand imaging and public relations development for the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle industries.
(n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2019, from http://prconsulting.net/

63
Sabbat would be contractually required to act with professionalism at all times and may not take
any action that could degrade the brand.
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Figure 20 Instagram photo taken from @lukesabbat during his brand partnership with Snap Inc. 2018
In late October 2018, PRC announced that they had sued Sabbat for failing to honor his
contractual obligations when he did not post the required content in its entirety. They sought
repayment of a $45,000 advance made to Sabbat. The damage done to PRC’s relationship with
Snap is a notable consequence of the controversy. While Sabbat continued to add followers, a

96
Bereznak, A. (2018, December 17). The Influencer Who Didn't Influence: Luka Sabbat and the Fame Economy
of 2018. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/12/17/18141386/luka-sabbat-
influencer-snapchat

64
Tech Crunch article attained a copy of the lawsuit filling where Snap said it was not involved in
the decision to sue Sabbat. The filing also said that the debacle brought unwanted attention to the
pay-for promotion deal that they established with Sabbat. The entire appeal of influencer
marketing is to feel subtle and natural. Instead, the negative attention around this suit provided
more harm than good to the brand.
In July 2019, Sabbat’s lawyer confirmed that his client would shortly be settling the suit
filed by Snap; that announcement appeared in Variety as part of an article describing another
lawsuit filed against Sabbat for breaching a contract to promote a product on Instagram.
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From a
marketing perspective, PRC hired Sabbat in what looked to be like a successful campaign. At the
time, Sabbat was being featured on Kourtney Kardashian’s social media pages and generating a
large following himself. However, influencer marketing relies on the influencer to promote the
content.
In all of the examples above, the brand sent product up front in order to allow the
influencer to create content with it. For those deals where items that were gifted without other
compensation in return for posts, brands at many times left room for unforeseen risks by not
requiring post approval or behavior guidelines post partnership which could result in negative
brand image by association. When brands invest more money into higher profile influencers, it
seems that more likely than not, the brand will include some kind of morality clause. However, it
is clear in Sabbats case, that even though the PRC did require post approval, as well as a morality

97
Maddaus, Gene. “Influencer Luka Sabbat Accused of Bilking Another Brand.” Variety, 2 July 2019,
https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/instagram-influencer-luka-sabbat-bilking-brand-1203258047/.

65
clause, a brand can still encounter harm that results in a failed partnership, negative reactions
from consumers, and fiscal loss.
Marketers hoping to incorporate social media personalities into brand campaigns should
identify influencers whose values and style align with the brand to be promoted.
98
Such
alignment is good business, of course, but it also hedges against undue ethical and legal risk by
reducing the likeliness of a brand being portrayed in a negative, confusing, or patently insincere
light. Analytics tools area available that describe viewer demographics, engagement statistics,
and other descriptors of an influencer’s online presence, as well as the authenticity of the
influencer’s accounts.
99
Platforms like CreatorIQ, allow marketers to identify likely influencers,
accurately project an influencer-centered campaign’s impact, and manage the campaign itself.
100

With or without such purpose-built tools, marketers must perform due diligence on all
influencers considered for each campaign. Failure to do so introduces a significant risk that the
campaign will go unfulfilled, fail to reach its goals, or result in harm to the client. Careful
consideration of an influencer’s existing followership can greatly mitigate such risks to a brand’s
reputation.

98
Glucksman, Morgan. “Branding Lifestyle.” Lifestyle TV, 2016, pp. 25–48.
99
Aswani, R., Kar, A., & Vigneswara Ilavarasan, P. (2018). Detection of Spammers in Twitter marketing: A Hybrid
Approach Using Social Media Analytics and Bio Inspired Computing. Information Systems Frontiers, 20(3), 515–
530. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-017-9805-8

100
Influencer Marketing Software Platform. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://creatoriq.com/

66
In this section I explained how risks can be avoided when using influencers for
promotional purposes, now I will conclude if/how marketers can control these risks.

