Last week the news of an influencer offering sponsorship opportunities around her surprise engagement poured further scorn on the influencer industry, many people claimed that the line between paid content and organic had been crossed.
The influencer in question, Marissa Fuchs, denied any knowledge of the pitch pack that had been circulated to brands, pushing the blame onto a friend and her now fiancé.
With such actions, it’s easy for brands and consumers to be tiring of paid influencers pushing products towards us but it’s unfair to tar everyone with the same brush, in any industry.
It’s with this thought in mind that I decided to explore how an influencer can be an influencer but not actually an influencer.
You won’t normally find social media influencers in the remote Atlas mountains being moved on by the police, but Jenny Tough isn’t what many would consider a normal influencer.
Given the current backlash against influencer marketing over its lack of authenticity—Jenny Tough is actually the very definition of a genuine influencer—she lives and breathes what she does and its this authentic passion that makes her influential and creates a beautiful global Instagram account along the way.
It wasn’t Jenny Toughs original career path but as she has always had a real love of the outdoors, travel, adventure, and endurance sports her hobbies combined and grew into doing what she does today. As Jenny, herself says: “I’m always most motivated by wanting to know what’s around the next corner, and I’m quite lucky that I get to explore parts of the world where very few westerners have ever been.”
Jenny’s next challenge is to run across a mountain range on every continent, solo and unsupported (meaning she runs with a backpack full of camping kit, food, and supplies, and navigates herself through regions where no routes exist). To date, she’s crossed the Tien Shan (world first, 1000km, 25 days), the Atlas Mountains (world first, 870km, 23 days), the Bolivian Andes (world first, 650km, 17 days), and recently the Southern Alps of New Zealand.
While she might be fortunate to pursue her hobbies as a career... it’s certainly not easy. Every trip has dangers and challenges, for example when she ran across the Bolivian Andes, solo and unsupported at an altitude of >4000m the weather was so bad she was permanently cold and wet, there were very few people anywhere on her route and the dangers of attack for solo travelers in this area are well known - it really would have to be her passion rather than a job for her to keep putting herself into these situations.
Jenny originally began sharing her travel stories on social media to inspire others to get outside and take on big challenges. She believes that “if people love it, they’ll protect it,” so her motivation in sharing these stories was simply to get more people to develop a love for the outdoors and nature.
Her influencer status snowballed when as more and more people started following her and her travels she then started getting approached by brands who wanted to sponsor her expeditions–this suited her as she was self-funding her trips and this ensured that she always had the right kit–which can be very expensive.
Brands have approached Jenny through social media but also directly, as the U.K. outdoors industry is a pretty small crew where you tend to meet the same companies and build personal relationships with like-minded people at the various events and festivals throughout the year making it a fun and ultimately authentic industry to work in.
Outdoor brands sponsor Jenny’s expeditions providing her with the kit to use and when she posts about her escapades, the kit features heavily in the posts through tagging the brands and the #ad hashtag. From their perspective, working with a real adventurer is more valuable than traditional advertising because they get a real story that’s actually interesting, and also get the opportunity to prove that their gear works in the harshest conditions. Customers are becoming immune to normal advertising and prefer real content, so when a brand sponsors an expedition, they get to share that story with their followers as well as having access to Jenny’s own followers learning about their products.
This is very different from some influencers because what Jenny does is incredibly dangerous and very much on the edge. She is heading out into truly challenging environments and her kit is essential to survival, so she can only work with brands that make the right kit to keep her alive or support her activity. She has to be very selective about who she works with—actually life or death selective.
As she herself says: “I see it as a huge honor and responsibility that I have followers who look to me for advice on getting into the outdoors, so I always ensure that I’m only telling them about products and brands that are genuinely good enough to keep them safe out there. The brands I work with aren’t creating fast fashion, they’re creating technical equipment for adventures.”
In the past year, Jenny has taken her influencer status one step further and actually worked alongside Montane for the development and launch of their fastpacking backpack, the Trailblazer, helping them design the backpack rather than just testing and using it. Jenny’s own Trailblazer has certainly been put through its paces being used on well over 1000km of journeys in environments around the world before the retail pack even launched, therefore, this is a piece of kit that is guaranteed to survive the harshest trips!
It's clear that consumers attitudes are changing towards influencers and the industry is rapidly growing up.
The main change is that more and smaller brands are now choosing to outsource their social media, and therefore influencer marketing, to third party companies, which for adventurers like Jenny puts pressure on the relationship as it can then become quite transactional, rather than building a relationship and working with the brand employees who actually make the products and people who "get" the outdoors world.
For example, Jenny told me a story from her run across the Atlas Mountains.
“On the fifth night of my expedition to run the length of the Atlas Mountains, I was bivvying [that’s sleeping outside without a tent] high up on a hill, far away from any civilisation, when I was suddenly surprised by two Jeeps that came up to my campsite—even though I was nowhere near any roads. Ten men, all armed with guns, piled out of the vehicles and started yelling at me to get in the Jeep with them, that I couldn’t sleep here. It was a scary situation for a while, but although none of them were in uniform so I couldn’t be sure, they insisted they were part of the Gendarmerie (local police), and felt that camping outside was too dangerous and they wanted to take me back to the nearest town—a town where, as a solo woman, I wasn’t allowed to even walk through the front door of the only hotel or get a meal at any of the cafes, as women aren’t allowed in those places. I refused to get in the Jeep with the men, and in the end, I had to pack up my campsite and move to a Berber camp nearby, where the police locked me in from the outside to ensure I didn’t try to go camping again!
It was a scary first experience, but in the following days, I did meet in calmer conditions with the Gendarmerie (now in uniform, so I could be sure). It turned out to be a bit of a culture clash, where the men of the Gendarmerie felt that mountains and wilderness were not safe.”
With such bad press for influencer marketing recently it’s easy to be cynical about the whole industry, but when listening to stories like Jenny's and seeing how she partners with brands it’s clear the industry isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and shouldn’t—although maybe it’s time for some evolution in certain segments.
