Influence me

Don’t be a sheep, be yourself, think for yourself, paddle your own canoe, I use them all, mostly directed towards my kids, and most of the time I take my own advice, I I march to the beat of my own drum (i also absolutely love an idiom) but i have an achilles heel, one that frustrates me no end and one i try and resist the urge every single time it happens.

I am influenced by influencers. There I've said it, I am influenced by what they are wearing, their home decor, where they go on holiday, the suitcases they carry, and i am mostly ashamed to say i have even been known to show an interest in the cleaning products they use.

I don't always purchase the things i see, but i do find myself being interested enough to click to find out where the dress they are wearing / couch they are sitting on is from, sometimes even to the point of following the link to get a price, and it drives me nuts that i cant muster up enough self control to scroll past, what is it that makes me want to know the details of this perfect strangers life? Am i inherently nosy? (don’t answer that)

Before influencers came along TV advertisements were my kryptonite, a catchy jingle, fancy packaging, or even just the promise of whiter whites made me putty in their hands, but there is something about real people, in real scenarios that is more seductive than a staged ad campaign. I feel better knowing I'm not alone, the statistics tell us that influencer marketing is the fastest growing sector thanks to the meteoric rise in social media usage. 

So what is the appeal? Psychologists say its simple, influencer marketing plays on on our natural tendencies as humans, our inbuilt herd mentality means we instinctively follow a crowd, and fear of missing out is a  psychological response, we cant help it, its how we are wired. FOMO is real. 

Knowing my psyche makes me powerless to the ploys of modern marketing is both comforting and scary, I have always been inspired by how other people dress (mainly Kate Moss) But being inspired is very different to being influenced, I don't want to buy or wear what I am told, where is the joy in that? It sounds like the death knell to individuality. 

Lets go rogue, lets buy the things we fall in love with, wear the clothes that picked out. lets paddle our own very fashionable canoe.