2 - #PaidInfluencer, #HushMoney

Now a days, anyone can be famous. It's not that hard. With luck and algorithm on your side, you can go from posting selfies on Instagram to posting sponsored content, #paidad. Usually a moment of virality has to happen. And that's basically what happened. I posted a video and it literally might not be a notification of what's not buzzing. This is Bous. He went from being a digital marketing consultant to a viral comedian on TikTok. That virality is something that I think marketers already know how to achieve and virality is done via consistency first. So basically on TikTok, you will need to post frequently first so that the algorithm acknowledges you as well. Okay, this is an actual account that will post frequently. So therefore, this account has clear value contribution to our platform because people watch their stuff. Once they see that, okay, let's try to serve more views to video number 15 that they posted. That's when the virality happens. Today, its Bous has 55,000 followers on TikTok and his videos get up to 500,000 views. Now Bous is using his platform for something else as well. He's using it to bolster the campaign of his presidential candidate in the 2022 elections. Hello, I'm Jonathan Ohm, this information researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Harvard University. And I'm Kath Ventura, a journalist and executive producer at Puma Podcast. In this podcast, we take you deep into the shadowy world of political campaigns, pay trolls and disinformation networks in the Philippines. This is Catch Me If You Can, powered by Puma Podcast. That's right, Jonathan, and this is episode two. Yes, I'm so excited. Yeah. I think we have a lot to unpack from the first episode. We were just talking about trolls and now we're going to be talking about influencers. This is the second tier, Tamaba. Yes, so these are micro celebrities, online celebrities, people we follow on Instagram, on TikTok and Twitter, we like their content, they're relatable. But they can also be used for politics. Yeah, they can. And that's what we're going to be talking about with Bous Rufo. So hi, I am Bous Rufo. I am a digital marketing consultant and content creator at the same time. Bous Rufo is an LGBT comedian, TikToker. As he, it's Bous on TikTok and he produces excellent comedy content that carries the toxic work cultures in advertising and public relations. For this election cycle, we also observe that Bous Rufo is supporting the Lenny Robredo campaign. Lenny Robredo and also Kiko Pangininan. He is able to tell us a little bit about how influencers are used for brands, but also for political campaigns. Usually, a moment of virality has to happen. And that's basically what happened with my post in the video and literally my notifications did not stop buzzing. And that virality is something that I think marketers already know how to achieve. And virality is done via consistency first. So basically on TikTok, you will need to post frequently first so that the algorithm acknowledges you. Once they see that, okay, let's try to serve more views to video number 15 that they post it, that's when the virality happens. It's interesting about Bous and when we had this interview with him, that he's not only an influencer, he's also a digital marketing consultant. So the background as an account executive, he's the one who pitches strategy designs strategy right also works with a creative team. And he's also instrumental in selecting the right platforms in which corporate brands would want to be seen in to reach their customers. Right. And let's listen to what he has to say about that. Influencers are served on a platter to the client. It's purely the agency's responsibility in the sense that because the agency's function as the client set of eyes and ears in the outside world, it's up to the agency to tell the client that K, these are the quote-unquote movers and shakers of digital space now in terms of who are the people who can start conversations, who can write great engagement, and that's usually how the conversation starts with the client. And then they go through several rounds of influencer names of missions, usually an agency needs to have a list of 300 people prepared in order for a client to choose about 10 to 20% of that. So it's a very long, grueling process and there's a finalizing the list of influencers who will be part of the campaign. Sometimes the agency has some tech infrastructure to be able to look at which influencers really are performing in terms of engagement or in terms of catering to a specific audience. Or sometimes they can just be purely subjective, like from an intuitive standpoint, these are the influencers who sit the campaign. That's usually what happens. But before we go into that, Jonathan, how do we define influencers? Influencers are often referred to as digital first personalities, so they're differentiated from traditional celebrity, whom we know through the movies, through TV, right? So these are digital first personalities, often they're ordinary internet users who eventually gained a large following on social media through