product placement
girl holding a stanley cup
Last week, I rolled out paid subscriptions and shared my first subscriber-only post. In it, I took a look at a YouTube breakup video I posted a decade ago. It’s the first installment of a new ongoing series I’m calling Memory Jog. If you’d like to read that and more posts like it moving forward, consider subscribing for $5 a month. I’ll continue to make bi-weekly posts for free.
A few days ago I went to a Sweetgreen in the Financial District. My go-to order is the fish taco salad. It costs roughly $19. I used to sometimes order it for lunch when I worked in Dumbo, but now it is a rare treat. When I’m eating a salad from Sweetgreen, I’m a business woman. I love nutrients. I have a daily routine. I make good choices. I had Chick-fil-A for lunch the day before. This is a different kind of treat. When I eat Chick-fil-A, I am fun. I am carefree. I am a sexy little gremlin eating in bed. Both of these experiences are embodied, performed, documented, and uploaded.
My work often incorporates products, emphasizing certain brands as signifiers of current online trends or movements. Sometimes it is deliberate, like choosing to include a specific brand of grain free tortilla chips or greens powder in an image. Other times it’s simply what I’m consuming. I love Diet Coke as much as everyone filming their Diet Coke break TikToks or the average Lana Del Rey fan.
I’ve never been an influencer in a true sense. I don’t make money off of posting branded content. There are no sponsorship deals coming my way. There was a time in my life, when I first started really getting attention on Tumblr, that I could have pivoted to being an influencer or at least moved in that direction. Sadly, I wanted to be “taken seriously” as an artist - whatever that means. I plan to write more about this-pursuing art as a very online person who maybe should have just fully committed to being an influencer instead-but I’ll do that at a later date. Maybe someone reading this wants to publish that, maybe you’ll see it up on this blog someday, who knows!
Despite not being an influencer, I’m honing in on which items are promoted online. What sponsorships am I seeing over and over again on YouTube? Water bottles seem to always be trending; what’s the hot new vessel everyone’s drinking from? Are we still doing lip masks? What about meal subscription kits?
I often wonder what the inside of an influencer’s home looks like. I’m not so interested in the architectural details or the decor, but where all of the products go. I imagine PR boxes piling up, items they have yet to film themselves talking about strewn around their rooms. I want to see what’s on the other side of the camera, outside the bounds of their manicured filming backdrops. In 2020, I created a pair of window images based on this fantasy. They show carefully constructed interiors, overflowing with merchandise. Opening Up (Vulnerable) is a glimpse into an imagined office. A Curology box sits open on the floor. There’s an unopened Asos package with a bag of Coffee Over Cardio sitting on top of it. Products on the desk include: a Mario Badescu drying lotion, some HUM supplements, a Purology shampoo bottle, Young Living essential oils. By now some of these products have already become irrelevant; they’ve been phased out, duped, and de-influenced.
I continue to make these fantasy mess collages. I’ve moved over to the kitchen, but the process is the same. My 2023 kitchen counter will vary slightly from a 2025 kitchen counter. I search for product shots to litter the counter with. It feels like going shopping. I’ve never tried Graza olive oil or Diaspora Co. spices, common items found at boutique grocers referred to as Shoppy Shops, but I include them because they feel of the moment. They suggest we are in the home of someone who enjoys watching Tinned Fish TikTok.
Perhaps making these collages is my way of consuming without actually purchasing anything. I want to be the girl with the Smeg toaster, but only for a little while. The collages and photos of me holding products and haul videos are archives of fleeting consumer trends, and my own fleeting impulses.
On Instagram I posted a picture of myself holding up a carton of Almond Breeze. The brand of milk here is incidental, it’s what I had in my fridge at the time. I tagged the Almond Breeze Instagram account. A few days later they commented, “The balancing act we’ve all been waiting for! 💙💙”
Damn, millennials really messed up taking "art" so seriously. But it's never too late!! You can still be an influencer!!! I'll buy anything you tell me to!
There’s an American by way of Australia influencer named Alanah Pearce who you could hit up n Twitter. She got her start as a gamer girl reviewer and is a respected journalist who has worked hard to get where she’s at. She might be open to talking to you about all the sponsored products and empty boxes undoubtedly laying around in their own space in her apartment. It would be an interesting collaboration. Hopefully not just to me.