Influencers - The Competition Has Arrived
This morning while grabbing a coffee I happened to glance at the business section of the Wall Street Journal and I came across across an article about Miquela Sousa. I knew nothing of her, but the title intrigued me and I caught myself reading the full article. Miquela is a computer generated influencer. At first glance you wouldn't know she's not real.
The makers of Miquela, a company called Brud (venture backed) have carefully crafted Miquela to be the perfect influencer. Miquela will never age (she's 19 forever), have a hangover, get sick or ever say no. She can be whatever she wants, or better yet whatever her audience wants. She just put out an album on Spotify. I'd imagine she'll have a video game and Netflix show soon. She was recently signed to be a lead influencer for an UGG boots campaign. Currently in the works is a team of additional computer generated influencers to round out her crew.
The scary part is that the lines of reality are blurred. Young followers may not know they are being manipulated by Bruds team of expert writers and there is soon to be a wave of CGI influencers hitting social media. Brud is betting on pop culture. They believe that they can manipulate their way to a fortune. They're probably right and will most likely succeed. If humans didn't already have a hard enough time reaching the top of social media, Brud has just added a whole new layer of competition. How do you out compete the perfect social media influencer who looks perfect, never gets wrinkles and has a larger following than you?
My hunch is that humans will always need humans, regardless of how sophisticated technology becomes. A robot can't procreate or care for another human. A CGI influencer won't make any real mistakes which means they will never truly be vulnerable, lovable, inspiring and Human. That's not always great for advertisers, but who really cares about what's good for advertisers but advertisers? Brud can continue to create robot influencers that are self-absorbed, shallow and only focused on consumerism and follower count. But we already have millions of humans that fit that category. Do we really need to add robots to this mix? Let's work on recreating another Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi.