Virtual influencers in multimodal advertising

Abstract

The article highlights new communication and advertising phenomenon – virtual influencers (VI) or virtual models employed by different brands to promote their collections and goods. Influencer marketing became an effective marketing strategy and profitable trend within the last twenty years. Influencers can be categorized in line with the content they generate, number of followers they have, their specialization, the impact they produce. Influencer marketing flourishes in social media. Celebrities who earned their fame offline are mega-influencers. Virtual influencers are transmedia 3D models created by high-caliber professionals via computer-generated imagery (CGI), animation, computer graphics, multimodality, copywriting with their bio, tastes, hobbies, lifestyle, even political preferences and social values. They are fond of social networking and have accounts in the most popular social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Brands collaborate with social media influencers for narrowcasting young customers, mostly millennials who prefer social media to mass media and perceive virtual reality as a natural component of current civilization and everyday life. Experts believe virtual influencers’ rating is based on wow effect and they won’t be able to outperform celebrities despite high annual income as they are fictional and not emotional. Celebrities as mega-influencers and models fear virtual models will squeeze them out of marketing and advertising, other social media users have Uncanny Valley syndrome. Psychologists claim VI might trigger psychological problems for teenagers as they cannot attain glamorous lifestyle VI promote. Verbal behavior of virtual influencers is molded by copywriters and mirrors characteristics of English used in social media by teenagers and millennials – short simple sentences with acronyms visibly peppered with emoji and hashtags. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter accounts of the most popular influencers Lil Miquela, Bermuda, Shudu were analyzed. The future of virtual influencers lies in synthesis of CGI and artificial intelligence (AI) to generate posts automatically and communicate with followers. Then virtual influencers can be used outside advertising and marketing to make impact on global audience