When most people wake up in the morning, the first thing they do is open their phones and dive into their social media feeds. Social media is a crucial part of nearly everyone’s daily routine as hours are spent scrolling through Instagram, X and TikTok. These platforms serve as a gateway to the latest and most sought-after trends. Whether it’s the hottest new fashion craze or the newest restaurant in the area, social media has a constant influence on people’s choices and preferences.
Influencers are one of the biggest tools that social media platforms have when it comes to setting trends. The term “influencer” typically refers to people with large social media followings who create content on those platforms as a source of income. Through this content, they tend to influence their audience to do or buy something, hence the name “influencer.”
One of the main ways influencers make money online is through product endorsement. Product endorsement is when a company pays an influencer to try their product and review it online. As a result of the influencer reviewing the product, its demand increases, as everyone tries to get their hands on it.
Over the past few months, there have been many products that beauty influencers online have been raving about. Drunk Elephant, a high-dollar skincare line, often uses influencer product endorsements. The brand has been trendy lately, particularly a line of drops released in 2018– the Bronzi Drops, the Glowi Drops and the Rosi Drops. These drops are meant to mix with moisturizer to act as both makeup and skincare. Videos reviewing the Drops went viral in March 2023 and influencers online began raving about them.
Although some of the viral videos were genuine reviews, many of them were paid endorsements. Beauty influencer Kylie Larsen posted a video reviewing the Bronzi Drops, in which she states that Drunk Elephant sent her the product for free for her to review it in return. These types of videos are often misleading to consumers, as they begin to blur the lines between ads and genuine reviews.
Drunk Elephant began to increase in interest on Google searches, and remained consistently popular until September 2023, according to the Google Trends from the last 12 months. During this time, all three of these products were consistently sold out at Sephora and Ulta due to all the attention they received online.
This is not isolated to beauty products. Social media is constantly influencing where their audience shops, what clothes they wear and even what they eat. TikTok added a new category to the main page of the app in September 2023, the TikTok shop. TikTok shop is “a shopping experience built for TikTok” according to the TikTok Shop webpage. This addition to the app allows people to sell and buy products directly on TikTok.
Since TikTok is a platform for creating content, this shop furthers the paid product endorsements but allows it to feel less like an ad and more like a genuine reaction of a product. If someone buys the product after watching the positive review, the person who made the video will receive compensation for endorsing the product. It’s typically a very small profit, roughly 25 cents for every product that is sold. Anyone who purchases an item from the TikTok shop can make one of these endorsement videos for profit. This allows people with small followings to create product endorsement videos, making it more difficult to decipher whether something is an ad or not.
Today, everyone is using social media, and many don’t realize the effect the content they consume has on their choices as a consumer. As social media grows in popularity, so does its influence on trends. From skincare to fashion and beyond, platforms like TikTok and Instagram are always dictating consumer behavior. Influencers make content that tends to blur the lines between a genuine recommendation and promotional content. This leads to new fads, and products sold out in every store.
