Influencers tell all? Unravelling Authenticity and Credibility in a Brand Scandal

Abstract

This chapter discusses the emerging practices of social media Influencers. In focus are six influential Instagram Influencers who were ‘exposed’ for involving themselves in campaigns aiming to discredit telecommunications providers in Singapore. In the absence of enforced legal boundaries and industry norms regarding advertising formats and advertising ethics, brand scandals are frequent, causing concern among regulators, brand managers, and platform owners. When starting to accommodate commercial brands and contents in social media posts, Influencers are constantly at risk of breaching their contract of trust with their followers. The case study shows how Influencers, followers, and eventually also the brand clients, are sensitive to what they experience as deceptive and unethical behaviours that will put normative pressures onto the Influencers to conform to certain ethical standards

Full text

153
Inuencers Tell All?
Unravelling Authenticity and Credibility in a Brand Scandal
Crystal Abidin & Mart Ots
13.
Abstract
is chapter discusses the emerging practices of social media Inuencers. In focus are
six inuential Instagram Inuencers who were ‘exposed’ for involving themselves in
campaigns aiming to discredit telecommunications providers in Singapore. In the ab-
sence of enforced legal boundaries and industry norms regarding advertising formats
and advertising ethics, brand scandals are frequent, causing concern among regulators,
brand managers, and platform owners. When starting to accommodate commercial
brands and contents in social media posts, Inuencers are constantly at risk of breach-
ing their contract of trust with their followers. e case study shows how Inuencers,
followers, and eventually also the brand clients, are sensitive to what they experience as
deceptive and unethical behaviours that will put normative pressures onto the Inuencers
to conform to certain ethical standards.
Keywords: Instagram, bloggers, social media practices, Inuencer networks, advertising
ethics, Singapore, Inuencers
is chapter discusses the emerging practices of social media Inuencers. In focus are
Inuencers in the ‘lifestyle’ genre who advertise products and services in the industry
verticals of Fashion, Beauty, and Electronic goods on blogs and social media such
as Twitter and Instagram. In the absence of enforced legal boundaries and industry
norms regarding advertising formats and advertising ethics, brand scandals are fre-
quent, causing concern among regulators, brand managers and platform owners. In
this chapter we present illustrative examples and discuss a way to start analysing the
mechanisms behind the formation of this emerging professional eld.
In the transforming brand management landscape, we focus on a specic group
of stakeholders – everyday Internet users who manufacture themselves into a new
form of social media microcelebrity (Sen 2008) known as the ‘Inuencer’ (Abidin
2015a, 2015b). Whereas the commercial use of Inuencers is a growing global mar-
keting phenomenon, the material for the included examples was collected through
research in Singapore, between 2011 and 2015. Since 2005 in Singapore, many young
women have taken to social media to cra ‘microcelebrity personas’ as a career. Unlike

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mainstream entertainment industry celebrities who are public icons with large-scale
followings, microcelebrity “is a state of being famous to a niche group of people” and
involves the curation of a persona that feels “authentic to readers” (Marwick 2013:114).
Central to the success of the semi-professional Inuencers is the management and
growth of their personal brands. Studies have shown how they carefully aim to build
awareness and audience growth (Marlow 2006), but also that central to their success is
the deep and intimate relationships between their personal brands and their followers
(Abidin & ompson 2012). eir media brands constitute ‘Lovemarks’ – brands that
are not simply respected, but trusted and loved (Roberts 2004; see also Fournier 1998;
Ots & Hartmann 2015). Abidin & ompson (2012) identied four practices used by
commercial bloggers (a predecessor to Inuencers) to create this intimacy with their
mass audiences – endearment and personal language, authenticity through unaltered
‘behind the scenes’ material, commonality with readers by displaying shared mundane
practices (despite a luxurious lifestyle), and real-life meetings with their followers.
Beyond mere intimacy (Abidin 2015a), the success of the Inuencers hinges on their
own taste and credibility. McQuarrie et al (2013) accordingly showed how Inuencers’
conscious selective choice of text, images, and style led to the accumulation of social
capital (building their celebrity status and personal brand) as well as economic capital
(commercial success). In other words, credibility is important for the Inuencers both
for the growth of their own media brands and for their eectiveness as commercial
product brand endorsers – this is crucial as followers and consumers are increasingly
aware of the commercial nature of Inuencer editorial content, but a pronounced sense
of credibility serves as a safeguard against indiscriminately positive paid reviews. As
shown by Johansson and Bengtsson in this volume, the commodication of social
media network fans, followers, and contacts is not limited to Inuencers alone, but
the emergence of an Inuencer industry can of course be seen as a manifestation of
a ‘third enclosure’ – the market orientation of human life.
As commercial brands continue to abandon traditional advertising, marketers
start to look for new carriers of their brand messages. In this process, Inuencers
are catching attention as their accumulated social capital and audience relationships
have made them valuable as marketing intermediaries and brand endorsers (Chu &
Kamal 2008: Kozinets et al 2010). Hence, in their most basic capacity, Inuencers now
produce advertorials on blogs and social media platforms in exchange for payment
or sponsored products and services. Consequently, many bloggers have nancial
and contractual relationships and engagements directly with product advertisers, or
indirectly via various agencies and content networks.
e professionalization of Inuencer commerce
Inuencers are one form of microcelebrities who document their everyday lives from
the trivial and mundane to exciting snippets of the exclusive opportunities in their

