For those of you who don't know, Givenchy launched a new bag with FWRD recently. They seem to have gifted it to quite a few influencers. What is shocking and disappointing in this day and age is that I'm looking right here at 28 influencers who posted about this bag within a day. Obviously, no fucking way they bought this bag.

I don't think 28 people that all actually kind of look the same-- There's actually a few problems with this list in general. There's not really a lot of diversity on it either. 28 people all post about the same bag within the same day. How many people disclose that it was gifted for people? Luxury brands sometimes live in a fucking dream world where they don't think the rules really apply to them, and they don't want to be seen as having gifted someone something. So they actively ask for influencers to not disclose those relationships. We 100% will never do that.

We would never work with a brand that asks us not to disclose that something was gifted or that it was paid for in a partnership. There are real potential ramifications for you as an influencer. You could have been part of the Givenchy launch and thought, "This is fun. I just got a free bag. I'm going to post about it, and they didn't want us to disclose, who cares," but when they bomb Instagram like this, and this was as of yesterday, maybe there's 40 or 50 people that have posted about it now, this shit is like blatant cheating. It's like blatant not following the rules.

That's what gets the attention of the regulators over at the FTC, and if they decide to make an example of this campaign, it is you as an influencer that ends up getting impacted. The reason we won't do it, one, it's against the law, two the FTC could tell us that we are not allowed to do influencer marketing for anyone for a number of years. This happened a number of years ago.

There was a campaign of some dress, some retailer, I can't remember exactly who it was, where a lot of people got in trouble for this. So if a brand asks you not to disclose something, walk away, don't do it. If you don't think your audience can handle you telling them something is gifted, then you haven't done a good job building trust with them, but it is not worth risking your career to build a relationship with a luxury brand. If it's gifted, you have to say it's gifted.