Amazon is now hiring influencers but what does it mean to be an ‘Amazon Influencer’? – Screen Shot
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Amazon is now hiring influencers but what does it mean to be an ‘Amazon Influencer’?

For some unknown reason, I keep getting targeted ads asking me to sign up to become an ‘Amazon Influencer’. At first, I was taken aback—does Amazon, with its owner Jeff Bezos literally being the richest man in the world, really need the extra help in marketing and promotion from social media influencers?

For the sake of this article (that’s what I’d told myself), I tried to sign up and see what the big deal is. Of course, as I only have around 770 followers on Instagram, I did not meet “the eligibility requirements”, and was asked by Amazon to apply once I’ve increased my “level of influence” within social media—a reminder of the daily realities of my life as a non-insta-famous Gen Z’er. In order to set up an Amazon Influencer profile, also known as the “Amazon Influencer Programme”, you need to have an Amazon account, as well as either a Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or Instagram one and be successful at it, too, as Amazon states it looks at the number of your followers and other engagement metrics of your social media presence (purchasing fake followers won’t cut it, sorry). Once approved, the influencer is to set up their own Amazon ‘shop’ with a custom URL, recommending thousands of products, all in one spot. The influencer would then receive a commission for whatever they manage to sell.

So what’s the deal with Amazon’s decision to start using social media influencers as a marketing tool? Jeff Bezos seems to possess the ability to capitalise on literally anything, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. Over the years, the word ‘influencer’ has acquired a number of negative connotations, with people instantly rolling their eyes once they hear it. And yet, influencer marketing works, and it is actually very effective—Fyre festival, for example, is a painful proof of how much influencer marketing works. As much of a failure as it was, it would have never gained as much momentum if not for the social media influencers who marketed it (and are now being sued over this).

But who exactly is Amazon’s programme targetubg and how is it beneficial? Laura Fuentes is a chef, food blogger, and mum of three, and her Instagram account @momables has over 43.8K followers. She is also an Amazon Influencer and her shop comprises of different kitchen utensils and items, from tupperwares to cookbooks and supplements, and claims that since joining the programme, she has “seen an increase in affiliate sales revenue by 30 percent.” Laura promotes the exact type of products most of us buy on Amazon anyway, and as she says, “it is an easy way to serve your community by providing them with an easy and trusted source.” In other words, it does essentially benefit all three, Laura, the buyers, and the company.

Personally, I have never even considered Amazon when shopping for clothes, and neither did most people I know. There are so many options on the site that it is difficult to find the right piece, which is why so many people simply don’t bother. This is where Amazon fashion influencers come in. @colette.prime’s entire wardrobe allegedly consists of Amazon fashion, and Amazon fashion only. She began her fashion blog as a means to show the possibilities of engaging in fashion while also being able to afford it, which is how she came to Amazon. Her goal is to “take the best out of these options and put it onto one page”, enabling Amazon users to a much easier shopping experience. She, however, no longer works for Amazon exclusively.

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@mirabeauwine @amazonfashion I’ve had more compliments on my Amazon clothes in the South of France than EVER, and I’ve realized that so many more women are coming around to the idea of saving money on their clothes! Yes, at first there is a little judgment when I tell people that I’m wearing Amazon clothes, but when I tell them the price, they want to know all of the details. I am so inspired by the fact that I can connect with women all over the world because of this little idea that I had about helping women save money a couple years ago. And about this video: My idea of getting out on the town is dancing to Shania Twain with a bottle of Mirabeau Rosé wine. Cheers to having fun with ourselves and being proud of our personalities...especially the freaky & weird parts about them❕ get freaky wit it, always. If you have dance parties alone too, well actually, don’t we all?! About this outfit: hair scarves have become my favorite accessory! You can wear them a ton of different ways, around your neck, or purse. We love anything that easily switches up a look. My entire outfit is on my site and so affordable! #linkinbio #coletteprime #amazonfashion #sainttropezfashion #affordablefashion #sfblogger #hotgirlsummer #summer #summerfashion #fashionblogger #dance #dancevideos #shaniatwain #country #tiktok #musically #fashionblogger #fashionforwomen #womenempowerment #selflove #thisissainttropez #winelover

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This year, Amazon also launched the Amazon “drop”, consisting of limited-edition fashion collections designed by global influencers. It is uncertain why the company chooses to collaborate with influencers rather than giving a platform for emerging designers; nevertheless, once the collection drops, the Amazon drop user has 30 hours to shop until these items disappear forever. Amazon claims the ‘drop’ to be sustainable, as it doesn’t even start to make the piece until it is purchased in order to reduce waste. I applaud Amazon for this attempt to shift toward the right direction, but it does not make up for the years of environmental damage caused by excessive and unnecessary packaging or the CO2 emissions from rapid transportation.

It is good to see that Amazon can help working mothers like Laura or emerging fashion entrepreneurs like Colette gain revenue and essentially improve their lives for the better, but what about their factory workers? Just last month, Amazon was under fire over the mistreatment of factory workers in the U.K. warehouses, when Amazon created what seems to be an army of Twitter bots disguised as warehouse workers claiming just how much they love their jobs—exposed through a series of tweets. So how ethical is it to promote this new branch of the brand, really?

While we question the intentions of the brand and its decisions, the Amazon Influencer Programme is actually something good, and has the potential to benefit millions—the company just needs to rearrange a number of structures within for it to work. Amazon, the ball is in your court.

