There’s an agency that enables you to hire your very own image-enhancing squad, so it’s no shock other companies are paid to pair off product pushers with social-media “stars,” celebrities shrunk down to smartphone size. Those who’ve mastered Vine or Instagram or Youtube, usually teens, are paid hundreds–occasionally hundreds of thousands–to post pictures of brands or do stunts involving them. If corporations feared wasting money on yesterday’s unquantifiable print ads, they’re really no more sure, even with all the new statistics, they aren’t burning currency on Gladwellian “influencers.” It doesn’t seem like sound business, even if it speaks to the further Warholization of fame.

From Shareen Pathak’s Digiday interview with an anonymous social-media executive about the new industry:

Question:

How do you find them?

Answer:

Social team is a bunch of millennials, so we’ll often find someone we like and we’ll throw it into a database with keywords. But usually it’s a CEO or CMO or whoever saying, “Oh, my kid likes this guy.” At this major car brand I worked for, we paid $300,000 for a few photographs because the CEO’s kid liked someone.

Question:

What about the influencer agencies?

Answer:

They’re huge now. Like the big media networks that say they work with 2,200 followers. They’re helpful. The big problem is, they don’t operate much like a traditional talent management company. They don’t provide insurance in case their talent doesn’t deliver or anything. Agencies can’t really hire them through them. They sort of just expect the brands to approach them. They don’t pitch them or anything. It’s silly.

Question:

Tell me about the process.

Answer:

We’ll do a meet and greet. Tell them what we’re thinking and ask them for concepts. You can tell right away who is serious: The good ones come back within a day with ideas. Some send us decks or presentations that are pretty but not tailored to the brand. They’re all nuts. “I want to take a car and pick it up in London and drive it around Europe, so give me $100,000,” they say. Nope, let’s totally never do it that ever. These people don’t understand budgets.•