College Admissions Scandal Creates Backlash on Influencers

College Admissions Scandal Creates Backlash on Influencers
Olivia Jade had her sephora partnership pulled following the college admissions scandal

By Samantha Lyster

With the recent college admissions scandal implicating Hollywood parents and their offspring, influencer Olivia Jade has found herself in the crosshairs. Olivia, whose mother is Lori Loughlin (Beckey from “Full House”) has spent the last few years as a successful influencer, striking brand contracts with the likes of Sephora.

The admissions scandal showed that Lori paid a consulting firm lots of money to get her daughter into the University of Southern California, despite her grades being lower than the general population. The revelation of Lori’s work with this firm caused widespread backlash against Olivia Jade, and Sephora pulled its lucrative makeup line with the celebutant.

“After careful review of recent developments, we have made the decision to end the Sephora Collection partnership with Olivia Jade, effective immediately,” the Sephora spokesperson said. Olivia had a line of Olivia x Sephora makeup palettes and other collections with the beauty retailer as well as a big vlog following.

Online fashion retailer Lulu’s has also decided not to work with Jade. Olivia Jade has had many partnerships with Amazon, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, and other big name brands. So how do you choose the “right” influencer? It’s important to find a celebrity endorser that appeals to your target audience and demographic.

The ending of the relationship strikes up bigger questions about so-called influencers. An influencer is someone whose opinions are trusted by their followers. They can be a celebrity, a blogger, or a sports personality. These are the people who, when they say how awesome a product is, people listen. They personally don’t direct benefit from the success of the product, more they get paid to talk about the product.

Ninety-two percent of consumers around the world trust reviews and recommendations from people they know, as in friends, family, and trusted advisors. Brands control influencer marketing as a way to forge a path between new prospects and new customers faster. At the end of the day, trust and legitimacy beat a sales pitch any day.

The Davis Milling Company was one of the first companies to introduce an influencer, Aunt Jemima. To personify their brand, they picked a jolly woman with a big smile to appear on all their packaging, even to this day.

While Aunt Jemima may have been the first real influencer that we know of, the King of England has also had his fair share of endorsements. In 1760, King George III endorsed the pottery of Josiah Wedgwood, giving it the royal stamp of approval. This was now considered a “celebrity” endorsement to advertise and sell his products. The endorsement from the King boosted Wedgwood’s reputation compared to the other average potters with no face to their brand. To this day, Wedgwood pottery is a popular and trusted brand.

As the 20thcentury comes about, we begin to see more and more brands adopting influencer marketing. Sports stars start to become linked to products and brands, more than any other celebrity at the time. For example, names like Babe Ruth were being associated with tobacco companies across the country.

Now, we live in an all-digital age where being an influencer can become a career. For example, Meghan Young, a professional Instagram star that gets paid to climb beautiful mountains. Young makes money from companies that pay her to endorse their products on her Instagram feed, and is part of the social media influencer cycle. Companies may end up spending 1.6 billion this year on this kind of marketing on Facebook and Instagram alone. That money has fueled the rise of influencers around the world, flooding Instagram with millions of sponsored ads and posts a year. Young promotes a variety of products and destinations related to what she loves, climbing mountains. The process starts with landing sponsorship deals, this means spending days or even weeks researching potential clients’. Young estimates that about 70 percent of pitches she sends to potential partners ends in rejection. Even though doing this could be tiresome, Young says it has all been worth it because sponsorships allow her to spend much of her life in the mountains doing what she loves.

Even though being an influencer seems like a great gig, it comes with a lot of responsibility. Brands have become disconnected from their target audience, so they turn to influencers because they’ve earned their trust of their communities as opinion leaders. Some mishaps can lead to a brand ending an endorsement deal if the brand management disagrees with the influencers actions. For example, Paula Deen admitted to using racial slurs in the pasts and when that deposition was leaked, the backlash was intense. Deen lost deals with Walmart, Smithfields Foods, Target, Home Depot, and her tv show with the Food Network was terminated. Another example, Tiger Woods lost endorsement deals with Gillette and Gatorade after his mistress’s scandal broke out. He reportedly lost around 22 million that year alone in endorsement deals

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