different posts, funny visuals and memes, but also stories about their personal lives. And increasingly influencers are able to use their influence, their clout for entrepreneurial gain. And that's why they're increasingly used as marketers and endorsers. But who labels them as an influencer, or is that just something you sort of identify as? I do have friends from back in college that are from Atlanta, and I've been looking at Instagram for a long time, there were followers, and there were paid advertisements, but I know that she just started that account, like everybody else, to post about her life stories, her highlights. So in that sense, is she an influencer even without people like Baos telling her that she is one? We can define them as such based on their number of followers if we want to be very quantitative about it. And even if there are other tiers of influencers, there's the lowest tier which we call the nano influencers. There are 10,000 followers and below, for example, for academics, there are some of the influencers that, you know, they're not really sighted very well, but they're getting their TikToks and they're getting it. And then there's micro influencers, there are around 50,000 followers and below. And then there is the mid-influencer, about 100,000, and then there's the mega-influencer. So about 500,000 or a million followers. People's journey to becoming influencers could be very, very different. Some start from very humble, ordinary beginnings that they're just like really smart with using social media. But of course, but some of us have access to more resources, or we have friends who are legitimate celebrities, and therefore the Bacong Mapoestka Mataga, the friend who is a celebrity, and they're both together in the pause. But what I'm hearing behind your question also is, do you see what's going on in your career? Is it kind of tacky for you to call yourself an influencer? Or your primary profession is influencer? Would you like to hang out with such a person? Yes, that's right, because now, every time we go to a coffee shop, and there's a poster, there's a lot of posters, because you're sharing it on IG, as a highlight of the day. But going back to the end of the day, we're going back to the end of the day. The tears that you mentioned, but the number of followers. Are you basing it off of like how advertisers would categorize these people? So the industry defines, it's based on industry metrics, cocinio ng nano, micro, mid, or mega influencer. And based on these tears, my range then, the diet sa kanila. I personally don't know how much a micro or a nano would make from one specific post, but I'm sure Baos would. And so we should ask him. So your micro is about 15,000. I think a mid-tier influencer will cost around 30,000 pesos. That's someone that has at least, I think, 50,000 followers on Instagram. And then it just goes up from there. The most expensive, I think, will probably get to the celebrity level influencers. Already, these mainly are your celebrities who usually are affiliated with a big network. A celebrity who currently has an ongoing tele series or no time show, which I think is the gold standard of celebrity level influencer. My wouldn't be surprised if someone will charge about 200,000 to 300,000 pesos per post. So we have an idea of who these influencers are, how much they make, how many followers they should have, but in terms of personality, they sort of take on persona, don't they, Jonathan? I think what Baos is getting at is, especially for a political campaign, but not necessarily even for a corporate marketing campaign, you want to make sure that you spread your message, such that it becomes relevant to different demographics, right? So you want to be talking to the mommies, you want to be talking to younger people, you also want to talk to more like intellectual crowds. And therefore, the selection of influencers have to be very strategic. And let's focus it on political campaigns. So you would want to have accounts that you can see your positive messaging, those who can talk about your accomplishments as a politician. So therefore, go to the major neutral and safe account. So maybe a mom blogger kind of account, maybe even like a inspirational quotes account. Many people are going on Twitter and on Instagram, right? They're wellness influencers. So you might want to use them to do the positive messaging. At the same time, as we know, in any campaign, you'll have to be able to attack. The strategist will also select your bitchy snarky accounts. These accounts are the parody accounts, the dark humor accounts, or these accounts that specialize in, you know, you can call me the bar humor. Right, you're peeping the sun. Oh, oh, oh, the pan roast, there's so many accounts like that on TikTok, on Twitter. Yeah, I'm also thinking about parody accounts like Malakanyang events, in catering services, or Senora San Di Banyes, who has 5.6 million followers, right? 