When influencer marketing goes wrong.

Influencer marketing is a form of online marketing that revolves around online influencers. These online influencers can be celebrities but can also be someone who is popular in an online format. For example, popular YouTubers, Twitch Streamers, or Instagram influencers. Brands will collaborate with influencers to promote a product or service. When mentioning poor influencer marketing the first influencers that come to my mind are Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner. The disastrous Pepsi commercial faced a lot of backlash and is a prime example of poor influencer marketing. There are a lot more examples of poor influencer marketing, Terrie McEvoy for example.

Terrie McEvoy was an Irish blogger who had over 100,000 followers on Instagram. Terrie partnered with Tower Jewellers to promote the brand and a sponsored contest. The prizes for the contest were two bracelets from Tower Jewellers. Terrie rigged the contest and picked her brother’s girlfriend and a close friend of hers to pick the contest. Both Tower Jewellers and Terrie faced a lot of backlash from contest participants. This campaign to promote Tower Jewellers did not work because of the deceitfulness of the influencers.

Terrie McEvoy later deleted her social media accounts. Although later her followers forgave her after Terrie sent out an apology, the damage had already been done to Terrie and Tower Jewellers reputation. After the incident with Terrie McEvoy customers may see Tower Jewellers as a company who isn’t truthful. Even though Tower Jewellers was not involved in picking the contest winners, there is damage to its reputation and could cause issues with loyal customers as well as potential customers. From my point of view, if I saw a rigged contest from a brand I would wonder what other potential lies there could be from the company. This influencer marketing did not work for Tower Jewellers because of the lack of transparency and honesty from the influencer. Because of this poor influencer marketing decisions there has been reputation damage done to the influencer and the brand.