{"id":6773,"date":"2019-01-26T18:29:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T18:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/has-fyre-festival-burned-influencers\/"},"modified":"2019-01-26T18:29:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T18:29:42","slug":"has-fyre-festival-burned-influencers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/has-fyre-festival-burned-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Fyre Festival burned influencers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"fyreImage copyright<\/span>
\n Fyre <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Expectations….
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“Fyre was basically like Instagram coming to life.” <\/p>\n

Or at least, that was the idea, says DJ\/producer Jillionaire in the new Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened.<\/p>\n

The organisers spent eye-watering sums on an extravagant launch campaign with 10 of the world’s top supermodels sharing gorgeous promotional pictures and videos of themselves partying in luxurious style on a sun-drenched island in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

Kendall Jenner was reportedly paid $250,000 (\u00a3193,000) for one single Instagram post announcing the launch of ticket sales and offering her followers a discount code. <\/p>\n

Despite the “luxury” tickets costing thousands of dollars, the event sold out – many snapped up by social media influencers keen to document their exclusive experience, many in exchange for free accommodation.<\/p>\n

The festival was supposed to run annually for five years. <\/p>\n

However, just like Instagram, away from the filters and the supermodels, the reality turned out to be somewhat different.<\/p>\n

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\n Netflix<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n … versus reality
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The “private jet” in which the guests were supposed to arrive, turned out to be an old rebranded aeroplane. The luxury accommodation consisted of rain-drenched tents, and the gourmet cuisine was a cheese sandwich.<\/p>\n

The event never took place.<\/p>\n

The organiser, Billy McFarland, is now in prison for fraud.<\/p>\n

Bella Hadid, one of the models who took part in the promotions, later apologised to her followers and said she had “trusted” the event would be “amazing and memorable”. <\/p>\n

Kendall Jenner deleted her post.<\/p>\n

Two new documentaries about the luxury event that never was – one by Netflix, the other by US streamer Hulu – have thrown a spotlight on the influencers and celebrities who promoted it.<\/p>\n

You’d be forgiven for thinking this all sounds like extremely bad news for the influencer industry. But you’d be underestimating their Teflon-like resilience in the face of adversity.<\/p>\n

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\n Netflix<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Rapper Ja Rule took part in promotional activity with Billy McFarland
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Rohan Midha, managing director of the PMYB influencer agency, says that while Fyre itself was a disaster, the marketing choices behind it were not.<\/p>\n

“It just shows how powerful influencers can be,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

On the subject of Fyre, he agrees that while the sheer size of the influencer campaign was “unusual”, the results were not.<\/p>\n

“Influencers can reproduce the largest return on investment,” he says. “That’s across the board.”<\/p>\n

Werner Geyser, founder of the Influencer Marketing Hub, agrees. He says since the release of the documentaries his web traffic has spiked as curiosity in the industry has increased.<\/p>\n

“If anything [the Fyre Festival documentary] was showing utilising influencer marketing was part of its success in terms of marketing the event,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It’s all publicity at the end of the day. I think brand managers and influencers will be more cautious and that can only be a good thing.”<\/p>\n

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\n Netflix<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n The Fyre team was keen to promote the exclusivity of the event
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Mr Geyser thinks the documentaries will emphasise the importance of regulation – the responsibility of flagging promoted content using hashtags like #ad, #spon and #sponsored. <\/p>\n

In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US warned celebrities and influencers that they must be clear about when a post has been paid for<\/a> – but not all of them do.<\/p>\n

“Trust is lost when you are selling something that you were paid for but didn’t declare,” says Mr Geyser.<\/p>\n

“If you can say something is sponsored [the consumer] can take it with a pinch of salt.”<\/p>\n

But do they?<\/p>\n

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\n @world_record_egg \/ Instagram<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n The egg that cracked Instagram
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If you doubt the power of a stranger on social media to tell large numbers of people what to do – have a think about this.<\/p>\n

“This month we’ve seen people being influenced by an egg,” says Instagram consultant Danny Coy, referring to a picture of an egg which convinced more than 40m people to “like” it on Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr Coy, whose photography account on Instagram has 157,000 followers, is a former influencer himself. <\/p>\n

“What’s been happening for a while is the rise of the micro-influencer – people who have a much more organic following, less than 10,000, but they are really niche and targeted,” he says.<\/p>\n

“If you want to geo-locate or target certain areas, brands would rather team up with 10 micro-influencers than one big one.” <\/p>\n

The firm Neoreach offers data on influencer industry growth. According to its research and forecasts: <\/p>\n