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INFLUENCERS TELL ALL?
line of work. Inuencers are shapers of public opinion who persuade their audience
through the conscientious calibration of personae on social media, as supported by
‘physical’ space interactions with their followers in the esh to sustain their accessibility,
believability, emulate-ability, and intimacy – in other words, their ‘relatability’ (Abidin
2015b). In this way, followers bear more attachment to the Inuencer as a brand, than
the actual product or service they advertise, or what Abidin and ompson (2012)
refer to as ‘persona intimacy’. Inuencers write primarily on commercial blogs and
social media platforms (i.e. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) in the ‘lifestyle’
genre, where the women’s lives ‘as lived’ are the central theme of their output. e
main draw of these Inuencers is that their web content is premised upon sharing
the personal, usually publically inaccessible aspects of their life (Abidin 2014, 2015a).
ese commercial ‘lifestyle’ posts are one successor of contemporary women’s
magazines. Kim and Ward (2004) define contemporary women’s magazines as
“mainstream adult magazines that are geared toward an adolescent or young adult
female audience and that express the clear intention of providing readers with ad-
vice, scripts, and information about dating and sexual relationships” (2004:49). ey
also feature product placements (Frith 2009) and concealed ads (McCracken 1993).
Commercial lifestyle posts bear similar oerings but with an underlying rhetoric of
personalising ‘advertorials’ to readers engaged in aspirational consumption patterns
role modelled by Inuencers. e advertorial, Inuencers’ primary advertising device,
is a highly personalised and opinion-laden advertisement written in the style of an
opinion-editorial (Abidin 2014). e most eective advertorials have been those that
are seamlessly woven into the daily narratives Inuencers publish on their blogs and
social media, such that readers are unable to tell apart ‘paid opinions’ from ‘unpaid’
sentiments. Oen, these advertorials may take the form of complaints or praises for
a product or service that is written in a tone that is personal, emotive, casual, and
informal.
It has been noted that some Inuencers count followers in the hundreds of thou-
sands, or even millions, making their reach comparable to that of traditional media.
At the same time the Inuencers are becoming more professional and aware of their
role in the branding process, oering various services to companies (Grith 2011).
ey are not only part of a growing movement of consumer participation where
everyone can become a media entrepreneur, but also participating in the shaping of
brand management itself, its functions and processes (see also Dolbec & Fischer 2015).
Now fashion bloggers are leveraging their followers to become marketing machines
for brands other than their own (in other words, to earn money), augmenting
those companies’ advertising and PR strategies. ey’re taking on numerous roles
including guest bloggers, models, designers, and endorsers. ey’re maintaining
credibility with fans – they hope – by choosing partnerships discerningly, while
discussing deliverables, audience composition, ROI, and conversions with their
sponsors. (Grith 2011)