67
Chapter Four: Conclusion—Calculating Risks with Precaution in Influencer
Marketing
“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.”- Seth Godin
101

In this section of the paper I summarize both secondary and primary research. I will do
so by addressing four different conclusions: the importance of disclosure, the impact of bad
behaviors from influencers, conflicting ideas on what makes for a successful influencer
campaign and the distinction between influencer marketing and relations.

Social media influencer marketing represents a significant shift from the traditional
celebrity-endorsement model. It represents an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to deliver
brand messaging to pre-existing audiences of consumers, whether those audiences number in the
millions and represent broad market categories, or in the thousands and represent valuable niche
markets. With this shift comes a new breed of risk. The effectiveness of influencer marketing
depends largely on the connection between influencer and audience, a connection that may be
characterized by the audience’s desire to emulate the influencer, its respect for the influencer’s
authority, or its close identification with the influencer.
The sheer volume of communication produced by successful influencers, the multiple
channels through which many of them connect with their audiences, and the reliance of the
influencer-audience connection on at least a simulacrum of spontaneous exchange all represent

101
Lcarnes, Lauren. “Five Tips For Telling A Story For Media.” Risingtidesociety.Com, 2016,
www.honeybook.com/risingtide/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/may.pdf

68
possible sources of risk to marketing campaigns involving social media influencers. Even when
influencer campaigns are largely transactional and the influencer bound to well-defined
messaging guidelines, an influencer’s community-building work outside the marketing
agreement may blunt a campaign’s effectiveness or damage the brand’s reputation outright.
These risks run from the psychological to the legal but hinge ultimately on the ethics of
influencer marketing. There is nothing inherently unethical about social media influencer
marketing, but it does invite opportunities for ethical lapses against which previous modes of
advertising were better protected. All influencer contracts can differ in terms. While Weber’s
contract provided zero regulatory factors, Sabbat, Flanagan and Fletcher’s contracts consisted of
terms for approval and a morality clause. While Weber and other examples provided in
Appendix B, was given the legal space for potential brand damaging actions, it was Sabbat who
ultimately caused harm to his campaign. This realization supports the claims that although
marketers try their very best to avoid conflict in influencer marketing, even a breach of contract
resulting in monetary harm to the influencer still does not protect a brand from negative press.
No matter the effort, influencer marketing opens a unique and undiscovered door that traditional
advertisement does not.
Concluding Thoughts
The following four topics represent the most important factors to consider when
implementing influencer relations into a marketing or public relations campaign.
ONE: DISCLOSURE ISSUES/OPPORTUNITIES. Influencers are ultimately responsible
for ensuring that their relationships with marketers, including compensation received, are

69
properly disclosed. Far more important to their own commercial interests, though, influencers are
obliged to honor the codes of ethics represented by the Terms of Service agreements that govern
the platforms on which they communicate, and to deal ethically with their followers. In several
of the above examples of influencer contracts and creative briefs, it is stated that the influencer is
only compensated if/when they provide their content upfront to the brand before posting on their
own social media. Influencers are held by the legal rules of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
to produce ethical advertisement content; However, influencers like Swoozie explain how these
disclosures can be damaging to their own brand and create a lack of confidence and trust
between them and their audience.
TWO: BAD BEHAVIOR ISSUES/OPPORTUNITIES. Influencers may engage in
ethically questionable behavior, and even profit by it, but violations of the trust placed in them
by their followers—perceived insincerity chief among them—can be punished severely. On the
other hand, they may suffer little if at all from the unethical use to which their notoriety is put by
marketing campaigns, even when those campaigns fail disastrously. For Logan Paul, creating
boundary pushing content that made some viewers uncomfortable ultimately returned in profit
for YouTube - the same platform that once banned any AdSense on his channel due to the
scandal.
THREE: CONFLICTING/ CONTRASTING OBLIGATIONS. Marketers and
influencers, then, have related and often complementary ethical obligations, but fundamentally
different ones. Understanding those contrasting obligations is a key to mitigating the risks
inherent in social media influencer marketing or avoiding them altogether.

