Us versus them: advertising in the new age

We are living amidst a revolution. Not necessarily a revolution in the markets, but a revolution in marketing. At this very moment, it is in with the new and out with the old when it comes to advertising. 

Ever since the creation of social media applications such as Facebook, television news was doomed. Social media, serving as primary entertainment for young people across the world, also feeds news stories as a side dish. This news ranges from celebrity happenings to global conflict – everything that would be covered on television or written news.

 Social media has outsourced the need for the “former” types of news for young people, but that has come with the outsourcing of the other types of media that television can provide: advertisement. 

Advertisements are often seen as an annoyance for consumers, interrupting their programs with unwanted and predictable content being shoved down their throats. Additionally, if a corporation wanted to attract younger consumers to their products, they would be sorely missing the target by advertising primarily on television, as the content would not even reach young people. 

Corporations had originally found a way around this issue using social media. Brands would pay influencers with millions of followers to promote a specific product, and the expectation was that the credibility of the influencers would guide their loyal fans to put that product in their basket. 

This has been an effective method, but as of late, the issue with this method has been exposed. 

It has become glaringly obvious that these influencers are a vessel through which brands speak to consumers. The job of an influencer isn’t simply to influence the lifestyle of their followers, it is to influence their consumption habits. Brand deals are where influencers derive a significant amount of their wealth from, and young consumers are aware of this. 

What made influencers so popular in the first place is their relatability, where users responded to the connection they felt with the influencer. Therefore, when an influencer promoted a product, their followers were more likely to buy that product, because they felt as though they were on the same level of wealth (and therefore consumption) as these influencers. 

Once influencers began accumulating more wealth from brand deals and paid partnerships with companies, their relatability dwindled. Influencers became lumped with corporations. The intentions of influencers to simply make even more money became very clear to their followers. 

Users have stopped being as responsive to influencer-utilizing advertisements because of this. The divide between influencers and users became far too wide.  

But corporations have found a way around this divide. A primary example of this is Tik-Tok Shop. 

According to the Tik-Tok platform itself, “TikTok Shop is a one-stop E-commerce solution for driving sales and brand growth on TikTok. TikTok Shop allows sellers to sell products directly on TikTok through in-feed videos, LIVES, and the Showcase tab. It enables product discovery, product details, checkout, and post-payment activities all within the TikTok app.” The key part here is that any user can advertise a specific product and can receive a commission based on the engagement for the advertisement. 

Any user can make an advertisement. Any. User. 

This is the main feature of TikTok Shop that succeeds over the mass bore over influencers amongst younger audiences. Any person, no matter what class, background, experience, can promote a product, and do not necessarily amass large amounts of wealth from that promotion. 

The relatability aspect has effectively been restored by this system on TikTok because now one’s own neighbor or friend can simply make a TikTok about the product. These average people making promotional videos are not lumped with corporations because they are not necessarily insanely wealthy, therefore users are less likely to scroll past these videos because they are tired of corporate interests being shoved down their throats. 

Before, with influencers, there was a clear “us versus them” mentality, us being the “common people” and them being larger corporations and big influencers. 

In her commentary on TikTok about TikTok Shop, a content creator named Gia Rutkowski says, “There’s no more us versus them because we don’t know who the them is.”

If a middle-class white teenage girl sees another middle-class white teenage girl advertising a specific product, there seems to be a newfound level of trust that the product is actually of good quality, seeing that those advertising are speaking to audiences that are similar to them. 

It cannot be denied that TikTok Shop is a pure commercial genius. But it also cannot be denied that this is concerning. 

The idea of consumption is constantly thrown at us like it is a sacrament, and it only gets more severe with this development. TikTok Shop could be a new gateway for corporate power over our individual lives. 

Brands have slowly seeped their way into “our kind” (that is, people that are not incredibly wealthy) through small commissions acting as a decoy for their ultimate goal: to push their products onto consumers in an even more effective way. It creates the illusion that the wealth is being shared through this commission, but in reality the commission is simply a fuel for the illusion, as the profits are still primarily going to the brand. We are still more likely to fall prey to this new form of advertisement and don’t necessarily gain much from it. 

As a result, our feeds become increasingly and overwhelmingly centered around products, and we see a drop in thought-provoking and immaterially valuable content. 

We, as a collective consumer base, must be aware of this illusion that is dominating our feeds. We also must realize that the increasing quantity of advertisements we consume on social media is simply unfulfilling. While it is nice to be in the know about a really great eyelash serum, it is very unsatisfying to constantly be reminded that there are hundreds of similar products out there, and to be told that your life is not complete without it. 

We must be aware about when and how we are being sold something. We must also be aware that there is still an us and them. 

Written by Saniya Bhagwat