The Fraudulent Influencer

Prior to working in beer and actively using social media, I was a forensic accountant at a consulting firm and held a designation called a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). To pass that exam, you have to memorize every known financial fraud scheme, how to detect it, and how to prevent it. The training teaches you how to identify red flags on a company’s financials, reports, & analysis, instilling a natural suspicion. This background is how I ended up working in Internal Audit and eventually running that department for Reyes Holdings. I mention this only to provide context to why this topic jumps out at me:

​Breweries of all sizes are feeling the pressure of 7,000+ competitors, a fatigued consumer base, and increased restraint when it comes to drinking and purchasing habits. As Facebook & Instagram have continued limiting how many followers see a post (~10%), breweries are always seeking out alternative means of getting consumer eyes on their newest products. Enter that dirty word that we love to hate, influencer.

An influencer typically generates content that has the potential to steer their audience’s opinions and purchases. They have a sizable, engaged following who trust their tastes and recommendations. Successful influencers are often some combination of smart, honest, creative, forthcoming, funny, interesting, responsive, and most importantly, genuine. An influencer could be Tomme Arthur, founder of The Lost Abbey, who is willing to make time for the biggest and smallest creators, providing sage advice and honest takes through podcasts, articles, etc. Alternatively, an influencer could be a journalist, photographer, world traveler, comedian, reviewer, or industry personality sharing the beer world through their own vantage point.

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​Proactive breweries have someone reach out to these individuals and offer to send samples in hopes that the beer might make an appearance in their work. It’s pretty harmless from my perspective, which is, “hey, you’re doing something cool that is helping generate interest and/or creativity in beer, can I send you some beers?.” When I’ve provided samples, it’s usually to photographers who do cool shots of the beer, or writers/podcasters whose work I enjoy. If they like it enough to include it in their work, awesome, if not, maybe next time.

​Influencer marketing, in my opinion, is something that you should NEVER outsource, yet many large breweries do so. I've made my way onto a handful of beer PR distribution lists over the years, so I get a plethora of cringe-worthy e-mails that I love-hate to read. Two recent examples jumped out.

The first one required me to apply for the opportunity to post a picture of a particular beer on my Instagram, but I had to put a hyperlink to the brand on my profile for a designated amount of time.  IF SELECTED, I would receive a $50 gift card to buy the beer and keep the remainder. The second was worse, offering a six-pack of the brewery’s new IPA, but they would only send it to me if I promised one Instagram post and 1 Instagram story, which couldn’t include a competing beer and had to include their three designated hashtags.

Unpopular opinion: I love it

— Doug Veliky (@beercruncher) February 7, 2019

Sure enough, over the next few weeks, I saw both of these beers all over my Instagram feed and Explore tab, in some cases from talented individuals whose work I enjoy. That made me a little sad, not because I think they “sold out” or anything like that, but because they don’t value their time, talent, authenticity more than a free beer or a $25 gift card.  Writing, photography, editing, and building an audience takes a hell of a lot more time than these offers give credit for. 

Despite this NOT being a lucrative field, the prospect of being insta-famous and the money, free beer, glassware, tickets, and access that accompanies it has resulted in a vast sea of wannabe influencers. Like authentic versions, the imitators come in all shapes and sizes, each in search of a piece of the action. The time it takes build a strong following by generating meaningful content is too daunting. They look for shortcuts to appear more influential than reality, in hopes of getting noticed by breweries, or agencies working on their behalf. Here’s how they do it:

Buy Followers

This is the lowest common denominator. There are a number of websites where you can straight-up buy followers instantly, created by troll farms located overseas. What better starting point to build a following of real people than by tricking your prospectives into thinking you are more popular than you actually are. You can spot these accounts by noticing a really poor amount of likes/comments compared to their massive number of followers, or just by sub-par content that would never result in such a high number.

Buy Likes 

It looks odd to have that big following, with a severely low, disproportionate amount of likes on your posts. Naturally, those troll farms are happy to sell you fake likes to solve that problem, as well. I’ve noticed paid-likes being utilized by accounts before, either by seeing an unrealistic spike of “likes” within minutes of a post, or a failure to apply it to all their posts, so one post has thousands of likes, while another has 50. That type of spread is a big red flag.

