The number of cultural products that have their origins during the pandemic and especially during confinement is striking. These terrible weeks that have kept us in suspense, terrified, locked in our homes and with much more time than usual for reflection and the production of homemade bread, have given a lot of themselves from a point of view creative view. The Instagram account @hazmeunafotoasí is also an example. The publicist Lorena Macías (Valencia, 1989), its creator, who had worked in several advertising agencies in Spain and Argentina, was doing it at the time in a hotel in Madrid as social media manager. When Covid-19 arrived, his company implemented an ERTE and sent all employees home.
“Until then, I didn’t know much about the ecosystem of influencers Spanish,” he explains, “but then I started coming across photos on Instagram that I found very strange and very comical. So I made a meme, two memes, four, five… I published them and they were very successful, so I started to gain a little relevance.
The interest generated led him to delve a little deeper into the subject. “I discovered this whole world of people who sell on Vinted the things they had promoted the day before, the fights between them, the promotion of creams supposed to make breasts bigger… Then I started to tell them with my humor and my own astonishment, because it was new to me too. This is how “Take a photo of me like this” began.
The growth has been spectacular. Within a few weeks, the account already had over 100,000 followers and continues to grow steadily, reaching 333,000 today. “I guess it helped that we spent a lot of time at home on our phones,” says- he. “It’s also had a lot of impact among people who work with brands and advertising agencies who have written to me to say ‘thanks for saying what we can’t say’.
Today, Lorena, who after the success of her account opened her own agency, Make me an audience like this, has just published One hundred years of mendigram. The great history of Influ-Magic Realism (Roca Editorial, 2024), a book in which, with his acid and witty humor, he tells his story and enriches it with the most hilarious anecdotes from the universe influencer.
You say he’s a friend influencer He defined you, more than as a creator, as a “destroyer of content”. Sure, that’s great, but how do you set up your account?
The official definition was initially “the current influencer told with memes,” but I think over time that mutated. It’s an account where we laugh at the pantomime that is Instagram, in which we all participate as consumers and creators. I also try to ensure that the public, in addition to laughing, retains a little information so that they can be more critical of this new medium. When we see advertising on television, we all identify that it is advertising; However, on the Internet everything is much more diffuse, ambiguous and crazy.
Furthermore, to this is added the lack of ethics of influencers who try to introduce advertising to us through supposed content. The problem is not that influencers make money, they think we are fools for doing it. So I think it’s a good place for that: to laugh, but also to learn something about how this new digital media works.
“Take a Picture of Me Like This” had a lot of impact among people who work with brands and advertising agencies, who wrote to me to say “thanks for saying what we can’t say”.
You also have a podcast, Influ-Magic Realismin which this informative facet goes even further.
For me, the podcast was a way to begin to separate Lorena Macías from “Take a picture of me like this” and move into a more professional side. I wanted to delve deeper into certain topics and, of course, networks or memes weren’t the best format. I’m happy because it generated a lot of interest. When I presented the idea to some platforms, they said to me: “Look, we love it, we follow you, but we’ll buy a podcast from you if it’s about salsa”, but I didn’t want to not continue doing what I was doing. on Instagram for everyone in the world.
So well, I self-produced it, I directed it myself, and it was very pleasant to see that the public was very interested in subjects like the commercialization of breast cancer which is done on the networks; the exhibition of minors – for which Minister Sira Rego came – or the relationship of influencers with luxury, for which we have the marketing director of Porsche.
One of the key concepts in your story and which appears in the title of the book is “mendigram”. For those who don’t know yet, what is it?
This is something that is not practiced as much lately, but before it was very common to see a influencer record a video saying “do you know a place that sells cakes?” “, “do you know any good brands of vacuum cleaners? » or “I’m going to Majorca from April 4 to 20, do you know any hotels?” And by chance, the next day, I received a pallet of cakes, a pallet of vacuum cleaners or something, and then a message was recorded. history saying: “Well my friends at ‘@marca’ sent me this wonderful together of vacuum cleaners and nothing, I’ll tell you how it goes.” So beggar on Instagram: mendigram. I find it funny how the term has spread among people themselves. influencers.
When we see advertising on television we all identify that it is advertising, but on the Internet everything is much more diffuse, ambiguous and crazy.
Have you made many enemies among the influencers?
Don’t believe it. In the end, I’m not inventing anything. I say “this screenshot is your post from yesterday and this screenshot is your Vinted from today”. I only compiled it, turned it into a sketchI’m making humor out of it, but the objective reality is there and it’s you who did it.
I also understand, of course, that they don’t find it funny, but because they seem devastated. It is ultimately a job that is similar to that of a film critic. In other words, no one touches Boyero’s palms when he says “this is crap.” I may have proclaimed myself a critic of Instagram and I understand that there are people who don’t like it.
One of the stories that interested me the most in the book is the part where you explain your loss of innocence on Instagram, when you discovered how, for example, agencies were doing bad campaigns only for you to show on your account and promote it. . free. Or even groups of tastes by tastesto pretend you have a sequel that isn’t real.
One day, a career colleague called me and said, “At my agency, they harass you. They give these girls two coins to make fools of themselves and you amplify it on your profile with 300,000 free followers. It was a real blow to reality. I could sense it, but I couldn’t imagine that they were already designing the campaigns for me to take down.
Once you start pulling the thread, you discover a lot of ugly things, like this story about groups of engagement it left me stunned. Crazy people who dedicate themselves to revision tastes that you leave in a photo and if you don’t leave them, they kick you out of the group. There is a whole mafia there and there are many groups. In the book I explain what happened when I infiltrated one of them. It’s a very murky world with many people fighting to excel and earn 20 euros at the end of the month.
The problem isn’t that “influencers” make money, it’s that they make us look like fools for doing it.
As a networking expert, I wanted to ask you the eternal question: is it really very difficult or not to be an “influencer”?
Let’s leave it at that, it’s a job. Nowadays the influence They are just another advertising channel. Naturally, there are very professional people who do things well, whether it’s scientific dissemination, humor… Any type of professionalized content requires research, editing, etc.
It’s true that it has already become a joke that “there’s a lot of work behind that”, but there is, like in all professions. So yes, be influencer It’s a job, but most of them don’t take it that way.
And from your privileged position, how do you see the future of influencers? Do you think they will survive?
I think things will change, as they do on any platform. Creators who are truly professional and truly profitable for brands will survive. And I think there are profiles that are very similar because they come from humor or from lifestyle Also. The Pombos really use a lot of the stuff they put out, Laura Escanes does too. These are profiles that work because they attract many visits to a website. And then there are other people who do it for humor like @lalachus or @grtamara, or through dissemination or activism like @climabar who get results for brands.
I think that until now, brands have been a little blinded, because it was a new sector and now it is becoming more professional, we demand results and we invest accordingly.
The publication of the book coincided with your emergence from anonymity, why precisely now?
The truth is that I’ve been teaching and giving conferences for four years… People in the sector already know more or less who I am. There were already photos of me there and in the end I think the smartest thing was to make it natural and even more so with the promotion of the upcoming book. For me, it was like lifting a weight off my shoulders. And the truth is that the response has been very sympathetic. I received very, very kind messages. It’s not at all that I was afraid, but the welcome was very affectionate, very warm.
