Virtual Influencers
Context
I write about a wide variety of topics. Thanks to the Internet, the supreme aggregator of everything that could possibly distract you, there’s always some idea or story juicy enough to sink your teeth into. We live in an era in which information is absurdly abundant but time & attention are scarce.
In such an era it is a task in itself to prioritize, let alone fully consume, all the content that piqued your interest at some point. You perform a kind of content-triage as a result. Though you never explicitly rank-order all the queued YouTube videos, articles, Twitter threads, and podcasts you want to get to, there is some unrealized formula in your head that determines what you’re going to consume first when you get the time. It’s probably something like:
[Degree of novelty of content]+[Degree of practicality of content]+[Degree to which I am personally interested in content]+[Degree to which I think people I care about may find value in it as well] = What I’m consuming tonight
When the image surrounding today’s topic came across my iPhone screen, it flew to the top of my list of things to learn about. I sent the image to a couple friends. This selected group of friends varies widely in values, age, status, and so on, yet their reactions were identical: Equal parts confusion, disturbance, and intrigue. Without further ado…
Virtual Influencers
This is the image I saw while scrolling through Instagram. Look closely. Neither of the girls posing next to the male in the picture are people. They’re not real — they are a product of software. On the surface, what you are looking at is an influencer hanging out with her two friends. Below the surface, what you are looking at is a company that built a personal brand to sell product and ideology. Hold onto this thought for now.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of “influencers” at this point. But I’m a proponent of being crystal clear on definitions of foundational concepts that will be examined at length. An influencer is:
- One who exerts influence, inspiring or guiding the actions of others
- Gains influencer status because of their authority, knowledge, or relationship with the audience
The ‘girl’ on the left is ‘Miquela’, @lilmiquela on Instagram. She has 3.1M followers, ~1150 posts, and a checkmark circled in blue indicating she’s ‘verified’ by Instagram. She has a link to a Spotify playlist and has #BlackLivesMatter in her bio. She claims to be 19 years old residing in LA. Each of her posts show her out and about with friends (some real, some virtual, with the virtual friends having their own Instagram accounts. There’s a whole network of virtual influencers). Like most influencers, she wears branded designer clothes. The brands she wears are tagged in each post, usually 3 brands tagged per outfit. Each post has a couple hundred comments, from fans and other virtual influencers. The comments range from simple compliments to arguments about insensitive remarks (and if said remarks can really be insensitive if they’re directed at a nonexistent person — thought provoking indeed). Unsurprisingly the demographic here is young girls as evidenced by the comment section.
Miquela has collaborated with notable brands including Vogue and Samsung, as well as celebrities like Diplo and Shane Dawson. Did I mention that she’s a singer with millions of streams on YouTube?
She’s also positioned as a ‘social justice activist’. In 2019 a Calvin Klein advertisement featuring Miquela and supermodel Bella Hadid depicted the two women passionately kissing “to promote freedom of expression for a wide range of identities, including a spectrum of gender and sexual identities”. The ad faced deep criticism for “queerbaiting”, or “the act of alluding to queer relationships without actually depicting them”. In 2018, she engaged in a feud with a pro-Trump virtual influencer. For the sake of brevity I’m going to leave it at that; I’m sure you grasp the gist.
Who ‘owns’ Miquela? A media company by the name of Brud. Brud was recently bought out by DapperLabs, a massive player in the NFT space. DapperLabs is the company behind NBA TopShot & CryptoKitties — some of the most successful ecosystems involving NFT technology. We don’t know how large the purchase was but Brud had a $125M valuation back in 2019. For readers unfamiliar with the world of blockchains, NFTs, and so on — understand that these are not small company names or trivial events.
Given the success of Miquela, it makes sense that there are many other virtual influencers that have their own stories, personalities, demographics, products to sell and ideology to promote. By following virtual influencers, consumers signal their interests and spending behaviours, and companies get to select from a library of personalities that might align with their brand. Take Knox Frost as an example, the 20 year old ‘guy’ from Atlanta.
Two main takeaways here: 1) There is a real community that has been/can be built around virtual influencers, and 2) As influencers, they market both product and ideology.
Was This a Long Time Coming? (Anthropomorphism)
While the novelty of carefully constructed CGI girls’ Instagram profiles is eye-catching and off-putting, it’s not as shocking once you peel back the layers.
