[Article] How to create an Instagram star for 2 months and 800$

samcram

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Yesterday I read on the website about the Russian business an interesting article about how the two marketers created in instagram false star. They invited the 62 year old actor, paid him $ 15-30 per day of photo-shooting, take pictures and share them in "grandpa-millioner" instagram. They got 8k followers for the week, many brands want to buy ad in this account.

I decided to translate this article into English for BHW users.

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Real story

Roman Zaripov from Nectarin advertising agency told on his Facebook page, how his friend and he took up a challenge and created a non-existent person, who is still popular, for a few months.

This is curious.

Challenge accepted

July 2016. In just 2 days a video from Facebook with a millionaire old man Gianluca Vacchi, dancing on a yacht with his young bride, gains popularity with cosmic speed. This video gains 3 million views for a couple of hours and the grandpa becomes a staple of all entertainment world tabloids.

March of the same year. 4 months earlier. Almost every evening after work, I go to the center to have dinner with Misha Mishanya, exchange news and chat about important things (in fact, about women and different nonsense).

One evening, when we are in a wave of spring creative impulse and are discussing a dozen of crazy ideas and projects at the same time, we come across an article on how to create a star and how much money you need for it in 2016. Either 6 or 7 zeros appear in the article that both causes brain freeze and challenges us.

We take out the laptop and quickly sketch 10 images that we could create ourselves to prove that you do not need millions to boom the information space. We take the best of each image and get a 60-year-old successful man, who has a sharp tongue, who is sporty and loves young girls.

Ideal grandpa

15 minutes of searching in VKontakte and we find a perfect grandpa, who is renting a one-room apartment in Khimki and is living on a pension. Though he is far from the image of a rich man, he is fresh and looks great. The next evening we are on Patriarshiye Ponds. We decide to tell the old man about our crazy idea and to offer him to spend a few hours for photo shooting with us every Saturday for a minimum fee as a supplement to his pension.

It`s Saturday. We buy clothes, go to the center and take the first pictures in an expensive car, at an expensive store and in a restaurant. We spend half a day and an hour to create his account in Instagram and fill in the details. Then we start posting.

2 weeks later, we already have 10 photos in our profile, and we run phony news about a mad grandpa, whom we have found on the Web, in communities of VKontakte, using the function “Submit News”. We buy several advertising posts and light a candle. About 2 thousand people sign in to the account for a couple of hours, users start liking and commenting posts, and we`re just having fun, watching all this and continuing to open the image in subsequent publications.

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Wave of success

On the threshold of 8000 subscribers per week, we are invited to the First Channel as some sort of expert, to Russia TV channel to make a report of a happy old age, 5 airs and one public performance. Also clothing brands find Boris and offer him to play for advertising and accept free gifts.

About 30 messages come to the Instagram Direct a day. They are from different young people, who offer their business ideas, and girls, who take the bait of a free trip to Europe and decide not to lose this opportunity.

Here I start to go crazy a little, freaking out on how easy it is to deceive people, and how those, who should carefully check information, do not do it at all.

We take photos of Boris as an experiment for just a couple of weeks, making him an athlete or an insane guy, who came to the restaurant “Pushkin” with his McDonald`s bag, and continue to be amazed at how (except food in restaurants and gasoline payment) the popularity of a non-existent person is growing without any investments.

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Leave on the rise

On some summer weekend, we are drinking with Misha at the motel and see how a group of young guys at the bar are discussing Boris and ask each other if they have caught him in Moscow. In the morning, Misha goes to his summerhouse, and I`m going home to sleep off. We decide to complete the experiment.

A few days pass, I come to work, open Facebook and see an insane amount of reposts with that dancing Italian millionaire. He could easily pass for a younger brother to our Boris, despite the fact that Gianluca Vacchi is a real millionaire and Borya is a simple pensioner, living in Khimki.

Conclusion

There is nothing complicated about creating a legend and bringing your hero into real life. Entourage and places for shooting can be easily found within the Garden Ring, and expensive cars and private jets are rented for a couple of thousand rubles per hour. So are models. Fortunately, no one in Russia is surprised at “rich people out of nowhere”.

Why am I talking about it? I watched a new video from Therr Maitz while having breakfast, and at some point our Borya appeared on the screen. He apparently liked to be the center of attention, and he decided to continue his career, filming in commercials and music videos.

What conclusion can we make? None. Six months later I just continue to wonder how you can make tens of thousands of adults believe in a non-existent person, having spent 50 thousand rubles for 2 months. Add zero to our costs and you can create a competitor to Philip Kirkorov (one of the biggest russian pop-star).

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Sorry for my English - I am not a native speaker.
If you have any questions - ask, I'll try to answer all.
If you liked the article - put Like :)
 
I just read this to my Russian GF, she couldn't stop laughing. Much like the dutch band one day fly, where they created an international #1 POP song just to prove how easy it was.

Also, google "4 chord song".
 
What an awesome Idea would never thought that this would work.

But as is see the guys stopped the project didn't they ?
 
A good story worth reading. Got some helpful information from it.
 
Omg perfect idea.

I suspect the calculations I followed :D
 
This is really interesting, need to think of a way to use this in my niche...
 
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