70
FOUR: INFLUENCER RELATIONS/INFLUENCER MARKETING
While this thesis draws on established process models and emerging taxonomies of
influencer marketing, it does not assert a model of its own for the ethical engagement of social
media influencers in brand-messaging campaigns: it points to the risk-averting value of asking
serious questions about marketing ethics, but leaves their framing to practitioners. The time has
probably not yet come for such a model, at least not one developed specifically for the nexus of
influencers and brands. There are several practical issues that will arise when creating such a
model for an influencer marketing ethical standard. Brands at many times are balancing hundreds
of influencers per campaign making it increasingly difficult to track an influencers ethical or
non-ethical actions. Journalists are held to the SPJ code where they are expected to maintain a
standard of truth and transparency in their reports. Creating a code similar to the SPJ for
influencers would mean holding influencers to a black and white standard for what is appropriate
to share with their audience. This “code” may never happen because each influencer and
audience have a different interpretation of what is acceptable.
Perhaps a broad recognition among influencers and the marketers who hire them as to
what constitutes best practices in the field will give rise to a general consensus on what
constitutes mutually beneficial best practices. Such a consensus would be the germ of a formal
ethics of influencer marketing and will come, if it comes at all, with further experience. The
dawning of such recognition, and the attempts made to codify it, will be of great interest to
marketing professionals and social media influencers. Based on the research in this paper, the
strategic use of influencer relations will be the future of paid advertisements. These relationships
that are built over time instead of a one-off campaign result in a greater return of investment for a

71
brand. Additionally, the psychological response from a consumer will be more positive if they
feel they are not being targeted by a phony campaign. The easiest way to avoid risks while using
influencers for promotional purposes is to pay an influencer after providing a contract that
clearly lists FTC guidelines and morality clauses. Understanding which type of influencer is best
for a campaign and co-creating an effective collaboration with them is helpful in minimizing any
morality breaches. This thesis has shown that using influencers for marketing or public relations
purposes has become the next best thing to word-of-mouth marketing, but also presents risks and
rewards, both of which need to be addressed and considered by both the influencer and the brand
to be successful.

72
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APPENDIX A
Interviews with Four Social Media Influencers
Primary research for this thesis included an examination of the ethics of influencer
marketing from the perspective of social media influencers themselves. This appendix records
interviews conducted with prominent social media influencers; some of the material presented
here appears in Chapter Two.
Brands find it increasingly difficult to stand proud among the competition. Cultivating
brand advocates can be an efficient way to improve consumer sentiment toward a product.
Consumers may be skeptical of advertisements, but they do trust other people. With proper due
diligence and a consistent focus on the ethical risks as well as the commercial opportunities
represented by social media influencers, marketers can make savvy and profitable use of this
fact.

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Instagram and YouTube pages of interview subjects
Instagram Photo 3:

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Q1: Influencers say that influencer marketing continues to drive conversation to generate
legitimate content and thus is ethical:
“There are only a certain number of eyes balls out there. There isn’t an infinite number of
attentions. At the end of the day, the advantages to influencer marketing means you marketers
get a far more personal result. The influencer is the studio,” said Laughlin. “Being an influencer
is about having an intimate relationship with your audience, it may feel weird now, but it is the
new norm, what television did to radio, social media is doing to television.
“I treat my audience like they are my friends and I ask myself would I sell this to my
friends? The camera is my friend, the viewer is my friend and I would not try and sell anyone
something I wouldn’t try personally,” said Adande Thorne (Swoozie) in the same interview.
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.
“Influencer marketing it is taking over, it’s the same thing that happened with Netflix vs Block
Buster and Taxi Cabs vs Uber. We know how that story ends and its now happening with digital
entertainment.”
“I feel that I am the exact same person on social media as I am in person,” added Logan
Kunde.
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. “Others could argue that I may express my funnier side at times online but that not
being inauthentic, that is just showing more of a side of myself that I already have.”

