Social media
Company is building an empire of fake influencers on TikTok
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They’re young, pretty, and all of them have dramatic stories to tell – but they’re all actors.
TikTok is the social network that is probably the most popular among young people right now. Millions of colorful video clips, short, often funny, informative and entertaining. But as on all platforms, it didn’t take long for TikTok companies to discover this playground for themselves – and want to make financial profit from it. Like “FourFront”, a company that is now building a group of fake influencers on TikTok.
Around 22 characters have been invented at “FourFront” so far. They are all young, beautiful and look like all the other people who upload their clips to TikTok. They also behave – consciously – in exactly the same way and film themselves with their mobile phones. Nevertheless, the alleged influencers are paid actors who have different names in real life and whose everyday life has absolutely nothing to do with the dramatic stories they tell online. Because they all come from scripts that were written for them on “FourFront”.
The influencers are actors
Blond Sydney, for example, the company’s most successful fake influencer, has around 708,000 followers. She allegedly revealed that her sister’s fiancé is a hallodri cheating. Numerous videos revolve around whether or not she should spoil her sister’s wedding. Other stories of the “FourFront” characters are even more outrageous: Tia learns, for example, that her boyfriend is a member of an African royal family and does not intend to be with her permanently.
Of the initially 22 characters, only eight are now left. “Some stories work, others fail. We only invest in stories that the target group loves,” says managing director Ilan Benjamin in an interview with “Online Marketing Rockstars”. Initially, 20 videos would be produced for each character. Those that work will continue to be used. According to their own statements, the “FourFront” influencers together have over two million TikTok followers and 281 million views.
Users think everything is real
While the company’s actors deliver the videos, there is a dedicated exchange with the followers, chats and answers to comments. It must be permissible to ask whether the mostly young audience is not being deliberately duped with this kind of charade? “We tell stories that are a little crazier than reality. And I think that is what a lot of influencers do on Tiktok,” says Ilan Benjamin. He points out that the word “fictional” would always appear somewhere in the bio of the characters as well as in the hashtags of the individual postings.
However, one look at the comments is enough to see that this seems to have escaped most of the users. The followers take the stories told by the characters seriously. That seems to interest the makers behind “FourFront” less than the thought of making good money with the invented characters. Ilan Benjamin says, “When our characters get even more popular, I’ll see them in the classic Creator Economy, on Youtube, Instagram and other platforms. Then they could not only create more content, but also monetize it directly and in the long term. “
Source: “Online Marketing Rockstars”, “FourFront”, “TikTok”
This article originally appeared on stern.de.