This Influencer Bubble will Burst - Just Like the Ones Before It

"Give me your honest opinion... I don't think I should do it without payment, do you?" quipped the hastily written and typo-riddled email from an "influencer" with 30,000 people following her on Instagram.

And just like that, I knew the bubble was ready to burst.

She had been invited to participate in what would have been a genuinely fun experience for her and a group of her friends, brought to her courtesy of a major brand. The experience included a lot of free stuff and the possibility that she would also get an all expenses paid trip to New York. Unfortunately, she had been convinced that her 30,000 followers coupled with her unique ability to open boxes of free stuff in a compelling way made her a valuable marketing channel. I say unfortunately because it was unfortunate for both the brand and for her personally. In this case, the big, global brand was looking for aspiring but not yet established influencers to partner with and help build success together, over time.

She won't benefit from that partnership, though, because she had been convinced by one of the many fly-by-night influencer marketing agencies that have sprung up recently that she should demand payment. Specialist influencer marketing agencies and, even moreso, the influencer agents and brokers who have flocked like bees to honey are rapidly breathing hot air into a bubble that's ready to burst. Someone recently described these influencer "talent agents" as a blight on the internet akin to domain squatters. While that shoe may not fit comfortably, the analogy is somewhat fitting nonetheless.

What's unfortunate for this newest generation of influencers is that most of them were too distracted by the cell phones they had in their early teens to notice their Mommy Blogger mothers (all 4 million of them according to some) trying to monetize influence... and the boom and the bust that came with it. Or even the rise and fall of the infamous Tila Tequila of MySpace lore before them. During the early rise of social media, transactional "pay for post" vendors like IZEA popped up and were all but shunned by the important brands of the world. In fact, socialmedia.org led a large coalition of brands who agreed in principle never to stoop to this sort of tactic. Perhaps this was in part responsible for the demise of the mommy blogger, but I would argue that when everyone is an influencer, nobody is. And 4 million people may not be "everyone" but it clearly illustrates how diluted the meaning of "influence" had become.

In very similar fashion, for this new generation of influencers the meaning of "influence" is again being diluted, not just by the droves of Millennials who are positioning themselves as online influencers, but also by the inexplicable celebrities (those people who are famous but nobody really knows why) who have co-opted the moniker "influencer" and thus soiled its good name. If you need any convincing of this point, see the recent NY Times article in which Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid are named specifically... or the pending class action lawsuit which 50 "Jane Doe" influencers are party to for having recklessly promoted the Fyre Festival disaster. These instafamers are more celebrities than they are "influencers" in the traditional sense, but nobody knows why they are celebrities and so we call them influencers instead.

“The influencer bubble will totally collapse in the next 12 months if people aren’t very careful about the money being thrown around as brands try to buy influencer placement,” said Caroline Issa, the fashion director and chief executive of Tank magazine.

By referencing the traditional meaning of "influencer," I mean the original and meaningful definition of an influencer as first popularized in 1955 by Lazarsfeld and Katz when they theorized (and demonstrated) two important points... that messages tended to move from the mass media to the mass public via individual nodes who they called "opinion leaders," and that in order to be influential those opinion leaders needed to be similar to the people they were influencing. In other words, people are influenced by people like themselves. I feel confident in saying that almost zero of Kendall Jenner's 80 million followers are in any way similar to her, and that is why her co-opting of the influencer moniker is unfortunate for all influencers. Because while 80m followers might make you a celebrity, 30k followers does not. And trying to apply to same commercial model to how you work with brands does not make sense, either.

When influencer marketing is done well, it really is a powerful partnership for brands who embrace opinion leading customers, and for those customers who have been empowered by the democratization of mass communication. Examples as diverse as General Mills' long time partnership with Hungry Girl or Starbuck's Chase Jarvis mini-series are wonderful examples of how these partnerships can be beneficial to both brands and influencers alike.

For brands who are trying to find a way to capitalize on the influencer opportunity, though, these approaches are too often being painted as quaint or old fashioned, according to the latest influencer agency du jour. The obvious conflict of interest for a firm that represents both the influencer and the brand aside, it's much easier to play on brands' influencer FOMO with a simple, one-click solution to buying "influence" just like it's much easier to convince influencers to demand payment than it is to facilitate meaningful partnership.

The problem is, if you look at the main stages of a bubble forming and bursting, we are at the very top of the curve (see below)... The "New Paradigm!!!" is very much here, following all of the media attention, enthusiasm, greed, and delusion (30k followers, anyone?).

Exactly how long it will take to burst is anyone's guess. But, I spoke with the senior-most people responsible for influencers at two different Fortune 500 companies last week, and also with the editor in chief at one of the most prestigious publishers in the world. In all three conversations, the word "bubble" was greeted with immediate agreement and enthusiasm. So right now might be the right time to take a step back, take stock of your approach, and make sure it is rooted in reality.