Influencer sued for allegedly not influencing almost as hard as it was paid

Grown-ish Luka Sabbat, Kourtney Kardashian's contender, faces a lawsuit from Snap Inc.'s public relations firm, PR Consulting, allegedly violating the terms of the $ 60,000 influence agreement.

Influencing is a vague term that essentially refers to anyone who has a presence on social media and wants to take advantage of it, for example by accepting money to approve products or simply to be seen using them. For marketers, influencers are great because celebrities can offer their products directly to their fans, which is often more profitable than a traditional advertising campaign.

For those who are not marketers or influencers, the line is a little more troubled: No one really has the illusion that, for example, those hundreds of millions of dollars were not in the spirit of LeBron James when he signed his contract with Nike. But influence marketing on social media is often associated with ethically dubious behavior, in violation of the rules of the Federal Trade Commission, such as the refusal to reveal paid influencers to promote. Then there is the fact that, sometimes, the influencers described by themselves have only a vague influence.

In this case, Sabbath, who is a real celebrity, is accused of not having taken the trouble to follow through on his agreement of influence.

According to Variety, the lawsuit (visible here on a New York state court website) alleged that Sabbat, which has 1.4 million subscribers on Instagram, had cashed a payment initial $ 45,000 on a $ 60,000 contract promoting the Snap's Spectacles product before returning. In the documents, PR Consulting alleged that Sabbat was "to create original content for at least four (4) unique publications: one (1) publication on Instagram and three (3) publications on an Instagram story". The publications in question were supposed to be made at New York Fashion Week and during fashion shows in Milan or Paris, Sabbat was also asked for photos wearing Spectacles spectacles at European fashion shows.

Despite this easy qualification as one of the most decadent ways imaginable of touching $ 60,000, PR Consulting has written in court that Sabbath only published two of the posts and did not release them at prior with the PR firm as required:

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Sabbath has published only one RSS feed and an Instagram article, but has failed to publish a new Instagram narrative in New York, with a superimposed link, a narrative Instagram in Milan or Paris, with a superimposed link and has not been photographed in public at least once (1) in the aforementioned cities while he was wearing the product Shows.

… In addition, Sabbath did not submit the message to PRC before the collage and did not provide any analysis to PRC for its first Instagram story, as required by the 39; agreement. Analytics of his only post on Instagram have been provided beyond the agreed 24-hour publication deadline.

PR Consulting added in the documents that "Sabbath admitted its default but nevertheless refused to return the funds paid by him to the CRP", and seeks reimbursement of the initial payment of 45 000 USD and damages of 45 000 USD, fees.

A spokesman for Snap told Gizmodo by email that they were in no way involved in PR Consulting's decision to file a complaint.

Although $ 60,000 is a lot of money to publish a few times on Shows, Snap has much bigger financial problems right now. The company has been hemorrhaging for years, including tens of millions of people on unsold glasses. Their latest earnings report indicated that they had significantly reduced these losses, but still lost $ 325 million per quarter. As TechCrunch pointed out, the bad publicity resulting from this action could cost well over $ 90,000.