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Virtual influencers: for or against?

FOR

When Robyn Frost was hand­ed the brief for EE’s 2019 Baf­ta acti­va­tion, the agency cre­ative knew she need­ed some­one to con­nect the worlds of high fash­ion and tech­nol­o­gy.

With her team at adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing agency Poke, she was look­ing to hire an influ­encer to inter­act with con­sumers via mobile and cap­ture looks on the red car­pet. But they also need­ed the tal­ent to scan out­fits for cut, shape, fab­ric and colour, and use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to rec­om­mend more afford­able alter­na­tives. A reg­u­lar human couldn’t do it all. So Shudu, the world’s first dig­i­tal super­mod­el, was booked instead.

“We got to be real­ly cre­ative with Shudu, from cre­at­ing her tone of voice to work­ing with Swarovs­ki to design a dig­i­tal dress for her,” Frost recalls. “A real ben­e­fit was being able to guar­an­tee the pho­tos we were after; we defined how she posed and did tri­al after tri­al mak­ing sure every­thing was as seam­less as pos­si­ble.”

For the hand­ful of brands that have “hired” a vir­tu­al influ­encer, this has been the biggest ben­e­fit: con­trol. Shudu came to EE with a per­son­al­i­ty and a fol­low­ing, but the rest – out­fit, script, demeanor – was up to them to decide. This is in con­trast to work­ing on a paid-for cam­paign with a human influ­encer, who can spell your brand name wrong, post a prod­uct in an unflat­ter­ing light, for­get to badge a post as #ad and make all the mis­takes a reg­u­lar human is prone to.

They are essen­tial­ly cre­at­ed as per insti­tu­tion­alised beau­ty norms. Brands should be very aware of adding to that noise

The cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties are almost lim­it­less when it comes to the vir­tu­al form of influ­encer mar­ket­ing. Brands spend mil­lions of dol­lars a year fly­ing groups of social cre­ators to far-flung des­ti­na­tions to posi­tion their prod­ucts in the best pos­si­ble light; with vir­tu­al influ­encers, all costs bar a com­put­er-graph­ics design­er are negat­ed.

“The main dif­fer­ence is you have more flex­i­bil­i­ty in the sit­u­a­tions they can be in since any­thing can be designed,” says Shann Biglione, head of strat­e­gy at Zenith USA. “Want to take them to Mars? No prob­lem!” In a lock­down, this is noth­ing but a gift to mar­keters.

Work­ing with a vir­tu­al influ­encer puts a brand in the same league as the most cut­ting-edge brands, such as Sam­sung, Bal­main, Guc­ci. It dis­plays a sense of fun and futur­ism, and a con­nec­tion to the tastes of younger con­sumers fol­low­ing the vir­tu­al likes of Lil Miquela, Shudu and Yoox. As ODD Lon­don-based founder and exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor Nick Stick­land puts it: “If there’s a sem­blance of play­ful­ness, ener­gy and fun baked into the brand prin­ci­ples, and every­one is aware this is fic­tion, then inter­est­ing things can hap­pen.”

AGAINST

If the key to suc­cess with vir­tu­al influ­encers is demon­strat­ing an aware­ness of their unre­al­i­ty, the down­side is they may be per­ceived less as a new wave of mar­ket­ing enter­tain­ment and more as a prod­uct of fake news.

Deep­fakes, fake videos and audio record­ings that look and sound uncan­ni­ly real, are now count­ed as a polit­i­cal weapon; brands seen to be pro­duc­ing “fake” con­tent with com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed influ­encers run the risk of being hit by sim­i­lar out­rage.

While vir­tu­al influ­encers cur­rent­ly look like high-qual­i­ty video game char­ac­ters, the web­site ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com shows just how far the tech might be able to go one day. The plat­form serves up incred­i­bly real­is­tic, but entire­ly fab­ri­cat­ed, faces of every­day peo­ple. If it even­tu­al­ly becomes impos­si­ble to tell the dif­fer­ence between a real and a vir­tu­al influ­encer, brands will need to decide if their use real­ly match­es their val­ues, such as authen­tic­i­ty and hon­esty.

But this is a ques­tion brands need to be already ask­ing. If a mar­keter does not need to reach young, online con­sumers, then hir­ing a vir­tu­al influ­encer would be ill-advised giv­en they only reside on Insta­gram and YouTube, for now any­way. And brands that pur­port to ele­vate women should be aware of vir­tu­al influ­encers’ cre­ation sto­ry, notes VMLY&R’s emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy direc­tor Gra­cie Page.

“These mod­els are over­whelm­ing­ly cre­at­ed by men, which means the design has a bias,” she says. “Although the dig­i­tal influ­encers in exis­tence today have a range of skin tones, they are all young with a stun­ning­ly clas­si­cal bone struc­ture and on the skin­ny end of the body-shape spec­trum. They are essen­tial­ly cre­at­ed through the male gaze as per insti­tu­tion­alised beau­ty norms. Brands should be very aware of adding to that noise.”

As the coro­n­avirus pares social media users back to their most basic domes­ti­cat­ed selves, it is clear con­sumers are appre­ci­at­ing authen­tic­i­ty more than ever. Celebri­ties locked down in their man­sions aren’t elic­it­ing sym­pa­thy, while ama­teur cre­ators on Tik­Tok are laud­ed for their unedit­ed tal­ents.

Mean­while, influ­encers who are usu­al­ly styled by brands in unob­tain­able exot­ic des­ti­na­tions are find­ing they’re hav­ing to do their jobs at home with­out out­side help. “That locked-down form of influ­enc­ing is actu­al­ly far more attain­able, far more believ­able and far more nat­ur­al,” says ODD’s Stick­land. “I think this is prob­a­bly the most pow­er­ful form of influ­encer mar­ket­ing we’ve seen for a firm for a long time.”

If this is the kind of con­tent that con­sumers con­tin­ue to crave post-COVID-19, then vir­tu­al influ­encers may remain an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment, but not one that will alter the course of influ­encer mar­ket­ing.