Life

The 'Talent Agencies' Hustling Wannabe Influencers

If they're asking you to pay, it's best to stay away.
Influencer fake comments
Image: Helen Frost

The influencer industry is booming. Ex-Love Islander Molly-Mae Hague reportedly makes £10,000 for one Instagram post, while boat loads of spon-con stars have spent the pandemic sunbathing in Dubai, helping contribute to a sector that’s currently estimated to be worth around $5.5bn globally. 

But for most people who don’t get their fame from being on Love Island or modelling, there’s no fast-track to becoming an influencer. Enter: My Influencers, an influencer management agency that aims to give aspiring influencers a leg up, taking them from bedroom blogs to branded deals. 

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The My Influencers website highlights that the agency has won awards, scored invites to celeb birthday parties and been noticed by channels like MTV and ITV. For a one-off sign-up fee, they offer advice to influencers looking to nail their next sponsorship deal, “50 brand contacts” and the ability to “apply for collaborations and TV castings”. Understandably, you might think, why not sign up?

But paying to join an influencer management agency is considered shady practice. Most agencies do not charge their talent to join, and instead take a commission based on paid work the influencers get. 

“I felt really stupid,” says 32-year-old Rachael, who signed up to My Influencers in February 2020, after coming across the Instagram pages of other influencers who were signed to the agency. “It looked really good,” she says. “I looked at their stories and people were getting gifted collabs, working with Missguided and Boohoo.” 

After being approved to join the agency and paying a £30 sign-up fee for their “Basic” one year plan, Rachael was added to Instagram and WhatsApp engagement groups set up by My Influencers. These groups are created to help people build their accounts, widen their reach and get more followers, likes and comments. Everyone in them agrees to engage with the content of those who are next in the “queue”, posting an infinite loop of fire emojis and generic “nice” praise. 

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“There were hundreds of people in the groups and it seemed like there was a bot running it. If you made a new post, you had to like and comment on the posts of people that had previously made a new post. I did it once and then I was like, ‘Why did I do that?’” 

Ultimately, Rachael says that trying to grow your Instagram using these tactics doesn’t work. The other people in the group comment on your content because you post on theirs, meaning you end up with tons of comments from the same group of people and an audience that isn’t authentically engaged – which, after all, is the most important aspect of gaining followers to influence.

Chasing likes in this way is also against the rules. Instagram’s Community Guidelines state users should “help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content”.

My Influencers denies it uses bot-like services. “We don’t even allow our clients to use unfollow apps,” the agency told `VICE in a statement.

As part of the ‘Basic’ package, Rachael says she was sent a list of brands she had been told would work with people that had under 1,000 followers. But Rachael explains she had to contact the brands herself, rather than having My Influencers do so on her behalf. This isn’t standard practice – usually an influencer management agency seeks opportunities on behalf of their clients. 

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After a month of being represented by My Influencers, Rachael says she eventually left the agency – with no collabs under her belt – telling VICE that it was a “major rule” in their contract that you couldn’t work with another agency while working for My Influencers.

“They give absolutely zero support,” says Charne, 24, who also signed up to My Influencers back in August 2020. Like Rachael, she also left without a single branded collaboration.

“They promise to teach skills of how to grow your account as well as getting you collabs,” she says. “But half the emails were duds. Then they say you can’t contact more than five brands per week as it looks bad on the agency.”

In the world of Instagram influencer marketing, My Influencers is one of many businesses that claim to help influencers achieve success by earning money and working with brands, but ask influencers to foot the bill.

While VICE spoke to My Influencers users, US-based company Global Influencer Agency asks users to pay to be a brand ambassador. Meanwhile, IQ Advantage – which has since closed – asked wannabe influencers to lay down a hefty $299 joining fee.

So how can prospective influencers separate the wheat from the chaff?

Ruby Aryiku, co-founder and head of PR at digital talent agency VAMP, says that it can be very difficult to work out which agencies are a “scam” and which ones are legitimate from the offset. 

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“They're going to want to look legit. We all know with Instagram, you can look how you want to look, and you can perceive to be something that maybe you aren't. And that’s the same for businesses,” she explains. “Because of what these agencies may be offering and because of the lifestyle that a lot of influencers think that they want to join in on, it's very easy to get misled.”

Aryiku says that influencing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. If a management agency is “all about money” and has a lot of references to earning money on their website or Instagram page, you should be able to tell that they are perhaps not what they seem. She also suggests steering clear from agencies that promote engagement pods, loops and bots.

Crucially, “if a brand wants to work with you a month down the line, and they check your engagement for a specific post and it doesn't match, there's going to be inconsistency”.

It seems the age-old adage of fake-it-til-you-make-it doesn’t apply to engagement and shady agencies – and it might actually hurt you in the long run. “If you do something quickly,” warns Aryiku, “without [doing the] genuine work, it can all be ripped away from you.”

@lolachristina