The murky world of influencer marketing is splashed across The Times today with 'social influencer' Luka Sabbatt (who?) being sued by a PR firm for, er, not having enough influence.
The eye-watering amounts of money consumer brands spend with influencers for a plug on social media is utterly bizarre.
It is largely unmeasurable by brands owners and seems to do nothing more than to line of the pockets of self-styled social media celebs.
A splash of celebrity star dust has, of course, always worked wonders for a product or brand and influencer marketing can trace its roots back to the earliest days of Hollywood.
The Royal Warrant on products is perhaps the ultimate in influencer marketing. Yet, like the Royal Warrant, genuine influencers take an increasingly discerning approach to brand associations, and this undoubtedly creates opportunities for the self-styled influencers, like Luka.
And here is the rub: they just do not care about the brands they are being asked to plug (to be fair, it also seems that nobody else cared about Snapchat's Spectacles). How can you influence buyers if you don't give a toss about the product yourself?
A model and “social influencer” is being sued for not doing enough influencing. Luka Sabbat, 20, is an actor, model, and general “It boy” who briefly dated the reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian, 39, and has 1.4 million followers of his Instagram account. He was selected by a public relations business a day after being photographed with Ms Kardashian on September 15. PR Consulting hired him to promote Snapchat’s Spectacles, sunglasses with inbuilt video cameras. The first version of the product had been launched in 2016 and not sold well, with Snap, the parent company of the photo and video-sharing app, writing off $40 million as a result.
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