The power of the pitch
Inside the lives and finances of Boston-area influencers (it’s not just about getting all that free stuff in the mail, though that’s pretty cool)
Britney Branch, dressed in a white turtleneck and leather snake print boots, is ready. She’s picked a spot with perfect lighting this February morning: a common area in her Revere apartment building with bright, beachside windows. Her white water bottle, coffee, rose gold MacBook, and planner sit, carefully arranged, on a small table. Phone on. Tripod positioned. A pile of fancy boxes by her side, waiting to be opened. She hits record.
“So I just got this package in the mail,” Branch, 31, tells the camera, her pink-manicured hand displaying a small teal box. “It’s from IT Cosmetics. I really love this brand. I’ve been using it for years, and it is their ‘confidence in a gel’ cream.”
Though her days filming companies’ free product packages make her career as an “influencer” look easy, Branch has worked hard to build her brand as a beauty and wellness expert and to get to a point where she was able to quit her corporate marketing job. She is one of thousands of influencers in the Boston area who make up a new class of internet celebrities promoting products. Influencing has only become a viable career in recent years, with some local influencers telling the Globe they made at least $100,000 last year.
Branch earned more than $60,000 from brand deals on social media alone last year, she said, and additionally earns commissions when people buy products after clicking links she shares. For a recent $2,500 campaign with Star Market, Branch perused grocery aisles and, in her kitchen, cooked salmon and broccoli as her voiceover explained the importance of a varied diet, or “eating the rainbow.”
This is the world of influencer marketing,
which continues to grow in importance as Gen Z — the TikTok generation — comes of age. Companies spent an estimated $21.1 billion on influencers in 2023, up nearly 30 percent from 2022, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub.
TikTok, while lucrative for influencers, may be in jeopardy, after the US House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that could effectively ban the video app if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell it.
To Branch, the uncertainty underscores the importance of building her following everywhere.
“I’m still going to create as much content to support my audience” on TikTok, said Branch, who also plans to increase her YouTube and newsletter efforts. “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen with any of these apps — you just have to be prepared.”
Despite TikTok’s precariousness, influencing remains big business. Influencers’ vibes of authenticity make people want to buy what they’re selling, said Alessandro Bogliari, chief executive of The Influencer Marketing Factory, which is based in Miami.
“Whenever you are on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or whatever, Twitter, there is this feeling that this person could be a friend,” Bogliari said.
Bogliari said Boston — where a third-party tool he uses counts 7,188 Instagram influencers — is no hot spot like New York or Los Angeles, which respectively, the tool says, have 124,000 and 151,000 content creators with at least 3,000 Instagram followers each. But regardless of where influencers live, he said, they can make good money, ranging from a few hundred dollars per post to upward of $100,000 per post.
Content creators said they enjoy both the creativity and flexibility of this job, which has skyrocketed in recent years, as the pandemic increased people’s screen time and made influencers a key asset for brands, according to Hurradt Marketing.
When the pandemic hit, Branch was still working her corporate job but decided to quit in 2020, as she saw significant growth in her followings on Instagram and TikTok.
Now, she’s amassed more than 120,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram combined and can make up to $10,000 from a brand deal, which requires a certain number of posts, all pre-approved by the advertiser, in a given timeframe.
But she’s not driven just by money — Branch said she also wants to increase representation for people of color in the wellness industry. In a recent TikTok video, she decried being the sole Black woman in her yoga class.
“I myself am studying to become a yoga teacher because I want to walk into a classroom and see representation across the board,” Branch said.
With almost no startup costs, influencing draws many young people with the allure of making easy money. Some have no luck. Others, like Branch, work hard and see it pay off.
And then there are those who find instant success.
Kristen Schick, 26, a biotech quality control specialist, posted her first video on TikTok two years ago. It was simple: her Seaport apartment’s clean, aesthetically appealing rooms and artsy shots of herself. But it managed to take off — drawing nearly 100,000 views.
“I was just like, ‘I guess I have to keep posting,’” she said. “I never had a dream of becoming an influencer or anything.”
In two years, Schick has garnered more than 225,000 followers on TikTok, where she posts lifestyle and day-in-the-life videos. She still works full time, but she said her influencer income now brings in nearly triple her biotech salary. She’s done brand deals with companies such as Lululemon and Dunkin’.
The lifestyle isn’t as lavish as it looks, Schick said. She often works 12-hour days, a grueling schedule she plans to keep for at least five years. She is holding onto her biotech job though, because she doesn’t envision herself filming videos forever, especially once she has kids.
“I’m not going to sit here and say being an influencer is a really intellectually challenging job ... but it is time-consuming,” she said.
Schick signed with a media agency in 2023 to help ease her workload. But agencies can take a hefty cut from influencers — about 20 percent, Bogliari said. So some content creators choose to forgo agents. That has led to a difficult juggling act for Kimberly Chacon, 26, a Latina lifestyle and cooking influencer, who handles her own influencer deals while working full time as a store manager.
“I do love my full-time job, but I do eventually want to go into my passion, which is to create videos full time,” she said.
Chacon, who has nearly 64,000 followers, has seen her efforts pay off. Through sponsorships from companies such as Verizon, Dyson, and Goya, she said she can now earn her job’s annual salary in four months of influencer work. She is keeping her store job for now, though, for financial stability.
Other influencers have jumped all in.
Tommy Guarino, 24, dropped out of University of Massachusetts Boston in 2022, after he discovered his passion for creating funny videos and started making money on social media. In his first TikTok, he joked about how people say they’re from Boston, despite growing up in the suburbs. That video drew 100,000 views. He now has 1.8 million followers on TikTok and 263,000 on Instagram — including actor Mark Wahlberg.
Guarino now makes more than six figures from social media, he said, where he often posts videos with his friend, who goes by Prosciutto Papi, mimicking a Boston deli shop with customers ranging from Taylor Swift to Bill Belichick.
“We’re kind of like a big fish in a small pond,” Guarino said of himself and Prosciutto Papi, “whereas everyone in LA has a million TikTok followers.”