LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #12:

THE FUTURE OF INFLUENCERS, THE PAST OF A TREE, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN.

The end of influencer marketing as we know it?

_Graphic lifted from http://blog.influence.co/instagram-influencer-rates/._If you haven’t lived under a rock the last couple years you noticed that Instagram is full of accounts that promote goods or services from brands. These ‚influencers‘ rank from world-renowned celebrities to people well-known in smaller circles and sub-cultures. What they have in common is that they act like advertising spokespersons for the brands they are promoting, often downplaying or concealing their relationship with the brand, or their motivations for the posts.

With the proliferation of ad blockers, a lot of brands turned to social media influencers as marketing outlets, because their content is much harder to classify as advertising, and in the walled garden of Instagram, ad blockers simply have no say at all. (It is my guess that this is the reason why Instagram doesn’t care about instagram.com at all).

This tactic was just dealt a huge blow.

In a landmark decision, a german court now ruled that social media posts bought by brands must be clearly labeled as advertising. According to the court, it is not enough to include the hashtag #ad or something similar in the hashtag party at the end of the post. The ruling was against the drugstore chain Rossmann who hired an influencer to advertise their online promotions and it is more than just a slap on the wrist: It also carries a fine of up to 250.000 euro if they are caught doing it again.

What does that mean for influencer marketing?

For one, it puts pressure on Instagram to roll out their already announced new tagging system for ‚sponsored posts‘. With the user interface change, Instagram will correct their relationship with influencers, and maybe even distance themselves a bit from them.

The big social media influencers are already operating like independent publishing houses, and adding a sponsoring tag won’t change their business model in a big way.

Who might be in trouble are the social media stars with less followers, who often don’t get paid in cash, but in swag. They mostly build on their credibility, something that will likely get a dent if they start tagging their content as being paid-for.

Then again, if you’re not making a living out of it, you might just be small enough to slip under the radar.

Fictitious prices and the future of retail

A few days a ago news broke that most online stores carrying Shimano parts will discount the new and long awaited Ultegra groupset with 27% immediately as it hits the stores.

That means the big online chains can sell the much-bought group set cheaper to consumers than many small bike shops can buy them from their distributors. One bike shop owner who specializes in custom builds told me that they stopped buying Shimano parts from their distributor a year ago. Instead, they are buying them from the same online outlets everyone else is buying from, with a zero margin of course.

As retail prices are eroding due to economies of scale of online shops, the pressure for bike shops becomes ever increasing. I’ve worked with retailers from many different industries, and one thing was true for all of them: If you want to compete with online shops on their terms, you will lose.

The current price cuts (along with reduced profits from companies like Shimano or Giant) show that everyone in the cycling industry is hurting, but the shops feel it first, and harder. It reinforces the point that brick-and-mortar retailers need to reinvent themselves as service companies, something I’ve written about over a year ago.

Head badges, lots of head badges!

Here’s a crazy-good collection of head badges: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bikegeek/

How to see the time pass

By watching a tree and its animal visitors for a whole year (condensed to less than three minutes because nature knows we’re awfully busy).

(Source)

Running Java on an 8-bit machine

This is a double-punch flashback for me, and a funny thing for all geeks: Back to the Future Java, a virtual machine designed to run on the Commodore C64, one of the most popular home computers of the 80ies.

https://mzattera.github.io/b2fJ/

#bussibussi stickers are here

We made some sweet #bussibussi stickers. Drop me a line and tell me your postal address if you want some.

That guy swims to work - And how’s your commute?

Image Source:  Benjamin David/Facebook

Man from Munich swims to work every day.

(via boingboing.net)

I’ll just leave this here.

That’s it from this edition of Let’s be Fwends. Please highfive yourself, and don’t forget to claim your #bussibussi stickers. You earned them! 😘