5.6 million followers, mega influencer. On Facebook, to shimper, you want to include them also for attack ads, and attack funny humor, sarcasm, kinds of posts. At the same time, you also want to assemble, you can match your past smart. Obviously, in our visual age as well, you have a sexy account. So I like the term "thirst trap influencers." Thirst trap influencers. Wait, how does that work? Can you explain? They will post something provocative, and then they'll see a campaign message, you know? Yes, I've seen that happen. We saw this happen in 2019 elections, and I can name names, and we were able to take screenshots of my Instagram influencers, that very sexy men, six pack abs, eight pack abs, tapos nasa beach, nasa holiday, tapos biglang may in really ad. Wow. So some of them are not that bad. So I actually don't think it was very effective, because it looks so unorganic, right? It's just that you need to be able to visualize your messaging. But anyway, you get what I mean. Yes, that's right. And I'm sure before we go into the campaigns, and how these are being used, I'm just curious now, don't people following these influencers, don't they feel slighted when all of a sudden and really shows up that he's not as hot anymore, tapos biglang may be seeing it in a politician. That's a great question, Kat. So yeah, as a professor, you are much younger than me. But I'm increasingly seeing this judgment. The way I sell out the influencer, I get the bias in the influencer. To me, that judgment is like a generation thing. So like older people will tend to kind of judge that person or that account, more negatively. For young people, what I notice from when I talk to my own students, who are 18, 19, like in college, they see it as actually a success story. If you want to add from a politician or a corporate brand. So I don't know, this is just my observation. And I wonder whether our listeners agree with this. So Kat, I want to ask you, whether you think for young people, what are their own idols? The influencers on Instagram, on TikTok, they're also not too far removed from these people. They tend to be ordinary people to begin with as well. So don't you think that young people are aspiring to become them? And therefore, if they see their idol getting an endorsement, they're like, "Oh, one day, I'll be there." Yeah, actually, you know, that's how aspirational and that's how we're going to invest. I'm going to try to push you up. Maybe you'll be there. But I think it's also a very thin line. Like, there are forgivable things, and there are un forgivable things. Now, if you are, I think there's a conviction about the dark days during the martial law era. If you hear your influencer, this person you're following online, say otherwise, it might leave us our days in your mouth. That's a non-negotiable thing for me. And I don't want to go there. So I might just cancel you out. And we've seen celebrities get canceled out because of this. For sure, yeah. So, cancel culture is real. And I think that's like a very kind of consumer activism, mode of engagement. Again, we go back to discussions of ethics where do people draw the line? I can see this also play out when it comes to, you know, people I follow on Instagram. It seems like there's a lot of repetitive things. It's like a post, a post, a paid ad. Hey, I used to follow you because you were so authentic. You were telling me about your life, about your struggles. But now, all you can do is to promote a wellness brand. So, again, the notion of what extent you want to continue pleasing your fans, giving them the content that they expect. Also, you yourself, I'm doing it for your own entrepreneurial benefits. So, you have a lot of influence. So, I'm sure that you're right. Even though I'm on Twitter, I have 4,000 followers. But I sometimes clam up. Oh, my God, I need to tweet something. There's something going on. On influencers getting canceled. And also, people sort of having non-negotiables, right? They're in their beliefs. And also drawing the line. And getting turned off by the influencers themselves. This is the first time you've ever experienced it. There was a troll who started bringing up a different conversation or skewing the conversation during a live stream. And this was a six experience. This was a popular strategy of theirs. About six, seven months ago, I was doing a live stream. And when I was watching other live streams, so usually the conversation is just like about, "Okay, what happened to me today?" And then someone will ask, "Hi, where are you voting for?" And then that's usually like the tram already. Like, "Hey, I don't where are you voting for?" And then if you tell them Lenny and Ben, that's when they, "Oh, my God, Lenny. Kapalalo, and then they use that to just hijack the conversation with the other people in the live stream." And then you start to adapt wherever it's casting the live stream. I guess it's just one tactic that I saw of how the Marcos team was at work. I'm going to get another execution applied from influencers or co-opinating on existing posts. so I experienced something where I was talking about something else and then a troll dominated the conversation and had talking points with them. What we heard from Bounce here is a new example of what happens of influencer warfare. The trolls