It's All About The Money: The Rise And Fall (And Rise Again) Of Influencer Marketing

Pune, India - 28 March, 2025 - Recollect the early 2000s when bloggers on platforms such as LiveJournal and Typepad shared real, personal experiences. A blogger recommended products they genuinely liked, and readers felt a connection. Brands recognized this, and out of these honest and organic endorsements, influencer marketing was born.

However, influencer marketing today is struggling—which is why brands are turning to expert guidance from a leading digital marketing agency in Pune to refine their approach. If influencer marketing fails to be authentic, it won’t connect with the audience. What once felt like genuine, personal recommendations now often comes across as inauthentic. Once money entered the picture, everything changed. Paid sponsorships became more obvious, and influencers shifted from sharing real experiences to simply pushing products.

Remember the first time you saw a "sponsored" post on your feed and thought, "That doesn’t seem real"? That was the turning point when influencer marketing began to feel disconnected and insincere. Today, authenticity is more important than ever—without it, influencer marketing loses its power to truly engage. A well-planned strategy from an experienced digital marketing agency in Pune can help brands restore authenticity and connect with audiences more effectively.

Here, we explore the cautionary tales of some brands that stumbled due to a lack of focus on effective branding.

●       Fyre Festival - Promo as a music festival with luxury amenities, high-end accommodations, and gourmet dinners served on a private island. Influencers like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid shared enticing images on social media, creating a sense of exclusivity and allure. Frantically expressed disappointment, as there was little more to discover than flimsy shelters, barely edible food, and no such thing as music. Fyre festivals failed to deliver on popular demands, which led to legal action against organizers and criminal charges against the latter while it also left a dent on reputations with regards to the influencers involved. This reminds brands to put in due diligence in partnerships of claims of influencers and confer legitimacy in their assertions.

●       Pepsi's Kendall Jenner Ad - A video aired in 2017 featuring Kendall Jenner emerging from a modeling shoot to join a protest and offer a police officer a can of Pepsi as a tension diffuser. The ad's message was one of unity and peace; however, there came an immediate backlash in renunciation of trivializing very serious social movements and protests against police brutality. Critics called the ad tone-deaf. Pepsi subsequently withdrew the ad, apologizing for it and reminding brands that sensitivity toward social issues requires authenticity and understanding and should not merely be seen as marketing fodder.

●       Tata Tea Fruski Campaign with Biswa Kalyan Rath - Tata Tea missed the point when they originally dealt with comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath, for, in-the-name-of-the-campaign #FruskiLeak, it failed to showcase Biswa's style. What followed was a script that felt very untrue to the actual human experience of connection and unable to reach an audience because it was a hypothetical reach.

●       Reliance's Jio Launch - The high-profile launch design fell flat when multiple celebrities tweeted the same message due to a copy-paste error. This blunder showcased the inauthenticity of the campaign and emphasized the importance of personalized, authentic content from the influencer.

Evonix’s Game-Changing Approach to Influencer Marketing

At Evonix, we establish influencer partnerships that are not limited to reach but cross the range of collusion and fidelity with the message of your brand. We carefully select an influencer based on the affinity to your target audience so that every action brings further credibility and real engagement to your brand. Whether she is a micro-influencer or an established name, we can handle influencer campaigns from strategy to execution, telling the story of your brand in an absolutely trustworthy manner. Each partnership has impact measurement to allow continued expansion of your brand reach in social and digital platforms.

Fast forward to 2019, when our world has grown into a highly interconnected one teaming with clickbait, #ads, and #Sponcon. Personal blogging, on a large scale, has shifted from long-form essays to mobile-friendly listicles and pictures-snapping content over social networks. A whole industry has propped up around internet celebrities using their charm to peddle products. Unless we somehow reignite some of the reasons why influencer marketing became successful, this very industry will meet the same demise of traditional advertising.

In this paradigm, consumers are getting tired of bombarding endorsements and the A-class influencers hawking everything from laxative teas to island festivals at best sounding dubious. People are sceptical of influencer fraud, and frankly, we are tired of seeing Instagram influencers sitting on inflatable swans trying to sell flavored seltzer water.

Time is ripe for brands and influencers alike to have fun with influencer marketing once more. How do we do that?

Step One: Find the passion. Find the passionate people -- creators and brands alike -- who give a damn about forging real connections and providing actual value to engaged audiences. Find the people who care more about relationships and less about follower numbers.

Step Two: Forge partnerships that actually make sense. Look, if you’re Pepsi and you want to work with Kendall Jenner, fine. (Just maybe don’t trivialize a serious social and political movement while doing so.) But most brands should be looking for influencers whose interests and values align with their own.

Step Three: Stop the flat tummy product shout-outs, the poor (or missing) FTC disclosures, the cringingly overly-staged photos, and the accounts that are more about advertising and less about authenticity.

Influencer marketing doesn’t have to be one more bummer byproduct of an overly-commercialized internet. Just like the old days, influencer-shared recommendations and brand messaging can be a natural, enjoyable part of our content consumption rather than yet another disruptive, shallow ad experience. Make audiences the priority and deliver something of value, and the money will follow.

About Evonix

Evonix is a leading digital marketing and technology solutions company, known for its innovative, creative, and data-driven approach to marketing. Specializing in immersive experiences, Evonix helps brands engage with their audiences in new and exciting ways, creating lasting connections that foster growth and success.