Why CGI influencers are the perfect fit for fashion industry

CGI influencers are the perfect mannequin. They can be placed within any context and dressed in any sponsoring-fashion house’s garment.

Influencer marketing effort is often front-loaded. It takes time - and therefore money - to identify the most appropriate influencer for your brand.

Enter the CGI influencer. With avatar influencers you don’t have to:

• Spend time carefully identifying, selecting and briefing avatars. 
• Vet CGI influencers through a careful and thorough process of digital due diligence. 
• Fret that a CGI influencer will produce another Logan Paul Aokigahara forest moment and tarnish your brand by association.

CGI influencers will always turn up on time for the creative shoot. They’ll always look Insta-immaculate, too.

I’m not the only one to see the growth potential. According to LA TechWatch Brud, the company behind  Lil Miquela has just raised $6M in funding from Sequoia Capital, Boxzgroup, SV Ange and other investors.*

Investors see the growth potential in these computer-generated creations becoming mainstream fashion influencers. Proof of concept has been made de-risking their investment. Lil Miquela, for instance, has worked with Prada on its Autumn Winter collection. She’s posed wearing Diesel and Moncler, too. 

Other CGI avatar fashion influencers

Lil Miquella may be the most famous she’s not the only Insta-creation working with fashion brands.

Shudu, is the CGI 'supermodel created by British photographer Cameron-James Wilson. Shudu was designed as an art piece celebration of beautiful dark-skinned women; a project to frame beauty.

The Shudu Instagram account went viral when Fenty Beauty - the make-up brand owned by singer/songwriter Rihanna – posted Shudu’s image wearing one of its lipsticks.

Since then, Wilson says, he’s received many brand offers in the fashion and tech worlds, all hoping to work with the CGI model.

The fashion vertical is, perhaps, the natural space to inhabit for these CGI influencers.

Always looking Insta-immaculate there’s no need for these CGI models to succumb to perpetual dieting, gruelling beauty regimes or cosmetic surgery.

There is a long history within the fashion industry to touch up images so as to perfect them. From the antediluvian airbrush to 3-D graphics and Photoshop.

These avatar influencers become dolls or mannequins that can be placed within any context and dressed in any sponsoring-fashion house’s garment.

CGI influencers: more real than some Insta-famous

Final word: What does this mean for disclosure regulations?

The Financial Times newspaper ran an interview with Lil Miquela a few weeks ago. Of the dozen or so questions the only one which went unanswered was: 'Do you put up sponsored (paid-for) content on line?

The Federal Trade Commission is the independent agency of the US government tasked with promoting consumer protection and regulating influencer marketing.

Last year, it updated its endorsement guides to require influencers to disclose their marketing relationships and identify paid posts with a hashtag like #ad or #sponsored.

So far it's unclear how those rules would apply to CGI influencers who aren't human, and whose creators cloak themselves in secrecy. Presumably brands paying these avatar influencers would be the first to receive the FTC knock at their door.

* When the Lil Miquela Instagram account was ‘hacked’ last month by fellow CGI Insta-influencer Bermuda I tracked two of the people behind Brud: Sara Decou, chief of Stuff at Brud and Trevor McFedries. They appeared to be operating from a residential address one street away from the Los Angeles City College.