Life and Death of Authenticity in a Digital World.

About a week ago, I was served a sponsored post to my personal Instagram feed. The post was from a digital marketing agency in another state that had pretty much verbatim copied one of my @passionfruit_marketing posts about email marketing. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Firstly, we were mad. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

They are an “established” business (with staff, overheads, “big name” clients), stealing my copy (a little fish) and profiting off it, by using it as a post to seek new clients.

Then we wanted to find some empathy for them.

It’s taken us a while (about a week, to be precise) to take it as compliment and not pity them, as clearly we’re doing ‘something right’ for them to want to copy it.

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BUT, all things said and done, it also makes us just as frustrated.

That post caption? It took me time and effort (and knowledge) to write, and they just took it in two seconds with a good old ‘Ctrl+C’, Ctrl+V’.⠀⠀⠀⠀

The caption that I wrote? It’s a good post. Hell, it’s actually a great post.

It currently has 33% engagement (with the ~average~ IG engagement per post sitting around 0.5 – 1%). So, at least they chose a good post to claim as their own.

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#copywritingtip : In a world where everyone is seemingly an instant expert, be yourself – because chances are, when you can’t deliver on the promises that “you” (someone else) make, you’re going to get found out in the long run.

— Kate

Director and maker of authentic copy.

P.S – Wan’t to see the post in question worthy of being copied? You can find it here.