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Okay, you read the headline and you’re rolling your eyes. Fine.
But before we get into why I believe that Instagram influencers can save the world, let me walk you through how the burgeoning influencer economy works (and why HubSpot predicts the industry will be worth $8 billion by 2020).
You, a non-celebrity, download Instagram. You really love funky, patterned socks. You also really love Kanye West. So every day, you post a photo of your socks paired with a relevant Kanye lyric. You make sure to use hashtags and before you know it, you have 15,000 followers.
Then a niche, hipster sock company offers to give you $500 to post a photo you take of their socks (tagging their own Instagram account, of course). Your prominence grows. Next thing you know, you’ve quit your job and are a full-time Sock Influencer.
According to Hubspot, there are over 500,000 active influencers on Instagram. Some of them – like Selena Gomez – earn $550,000 per post. Self-made influencers can rake in anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000 per post.
There’s a reason why brands spend so much money (and send free merch) to these social media stars: it drives sales. The infamous Fyre Festival is a great example of this. The sham sold out because of the mega-famous influencers promoting it.
So I now ask the question: can Instagram help transit systems in the United States regain millennial riders, the demographic fleeing transit at the fastest rate?
I think yes. Here’s why.
Millennials, or people between the ages of 22 and 35, are chronically burned out. They also make up 70 percent of Instagram’s 800 million users, and spend between 20 and 35 minutes on the app daily.
Our never-ending stress and burden (crushing student debt, the impossibly-high cost of home ownership, the ever-present and growing threat of climate change) might be tied to the popularity of “simplified branding,” at least according to Fast Company. This is the trend of brands with simple labels and sans-serif fonts (think the mattress company Casper).
Taking it to transportation, the two companies who excel at this simple, calm, and (dare I say) enlightened branding are Uber and Lyft. The rideshare companies make it as easy as possible to use their apps, and they make their transportation option seem so much better than transit, too. (Lyft even had the audacity to advertise – on DC’s Metro, of all places – that using its services are good for the planet).
So how can transit agencies compete? I say, reach out to your neighborhood influencer (every city has them) and ask them to pose by a bus, pro bono. It can’t hurt.
Photo of Instagram Influencers plying their trade, by European Union 2017 – European Parliament.
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