“The integrity of the upright will guide them, But the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them.” Proverbs 11:3
So time for some real talk. By this stage (almost) all of you would be aware that Bec and I are blessed enough to get paid for this gig we call blogging. It’s great to get paid for what you love doing, we cannot lie – but is some of the $ really worth the sacrifice of our integrity?
As of March 1st 2017, all ‘Influencers’ are required under the AANA-Code-of-Ethics to indicate which of their content is sponsored via payment. This legislative move essentially helps consumers (aka followers) to identify the content you see on your Instagram feed that is being paid for by brands. Lucky for us, being in the Marketing game for several years now we more often than not have been letting you guys know whats sponsored, etc by popping #ad or #spon in the caption and at the end of our Blog Posts. Moving forward, it only means that we will be more transparent with you.
But the question is, is sponsored content un-authentic?
Bec and I tend to sway from answer to answer with this, and in the end it comes down to who is promoting that content. Are they trustworthy? Do they have a track-record for pumping out anything and everything on their Instagram page with no thought of their branding and essentially, just for the dollas? Or, are their brand alignments carefully curated and selected? We’re coming from an over-critical point-of-view as this is the industry we work in, and we tend to see through the ‘Oh I love this dress so much’ etc, etc when the influencers branding doesn’t match. It’s almost like when you’re in clothing store and hear ‘Babes, that looks so hot on you’ from the Sales chick and you’re like……’YO, are you kidding me? I look like a big potato – stop trying to force the sale’. You feel me? It just feels fake and #SPONSORED – lol.
In saying that, you’d probably be surprised how much of our work isn’t sponsored, I think? I think because there is no clear ‘guideline’ or ‘rule’ (until now, of course) no one really knew how much work an influencer produced was paid for or not. We produce so, soooo much more content that is unpaid than paid. Man, if every single one of our images was sponsored we’d be like billionaires by now. Well, not really..but still. Bec and I have always been conscious of making sure our page looks perfectly curated, so for us it’s more about what looks good than just what brings home the bacon. We generally produce extra (unpaid) content as fillers for our sponsored content to make sure nothing looks staged, ‘out-of-place’ or unauthentically sponsored.
The amount of sponsored content we produce varies from month-to-month, sometimes in busy periods – it’s a lot!
But other times (and mostly) it’s majority unpaid content we produce and a sprinkle of paid work – like here.
We hope that you see our feed and genuinely believe in the brands that we promote, because we do. Now more than ever, we’re going to be (even more) selective with the brands that we work in order to provide genuine and authentic reviews, endorsements and brand alignments.
Read more about the AANA-Code-of-Ethics here, or an article summary here. Oh, and also – to set a good example, this post is not sponsored. BUT you can #ShopTheLook below.
BY JOHNNY TOP / BY JOHNNY SKIRT / EGO MULES / J.W.ANDERSON BAG
BY JOHNNY TOP / BY JOHNNY SKIRT / EGO HEELS / OUT WITH AUDREY BAG
xx TB