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CRYSTAL ABIDIN & MART OTS
Owing to their capacity to shape purchase decisions, Inuencers’ clients have pro-
gressed from small home businesses to blue-chip companies including Canon, Gucci,
and KLM. e immense success and extensive popularity of the Inuencer industry has
garnered widespread attention from several other ecologies including multinational
corporations, politics, education, social and humanitarian organisations, and the main-
stream media. Riding on their extensive popularity and consistent readership, these
sectors oen invite Inuencers to make special appearances to bring publicity to the
project or special cause. Inuencers are also invited to events as special guests and VIPs
in acknowledgement of their unique status and the social prestige they have earned.
A case study: e SingTel/M1/StarHub incident
In a short case study we will demonstrate how Inuencers exert pressure on each
other to conform to certain implicit standards, norms, and ethics, when it comes to
the publication of commercial content. Material from the data set was publicly dis-
seminated by Inuencers and pitched for public consumption, and Inuencers are
identied here by their public Twitter and Instagram handles.
In this case study, we explore the institutional eects of publicly revealing social
media posts as ‘commercial branding work’. In this case the actual brand strategy is
leaked. Despite the fact that no legal boundaries have been crossed, two core norms of
the Inuencer industry (authenticity and credibility) are broken (Abidin & ompson
2012; McQuarrie et al 2013). e breach of trust is used by competing Inuencers
to exert coercive pressure on the Inuencer who is forced to make public account-
ability to her followers. Gushcloud, the Inuencer agency behind the campaign, is
also under normative pressure by the brand client to conform practices to the brand
owner’s norms and values. ere are related cases when Inuencers have been exposed
as ‘inauthentic’ based on other pieces of evidence – such as inconsistency in product
preferences over time, discrepancies between what posts say, and what pictures show,
and incongruence with their overall prole and established brand values.
As mentioned earlier, eective advertorials are those that are so natural and personal
in tone that readers are unable to distinguish them from the daily narratives which
Inuencers publish online. In the vignette that follow, we see how a group of Inuencers
published complaints and praises about a particular product or service in Tweets and
blogposts, but were subsequently exposed by an Inuencer from a rival company for
‘masking’ their advertorials following the anonymous leak of a campaign brief. Based
on Abidin’s eldwork (Abidin 2015b), it is learnt that Inuencer agencies exert some
coercive pressures on the Inuencers, dening their contractual relationships within
each campaign and client brand. Agencies usually propose ‘briefs’ or ‘story boards’
advising Inuencers on key points that have to be clearly addressed in their advertori-
als (i.e. highlights of a new product, how prospective customers can make purchases,
suggested narratives based on the Inuencer’s lifestyle for craing believable advertori-

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INFLUENCERS TELL ALL?
als). However, in Singapore the content of each advertorial and the approach towards
content dissemination is still largely the Inuencer’s prerogative, and has not yet been
standardised nor regulated by any industry guidelines. In an international perspective,
the situation in Singapore is far from unique as global industry practices are still in their
infancy, but regulators are more and more concerned about how to apply and enforce,
for instance, advertising regulation and tax regulation to social media Inuencers.
e ‘scandal’ looks at how a group of six Inuencers were ‘exposed’ for non-credible
branding work of three local telecoms (i.e. SingTel, M1, StarHub). Two rival Inuencer-
management agencies are mentioned – Gushcloud and Nunang. Akin to modelling
agencies that groom model talents and broker deals on their behalf, Gushcloud and
Nunang function as intermediaries promoting port folios of contracted Inuencers to
prospective clients who wish to advertise with them. Inuencer ‘Xiaxue’ is contracted
to Nunang, while the others are contracted to Gushcloud. Such ‘scandals’ are usually
framed by mainstream media as mere ‘blogger spats’ – a regular occurrence in the
industry’s history of a decade – as opposed to orchestrated controversies between rival
agencies. As such, it is tempting to trivialise the incidents that unfold and overlook
the productive work they do for the industry.
On 11 March 2015, an anonymous user ‘leaked’ a campaign brief for Gushcloud
Inuencers on a public Tumblr site. Titled the ‘Gushcloud x Singtel Youth Plan x LG
G3 Blogger Brief’, it detailed local telecom ‘Singtel’ engaging Gushcloud Inuencers
to market its mobile phone subscription plan targeted towards youth. Such docu-
ments are usually highly condential between the client, the agency and the engaged
Inuencers, since they indicate which social media posts that Inuencers publish are
paid advertorials and which are (unpaid) personal opinions and lifestyle narratives.
Among many guidelines, the ‘leaked’ brief presumably prepared by a marketing man-
ager from Gushcloud suggested that Inuencers badmouth rival telecom companies:
Complain/lament about competitor’s (M1/StarHub) services/network connections
and pinpoint with existing plan (Insucient local data bundle and no unlimited
SMS/MMS etc).
To share with readers on how they have had enough of their current mobile plan not
being able to t their needs and currently have plans to sign up for new mobile plan!
Inuencers will ignite conversations where possible amongst their readers on their
blog post(s) and social media accounts.
is revelation was contentious because it was made public for the rst time that even
Inuencers’ seemingly harmless and o-hand gripes against particular products and
services could in fact be orchestrated advertorials. In its eleven-point ‘Proposed Story
Board’ that was meant to be assigned to the engaged Inuencers, the brief suggested
that Inuencers cra some narratives to naturalise their advertorial – a common
strategy to avoid appearing too commercial or ‘hard sell’ when marketing products.
Some of these were more contentious and dramatic:

