Am I Finally An Influencer?
Online Influencing isn’t just for kids anymore.
Today I received an unsolicited email, Subject ‘Reaching Out’. I copy it in its entirety below, but first, my response.
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Is this what it’s come to?
Is this, at last, the big payoff, after 30 years of ups, downs, and further downs as an international journalist and filmmaker, a career where I’ve earned less in every decade than the one before?
Is this why I spent the ’90s being handsomely paid by ABC News in Tokyo, CNBC in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and CNN in Beijing?
Is this why I spent the ‘00’s just about doing OK as an indie filmmaker, running my one-man-band production company Litmus Films from my Global Shedquarters, making low-budget, high-quality documentaries, consulting, and training, for national public broadcasters like NHK and the BBC?
Is this why, when that work dried up in the ’10s, I became a crowdfunding pioneer, at one point having two of the UK’s top ten crowdfunded documentaries, and then when that became a bust, struggled to find paid work making videos for charities that I believed in, growing more depressed as the struggle deepened?
And now, benevolently, selflessly, Joe Sinkwitz from www.intellifluence.com, of 9171 E Bell Rd, Suite 101, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, you’ve ‘reached out’ to me, offering me the opportunity to join
the largest warm influencer marketing network in the world (every influencer joined on their own).
Joe, you’re giving me the chance not only to ‘make a transition’, but welcoming me to your corporate bosom:
If you’ve made the transition from creative to creative influencer, or if you haven’t yet but are interested in doing so, it will cost you nothing as an influencer and we’d be very happy to have you in the family.
Well Joe, here’s my answer.
No doubt there are many other ethical journalists, in more dire financial straits than I am, who’ve taken up your offer, so it was definitely worth sending the email. It’s flattering, almost.
There are doubtless even greater numbers of unethical journalists, more than happy to grasp the opportunity to be compensated monetarily and /or with product by the brands that reach out.
But it’ll be a ‘no’ from me, Joe, fuck you very much.
I’ll keep on struggling a little longer, before I trash whatever reputation I’ve built up over my 30 years.
I may not have influenced many, but at least I can still look those I have influenced in the eye.
‘Warm influencing’ would throw cold water over all those hundreds of painstakingly cultivated bonds of trust I’ve forged over decades — the cave-dwelling peasants of Shaanxi, that scoop on the son of Hong Kong’s richest man, the first and last profile he’s ever done, those brave sailors of The Mongolian Navy, the students on that Chinese game show, the 5-year olds at the Arctic Outdoor Preschool, the Chessboxing trailblazers, the Tamils of the Tundra, all those ukulele nuts.
They’re all on the Litmus Films YouTube channel you ‘came across’. After seeing all of these films, is the only thing you were ‘wondering’ was whether I ‘ever do product reviews or influencer campaigns’? Forget what my back catalogue of films says about me — what does your reaction to it say about you?
It was hard enough for me to ask friends if they might be up for crowdfunding a documentary, but at least the deal was transparent, and everyone got some perks in return. I’m not yet so destitute that I can’t afford to be principled.
So this is a first, Joe, well done. I’ve never been sent a more depressing, cynical, amoral, venal email in my life. All those Nigerian princes have nothing on you.
Don’t you see that you’re asking me to use my painstakingly-accumulated credibility, built up over a lifetime, to destroy itself?
Or do you know it, but just not care? Actually, it must be the latter — you can hardly plead ignorance, as it’s the foundation of your entire business model.
And I can’t even bring myself to find out what a ‘warm influencer’ is. I fear it’s every bit as bad as it sounds.
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Scottsdale, AZ 85260From: Joe Sinkwitz <joe@intellifluence.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021, 04:36
Subject: Reaching out…
To: <litmusfilms@gmail.com>
Hi there,
I came across your Youtube channel and was wondering if you ever do product reviews or influencer campaigns. If you do, we’d love to have you in our network doing commissioned videos and product reviews viahttps://intellifluence.com/influencers. We’re an influencer marketing platform that helps connect small business and medium sized brands with willing product reviewers across a variety of mediums and blogs; reviewers are compensated monetarily and /or with product by the brands that reach out.
If you’ve made the transition from creative to creative influencer, or if you haven’t yet but are interested in doing so, it will cost you nothing as an influencer and we’d be very happy to have you in the family.
While the typical experience would include brands reaching out to you inside our app, we’re excited to have recently launched a new system where you as an influencer can view what brands are looking for and interact with them directly. Check out what some of our brands are offering here:https://intellifluence.com/offers.
If you’re not quite ready to sign up but are interested in learning more about what influencer marketing is all about, I encourage you to check out our introduction video:
Cheers,
Joe Sinkwitz
9171 E Bell Rd, Suite 101
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
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SternWriter (Robert Stern) gave up trying to make a living from documentary filmmaking in lockdown, and started a non-profit social media network See Through News, with the Goal of Speeding Up Carbon Drawdown by Turning Inactivists into Activists.
