This is the Dawning of the Age of Personal Branding
In last week’s newsletter, I made an allusion to a Vice article that was cut for being “too snarky.” As I was never able to place it elsewhere, I fail to see the harm in posting it now.
Looking for the original draft of this piece required booting up an old computer. The first document I noticed on its hard drive was entitled “MONEY VICE OWES ME.” (In April 2016, not that you asked, the amount was $810.)
The following was written nine years ago. Were we ever so young that this influencer shit was once considered novel?
When I was your age (Hi, I’m 800 years old), selling out was a check no one’s ass was willing to cash; in the glory days of grunge, getting in bed with “the man” meant kissing your credibility goodbye. Christ, even cutting your hair was considered tantamount to sucking the Devil’s capitalistic cock.
Times have changed, as they are wont to do; now, no one bats an eyelash when an indie band licenses a song to a car commercial or a feminist icon signs as the new face of a makeup line. It’s all considered “exposure,” and in the modern world, exposure has become the be-all and end-all of human existence. Adrift in a sea of selfies, we do our damndest to claw above the fray, to be noticed. And what better way to be noticed than to align ourselves with a higher power? Now, when I say a “higher power,” I’m not talking about God (could anything be less marketable than our creator?). I’m talking about big business, and the ego-validating publicity it can provide one’s “personal brand.”
While the ‘90s may be dead and buried, the anti-establishment ethos that fueled it is still very much alive. Millennials, much like their Generation X predecessors, are deeply distrustful of traditional advertising. They know snack chip brands do not have their best interests at (cholesterol-clogged) heart. The schmaltzy marketing that worked like gangbusters on their parents is now considered insincere, disingenuous. They are unique and special flowers, who deserve to be courted accordingly. They crave “authenticity.” In this environment, sponsored content has thrived.
In an attempt to personalize their products, companies now court the substantial influence of well-known bloggers. When a respected style icon gushes to her legion of online fans about a new lipstick, she puts a human face on an otherwise faceless multi-million dollar global conglomerate. By creating a “collaborative partnership” with style and beauty bloggers, businesses succeed in humanizing the merchandise they’re pushing. This is far more insidious than the advertising of years past; by presenting paid plugs as the sincere, unbiased opinion of the person giving them, they don’t appear to be ads at all.
I, along with a bevy of bloggers, recently attended the Create and Cultivate conference, a gathering of “the next generation of curious creatives, entrepreneurs and business leaders,” designed to “enlighten, entertain and inspire across multiple categories such as fashion, design and business.” With panels like “Brand Love” and “The Art of Instagram,” the event was designed to teach you, the novice, how to sell out in an “authentic” looking fashion and in the process escape with 200,000 Instagram followers and your dignity unscathed.
Many of my fellow attendees wore sun hats indoors; the vast majority sported those inexplicably fashionable chunky black booties that, for whatever reason, refuse to go the way of the Ugg. ‘Cause cunts like them, baby, they were born to brunuuuuch. As we awaited our first panel, “From Logo to Look,” they pecked at iPhones ensconced in glittering cases. I watched as one scrolled through her Instagram account, emotionlessly liking every image in her feed without fully glancing at the images in question or reading their captions. Our environment, artfully decorated with cacti and serape blankets, made me feeI as though I was inhabiting a Pinterest account—every surface within eyeshot was hyper-designed and begging for digital documentation.
There were photo ops, branding ops, a 3-D mirror where one could virtually try on clothing, and logos a-go-go. Complimentary makeovers were provided, but most attendees did not need them; their skin glistened like dew in the morning sun. How did they look so “on point” at 9AM on a Sunday? What were they, witches? If they were, that would explain their Laurel Canyon, Stevie Nicks-inspired garb. There was, as the environment demanded, ceaseless documentation of everything—in light of this documentation, the aesthetic flawlessness of the women taking selfies in front of the conference’s pop-up shops made sense. The heavily-shadowed eyes, after all, are the window to the brand.
Making marketing appear organic and thus not gauche, I quickly learned, takes hard work. It requires the use of analytic data to “empower brands” and see what “encourages more swipes.” We were told not to be formulaic with our posts—after all, we wanted people to engage with the “genuineness of [our] brand.”
“Be genuine about the story you’re telling!” one woman implored the audience. “We created a platform for brands to tell their stories,” another said. “Who do you think is doing an incredible job of storytelling right now?” a moderator asked.
I quickly lost count of how many times people made reference to “storytelling.” What is this? I thought. The fucking Oscars? The story was what, the tale of the shit you bought, or were given by a hot new jewelry company? No wonder Instagram and fashion blogs are lacking in text. Were these stories real, they’d be as lacking in substance as children’s picture books.
A woman from Spring, a shopping app, compared the company’s mass shipment of sweatshirts to trendsetters, which in turn made said sweatshirts go viral on Instagram, to a “grassroots political campaign.” In this brave new world, the political is as personal as it is monetizable.
As she spoke, the man sitting in front of me followed her and her fellow panelists on Instagram—one by one, I’d observe the handle of the account he was looking at on his phone, then look up to the screen flanking stage left and see the same handle printed in electric pink. Less than two minutes later, the woman to his right did the same. This is how brands are born. Perhaps they would become the next tastemakers, and receive a free viral sweatshirt.
I was surrounded by people tirelessly working on the development of their “personal brands.” The end goal for all was to align themselves with larger, more powerful ones in order to be paid to promote. Starting as an unpaid blogger, it seems, is be similar to starting out giving free handjobs in the hopes you’ll eventually be employed by a brothel. Living the dream means having your “passion” for telling the world about an amazing new face cream monetized.
All want to stand out—at the conference, individuality was pushed heavily by both the bloggers and the brands. But how do you stand out when you’re peddling the same wares as your competitor? What separates you from the others—a different Instagram filter? And more to the point, is individuality even achievable in the 21st century? The best way to stand out, at this point in the game, would be to get out of the game completely. To carry a flip phone, be blissfully unaware of trends, and cease chasing the impossible dragon that is attention.
The same self-serving narcissism drives the desire to be a style authority or a “brand ambassador” as it does to be a resident of the internet, period. People want to be seen, admired, and loved by both the known and the unknown. If involvement with a company is going to get you both love and money (which, as we all know, is vastly superior to love), who are you to turn down such an opportunity? Especially when you know people won’t think less of you?
Outside the conference, a woman paid me for a cigarette in coconut face masks; as an ambassador of the brand, she was there to “give them to all the panelists.” I accepted them in lieu of cash, as they were currency in our environment. I am not telling you the brand of the masks, however, because I am not being paid actual cash to do so.