are actually interfering other influencers, influencers of the rival political camp by posting negative comments during a live. We kind of know this a little bit when for example, like a rappler or an ABS CBN do a live stream and then they put on DDS or Marcos accounts. But for influencers, they don't have influencers either. What is the appeal that these influencers have? Why are all of a sudden are they flocking to them and trying to get their support? So why are influencers important in political campaigns? So influencers first and foremost have a degree of relatability and authenticity. These are people we look up to, we kind of feel that they're friends, especially the micro and nano influencers that are not super sick and therefore when they start promoting a politician, you feel that there's an alignment of values. This person whom you've trusted reinforces, okay, this politician also represents shared values that you might have. So I think they're really effective in that way. At the same time, influencers are super strategic based on again, the number of followers that they have. They have a good friend or a viral particular message. One academic concept that my colleagues Alice Marrowick and Becca Lewis have developed is the concept of attention hacking attention hacking. What does this mean? So in a very competitive social media environment, people are fighting for our attention and influencers are super good at hacking our attention at directing our attention to focus on a specific issue or crisis or scandal. What they need to do is, you know, a little bit of coordination like a group of six to 10 influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers posting the same hashtag. This is what the followers are and they would tend to reshare, repose and suddenly you have a viral event. And the purpose of attention hacking ultimately is for journalists and mainstream media to pick up that story too. Secondly, the whole community or citizenry is suddenly talking about a new news agenda that was actually see that by influencers. We actually observe attention hacking through a seeded hashtag by anonymous influencer way back in January 2015. The event was, if you recall, there was a failed military operation in Mama Sapano in Maginda now that resulted in the death of 44 special action force personnel. And the discussion online was, where was President Benigno Neu Neu Akino? We saw the hashtag nasaanangpangulo trend on Twitter. So what we did here in our investigation was look at who was the first poster of nasaanangpangulo. And it was an anonymous code account, the Bob-ong code account or I love Bob-ong. This account is if you look at it, for the inspirational codes. You know what? Anya Re, Neu Neu Akino hashtag nasaanangpangulo. And then had a picture of the casket of the personnel. And so it was a very evocative image and it was also retweeted by many anonymous accounts. Our suspicion is that this was a top-down strategic operation. It was a group that was assembled to really see this narrative that Neu Neu Akino is an absentee leader. Of course, it's also the general public who picked it up. There were ordinary people retweeted hashtag nasaanangpangulo. And eventually, it was picked up by Philippine National News Media and even International News Media. Umabut Patosa, BBC, I would argue that local media, international news media should have done more investigation than the feeling that this looked like a real strategic operation. I mean, if that's not proof enough, the bar of the kind of influence an influencer campaign has, I don't know what is. So I guess we go back to this idea of targeted campaigning. Why politicians are subscribing to these influencers then? They say it's because of how targeted and the kind of relationship that they have built with their followers. In one of the webinars that I did listen to, they were saying that the vast majority of people know influencers because it's not exactly about quantity. It's more of the quality of the relationship that you have with these influencers. Of course, the number of following matters, but I think it matters less now because there are far more micro nano influencers who provide way better engagements than your bigger influencers. So I think it's an engagement really that that is the main yardstick when it comes to choosing who will do well for a campaign. So for me, I'm a huge fan of Makoidubbs on Instagram and TikTok. So Makoidubbs, another LGBTQ influencer. I love how he or they I'm not too sure about their pronouns, but what he they would do on Instagram and TikTok would be to craft different personas that are. It's social auntie, the social tita and then create a storyline around each of these personas. And then occasionally would post about an endorsement also would sometimes post about a politician, but he does so in always such a witty and creative and unexpected way. I think that's the punch line yeah, sometimes you don't see it coming, but super funny, so I would support you whatever Makoidubbs would endorse. When we go back to how the politicians are using these campaigns, definitely, you're not going