{"id":161641,"date":"2023-06-30T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=920628"},"modified":"2023-06-30T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T00:00:00","slug":"why-influencers-love-a-free-trip-even-a-controversial-one-from-shein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/06\/30\/why-influencers-love-a-free-trip-even-a-controversial-one-from-shein\/","title":{"rendered":"Why influencers love a free trip even a controversial one from Shein"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Thousands of influencers post content online with one goal: getting a brand deal. It\u2019s affirmation that they\u2019ve \u201cmade it\u201d as an influencer, that they\u2019re interesting enough to be paid to post, and that content creation could be a job. It\u2019s usually a good thing \u2014 until, of course, it blows up in your face.
\nIt\u2019s not clear to me why anyone involved in Shein\u2019s recent PR campaign thought it was a good idea to send influencers on a free trip to try to beat the labor exploitation accusations that plague the company. There\u2019s an unseriousness to sponsored content \u2014 the cheery, upbeat music, the approval process videos go through before they can be posted \u2014 that makes it an insufficient response to workers who say they\u2019re subjected to illegally long workdays and withheld wages.
\nBut that didn\u2019t stop Shein from tapping a handful of creators to visit Guangzhou, China, for a multi-day guided tour of Shein factories and facilities, fancy dinners, and photo ops.
\n\u201cI expected the facility to be so filled with people just slaving away, but I was actually pleasantly surprised that most of these things were robotic,\u201d one influencer who went on the trip said in a video. \u201cEveryone was just working like normal, like chill, sitting down. They weren\u2019t even sweating.\u201d
\nShein got what it wanted, but the influencers quickly realized this wasn\u2019t a typical brand deal \u2014 followers and strangers alike were furious over content that seemed to brush past widely reported troubles with the brand. The backlash was swift, primarily directed at a creator that goes by Dani DMC, an influencer with nearly 300,000 TikTok followers whose videos were reshared on Twitter. In a matter of a few days, content from the Shein trip was deleted, defensive responses shared (and then also deleted), and apologies issued.
\nIt should be yet another good lesson for anyone trying to make money through content creation: brand deals will sometimes come back to bite you. And it\u2019s often the individual content creator \u2014 not the advertiser \u2014 that gets the most heat while having the least amount of support resources.
\nThe incentives to make ads for brands have never been higher. Fueled by breakaway stars like MrBeast, the D\u2019Amelio sisters, and Alix Earle, young people the world over don\u2019t just dream of creating a viral presence out of nothing \u2014 many of them live it. Acting like an influencer is so easy it doesn\u2019t even feel like pretending; shilling products and services online to a following of a few hundred has become a tenant of being online.
\nThe work of converting content creators into an army of micro-advertising firms is becoming increasingly streamlined and frictionless. Platforms like Instagram offer creator marketplaces where brands can find influencers to hire for sponsored content. And on TikTok, a new program encourages creators to submit branded content for a chance at making some cash if their video performs well, without guaranteed returns.
\nMaking a living online can be tricky \u2014 for most content creators making shortform videos, the payout from the platforms themselves is paltry. Earnings from creator funds, which pay viral personalities out of a pool of money set aside, often come out to be just a few dollars for millions of views. Other rewards programs for shortform video that were introduced to compete with TikTok have now dried up. Apart from potentially lucrative ad revenue sharing programs, many creators rely on brand deals to pay the bills.
\nThe eagerness to make content for brands \u2014 and for brands to tap popular creators \u2014 has repeatedly backfired. Influencers boosting crypto projects made thousands of dollars, only for projects to turn out to be a scam. Even Kim Kardashian paid a $1.26 million fine after sharing sponcon for a crypto token without properly disclosing it was an ad.
\nLast year, TikTok and Instagram were littered with sponsored content made for a little-known app called Nate, which claimed to use artificial intelligence to autocomplete online shopping transactions.
\nFashion and lifestyle influencers earned thousands of dollars in shopping credits by getting followers to sign up for the app. But the \u201cAI\u201d reportedly ended up just being human workers in the Philippines \u2014 users\u2019 checkout information was manually entered by strangers. And in December, Nate ran off with influencers\u2019 earnings, abruptly suspending its influencer program. Creators who had been using and promoting the Nate app aired out their frustrations and announced they would no longer be using the service \u2014 in the end, they lost out on what they were promised.
\nIt\u2019s often the individual influencer who becomes the center of the maelstrom
\nWhen brand deals go awry, it\u2019s often the individual influencer who becomes the center of the maelstrom, as was the case with the Shein image rehab trip and others. Last month, a different influencer came under fire for referencing a school shooting that happened at her university in a sponsored video for skincare company Bior\u00e9. The brand apologized, too, saying it reviews all influencer content but doesn\u2019t \u201cedit or censor\u201d material creators submit. I\u2019m less outraged that a young person who experienced a campus shooting would mention it when asked to create content about mental health. But if you work in marketing for a major brand and don\u2019t see how this could cause problems for everyone involved, you are bad at your job. Content creators are responsible for what they put their name on, but it\u2019s up to the brand to make sure they don\u2019t look like a fool.
\nEven worse is when a brand partners with an influencer and throws them to the wolves when there\u2019s a public response, as was the case when Bud Light partnered with trans creator Dylan Mulvaney. When Mulvaney was subjected to an onslaught of transphobic vitriol and attacks, Bud Light doubled down, putting marketing executives on leave. As recent as this week, Mulvaney said the company had not even reached out to her since the abuse began.<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of influencers post content online with one goal: getting a brand deal. It\u2019s affirmation that they\u2019ve \u201cmade it\u201d as an influencer, that they\u2019re interesting enough to be paid to post, and that content creation could be a job. It\u2019s usually a go…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413,144,325,137,138,408,288,194,493,222,465,1242,334],"tags":[10355,8755,5567,7705,10309,10333,6823,10315,2240,10329,7327,10310],"class_list":["post-161641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-china","category-education","category-fraud","category-guangdong","category-guangzhou","category-medicine","category-news-chinese-law","category-online-shopping","category-online-video","category-social-media","category-twitter","category-university","tag-army","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bitcoin","tag-blockchain","tag-bytedance","tag-crypto","tag-fintech","tag-media-intelligence","tag-military","tag-philippines","tag-revenue","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161643,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161641\/revisions\/161643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}