Lori Loughlin

[Deleted]

That is a very good point and I think illustrates the post upthread where the influencer loses credibility when they are being paid to push a product.

An example I see time and again: an influencer is paid for a campaign pushing JC Penney. So she does a few sponsored posts wearing some JC Penney clothes with the theme of, "See, JC Penney has cute stuff too!" Then you never see that JC Penney coat again and the influencer is back to Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Or an influencer who is all about healthy food/eating clean/paleo starts talking about how much she loves Nestle Tollhouse cookies and makes multiple posts about it because Nestle is paying her. I know another influencer who did a series of posts about how much she loved World Market although her house is outfitted with Restoration Hardware.

That is the difference between influencers and traditional marketing. When I see an ad in a magazine for Coach handbags, I know it is an ad trying to sell me Coach handbags. When an influencer posts a picture of themselves skipping down the road with the caption, "Love my new Coach!" - does she really? Or does she love the fact that it was free? But - there is an argument to be made that who cares if it is disingenuous, if you like the Coach handbag she is wearing and buy it, then she has successfully done her job and you have a new handbag that you like. Everyone is happy.

Another example: I see a lot of lifestyle bloggers/influencers who will post links to their supposed "favorite" items at Nordstrom. Then when, say my mom, who knows nothing about affiliate links, clicks on the link it attaches cookies to her computer. Three weeks go by and my mom goes back to the Nordstrom website and buys a dress. Because those cookies are still attached, the influencer receives a portion of that dress purchase even though that purchase had nothing to do with the influencer. Which in turn motivates the influencer to post more affiliate links, not because they particularly like any of those items they recommend but because the cookies give them a portion of the proceeds from future sales.

That is why you see so many influencers completely lose their minds before the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale every summer. Because they know a large amount of people are about to spend a large amount of money and they want a cut of it. So they buy a ton of merch, try it on, post photos with affiliate links and then return it to the stores. How is that not duplicitous?

[chiqui]

I think it's a generational thing. I like ads to be clearly delineated from content. I don't even like product placements in movies and TV because it feels too much like a "trick." But I think the younger you are, the less you mind being marketed to constantly.

Paid product placement in movies has been going on since the mid-1970s I think. I remember hearing about it then and being surprised because I had never noticed. Since then, in the older movies, it's easy to pick out -- like a female character with love woes consoling herself with a pint of ice cream whose label is turned just so revealing the full name. It's even more amusing when the product no longer exists. It's advertising inflicted on the consumer without their consent. I mean, all advertising is. But TV commercials, ads in magazines, billboards, etc. are all very clearly advertising media and when you watch TV, read Vogue, or drive in the city, you expect to see them, they don't surprise you. But while watching a movie you are off your usual guard.

That's how I feel about social media influencers, professional or freelance. You're following, say, Kim Kardashian and all of a sudden she's shilling a weight loss lollipop. Does she really mean it as a person saying something of note, or was she paid to? There's a grey area. The expectation is she's chatting with her fans as if she's at a party and not shilling because of the nature of the medium, which is one not exclusively for advertising, like a billboard is. I suppose if her social media homepages said in big letters KIM KARDASHIAN IS A SPOKESWOMAN FOR DIET-RITE QUICK-URINATING LOLLIPOPS the watcher would know. But I don't think they do.

So Olivia Jade on YouTube and Instagram might seem like a peer and someone fun to watch, so when she starts shilling Target and Pantene and Sephora the viewer would likely think Cool, she's talking from first hand experience and giving her honest opinion, not She was paid a buttload of money for this and given free products.

ETA: So in a perfect world, paid social media influencers would have a disclaimer on the bottom so we know without a doubt they're shilling, that is, telling everyone how great the product is. Either that, or do it movie product placement style... the product is in the background where everyone can see it, but no attention is called to it.

If all these influencers are shilling the advertisers' products for money, shouldn't they be regarded as actors and required to join the screen actors' guild?

[magazinewhore]

If all these influencers are shilling the advertisers' products for money, shouldn't they be regarded as actors and required to join the screen actors' guild?

Careful with that Pandora's box you're about to open.

[tanyak]

And not only do bloggers/influencers get free stuff, they also might get items that are not representative of what the general public might get. Take reviews for the various clothing box subscription services. They’ll tell you that they got their box for free, but I recently read somewhere that companies make sure to spend extra time curating blogger boxes with a lot of their top-notch stuff. Plus,a blogger might end up reviewing five pieces of clothing while a typical box will likely include four pieces of clothing and an accessory like a hat or scarf.

And thank you so much for explaining affiliate links. I wasn’t sure how they worked! Ugh.

[greekone]

Mar 19, 2019 9:01:18 GMT -4 Ginger said:

Kourtney Kardashian went to ASU!

Kourtney actually went to University of Arizona which is in Tucson. She graduated with a bachelor's in Theatre Arts. I only know this because one of my daughters is a U of A graduate and I remember some anecdote being told at the parent orientation that referenced Kourtney attending U of A.

[Ginger]

The Daily Mail has an entire article today about how Lori Loughlin texted a high-five emoji to the scammer guy when her daughter was accepted to USC:

Several emoticons could be identified as the 'high-five emoji', whether the single splayed palm, two palms facing the viewer with the thumbs nearly touching, or palms pressed together. It's not clear exactly which emoticon Loughlin used when the transcript says she used a 'high-five emoji'.

I'm glad The Daily Mail put their best investigators on this one and got to the bottom of the whole emoji issue.

As everyone knows, per Federal law, a single-palmed high-five emoji indicates a legally binding criminal agreement whereas the double-palmed high-five emoji does not, so this could potentially be a big crack in the case.

[Ladybug]

Just replace the whole dang alphabet with emojis. It's time. We're already drifting that way anyway. Kids can't read cursive anymore, why bother with letters? We'll just go back to hieroglyphs.

[Auroranorth]

Lori Loughlin Doesn’t Seem to Realize She Might Go to Jail

[Mutagen]

Mar 19, 2019 17:38:36 GMT -4 chiqui said:

Paid product placement in movies has been going on since the mid-1970s I think.

A random factoid I heard years ago, and it could be apocryphal, is that Clint Eastwood's "this 44 Magnum will blow your head clean off" speech in Dirty Harry caused sales of that particular gun to jump way up, which really kicked off modern product placement in movies.

[laurenj]

Apr 5, 2019 13:44:31 GMT -4 Auroranorth said:

Lori Loughlin Doesn’t Seem to Realize She Might Go to Jail

Okay, I know people going to courthouses isn't anything new, but that picture of those 2 women posing with Aunt Becky face cutouts seems like a special kind of stupid.

I saw the video of her on TMZ where she was being overly polite with them and it just had such a ring of smugness to it. She really does seem to think she's untouchable.

And I said it when this first broke, but I'll say it again...was it really worth it? I guess it all goes back to her apparent feelings of being above the law and above the common folk, but this is just such a stupid thing to have invested so much money in.

Her kids were probably going to do exactly the same things they ended up doing no matter where they went to school and whatever prestige USC may carry (as an East Coaster, it was never on my radar as an impressive school on the level of a Harvard or Yale, or even Stanford), I really doubt that Olivia Jade's millions of Instagram followers truly cared all that much about the name of the school that she fully admitted to not caring about attending. They have football games, parties, and whatever else at plenty of schools that it wouldn't have cost $500k and potential jail time to get into.