Opinion

Confessions of a zero-waste Amazon Prime subscriber

By Danielle Knight


Climate change

Nov 14, 2018

London is expensive and informative. I’m woefully woke and sickeningly skint. Nowhere, perhaps with the exception of LA or Shanghai, would it be harder to hide from the deafening impact of my own thunderous carbon footprint while being relentlessly pressured to buy more stuff.

The free magazines outside tube stations scream zero waste guilt. You must buy tinted lip moisturiser in recyclable aluminium tubes, not those devilish plastic pots. Buy one in each colour! The next column is a real-life horror story: the toxic plastic microfibers from your clothes are polluting rivers and oceans via your washing machine and suffocating aquatic organisms. Only purchase clothes made with natural fibres from now on!

Instagram Search is similarly determined to whisk me down the zero-waste rabbit hole. Earnest models match grave expressions with bikinis and boardshorts, grasping bulging bags of single-use plastics they have collected along tropical beaches. Videos of the whirling Pacific Garbage patch induce a dizzying sense of vertigo at the sheer expanse of eternal trash human beings have made.

Beyond the thin, slippery pages and endless scrolling digital grid, I can’t escape carbon and plastic pollution around the city. Every fresh lungful of polluted air is heavy, gritty. The pavements are littered with plastic packaging. I feel gluttonous and ashamed of my complicity in all this and re-forge a broken promise with myself to attempt a zero waste lifestyle. Homemade lunches, refillable wine bottles, home-grown herbs, maybe composting? A spell of daydreaming later and I am convinced my tiny apartment and 4×3 foot balcony can accommodate a level of self-sufficiency akin to 1970s BBC sitcom “the Good Life”.

Until this wholesome new urban life of self-sufficiency materialises, I need an army of durable, non-plastic containers, string bags and reusable wrappers. At least, the hordes of zero waste bloggers I’ve been following tell me these are essential: an investment. Buying more stuff feels counter-intuitive, but I venture West, to zones abundant with zero waste homeware stores. Inside one, I lift a price tag on a set of glass lunchboxes and shudder involuntarily. I scrutinise their fragility as I recall the ocean of reusable coffee cups I’ve bought and somehow lost over the past year, before fleeing empty handed.

Food-wise, a complex groceries map is the only way to survive the weekend staples shopping marathon. Cycling my janky old bike down Hackney Road is a high speed, Olympic-level sport. The pavement and tarmac have become an obstacle course and I dodge the debris of discarded plastic bottles while balancing a heavy backpack stuffed with bulk buy spaghetti. The weekly cross-city grocery shopping route is now a five-hour roundtrip; a slow, gruelling marathon.

Each evening after work, the labour intensive craft of combining suspicious looking fridge scraps with bulk buy, zero waste ingredients sucks away the hours. Eating out is impossible. Life and leisure evaporate in a zero-waste haze.

Downtrodden, I remember one budget-conscious blogger recommended Amazon as a treasure-trove of sustainable toiletries and other essentials. Unable to shake the image of a tiny seahorse navigating the high seas, its tail wrapped around a plastic cotton bud, I sneak Amazon open on my browser. 100 biodegradable bamboo cotton buds for only £2.95. Undeterred by the universal Doctors’ advice not to poke cotton buds deep inside your ear canal, nor by my mum’s recent cotton bud related earache saga, I click ‘Buy Now’. The next day, the package plops through my letterbox. Since seeing that National Geographic seahorse, I have spent 10 long months deprived of the unbridled relief found from wiggling a sterile foreign object inside my ear.

Amazon first entangled me in a Prime subscription by offering one month free. After months of nudging emails and adverts for Prime membership, I finally succumbed to the allure of binge watching the TV adaptation of Philip K.Dick’s “the Man in the High Castle.” Free TV! Foolishly, predictably, I forgot to cancel the subscription before the end of the month months and they hit me with a full annual subscription fee. £79. As a disorganised graduate student with towers of textbooks to buy, the staggeringly low prices and convenience of next day delivery helped me post-rationalise that Amazon Prime was a bargain.

In this latest dalliance with Amazon, the algorithm was tightening its grip while I was weak with the exhaustion of zero waste living. The intimacies of my search history means Amazon guesses what I am up to and what my idealistic hopes and dreams are. Then, the product recommendations begin. The gadgets, the bulk buys, the “customers who buy this bought this”. Buy buy buy. So cheap!

I start reading posts from Polly, a zero waste budget blogger who helps assuage my guilt for supporting such a notoriously unethical company with soothing advice that boycotting Amazon is a privilege. She recommends some tactics for overcoming their wasteful packaging including emailing Amazon customer services to add a note on your account to avoid plastic packaging and using Amazon’s Frustration-Free Packaging service, which avoids the box around a box fiasco. Then, there is Amazon warehouse which sells second hand items. Decidedly happier, I scroll for more tips, until she hits me with the bombshell advice to avoid next day delivery, as it is terrible for the environment. Clumping purchases into one order helps minimise the carbon emissions associated with your order. Damnit. It dawns on me that everything about Amazon Prime is enabling and encouraging me to go hog wild buying zero waste products when really I should be buying as little as possible.

Although products are affordable, I am buying things I don’t really need and spending more than I budgeted for. Perhaps one reason local suppliers aren’t stocking these products at affordable price points is because Amazon undercuts everything. It’s a false economy. Local shops just can’t compete with London commercial rents to pay. The Amazon algorithm has data about my innermost concerns and manipulates me with clever marketing tactics. Perhaps, rather than sitting behind a computer screen or trekking to West London to shop zero waste, I should chat with local shop owners and encourage them to stock zero waste products. Then support them by buying from them. Huh.