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Swoozie06. (n.d.). SWooZie. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUKi4zY5ETSqrKAjTBgjM-g

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Logan Kunde (@logan_kunde) • Instagram photos and videos. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
https://www.instagram.com/logan_kunde/?hl=en

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“Being an influencer means constantly creating quality content, putting yourself out there
and being ready to be scrutinized, while at the same time, also being prepared to having people
rely on you,” said Evarts. “As an influencer, you are emulated, you are more relatable, which is
why the sales for influencers are skyrocketing.”
Q2: Influencers think it is ethical to profit from ads on their social media platforms
because they are capitalizing off of themselves as a business:
“This is my career and its one of the best jobs I’ve ever had in my life. I quit my day job
at 100,000 subscribers that were watching and engaging with my content, so like 50,000 to
100,000 views per video. “I made five figures last month and I didn’t post a single video, just so
you know what you can accomplish from your bedroom,” Said Thorne. “But you have to be
business savvy. We choose what ads run on our videos and we can choose if we don’t want to
run them at all. When I first started, I didn’t want to run ads on my videos, I didn’t like the skip
after five second thing, then one day my friend came to me and asked why I wasn’t running ads,
and I said ‘I don’t like them,’ and she said ‘I made 300 dollars yesterday from running ads on my
videos by sitting in my bedroom and doing my makeup,’ so I hopped on that train, and that was
back in 2010, imagine what you can make from it now.”
“As an influencer, you are essentially creating your own publication day after day, you're
the editor, you're the director, you're in front of the camera, you're also the manager, the business
owner and the CEO,” said Evarts. “I have an entire team to run and scale my business. I have a
project manager that is in charge of collaborations, a photographer and videographer, two
graphic designers, an assistant, creative editor, website creator and podcast producer.”

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“When you look at influencer marketing from a business perspective, it is no different
than starting your own Esty store, we are selling a product, an experience; that just happens to be
ourselves.” Said Kunde.
Influencers say their interaction with their viewers is authentic:
“When I moved to LA the advice, I got from my mainstream Hollywood friends was to
ignore my fans when they came up to me, to play hard to get,” said Thorne. “But for influencers
our audience is an extended circle of my friends and when you're authentic about that they feel
it.”
"There is a difference between us and the traditional celebrity, when people see me out,
they feel they can come up to me, if they see Kylie Jenner out, they are sneaking photos of her,”
said Evarts. “Being an influencer is about building a friendship, which yes, is very powerful
when selling products but its more about building a community. I interact with my followers for
at least a half an hour every night through DM or Facebook groups. Yes, sometimes I’m creating
advertisements for brands, but I’m also documenting my day from the second I wake up to the
second I go to bed 7 days a week, my followers know me.”
Q3: Influencers don’t do unethical brand deals:
“It’s like I said before, we are our business,” said Kunde. “Why would we risk destroying
our company for someone else’s.”

87
“As an influencer, if you're doing something and it doesn’t feel right you, shouldn’t do it.
You have to look at the long game, for me that’s launching my own product line and you can
only pump out enough of other people’s products before you ruin your own reputation because it
feels like a sell-out.” Said Evarts. “My followers are a focus group at the tip of my fingers every
day, I want to give them what they want. The best partnerships are when brands give you a
product and say, ‘here if you like it talk about it,’ it’s so easy for me that way, the ones that go
bad is when the brands come in and control everything.”

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APPENDIX B
Influencer Contracts and Creative Briefs:
Samples for this thesis included real-life examples of an influencer contracts and creative
briefs This appendix displays the contracts and briefs in its entirety; some of the material
presented here ap appears in Chapter Three. Contracts were provided to the researcher via
email directly from the influencer or directly from the brand.

