Comstock's magazine 1217 - December 2017 | Page 28

n WORTH NOTING
buzzwords
in flu enc er
READERS SOUND OFF
IN THE COMMENTS
in-floo-uh n-ser, n.
A person who has the power to influence many people,
as through social media or traditional media
BY Jennifer Snyder ILLUSTRATION: Jason Balangue
Y
ou’ve likely been on the receiving end of religious evangelism at one point in your life —
a midday knock on your front door, or a pamphlet tucked in your door. And you likely
already know what brand evangelism is (think Cindy Crawford drinking a bottle of Pepsi in
the now-famous Super Bowl television ad in 1992).
But in recent years, with the rise of social networking, the business world has embraced
a modern form of evangelism, making the word synonymous with an entirely new brand of
evangelist: the influencer.
THE BUZZ
The celebrity endorsements of yore have been supplemented by paid and in-kind influencer
recommendations made to an individual’s dedicated social media following. No longer do
brands need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on prime ad placements; they just
need a product endorsement posted from a Kardashian Instagram account to garner similar,
if not stronger, results.
Sacramento resident Kachet Jackson-Henderson is a longtime blogger who recently
founded The Blog Bloc, which helps bloggers build their business around content and influ-
ence. She describes an influencer as a “leader and an advocate, a person of great wisdom or
insight within a certain area,” adding that, when it comes to these evangelists, “sometimes, it
only takes one person to start the revolution.”
But influencer marketing can be problematic for consumers who may not recognize
what’s really happening behind the scenes of an