Influence has evolved: from Get Beauty to recommendations

Nearly ten years ago, I launched Get Beauty Paris, the first French physical event dedicated to fashion and beauty YouTubers. Even Beautycon wanted to buy us out, true story.

On May 28, 2016, at the Parc Floral, across 13 000 m²: ten thousand expected visitors and over seventy web headliners (e-marketing.fr). The promise of meeting your favorite YouTubers, provided you were patient enough to wait in line for three hours.

I look at the photos today, and what strikes me is not what changed. It is what has not moved at all.

2016: ten thousand people, three hours in line

Back then, the media talked about influence as a “phenomenon.” Meaning: a passing trend.

They were all there anyway, cameras on their shoulders, covering the event while explaining it would not last. It still makes me laugh.

Before we called them “influencers,” they were YouTubers and, more broadly, content creators, which they never stopped being. For an entire generation, they were accessible stars people could identify with. They still are.

Brands, on the other hand, were curious. A handful had already understood that these new figures would become a permanent line in the marketing plan. Nine years later, the creator economy is worth 250 billion dollars, with a projection around 480 billion in 2027 (Goldman Sachs Research). Not bad for a fleeting phenomenon.

Why wait in line for three hours to see someone you can watch for free?

For the relationship. They already had the content.

Ten thousand people waited three hours to meet someone they could watch in high definition, from their couch, for free, at any hour of the night. They came to verify that the person behind the screen was really who they imagined. They came to turn consumption into a connection.

The entire history of influence fits into that waiting line. What holds value is the relationship. Reach is merely a byproduct.

Nearly ten years later, that is exactly the conclusion the market is coming back to. It just took a very long detour.

The long detour through the race for followers

I took part in it, might as well say it right away.

First focused on accounts with several million followers, brands moved down to macro, then micro, then nano-influencers. Smaller communities, stronger engagement, lower cost per view. Then came UGC, where strangers are paid to produce videos that look like customer videos.

At every tier, the same intuition, and it was right: trust is found one notch lower. At every tier, the same limit: we were searching within the ladder.

Because as creators became brand ambassadors, with agents, exclusivity deals, and year-round media plans, they inherited the problems of traditional celebrities.

Success degrades the asset.

The more successful a creator is, the more they collaborate. The more they collaborate, the more they look like an ad agency. The more they look like an ad agency, the less their voice carries weight. It is mechanical. No blame here, especially not from me. The details of this paradox are in “Alternatively Influential”: you are one without knowing it.

Why has trust in influencers collapsed?

Because it followed professionalization, with a few years’ delay.

62 % of 13-39-year-olds say they are tired of always seeing the same big names, and 73 % trust small creators more than big names (YPulse, Celebrities and Influencers Report).

Meanwhile, the money keeps growing. French advertisers invested 587 million euros net in influencer marketing in 2025, up 13,1 % year-on-year, compared to 323 million in 2022 (ARPP / France Pub). Budgets doubling, trust eroding: the two curves have been diverging for five years, and almost no one is steering by the second.

That said, let’s not overplay the collapse. 47 % of French people still state they trust influencers more than brands to talk about a product (Edelman France). What is eroding is the credibility of the big sponsored creator. An individual’s voice, however, remains well above that of a brand.

And at the other end of the spectrum, nothing has moved. 88 % of consumers state they trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel, 50 % more than the lowest-ranked formats, led by banners, SMS, and SEO ads (Nielsen, Trust in Advertising 2021). It is the only trust indicator that hasn’t changed throughout my career.

I expanded on this point elsewhere: Crisis of influence or crisis of trust?. The distinction is not cosmetic. It decides what you do next.

From Get Beauty to Frak: the same move, a different scale

With Frak, I am doing pretty much what I did in 2016, with different tools.

Back then, we built a physical venue to make visible a relationship that already existed online. Today, we build an infrastructure to make measurable a recommendation that already exists in real life, in WhatsApp group chats and office conversations.

Concretely: allowing anyone, from loyal customers to creators, to play a real role in the growth of a brand they love, and get paid for it. The brand sets its acquisition cost in advance. On a 10 € CAC, 8 € goes to the ambassador customer and 2 € to the platform, only if the sale occurs. This is the shift from a Creator Economy to a Recommendation Economy: influence stops being a job reserved for a few thousand people.

What jumps out, placing both columns side by side, is how little really changes. We take seriously a behavior the market is not looking at yet. The rest is execution.

What twenty years in influence taught me

‘Fleeting phenomena’ never are. Influence was a fad. Live shopping was a Chinese thing. The creator economy was a YouTuber hobby. Every time, the use case existed before the industry believed in it. The only useful question: what are people already doing without being prompted?

What becomes professionalized loses value. Any form of influence loses credibility as it turns into a job. The macro, micro, nano, UGC descent had its logic. It was simply capped from the top, and its final step is the customer who paid for the product out of pocket. That is the subject of We are all influencers.

Trust cannot be bought. It is the only thing advertising has never managed to buy, despite dizzying budgets. It is built in relationships, and it belongs to the person who built it, not the one renting it. That is also why it degrades as soon as you rent it out.

Influence is not dying. It is changing hands. From brand ambassadors to creators, from creators to customers. At each step, we get closer to the original conversation: someone telling someone else, “I use this, and honestly, it works.”

And in my opinion, that is where it stops. Beyond the customer who paid, there is no more credible spokesperson to find. To see how this changes acquisition, read The Recommendation Economy: the next acquisition channel.

Frequently asked questions

What was Get Beauty Paris?

Get Beauty Paris was the first French physical event dedicated to fashion and beauty YouTubers. Its first edition took place on May 28, 2016 at the Parc Floral in Paris, across 13 000 m², with ten thousand visitors expected and over seventy web personalities. Beautycon, its American counterpart, offered to acquire it.

Why did trust in influencers drop?

Because influence became professionalized. The more a creator multiplies partnerships, the more their voice sounds like an advertising message. 62 % of 13-39-year-olds say they are tired of always seeing the same big names and 73 % trust small creators more than big names (YPulse).

What is the Recommendation Economy?

It is the model that succeeds the creator economy. Instead of paying a few thousand professional creators for their audience, a brand rewards every customer for the sales they actually generate. The reward is paid in cash, upon sale, based on an acquisition cost set in advance by the brand.

Can an ordinary customer replace an influencer?

Both play different roles. A creator brings reach and polished production; a customer brings proof of use that no one can fake. 88 % of consumers trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel (Nielsen, 2021), and no media budget can buy that level of credibility.

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I am Virginie Maire, co-founder of Frak Labs, which turns your customers into a scalable, profitable, and authentic acquisition channel. A committed entrepreneur and mother of two, I have spent 20 years navigating media, social networks, influence, and e-commerce… and I am still having just as much fun!