While digital influencers often feed our many and sometimes overly consumptive habits, there is an emerging TikTok trend that is doing quite the opposite. Many TikTok creators are denouncing products they were influenced to buy but never actually used or found little lasting value in.
It’s called De-Influencing, where influencers attempt to dissuade audiences from making purchases they don’t need. The goal is to prevent over-consumption and remind us that we don’t need products to feel good and valued.
TikTok’s #deinfluencing tag has over 65 million views to date, spanning numerous product categories.
Here at Bovitz, we’re helping clients make and market products that meet true, real-life needs. Products that actually improve life, not just for a fleeting moment of retail therapy, but over the long haul. We call it being People First – an ethos, culture, and process for offering products that meet profit goals AND place people’s needs at the center.
Accordingly, we see the de-influencing trend as a call to action. It can and should inspire companies to make truly valuable products. And we’re here to help on that front.
But more than that, we also see the de-influencing trend as a consumer need and, as such, an opportunity to tell a different story. A more authentic and less product-spec sheet one. A story of how your brand is promoting kindness and compassion, bravery and courage, and casting a vision full of vibrance and possibility with a dose of no-nonsense reality.
Don’t get us wrong though. Retail therapy, shopping for guilty pleasures and little (or big) indulgences feel good in the moment. They’re a dopamine hit; mood makers that bring out the giddy in us. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional treat yourself moment! And brands can cater to this need to a certain extent.
We just believe we can do better collectively.
One powerful story amidst de-influencing we couldn’t help but share involves someone taking a young person facing houselessness shopping, and the young person said: “There is nothing in this store I could buy that’s gonna make me feel more loved or less alone in this world.” We encourage all of us to take this powerful line to heart and use it as inspiration to build brand experiences that value humans and their humanity. That is a People First call to action.