From studying, researching and working in Influencer Marketing, my absolute pet peeve is seeing influencers promote products like diet teas and shakes. They are also grouped under a term called ‘BANJO Influencers’ but that’s a topic for another blog post.
So to see an influencer campaign with a social cause, was a nice surprise. The #NoFilterNoFuture campaign by Brita and Social Chain highlighted an important issue surrounding climate change while also promoting their water bottle product.
This issue of climate change is a very important one and while not much is reported in the media, it is quite important for those with a large following and clout to use their channels to educate and inform their audience of what’s happening to the world and the danger that we could be in if we don’t make changes to our everyday lives.
The content created was incredible, showing what the future will hold for our planet if we don’t start to care about the climate and our earth. These extremely ‘Instagrammable’ locations may not be so in a few years’ time.
The campaign
The campaign itself was carried out by Brita who teamed up with Social Chain to encourage consumers not to use single-use plastic and instead use their filtered, reusable water bottles to help the environment.
The campaign was executed creatively, working with 21 Instagram influencers to create images that would depict the impact plastic is going to have on our future if we keep using it disparingly.
It was definitely a very clever campaign by Brita as it caught the attention of Instagram users and made them stop scrolling to really take a look at the images posted by these influencers. Influencers involved in the campaign included Kylee Campbell, Kevin Droniak and Laura Jung.
We’re all used to seeing our favourite influencers promote products by posting a lovely photo of themselves holding or using the product, but Brita’s take on product advertising was very different from the norm that we see on Instagram everyday. It was creative and fresh, and it’s going to take campaigns like these to catch the ever-shortening attention spans of the Instagram consumer generation.
Do influencers have a social responsibility?
I think in terms of selling detox teas and supplements, influencers definitely have a responsibility. But I’ve just heard this morning that Instagram has introduced a new feature that anyone under the age of 18 won’t be able to see these adverts. How this works, I don’t know as most of the adverts for detox teas aren’t labeled as ads.
Even when it comes to fashion and beauty hauls I think influencers need to be aware of how much they are contributing to fast fashion and how much we are consuming beauty products and the waste involved.
Thanks to Instagram, most young people want to wear an outfit once and that’s it. Never to be worn again. Years ago, that would never be the case. I see a lot of my friends going out at the weekend and then on the Sunday they’re advertising the dress they just wore the night before on their Depop.
Oxfam ran a campaign this month called #SecondHandSeptember, trying to encourage people not to buy anything new for the month and instead, if they really felt the need to buy a new item, get it second hand instead.
A social-cause generation
From what I’ve experienced, it seems that my generation and those younger than me are very much interested in brand ethics. We shop from companies that have a corporate social responsibility, don’t use fur, don’t test on animals and give back to society.
We can see this through the ongoing list of high-end fashion brands cutting out fur, brands eliminating their plastic and waste usage and partnerships with charitable causes.
Consumers today care about the morals of the brands that they buy from and are more willing to show loyalty to brands that behave in an ethical conduct and that do good for the environment and their employees. We’ve seen this with the sweat-shops in third world countries, employee harassment cases and brand damaging claims from the likes of Uber.
We care about the environment, we care about the future and we care about doing good. Companies need to get on board with this if they want to remain relevant and successful. Brita acknowledging the crisis of climate change that a lot of the world seem to be ignoring is only going to make them a better-standing brand.
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