creeping voyeurism is certainly a threat to my productivity, but on the other hand it is also an inspiration. instagram has seldom held a fascination for me but i do acknowledge it’s place in the social-media-food-chain, its ability to create new content in a democratised way must be its most admirable attribute. this brings me to those diligent instagrammers who succeed in not only contributing to the visual feeds but actually manage to create an audience to their lives. this is not a great feat for hereto known celebrities but it is happening more often that i get sucked into the more ordinary lives of others…
like the italian duo of leonardo and michele who have managed about 100k of followers between the two of them. the interesting thing is that aside from their obvious cuteness, they also pose a challenge the conventional model-marketing-machine. i am not sure about the statistics on this but i believe that using this kind of informal loyal following could become quite meaningful to marketing strategists. looking at leo and michele’s near daily shenanigans combined with careful product placement vs the styled model print-ad, i’m not so sure the latter would be more convincing. the endorsement that flows from an emotive connection should, in my mind, carry a greater conviction than the anonymously employed model. just because i think most people are foolish, i don’t think everyone is a fool and just as i’m not a slave to anna wintour’s opinion, i don’t think everything is great just because david gandy wears it; it’s not inconceivable that many designers are also following ad-hoc bloggers anyway.
one should surely expect a movement in the industry towards utilising different ways of targeting their market now that their target market is viewing things in different ways.
