How celebrities are bending the advertising rules in the social media age. Kim Kardashian, waving, and sister Khloe are among the best celebrities at leveraging their massive social media presence for advertising dollars. Kardashian is perhaps the most successful celebrity in the social media age at leveraging her fame into endorsement dollars by hocking products and services to her followers on the sly. Social media expert Frank Spadafora, the founder of D'Marie Archive, says between the Kardashian and Jenner families and more than 300 million collective social media followers, the Kids can command anywhere between $75,000 to $300,000 for a post across all of their feeds. In none of those snaps did any of them admit to having been paid to promote the product. But we've since learned that they were, because posts have been recently updated with captions that include the hashtag #ad. Truth in Advertising has complained both to the family and the FTC that there's deceptive marketing all over their feeds because paid endorsements must be stated in a clear and conspicuous way. That's according to the FTC's own rules, which make it clear that you can't blur the line between authenticity and marketing on social media. The FTC has the power to slap fines on companies when they break their clearly defined rules, something about which Canadian authorities haven't been as clear. Celebrities with millions of followers can often get six figures for using their digital heft to market for brands, Frank Spadafora says (CBC) That goes for both the celebrities and for consumers too, who he says are much savvier about marketing than people give them credit for.
best celebrities at leveraging their massive social media presence
for advertising dollars. (Artur Harutyunyan/Associated
Press)
For the 86 million people who follow Kim Kardashian on
Instagram, the 36-year-old entrepreneur’s life can seem downright
exhausting.
Whether she’s taking
in a show, playing a quick
game of tennis in patently unsuitable shades, lounging at her
NYC pied a
terre, hanging
by the pool, or declaring her love for
her new fitness gadget, it’s hard to know where she finds the
time to do it all.
Harder still is to decipher which of those Instagram posts were
bona fide candid snaps, and which were something a little more
orchestrated.
Kardashian is perhaps the most successful celebrity in the
social media age at leveraging her fame into endorsement dollars by
hocking products and services to her followers on the sly.
There’s big money in it. Social media expert Frank Spadafora,
the founder of D’Marie Archive, says between the Kardashian and
Jenner families and more than 300 million collective social media
followers, the Kids can command anywhere between $75,000 to
$300,000 for a post across all of their feeds. When it comes to
product endorsements, “the Kardashians…reign supreme,” he said
during an interview in Los Angeles.
Last month, Kim was robbed at gunpoint in a Paris apartment
after posting pictures on social media of her jewelry, worth
millions of dollars. Since then, her social feeds have been dark,
but there’s ample evidence to suggest endorsements are a major part
of her online presence.
Six-figure price tags for major marketing campaigns may be
nothing new in mainstream media, but in the nebulous world of
social media, they’re breaking new ground for the way they bend the
rules. So Marketplace went digging to try to figure out where the
line between marketing and reality really lies.
Consider the aforementioned fitness post. Kim, her sister Khloe and
her other sister
Kourtney have all declared their love for girdle-like get-ups
known as “waist trainers” in recent years. In none of those snaps
did any of them admit to having been paid to promote the product.
But we’ve since learned that they were, because posts have been
recently updated with captions that include the hashtag #ad.
Timothy Caulfield, an author and professor of health law at the
University of Alberta, says celebrity endorsements like that are
pernicious because they’re a powerful new form of marketing, and
they are taking over a medium that’s getting more and more
impossible to ignore.
“You don’t know if they actually use it,” he said, referring to
Kim’s famous waist training pic, “but I bet it…
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