This sort of behaviour is one of the things that annoys me most about "influencers". It's by no means just Helen that does this, but since she's the person I've seen doing it most recently I'm going to use the McDonalds ad as an example.
This year she has talked about eating less meat numerous times, talked about trying to buy less fast fashion and also reducing plastic to be kinder to the environment. All of which are great sentiments and I'm a believer of "lots of small changes" so I don't begrudge her for doing an ad for McDonalds in that respect (although I do find the idea of seeing how chicken nuggets are made vomit inducing and I really don't get why she mentioned it). What pisses me off is that she surely knows McDonalds is not a brand that particularly fits in with her trying to be kinder to the environment and that people may ask her about it given her previous comments that have been immortalised by her filming them and putting them online. But, instead of acknowledging this prior to the ad and planning what she might say if/when people question her collaboration, or speaking to Maccies to find out what they are doing to reduce their impact on the environment she just turns off comments and deletes anyone that brings it up on another post? She could have done a disclaimer, before or after the ad and then at least she knows she's done everything she can to explain and be transparent in her choice of ad partner.
It just winds me up when influencers think that any kind of comment or question that isn't a compliment is hating or trolling and should be ignored. You can't build a career based on being a "friend" of your audience and then ignore them when they have questions. If you're being fed a targeted ad from someone you follow you have a right to question it. It's called being held to account. I don't understand what is difficult to understand about that?
I actually think a lot of the OG influencers find this sort of thing harder to deal with due to the fact they could make money in any shady as
duck way they wanted to before the ASA created guidelines. Can't wait until they get a professional body for influencers, they'll all kick off then "omg professional standards are soooooo unfair".
Ok rant over now
