5 Reasons Why Influencers Are a Scam…

Meet the brains behind Final Boss Sour, former Creative Director, influencer, and one of the funniest people I have interviewed to date, London Lazerson.

Since 2015 London has been in the weeds of the influencer culture, he knows the do’s, but more importantly, the DON’TS. 

And there are a LOT of don’ts, but lucky for us London spilled all of the tea on The Marketing Millennials Podcast for how to successfully run influencer Marketing.

Here’s what he had to say in his own liiiiiiightly edited words.

1. London’s Take on Influencer Marketing:

“My first brand deal I got paid $10,000 to do a handful of videos for a random product.

The client loved the content, then we posted it and it absolutely flopped.  

I was doing millions of views per week and this video did 2,000 views, 0 clicks to my bio, and 0 sales. That’s not only sad for the brand that just invested in me, it’s sad for me that I feel like I scammed the brand (eeeekkk!).

So I dialed back and decided to integrate my knowledge of traditional advertising in my next partnership. 

The next brand I was like, “look I will post this organically and it could flop, this could do nothing for your brand. You’re still going to pay me the $10,000 but this could do nothing for your brand.”

But then I would explain to them after we organically post it, we will use an ad buyer to run the content as an ad for them (GENIUS). 

We would design the content in a way that it suffices both paid and organic audiences by shooting different intros and visuals. The ethos behind it all was that if a brand pays me $20k I want to put a crystal clear route to make them $40k back.

The biggest scam that nobody talks about is influencers, because most will take your money, post to their audience, and do no sales.

I know brands and agency owners that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on friends of mine and never made it back. 

They rationalize it by calling it awareness, and that’s BS. There’s better ways to generate awareness than your shitty TikTok of you unboxing their product.

2. How to Think About Marketing:

I think about Marketing as a pendulum. 

I look at what every brand doing right now and find the pitfalls. Right now everyone and their dog is doing UGC content. That’s why I think TikTok is about to change in a very big way.

For so long TikTok was this app where you could set up your iPhone and didn’t have to do anything and you could go viral. That’s not the case anymore (retweet).

The trend of UGC on the paid side was started by Hismile. They were spending millions of dollars/day on ads for their toothpaste and it was all UGC content. So everyone then hopped on that trend. 

What I’m doing as an agency owner is instead looking for influencers that can make well edited and higher produced content because UGC does not stand out as an ad anymore. Sure it still works and we do use it in a lot of our funnels, but it is just not standing out as much as it once was.

We’re looking for influencers that can actually make a well scripted and designed video that I can take as the brand and run as an ad later either through whitelisting on their Instagram and TikTok, or just in my own business managers.

I’m not looking for people who have high engagement rates or anyone on TikTok who has every video with a million views. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about that because that is catering to an organic content. 

I’m looking for people who can make a well constructed video I can run as an ad.

3. Influencers AREN’T Marketers:

As a creator if you step into every conversation placing an emphasis that the partnership is a TEST, the brand partnership will be a win regardless of performance.

One of the things I love to use with failed ads as well is asking the client if they liked the content and 8 times out of 10 they do.

So we simply restructure the content, add a different hook, this saves the company a lot of time and money (efficiency>>>).

Whereas a lot of creators out there just ditch the brand and partnership after they hit post and got paid. It all comes back to how they don’t know how advertising works.

It’s weird because we trust these influencers to be Marketers when in reality, 9 out of 10 influencers can’t answer you why they’re famous. 

Our algorithms are so forgiving to a lot of different faces where they post a video of putting on lobster shoes and all of a sudden they have 10 million followers.

Just because they have a TON of followers doesn’t mean they know Marketing. (THIS.)

4. iPhone Creators Are on Their Way Out:

If everybody’s a superhero, nobody’s a superhero (ouuu tell me more).

We’re living in an era right now where everybody’s a superhero. You can set up your phone, shoot anything, and as long as you’re consistent, you can build a following and can make money. 

When TikTok started, I was doing the iPhone and the low quality content because that was new and stood out, but it doesn’t stand out anymore.

Hardly anybody on the internet right now can put together a set or write a script that’s funny and intriguing. Back to the pendulum reference, this is where it swings. (We’re making this pivot here at TMM with our YouTube. 🤪)

Soon the whole onslaught of all these iPhone creators will be dead. If they don’t get ahead of it by starting their own brands and learning how to make a higher produced video then they’ll be gone.  

5. Don’t Make This Mistake:

The lifespan of a person with 1 million followers is 12 months. (I did NOT know that.)

A lot of people believe that if you can get to 1M followers, you’ll have it made, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ll explain…

You hear about the CPMs creators that are making millions of dollars a year get, but then you see the biggest and the most viewed creators like MrBeast. Mark Rober, and Emma Chamberlain starting their own brands.

I realized that didn’t add up, so I asked myself why am I chasing a high view count if the the most watched people on the face of the planet are starting companies (mhm LOVE).

It’s because they’re onto something and they realize that this view count can’t sustain itself, but bigger than that it’s these platforms have massive swings.

That’s why I stepped away from my own content to start final boss sour because I’m actually building a real entity with real value in the world. 

A lot of these algorithms hold no value to the world because one day you can do 100 million views a month and the next you’re doing 1 million views.

So creators, don’t chase a view count, chase an audience, and chase a product, you have to own something.” 

(This isn’t saying that social media isn’t important, instead treat it like a Costco sampler. Give consumers a taste of what you offer and bring them down funnel to your owned channels.)