“Asking an influencer to promote your brand for free clothes is like asking a plumber to unclog your toilet for free plungers,” reads one Instagram post from F*** You Pay Me (FYPM), an app that describes itself as Glassdoor, but for influencers.

Scroll through the rest of FYPM’s Instagram account, and you’ll find more posts echoing the same sentiment: that free products are a tool influencers need to do their jobs, not appropriate compensation. Or, to put it bluntly, influencers can’t pay their rent with free plungers.

As the influencer-marketing industry continues to grow and mature, experts in the space are debating if gifts—long a form of compensation for creators—are fair payment. Many we spoke with said that it’s not as simple as gifting versus not gifting, but agreed that paying influencers with cash instead of swag is becoming the new industry standard.

Got a bad idea

Lindsey Lee Lugrin, co-founder and CEO of FYPM, told us that, for influencers, it often comes down to personal preference—brands shouldn’t automatically assume that influencers are happy to receive gifts without a check.

“I think where brands go wrong is assuming that that’s okay, or that’s the standard,” she said.

• For one, making that assumption can be insulting, according to Lugrin. She said what “gets [her] going” is when a brand tries to act like an influencer is getting a really good deal for exchanging, say, 10 Reels, 20 IG posts, and full usage rights in exchange for…toothpaste.
• “A startup wouldn’t go to an engineer and be like, ‘Hey, we don’t have any money. Will you work for free?’ No, that just doesn’t happen,” Lugrin explained. “You’re asking somebody to do something for you that takes hours.”

What’s more, if a brand offers to compensate an influencer by offering gifts alone, it could appear in a post after all…just not the good kind.

Case in point: Lindsey Gamble, associate director of influencer innovation at Mavrck, told us he’s heard tons of stories of creators posting screenshots of DMs from brands only offering free product. “Think about brand safety and just protecting your brand,” he said.

Looking ahead: Gamble also argued that this method simply isn’t the norm anymore. “The market is definitely changing, where it’s more standard for creators to receive a product or service along with monetary compensation,” he said.

In some cases, though, influencers are fine with getting paid in free product alone. Keep reading here.—PB

The latest season of Euphoria may be over, but makeup designer Donni Davy is just getting started. After years of inspiring people to re-create her glitter tears and rhinestone wings, Davy released her own makeup line, Half Magic, this month.

• To design the product branding and debut the line’s first campaign, Davy and Euphoria's production studio A24 worked with creative branding studio Mythology. It’s not the first time the studios have worked together: Mythology was involved in A24’s “Public Access” campaign, which involved projecting the studio’s movies like Lady Bird and The Witch on billboards in the cities where they were filmed.
  
• “I think what’s great with [A24] and with Donni and this project, specifically, is that we’re really among peers in terms of being creatives and being artists,” Audrey Attal, creative director at Mythology, told Marketing Brew.

We spoke with Attal about Half Magic’s release and designing a show-inspired brand for all ages.

Half and half: “Part of the magic is the makeup and the rest is you,” Attal said of the brand name inspiration. According to Attal, the whole point of the line is to make creative makeup looks accessible and allow for easy self-expression—great news for anyone who’s ever been invited to a Euphoria-themed party.

Blast from the cast: Veronica Taylor, who plays Bobbi on Euphoria, and playwright, consultant, and co-producer Jeremy O. Harris both make appearances in the film. Attal said it was intentional to mix familiar faces with a diverse mix of people from all walks of life, including older generations. “This level of self-expression and this level of character-building with beauty is something that Gen Z is really comfortable with, and is almost growing up with now,” Attal said.

Read more about Half Magic’s debut here.—KH

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

We stan: Here’s what social media managers can learn from stans.

Beer brawl: How the rivalry between Miller Lite and Bud Light came to be.

: Check out this explainer if your head still spins when people talk about the “cookieless” future of advertising.

Let’s address the burnout in the room. Figuring out the root causes of and ways to prevent burnout can feel like a crapshoot. That’s why Asana put together a report to understand how the workplace has changed, what’s working, and what isn’t. Get the deets here.*

Dive deep: Read about the rapidly evolving streaming space in Marketing Brew’s new hub. The latest article just dropped—find it here.

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Find your next great marketer by sharing your openings with our 250K+ industry leading marketers on the Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Copywriter and Account Executive at Morning Chalk Up
• Director, Marketing at MediaMath
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See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

The upcoming summer travel season is expected to be a big one, with leisure travel on track to surpass 2021 and even pre-pandemic levels, according to Deloitte’s 2022 summer travel survey.

$$$: Six in 10 Americans have travel plans for this summer, up from five in 10 last year, per Deloitte’s survey. And despite inflation, summer travelers are planning to spend more than they did last year, good news for brands in the travel space.

• Nearly half (46%) of Americans will stay in paid lodging this summer, up from 41% last summer, including strong demand for hotels.
• Younger travelers, however, are turning to private lodging over hotels at about twice the rate as travelers 55 and older.

Jet-setters: Additionally, 47% of travelers said they’ll fly to their destination, including 27% flying overseas. The rise of air travel means the decline of road trips, with 62% of Americans driving “as at least one of the modes of transport for their trip,” down from 76% last year.

The survey was conducted March 23–30, 2022, among 4,233 Americans.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Streamers are creating companion podcasts for superfans of their shows
• These groups want to collect your data in exchange for crypto
• The 80s are back—at least in ad design