I am now the influencer who says good things about a brand in exchange for free products.
A usual Sunday mall hop took me to Sodhi (people in Gurgaon will be familiar), and they had an ongoing offer. Pic below.
There were a few rules though:
- Follow the page
- Review a Sodhi's product
- Have the reviewer's face in the video
There's one thing to review or say good things about a product or brand. It's another to get influencer marketing sold over a brownie.
I didn't have the time or energy to look good, check the mic, edit audio, edit video, and ensure everything went through smoothly. Because, well, I have an image to maintain.
That said, their brownies are good. (Not a promotion)
A random thought led me to a workaround.
I was experimenting with videos on Veo 3.1, and one of the options was Ingredients to Video. It sounded interesting, so I googled it and decided to try. You basically give the video its "ingredients" - background, subject, context, and desired result.
I gave it a prompt to generate a video testimonial on Adrak Gur chai at Senti'o Bake (I already had pictures of the product and the café), along with a recent selfie of mine.
Two tweaks later, the result looked satisfactory.
[EMBED: Instagram reel DUkcJREjvSH]
I posted it on Instagram, invited the brand as a collaborator, and went back to the shop to get my brownie. The guy at the counter looked at me suspiciously, but the video technically met all their criteria - a human talking about their product, at their location. So they couldn't really deny it.
I got my brownie - walnut chocolate - had my eyes on it all along.
To be clear, the brand got the promotion they wanted. But the method is what we actually need to talk about.
Is this the "right" way? Partially, no. The video isn't me speaking yet it is me. I generated it, edited it, and approved it. Some credit is due.
That said, this is risky. Someone else could take a picture of mine, use it as an ingredient, and make me say or do things I never consented to. And given how fast AI is growing, by the end of this year or early next, we'll likely have video generation that's indistinguishable from reality.
The brownie was incidental. Identity and consent aren't.