Once the initial shock value has worn off, you start to see virtual influencers as merely a new tool brands can use to ‘anthropomorphize’ themselves.
“Anthropomorphism” is defined as “attribution of human motivation, characteristics or behaviour to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomenon.” Anthropomorphosis has been, and continues to be key to connecting with consumers.
As a student of marketing, I’ve been taught to observe companies becoming more ‘lifelike’ over time. Once-faceless corporations have evolved into what we call brands — increasingly anthropomorphous entities. Brands have identity. They have a value system (often unrelated to their product/service). They have a colour (scheme). They even have a voice (Brands intentionally curate their vernacular to control the impression they give off — for example, Wendy’s Twitter account sounds like a witty Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy). Some brands have an individual that embodies the organization (think of Elon).
With virtual influencers, they have an entirely customizable person, more malleable than a real person could ever be.
One Step Further — Communities
Let that sink in, then go one step further — brands can have an entirely customizable group of persons. They can effectively create their own fake hype and fake communities for products, as a method of kickstarting actual hype and real communities.
The potential here is too big to ignore. Imagine that Nike plans to unveil a new line of sneakers at some point over the next 24 months. Nike wants to creatively market the new line. Nike might ask Brud to come up with a virtual influencer strategy to create hype. A basic example of this strategy in action might look like:
- Nike vaguely teases the new product line in an Instagram post
- Lets say Miquela is designed to be the most fashion-forward of the network of virtual influencers, so she’s the first to ‘notice’ this teaser — she shares it on her Instagram story before anyone else with a caption signaling her interest (Mixing in a few emojis — 😮🤔😻 etc.)
- Nike announces the product line a few weeks later in a press release with a corresponding Instagram post. Miquela and another trendy virtual influencer friend of hers leave comments on the post to draw attention to it
- When the product line launches, another virtual influencer posts her and Miquela going to the Nike store together, buying the newest product and finally posing with it on their feet. All of Brud’s other virtual influencers leave comments in adoration, and upon checking their profiles you see that they all have their own set of interactions with the new product line too.
This gives brands the choice to roll out a comprehensive influencer campaign that is centralized — they don’t have to gather 10 different influencers, with their own schedules, pricing and requirements. They went to Brud, a single entity with the exclusive control of many, and Brud took care of it.
Closing Thoughts
Influencers can be categorized by their domain of influence (fashion, politics, geography, etc.) and by size (ex., 1M+ followers vs 10K followers). I’ve yet to hear them categorized by whether or not they actually exist — whether they are real or virtual. I’m willing to bet that this will become a more relevant categorization as we increasingly spend time in the Metaverse, just as we spend increasing amounts of time on social media (if that sounds like some very distant hypothetical reality, you are wrong. The rise of smartphone use and social media over the past 10 years is merely a sign of what is to come — the Metaverse is coming, soon).
I am particularly fascinated by the idea of having a network of virtual influencers kickstart hype and communities through their interactions with one another.
Currently, it seems that virtual influencers are predominantly created by marketing companies that can aggregate a bunch of sponsoring brands. I bet that we’ll eventually see non-media companies build their own virtual influencers specifically for their brands. Or, take old existing mascots and put them on new marketing steroids. Imagine Ronald McDonald makes a stylized comeback and is suddenly on your 9 year old’s Instagram feed enjoying a Happy Meal with a woke Hamburglar. The sky’s the limit.
Speculation aside, I’m 100% sure that virtual influencers will grow in popularity and scope. Right now they only target younger generations, who are relatively open minded. But just like how Facebook was at one point a place only high schoolers and college students visited, older cohorts will eventually adopt. Eventually there will be virtual influencers to target your aunt who didn’t know what Facebook was 10 years ago, but now cannot go a day without it.
Advanced Closing Thoughts
If you use a website like Twitter, odds are you are already way more familiar with the concept of virtual influencers than you may have thought. On Twitter, oftentimes you’re interacting with individuals operating under an alias, a pseudonym. What makes them so different from virtual influencers? The only real differences might be the type of content they are releasing and the degree to which you perceive them to be virtual. As far as you know, that ‘person’ who you happen to agree with all the time might not be a person at all, maybe they’re actually a marketing company trying to sell you product or ideology…
—
If you enjoyed this, let me know. If you didn’t enjoy this, let me know.
