Jesse Juarez 08/07/2022
photo credit: freepik.com
While reading the transcript for the 2016 interview on the TV show 60 Minutes titled The Influencers by Bill Whitaker; I was hit with a shock wave of memories thinking about how much technology has changed over the last 39 years of my life. I do not follow a large number of influencers on social media because I have my own life to worry about, but while I was reading this transcript, I was shocked. What is even more shocking to me is that this interview is almost six years old. During the interview, Whittaker asked Paul Cazers, a Hollywood agent, “if today’s influencers get paid too much”; his response, “No, they’re the new rock stars with a bigger audience that old Hollywood never had the chance to access,” (Whitaker, 2016.) The classic 1980 song by The Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star was playing in my head, and I started to think about the past and future. More specifically, I have witnessed antenna broadcasting morph into cable and satellite and how they are killing the need for an antenna. Also, TV and satellite radio are destroying FM radio without the money from advertising to keep broadcasting smaller stations. With internet access to anywhere in the world and devices with streaming capabilities, it is changing demand for TV from cable or satellite. I wonder how long until there’s a new communication medium and the unique challenges marketers will face when the time comes. Or will we get ahead of ourselves and go backward in technology, leaving the marketing game the same?
The influencers I follow are primarily on Instagram and revolve around the jiu-jitsu community or the fitness community innovators that connect to this sport. Only a couple of the influencers in the jiu-jitsu community stand out from the rest. The most significant example I can give is a young grappler named Gordon Ryan. He brands himself in a way no other grappler does, and it upsets everyone else because while others have tried to brand themselves as the best, not many can back it up. Mr. Ryan has one of the best trainers in the world for jiu-jitsu and MMA. If you combine his training with his dedication, determination, athleticism, and charisma, you have someone who is self-branded as the king of no-gi grappling with no one good enough to dethrone him. Since the beginning of the self-branded king, which started as a joke with a Burger King kids crown, he has kept this image and has nearly half a million followers on Instagram alone. Even though his brand has made me hated by almost everyone in the sport, it has brought in thousands of new practitioners and brought attention to a sport where there was little before him. When Mr. Ryan started to shake up the jiu-jitsu community by trash-talking everyone on social media, it brought negative attention from long-time practitioners but a lot of money to grapplers with sponsors. An example of a new sponsor to the sport is the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which sponsors Gordon Ryan as an individual grappler and jiu-jitsu’s largest worldwide sporting event, ADCC. With the hate Mr. Ryan obtained from self-branding, he cannot change it now without losing the positive attention the sport gains with his influence; his brand is a catch-22.
REFERENCE
Whitaker, B. (2016, October). The Influencers. CBS News. Retrieved August 2022, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-kim-kardashian-logan-paul-social-media-influencers/
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