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The Normal Brand

WHEREAS, ______________________ ("Influencer") and The Normal Brand (“TNB”) wish to participate in joint events featuring
the Influencer modeling TNB products; Influencer and TNB agree as follows:

1. Project Outline and Events.

1. Project Outline. Influencer agrees to produce at least one (1) Instagram post and one (1) Instagram story (collectively, the
“Collaboration Content”).

2. Intellectual Property Ownership and License

2.1 Copyright of Influencer-created content. Copyright of all Influencer-created content will be owned by Influencer
or his/her photographer or agency, depending on his/her agreements. Content is created by Influencer if it is taken by
Influencer or his/her photographer and on a device owned by Influencer or his/her photographer. Content includes
images and videos.

2.2 Copyright of TNB-created content. Copyright of all TNB-created content will be owned by TNB. Content is
created by TNB if it is taken by TNB staff or on a device owned by TNB staff.

2.3 License granted to TNB for Collaboration Content. Influencer grants TNB an unlimited license to use
Collaboration Content for any TNB use. This license is perpetual in time and universal in scope and medium. This
includes, but is not limited to, social media, website, emails, ads, etc.

3. Influencer Requirements for Collaboration Content.

3.1 Influencer must clearly feature product on-body in Collaboration Content.

3.2 TNB product must be primary featured item in Collaboration Content.

3.3 Instagram posts must tag @thenormalbrand in both the picture AND caption.

3.4 Instagram stories must tag @thenormalbrand in each frame.

3.5 If Influencer is a member of RewardStyle, affiliate links must be used for featured products in all Collaboration
Content.

3.6 If Influencer does not utilize RewardStyle affiliate links, @thenormalbrand must be tagged in both the
Instagram image and caption of post.

3.7 Influencer must disclose partnership in caption of post. Hashtag options: #sponsored, #sponsor, #ad. Copy
options: c/o, courtesy of, partnered with.

3.8 If Influencer does not utilize product in Collaboration Content to TNB standards and by the agreed up on
timeline, TNB may require return of product.

Jack Weber

90

Prose Haircare
4. Return of Product.

In order to maintain the integrity of our brand and image to customers, Influencers must return unposted products to TNB
unless specifically agreed upon otherwise. TNB will provide a prepaid return label. Event Product must be shipped back to
TNB within 7 calendar days of the event.

5. Amazon Third Party Sellers.

Many retailers are experiencing a growing problem of Amazon third-party sellers using stolen images to sell similar (but often
lower quality) products at much lower prices. Influencer will use reasonable efforts to avoid working with such Amazon
stores. These types of stores are easy to spot because they usually have odd sounding names and crop the heads off of the
models in images. This clause does not prohibit Influencer from working with Amazon or any legitimate third-party sellers.

6. Representations and Warranties.

Influencer represents and warrants to TNB that influencer is at least eighteen (18) years old and is free to enter into this Style
Influencer Agreement. Influencer further represents and warrants that she has the right to grant licenses to TNB to use the
Content and her likeness. Influencer is not subject to any agreements that would prevent this and has made all necessary
agreements with her agency and photographer to grant the licenses and absolve TNB of any obligations to any third party.

7. Indemnification

Influencer agrees to indemnify TNB against all claims arising from TNB’s use of Content from her agency, photographer, or
any other party claiming rights to the Content. Influencer further agrees to reimburse TNB for all court costs related to such
defenses.

8. Agency

Influencer may be represented by an agent or agency. If Influencer designates such an agent in writing, Influencer agrees to be
bound by any decisions or agreements made by the agent on her behalf. This includes the agreement to make payments to the
agent directly instead of to the Influencer directly. At any time, Influencer may tell TNB in writing that Influencer is no longer
working with an agent and TNB will immediately cease communication with that agent.

9. Independent Contractor

Influencer is an independent contractor and not an employee of TNB. There is no agency or employer/employee relationship
between Influencer and TNB. Influencer understands that she is not eligible for any employee-related benefits of TNB,
including worker’s compensation. Influencer has her own insurance policy that would cover any injuries sustained during this
collaboration.

10. Termination.

TNB reserves the right to terminate this Agreement with or without cause at any time.

