Philly’s microinfluencers and the $16 billion industry behind them

Candice Nguyen was trying to coax a butterfly to land on a Q-tip inside the butterfly tent at the Philadelphia Flower Show. She wanted to take a photo. In fact, she needed to take a photo, part of the “deliverables for this collaboration” that the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society laid out when they offered her free tickets to the show.

Finally, a butterfly approached Nguyen’s boyfriend, Bobby Monaghan, who, in his own words, is “not a big photo guy” yet had been dutifully snapping them for the past three hours. But instead of landing, the butterfly gripped Monaghan’s Q-tip with its hind legs, lifted it into the air, and glided away. No photo. Even butterflies won’t give you something for nothing these days.

Nguyen, 23, can respect that. She’s a Philly microinfluencer, a small player in a $16 billion global industry where laborers like her help sell excitement, authenticity, and an enormous range of products in Philly and beyond.

Nguyen actually works three jobs: in addition to maintaining her social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok, she works full-time as a social media coordinator at the Campbell Soup Company and part-time at her family’s Center City nail salon, Raw Lab Spa. Working as an influencer can be a precarious gig.

“It’s fairly easy to make a few bucks, but it’s incredibly difficult to make a living,” said Emily Hund, a research affiliate at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the new book The Influencer Industry.

On social media, Nguyen tends to work in exchange for perks or free gear: perfume, clothes, tickets. Her most recent paid post was an Instagram story promoting a birth control company for $50.

Microinfluencers have more followers than regular people but fewer than a celebrity — roughly between 10,000 and 100,000. (Nguyen has 5,100 on Instagram and 72,000 on a mostly defunct TikTok account, so sometimes she identifies as a “nanoinfluencer.”) But Philly organizations said they didn’t strictly care about follower counts, instead valuing the intensity of the relationship between an influencer and her online audience.

“You could have somebody who has a pretty small follower base, but they’re so engaged with those followers, and they have such a relationship with those followers, that it’s a really valuable touch point for us,” said Erin Armstrong, vice president of marketing, communications and digital media at the Franklin Institute, which most recently invited influencers to its Disney100 premiere.

On the morning of the Flower Show, Nyguen applied liquid blush and highlighter in front of the lighted mirror in her walk-in closet in Williamstown, NJ, where she lives with her mother and brother. She stashed a pocket light in her purse. Next to her was a drawer crammed full of free, unopened products that companies sent, hoping she would post about them; they started arriving in the mail as her follower count ticked up.

Nguyen responds to half a dozen private messages daily from her followers, posting recommendations based on common questions she gets, like where she bought a particular pan or how she made her skin look dewy. The daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, she holds a dual master’s and bachelor’s degree in digital communications from Drexel University. She’s the first generation in her family to go to college; she describes her brand as a “Philly girl who keeps it real.”

“I consider myself a main character in everyday situations,” Nguyen said.

On Instagram, her grid is filled with a mixture of personal content (a photo of her euphorically celebrating the Eagles) and commercial content (posing in front of an AMC movie theater, which she was paid to do). It can be hard to distinguish while casually scrolling.

That’s precisely what’s compelling to marketing executives. “Word of mouth” is far more trusted than traditional advertising, said Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at Wharton. So rather than place an ad, companies turn to people like Nguyen to share their message. Philly’s cultural institutions have joined in, as well. In addition to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (which for a second year had “a robust influencer campaign” for the Flower Show), the Franklin Institute, the Kimmel Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art all work with influencers now.

“The ways in which audiences learn about our events has seismically shifted over the past five years,” said Crystal Brewe, chief marketing and audience experience officer at The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center. About forty percent of people say they heard about Kimmel events through a combination of “word of mouth” and social media, Brewe said — much higher than the “attribution rates” from traditional ads.

But with thousands of influencers to choose from, companies aim to work with those who appear the most “authentic,” a trait that’s hard to quantify.

“They look at their metrics, but then also maybe just a person who works at the agency would scroll through their feeds and be like, ‘Eh, this one feels right,’ said Hund.

After spending three hours at the Flower Show to create a four-slide post with the hashtag #flowershowfriend, Nguyen and Monaghan drove to the empty stadiums in South Philly.

Nguyen wanted to take photos that she’d be able to post weeks or months from now. In the car, she changed into red pants and a cropped Phillies T-shirt. The wind whipped down Pattison Avenue; Monaghan donned a windbreaker. Nguyen stood under the freezing sun, looked directly into the camera, and grinned.