I recently received a campaign brief over email on an upcoming ambassador program (revealing on IG really soon!) and had some food for thought which i decided to pen down in a quick blog post.
After reading the brief, i suddenly got reminded on how challenging it is to be a content creator. (I'm not using the term - influencers cos 1. I'm personally not a fan of the term cos it's being used too loosely and 2. I can go on and on rambling about the "influence" people actually have and the actual effectiveness of what they produce. Maybe i will talk more about it later in this post)
Ok, back to being a content creator.
I must really applaud the ones who actually spend time creating good and useful content that delivers the message across. I'm not talking about those pretty/ handsome faces who just hold the product and take a selfie with it kind and then post the photo with some caption which no one reads. *cough* "influencers" *cough* I'm referring to those puts in the effort to come up with a concept in line with the brief that they got from their clients. At the end of the day, they are proud of what they came up with.
(I'm probably gonna offend some influencers in this post but whatever lah.)
These content creators are different from celebrities. Celebrities when they endorse a certain product, they just have to appear on set and do everything as directed because there is a whole team behind that already conceptualized the idea and all they need is someone of influence a.k.a the celebrity to bring out the brand/ product. I'm not saying they no effort but they also need to pose or act and they are obviously good at their craft.
Content creators might or might not have a team, but they are usually only a one man show which means he or she does everything from liaising with client, coming up with concept, plan outfits, select location, self "photo shoot" (sometimes even using self timers cos they are alone), then selection of photo(s), post editing, thinking of content/ caption and i'm sure there are more things on top of those that i just mentioned. All for just a post. Be it just 1 instagram photo, a video or a blog post.
The amount of effort behind the scene can be tremendous and it can get really stressful when there is just no inspiration plus there might have a deadline to meet. At times as a content creator, you might even ask yourself, should i just pose with the product like some people and get over and done with? Honestly speaking, there are a couple of times i did that due to pressure and i was filled with regrets after. To the point that after a couple of months past the campaign, i decided to delete the post away because i'm not proud of it.
(I keep using the word "they" but i also actually meant myself lah, HAHAHA. I've done countless of campaigns with brands on my blog and i know how difficult it is. So i'm giving myself a word of encouragement through this blog post. *gives myself a pat on the back*)
I really applaud those who made it big through their efforts because they truly deserve it. In local context, we have YouTubers like NOC and Jianhaotan, or bloggers like Jemmawei and DreaChong and even though there are some debate on whether some influencers deserves the fame and what comes along with it but what we cannot deny is the effort behind the scenes in creating content that we see online now. They are the true influencers. How many of us dare say we can sell out a product offline?
Even if you have 20,000 or even 50,000 followers online how much influence do you really have? (as we all know, numbers can be inflated anyways) Is it based on your number of average likes per post? That might be used as a KPI for clients but probably only you yourself know how much influence you have exactly or when you have something to prove it. Like when DreaChong collaborated with the shoe brand, Superga and it was so successful that several media outlets wrote about it and people actually set a reminders on their calendars to go down to the stores to get the shoes that she designed together with the brand. How many the so called "influencers" now can achieve that?
I'm not saying the rest of people (including myself) have zero influence but i just felt that like what Uncle Ben in Spiderman said, "With great power comes great responsibilities" Make good use of the platform you have not just for personal gain, but think of how you can use it to deliver certain messages better and be proud of what you put out to everyone.
Am i sounding too serious? Am i making any sense? Anyway, just food for thought. Ciaos.
