Monday, June 25, 2018

"It’s Easy To Scam Your Way Into Free Hotel Stays By Pretending To Be An Instagram Star"

BF:
If her name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you've already heard of @wanderingggirl before: It’s the handle of an Instagram influencer with 63,000 followers who turned out to be a total fake, a persona created by a team at digital marketing agency Mediakix. They curated a glamorous feed of stock photos and bought followers as an experiment to see how easy it would be to get brand endorsement deals with a fabricated account.

Mediakix came clean to the press last summer about its stunt to make a point about how far a fake influencer could go and show how brands and advertisers aren’t savvy about looking out for fake followers or fake engagement on Instagram. It expected Instagram to shut down @wanderingggirl after it went public about the hoax — but it didn’t. So Mediakix decided to keep going, this time with the travel industry.