The Authentic™ Truth: How Brands Pay Through the Nose So You Can Pay Through Yours Certain things just happen every spring. Rains come, flowers grow, and I am inundated with customer questions about why we are not in XXX magazines’ “Best Of” and why we are not on the preferred list of this group or that cause. The simple answer is that I am not willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to magazines, NGOs, or Influencers for a quick ego fix. In today’s marketplace, nothing says “trustworthy product” quite like a perfectly filtered Instagram post from someone who was paid $85 million to hold it. Welcome to the wonderfully authentic world of modern marketing, where sincerity comes with a price tag and your favorite influencer’s enthusiasm for that revolutionary face cream lasts exactly as long as their contract stipulates. The Genuinely Artificial Influence Economy Did you know that in 2024, influencer marketing investment is expected to reach a modest $24 billion?[2] That’s right-mere pocket change for the privilege of having someone with perfect teeth tell you which protein powder changed their life (this week). Cristiano Ronaldo, that struggling athlete you may have heard of, somehow manages to scrape […]