The Bibi disaster: when influencer marketing fails miserably

The idea actually sounds pretty obvious. The Youtuber "Bibi", whose real name is Bianca Heinicke, is one of the most important German influencers. Her YouTube channel "BibisBeautyPalace" on the topics of fashion, cosmetics and lifestyle has over 4.4 million subscribers and reaches a predominantly young target group. So why not shoot a music video with "Bibi" to make Warner Music Germany known to teenagers? the only problem is that "Bibi" can't do one thing: sing. She openly mentions this in one of her videos. But the lure of money was apparently too great. The Cologne native announced her new song with great fanfare. She even urges her (predominantly underage) fans to pre-order the song, as it will only be released in limited quantities.Disastrous song causes a shitstormOn May 6, the time had come and the music video went online on YouTube. What followed was a veritable shitstorm. Childish melody, meaningless lyrics, useless voice - the song is so bad that it has already collected over 1.7 million dislikes (Status: 09:05.2017). This means that the teen idol has already made it to 7th place among the world's (!) most unpopular YouTube videos. Incidentally, Justin Bieber's song "Baby" came in at number 1 - the teen heartthrob achieved 7.6 million thumbs down.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gSOMba1UdM&tZwar also recorded over 25 million views for the music video. In other words, the song is so bad that everyone wants to see and hear it. This is hardly in the interests of Warner Music Germany. What music label wants to be associated with one of the worst songs of all time?Bibi advertises expensive watchThis is not the first time that Bianca Heinicke has hit the headlines with questionable actions. The YouTube star is known for not shying away from rather obvious "product placements". In a recent video, for example, she advertised a watch costing 250 euros - hardly an appropriate product for penniless teenagers. The well-known satirist Jan Böhmermann criticized this shameless and often poorly declared YouTube advertising with influencers on ZDFneo:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WinDf_5G9PsDer Bibi's case shows that influencer marketing also entails risks. If the advertising campaigns no longer appear authentic and are of poor quality, a campaign can quickly backfire. Warner Music Germany can tell you a thing or two about this - and a really bad one at that.