Automation

Branded as authentic, I’d just call these services a slightly more authentic type of fraud and by far the most annoying. Sites build programs to automatically seek out legitimate Instagram accounts who are most likely to be interested in your content, by searching out hashtags of your choosing. The service will automatically “like” those pictures as your handle and leave cookie-cutter comments that you determine like "Looks delicious, cheers!" on a post with the hashtag #craftbeer. In turn, some of these people will check out your page and give you a follow, thinking that you’ve just left them a genuine comment and perhaps are already following them. ​I get these robotic comments all the time from accounts trying to look like a beer influencer and gain a follower. Your following begins growing without you lifting a finger, though looking foolish in the process, as the program will leave illogical comments, like

        Post: “I got into a fender bender on the way home from today’s #craftbeer event”
        Bot Comment: "Looks delicious, cheers!"

Pods

While nobody fully understands Instagram’s algorithm, it’s understood that an above average amount of likes and comments will vault your post to the top of feeds and into Explore pages. More users will see your posts and you’ll gain real followers faster. A tactic called Pods was created by similarly motivated individuals to stack their odds. A Pod is a private chat group that could range from ten to a thousand content creators. After posting to Instagram, a member copies the link to their post into the group chat.  Other members get a notification, go in, and “like” each post then leave an “authentic” comment. By joining a pod, your posts are guaranteed to receive more likes, a ton of comments, and greater exposure. Put simply, alliances are being formed with an understanding that each person will “like” and comment on each other’s posts, making each look more like an Instagram celebrity to an outsider. THIS is why there are so many damn selfies and haze cans in your Explore tab and why they appear to generate so much interest.

Pods are rampant in the Insta-beer world. Many content creators whose work I respect unfortunately use Pods. I became aware of the concept about 3 years ago when I was invited to join one.  I accepted without much thought or fully understanding what it was at the time, tried it out with a couple posts, and watched each perform immensely better. Comments were piling up from beer-centric accounts, but in reality they were only there as part of a trade, of sorts. The genuine comments from people outside the Pod were lost in a sea of copy-pasted, non-personalized, bullshit comments. After a few weeks, I got out of dodge and watched the engagement on my posts sink back down to reality, but at least it was REAL and that’s how it should be. Pod users are trying to make themselves look like something they aren’t and that’s not of interest to me. It’s a strange new millennial form of Insta-fraud.

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As a consumer, these tactics are pretty easy to ignore or just roll your eyes at. Where I take exception though is when the fraudulent influencers are initiating the conversation with the brewery and looking to form a partnership or sponsorship. These requests tend to include some stats about their account, which are often manipulated. If this happened once, I wouldn’t be writing about it, but it happens all the time.

Let's Do Better

Here are my takes on how this idea of influencer marketing can be more successful:

Breweries

• Make yourself and your team available to those doing something awesome to further craft beer (writing, podcasting, instagramming, etc.), whether it's through an interview, samples, etc.
• Don’t judge content creators by the size of their following, but by the drive, effort, and/or creativity.  Take chances on people and use your own clout to amplify the result.
• Let someone internally handle the communications, not an agency. Build the relationship and make it meaningful. Authenticity, as well as a personal touch, is important and I constantly see it lost when the communication is outsourced.

Agencies

• See brewery recommendations

• If you’re sending beer samples out to content producers, don’t require anything. You’ll be a lot more successful if you make it a no pressure arrangement. 

• Take the time to learn about who you’re reaching out to and personalize the communication. Don’t be lazy with a giant distribution list that you bought and force interested parties to apply just to be apart of your campaign. Just send the e-mail to people you’d already be happy to work with.

Content Creators

• Value your time and take pride in what you are building. I know it’s exciting to be offered a free six-pack from a popular brewery, but having to commit to a series of posts before you’ve tasted the beer is unreasonable.
• Gaming the system is unethical and unsustainable. Tools are being built to score the authenticity of an instagram account and can detect all the fraudulent examples I pointed out above, even Pods. Be comfortable with what you’ve created organically and if the results aren’t as good as you’d like, change things up. Work a harder at it.
• Remember 2,000 active, engaged followers is more successful than 20,000 passive followers.

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It's not influencers we dislike, it's the individuals trying to be called one without putting in the real work. Beer badly needs more voices to rise out of the shadows and continue pushing conversations, education, and interest. There's just so few of them out there. Create something cool, work hard at it, be patient, good things will happen.

Let me know if I can help.​✌