to let the bad or the fun. Of course, and I think we need to track in the spends of politicians when it comes to influencer marketing. So this is big business and it does matter for elections because campaign finance is one important monitoring and accountability tool that should be oriented towards election integrity and fairness. So if we're seeing some politicians overspend when it comes to their influencer marketing and their endorsements, I think that's an unfair advantage compared with other politicians, don't you think. And what we're seeing right now, is existing regulatory frameworks, now come elect is so narrowly defined on advertising, you know, we hit on TV, we hit on radio or print billboards and as well as boosted posts on Facebook. But influencer marketing, in the past, for example, political advertising frameworks and monitoring some social media accounts that are run anonymously are endorsing dozens of candidates for this election cycle, is that fair. I think there needs to be more monitoring and accountability here, and you know that I've been monitoring this account for a while, Senora Santibanyas on Facebook, this account has 5.6 million followers on Facebook alone, I haven't checked their follower accounts on other platforms, I'm sure considerable following on other platforms. So for this election cycle, it endorse, I think there's a party list or two. You know the wifi party list? - Now, why if I'm partiedless? No, I don't. - Well, well now I know what we are. Thanks to San Juarez Antibanyas. So one post promoting Sarah Duterte yielded 159,000 likes, 2,800 comments, 1,900 shares. That's a kind of reach this account has. - Yeah, and those are just the people who reacted to it, right? - I don't know, but if he scrolled through it because someone liked it, then you can see the profile. That's a different kind of reach trend. And if we're gonna base it on what Baos said, but Baos told us earlier celebrity level influencer will be paid about 200 to 300,000 pesos per post. - Per post, so that's the fee that Baos had mentioned when it comes to celebrity level influencer. My hunch is Senora because Anonim was Shah, Indina Man Shah, you know, like a TV personality. Feeling could not demand that high, but still maybe like a 100kish. I think there just needs to be more transparency. So I'm not asking to unmask who Senora is, but I'm asking that the politicians who had hired Senora disclose the amount that has been poured into the account and also to declare that in their own campaign spends. And in other election cycles, Senora Santibanias was also strategically used by Nancy B9. So leading up to the 2019 election, Nancy B9 was running for Senator. So prior to this campaign, Senora Santibanias was actually very anti-B9. And the account that Senora is very snarky and very bitchy, the bubble would make fun. To me, like below the belt, the humor that poking fun at the collar of the skin of Nancy B9 in their family. And to me, Anonim was Nancy B9 ended up paying out Senora Santibanias to essentially shut her up, right? So Senora Santibanias eventually started endorsing formally Nancy B9. They even published like a joke book together. So to me, that is a way in which you know, you recognize the power of this account to see very controversial narratives and the viral content that poke fun at your persona, right, Nancy B9. I'm sure that's super hurtful and insulting. - We did that in Makitana. You know, if you can't beat them, join them or pay them to run the campaign for you. And do you think it became even more successful when she had Senora on board? - I would like to think that it was a creative campaign. She actually embraced the fact that she had been bullied for her looks and her skin color and made that a part of her advocacy. But in a way, silence the criticism and own their own persona, right, so they went directly and confronted that issue head on. And obviously, the silence you mean person attacking them. - And you can only get that from chief architects, from chief strategists. And that's the top fear, isn't it? - Yeah, so next week, we will actually have a very special episode that will bring us to the mastermind of political campaigns. And of course, this information can't be used. These are the political strategists, the political elites, also economic elites who operate from the corporate boardrooms of advertising and PR groups. - Right, and it's gonna be a special episode because we'll be taking from the research that you've done and the interviews that you have done before Jonathan. - Yeah, so we will actually listen to our own interview with a PR strategist that was enlisted for a national level campaign back in 2016. - So check out that episode and follow our country, if you can. Wherever you listen to podcasts, I'm Kath Ventura. - And I'm Jonathan Ong. This episode was funded by interviews and powered by Uma Podcast. - It was produced by myself and edited by Fresh Capistrano. Follow Kath Ventura on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, or wherever you listen. And if you like this episode, do share it with a friend. - Thanks for listening.