UK influencers who promote products on their social media feeds may soon need to add ‘#influencer’ to their hashtags, after an application made to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Chris Ward, former creative director of Comic Relief, argues in the application that influencers should be prevented from promoting ‘perfectionism’ and that lack of consistency with the use of ‘#ad’ puts young audiences at risk of being misled.

Source: The Drum

British high-street institution Greggs launched their second Veganuary campaign with the hotly-anticipated vegan steak bake. The bakery brand, who caused a stir last year with their vegan sausage roll, caught the media’s attention once again this year and undoubtably led many other well-known food brands to tap into this trend. Vegan versions of meaty favourites were launched, including KFC’s Original Recipe Burger and Subway’s Meatless Meatball Marinara Sub. With over 350,000 Brits having taken part in Veganuary this month, the importance of keeping up with the growing Vegan food trend is more prevalent than ever.

Source: Food Navigator

Viewing figures may have suffered a drop for the Winter edition of Love Island, but that hasn’t stopped companies creating creative content to gain coverage for their brand. Headlines have included SEX ED Love Island sex positions explained and a graph demonstrating percent growth of each Islander’s Instagram following each episode (which made it to The Sun’s Snapchat), demonstrating there is still an interest amongst brands connecting with a wider audience.

Source: The Sun

The ‘dream job’ is a long-standing PR trend due to the raft of online coverage from national, regional and lifestyle publications they receive, but this month one campaign receive backlash. TATE galleries advertised a caffeine-addict’s dream role “Head of Coffee” but, at £40K per year salary, employees complained that this was more than the average wage of a London-based curator. Despite this, journalists have suggested as long as there is a strong hook and an interest to their audience, ‘dream job’ campaigns are still worth pursuing.

Source: The Guardian

Photorealistic ‘Virtual Influencer’ has hit the headlines again this month, reigniting a debate on whether digital characters are able to make real connections with followers. Lil Miquela, a digitally-generated fictional influencer with over 1.6 million Instagram followers, has attracted the attention of luxury brands such as Prada and Calvin Klein. The ‘real’ influencer world is rarely without controversy and with the rise of the computer-generated counterparts, concerns about fraud and transparency are only set to heighten.