11. In the event there is any dispute between parties regarding the terms of this agreement, the prevailing party in such dispute shall be
entitled to recover its reasonable attorney’s fees and all costs and expenses.

12. The parties agree that the proper jurisdiction to any litigate arising from this agreement shall be in St. Louis County Circuit Court.

The Normal Brand, LLC Influencer: _________________________________
Print Name
Sign: _________________________________ Sign: _________________________________
Name: _________________________________ Date: _________________________________
Title: _________________________________

Date: _________________________________
Jack Weber
03/04/20

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Hidden Crown Hair

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Brumate:

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ButcherBox

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Masimo:

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Care Of

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Thrive Market

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Winc:

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APPENDIX C
Research Methodology
To investigate how influencers feel about their relationships with brands and their
viewers when conducting paid partnerships, this study combined interviews with four social
media influencers from different followers and industries. Four questions were asked. The four
social media influencers represented different genders, races, income classes, and experiences.
The interview with Logan Kunde was conducted by Kristine Bruun-Andersen in Los Angeles,
California in October 2018. The three other social media influencers referenced in this section
are Lauryn Evarts (The Skinny Confidential), Adande Thorne (Swoozie), and Chas Laughlin.
These interviews were conducted in person by Bruun-Andersen and other collogues while the
influencers served on a panel during an in-class lecture for the course “Influencer Relations”,
taught by Professor Robert Kozinets, at the University of Southern California in 2019.
Three participants were recruited via Instagram and direct email. One participant was
recruited by Professor Kozinets. The selection of participants was informed by one criterion,
their feed had to include sponsored content. I looked for included indicators such as #ad and
#sponsored. The three interviews conducted at the University of Southern California took place
on January 8, 2019 from 7:00 pm PST to 9:00 pm PST. The interview conducted with Logan
Kunde in Los Angeles took place on October 7, 2018 at 5:00 pm PST.
Once the interviewees had been selected based on the criterion, the interview process was
performed and structured around the five following topics: How influencers view influencer
marketing, disclosures, monetization, influencer/follower relationship and ethics. All interviews
were recorded, transcribed and coded manually by the researcher. Data totaled four hours and 17

112
minutes of recording. Coding focused on the four main topics: disclosure, monetization,
relationships, and ethics. Sub-codes of keywords and phrases were created to help the researcher
identify patterns between interviews. Since, in manual content analysis with one coder the
researcher is the instrument, biases may arise. This study will add much needed data in
understanding the difference between influencer relations and marketing and will give an
important perspective from the influencer’s standpoint where the majority of this thesis focuses
on the brand’s perspective.
Coding
Code Sub codes
How influencers view influencer marketing Control, pretend, product affinity, sell
Disclosures FTC, rules, regulations, in trouble, contracts
Monetization Dollar amount, paid ads, job, management,
representation, collaborations, partnerships,
brand
Relationship with followers Relationship, friend, with your audience,
authentic, copied, fans, celebrity, messages,
followers
Ethics Risk, ethical, unethical, transparency,
reputation, products

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bruun-Andersen, Kristine Lee (author)

Core Title Under the influence: understanding cautious influencer marketing and relations

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 02/17/2021

Defense Date 05/10/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag code of ethics,disclosure,ethics,ethos,Federal Trade Commission,FTC,hashtags,influencer,influencer marketing,influencer relations,Instagram,logos,marketers,Marketing,OAI-PMH Harvest,pathos,Public Relations,public relations practitioners,social media,social media influencer,SPJ,Twitter,YouTube

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Kozinets, Robert (committee chair), Gretzel, Ulrike (committee member), Yang, Aimei (committee member)

Creator Email kristinebruunandersen@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-421781

Unique identifier UC11666667

Identifier etd-BruunAnder-9272.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-421781 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-BruunAnder-9272.pdf

Dmrecord 421781

Document Type Thesis

Rights Bruun-Andersen, Kristine Lee

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA