COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGERY INFLUENCERS AS A MARKETING TOOL: A STUDY OF LIL MIQUELA

Abstract

This work analyses the communication tools that firms can implement to deliver their products and services. In particular, it deals with the Marketing Influence Practice. It attempts to address specifically the use of social networks by companies to promote their items by relying on innovative figures that characterize a more and more popular trend: the Computer Generated Imagine (CGI) influencers. After providing a general overview of the evolution of the marketplace and how these personalities, even being not real, influence consumers’ choices, the work studies one of the currently most popular among the digital influencers with the name of Lil Miquela. The content of the posts published on the Instagram account of the virtual influencer is analyzed as well as the messages that Brud, the LA based startup that manages the profile, spreads with the aim to identify those key inputs that allowed Miquela Sousa to become successful and requested by different fashion and beauty brands. Factors such as social activism, the allure of uncertainty around her true being (virtual or human), the captivating captions under the posts and the interest generated by the media are explored and discussed. This has been pursued through interviews with experts in this sector and active followers of Miquela and a survey using ANOVA analysis and the Tukey-Kramer Test. The work describes what this virtual personality stands for and the reasons for the media impact value, as highlighted during the Prada Fashion Week in Milan during the SS collection 2018/2019. The concluding remarks and reflections on implications point to how the use of virtual personalities might be conceptualized also to contribute to social utility.