158
CRYSTAL ABIDIN & MART OTS
Phone bill, kena [get] scolded by parents. en luckily, got youth plan for 10%
discount.
Phone spoilt. Oh no. Need new phone. Student not enough money, so thank god
for this $50 voucher.
Personal hotpost to tether to laptop/ipad. School wi sucks. And outside no wi.
Last time 2Gb how to tether? Now, you can with 5gb!!
One even suggested that Inuencers explicitly “badmouth” rival telecom company M1:
M1 connection jialat [terrible] in Orchard Central. Eating at EwF [an eatery], then
cannot upload photo on instagram. Pissed. Few days later, Got oered this youth
plan plus so many freebies. Yay. Happy instagramming.
ree days later on 14 March 2015, prominent Nunang Inuencer Xiaxue, wrote an
extensive blogpost on this issue that went viral regionally. In this post, she collated
screenshots of Inuencers badmouthing SingTel’s rival telecoms. At least six Gushcloud
Inuencers were publically named for allegedly making false claims against M1 and
StarHub on their Twitter streams:
My phone is ALWAYS getting “No Service”. Urgh screw Starhub! -@LydiaIzzati, 26
Jun 2014.
anks m1… Can’t even get signal in MY HOUSE -@iatedork, 28 Jun 2014.
Omg M1 seriously needs to like have better coverage. I can barely do anything with
my phone now. Zzzz. – @ongxavier, 27 Jun 2014.
So pissed o with the M1 server [crying face emoji] everywhere also no Internet &
I’m on 4G [crying face emoji] -@symoneoei, 28 Jun 2014.
Zzzz my starhub plan is always exploding!? I hate how they cap the data plan at such
a low GB [dollar bills with wings emoji].. Someone save me [weeping face emoji]
-@MarxMae, 29 Jun 2014.
It’s not funny M1!!! It’s not nice coming home to such sucky connections. I’m so
gonna switch to Singtel Youth Plan {NOT AN AD. I mean it.} -@EuniceAnnabel,
20 Jul 2014.
Aer the anonymous ‘leak’ of the campaign brief and Xiaxue’s viral blogpost, some
Inuencers wrote blogposts bearing explanations and apologies. In his blogpost pub-
lished on 18 March 2015, Xavier (@ongxavier) writes:
I, Xavier Ong APOLOGIZE to anyone aected for posting negative comments to-
wards M1 (while on a SingTel campaign) and not explicitly stating or revealing that
I was on a campaign with SingTel. However, I would also like to add that during that
period and even before, I was indeed unhappy and unsatised with the network and
service M1 provided me with therefore I DID NOT lie. I understand that I should

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INFLUENCERS TELL ALL?
have stated clearly that I was on a campaign or at least inform that certain postings
are advertorial/ sponsored posts and I am sorry for that.
Although there were no industry standards or guidelines prohibiting “masked” or
non-disclosed advertorials at that time, Inuencer Xavier acknowledged that his
badmouthing of telecom M1 was related to the advertorial campaign for rival telecom
SingTel to which he was contracted (i.e. “I should have stated clearly that I was on a
campaign”, “certain postings are advertorial/sponsored posts”). However, in a bid to
reconstitute his credibility with readers, he claims that his complaints about M1 were
genuine (i.e. “I was indeed unhappy and unsatised with the network and service…
therefore I DID NOT lie.”) even though he might have been paid to publicise them.
More specically, Xavier demonstrates how his bad experience with M1 predates his
campaign period with SingTel by including several screen shots of his Tweets dating
back to July 2011, when he was already consistently expressing frustrations against
M1’s connection problems. He writes:
While I admit that I was recruited as one of the members of such brand of advertise-
ment, not everything I said was unfounded. I had encountered many issues with M1
long before the deal was forged- perhaps it was my complaints before that would
eventually get me handed the deal.
ese tweets date all the way back to 29 July 2011. Yes, I was REALLY unhappy with
M1. I didn’t lie for the campaign or money. So how am I lying or faking something
up when I only took up the campaign on 30th June 2014 and my tweets about M1
has been going out since 29 July 2011 till 2013 and then nally up to 2014? I’ve
constantly been ranting about M1, their network and their service. So… a lie?
Although many of Xavier’s readers rallied behind him aer this clarication by express-
ing support and solidarity on Twitter, some others remain unconvinced of the truth
of his claims (i.e. the genuine complaints about M1) despite his predated evidence,
simply because the Inuencer had failed to disclose that some of these complaint-
Tweets were motivated by a monetary incentive. While it was speculated that he
lost some followers, there are no hard gures to prove this, and many followers are
observed displaying supportive comments on his social media. In the wake of these
events, a SingTel issued a statement to say that Gushcloud “did not adhere to SingTel’s
marketing standards”, and their Vice-President of Consumer Marketing apologised
to M1 and StarHub. A day later, the chief executive of Gushcloud issued an apology
to M1 and StarHub. He added:
We have started a process of auditing our practices, processes and people, to ensure
that we can be a good agency and partner to our present and future clients. We
aspire to higher standards, values and principles on which we will rebuild trust and
condence … In the coming months, we will keep the public and industry partners
updated on these initiatives through our website.

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CRYSTAL ABIDIN & MART OTS
Both telecoms have accepted SingTel’s and Gushcloud’s apologies, and although news-
paper reports claimed the telecoms were considering legal options as of March 2015,
no action had been taken as of April 2016. Instead, action groups and public forums
have been set up comprising advertising authorities, Inuencer agencies, Inuenc-
ers, and other key stakeholders and prominent public commentators to research and
develop guidelines for Inuencer advertising.
Authenticity and credibility
In this chapter we have commenced some introductory work to understand how new
brand management professions are institutionalised as amateurs and semi-professional
Inuencers and are becoming brand workers. Earlier studies have noted how these
semi-professional online activities do lead to institutional market change (Dolbec &
Fischer 2015) but that these new professions are ambiguous as they need to accom-
modate both communal and commercial norms (Kozinets et al 2010), that credibility
and taste are central components (McQuarrie et al 2013) and that authenticity and
intimacy are common, but not exclusive, strategies to build brand relationships with
followers (Kozinets et al 2010; Abidin & ompson 2012).
When starting to accommodate commercial brands and contents in social media
posts, Inuencers are constantly at risk of breaching their contract of trust with their
followers. e case study displayed common campaign structures and the involvement
of Inuencer agencies that mediate Inuencers and brand clients. It also showed how
Inuencers, followers, and eventually also the brand clients, are sensitive to what they
experience as deceptive and unethical behaviours that will put normative pressures onto
the Inuencers to conform to certain ethical standards. is brand scandal exemplied
the emerging normative and coercive pressures concerning the brand management
practices. In the absence of legal boundaries and industry norms regarding advertising
formats and advertising ethics, observing the dynamics of these pressures is a way to
start analysing the mechanisms behind the formation of Inuencers’ publishing prac-
tices. Certainly, research in this area is especially crucial since following the wave of
emerging Inuencer commerce, national boards and advertising regulatory authorities
(Manjur 2015) across the globe are now realising the importance of formalising and
enforcing guidelines and transparency in Inuencer brand management.
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