NASHVILLE PLUS SIZE INFLUENCERS SAY BRANDS NEED TO BE MORE INCLUSIVE
Kara Aguilar
November 19, 2019
NASHVILLE, Tenn.- As the popularity of social media rises, businesses are adopting social media influencer marketing as their new strategy. This is when businesses partner with individuals that have a large online following to increase their own brand awareness and connect with a specific target audience.
In 2017, Influencer Marketing Hub reported a 325 percent increase in Google searches alone for the phrase influencer marketing over the previous 12 months.
According to a study by Mediakix, influencer marketing has grown to be a 5 to 10 billion-dollar industry over the last five years. The same study also found that 65 percent of companies surveyed said that they planned to increase their influencer-marketing budget for 2019.
The leading platform for most influencers is Instagram. Currently, the company reports to have over 1 billion monthly active users and over a half-million daily story activities.
As the industry grows and as the world continues to become more and more connected, representation becomes an increasingly more important.
Local
Shannon Clemons, who goes by Shannon Grace online, is a 34-year-old plus size micro-influencer and Nashville native. Since August of 2018, Clemons has intensively worked to build her brand and create a platform that emphasizes body positively to over 18,000 Instagram followers.
“When I hit [a] thousand, I swear I had worked for each and every one of those followers. Like just clawing my way to get those thousand followers,” Clemons said.
Clemons said she stumbled into the body positivity community of plus size women around four to five years ago during a period of time when she was working towards self-discovering and loving herself once again.
She said that finding an online community of women who looked like her was inspirational. Women who were beautiful and doing things that she once believed she could not do.
“I kind of like being in front of people, Clemons said. "But I kind of lost that part of myself so when I found that community and went through my process, I was like I kind of want to try to be that person for other people like me.”
Early on, Clemons started working with small brands that offered her a few free items in exchange for Instagram posts. Even though she wasn’t getting paid, Clemons said it was an even trade because it gave her content to produce and exposure to a wider audience that could expand her online following.
“Working with brands is cool. It helps a in couple of ways because it always gives you additional content to post on your Instagram, which is always what you are looking for,” Clemons said. “I’m typically planning out at least a month. Sometimes the second month is loosely planned as far as what photos I'm going to be posting, what brands I'm going to be working with and the stories are more like day to day.”
As Clemons’ follower count increased, she moved onto working with larger brands. She was recently featured in the national “You-Time” advertising campaign for Birchbox, a monthly subscription-based company for beauty and grooming supplies.
But working with local businesses is a different story. Clemons said that she hasn’t had many local brands reaching out to her. Most of her interactions with them are limited to events and gatherings attended by other social media influencers.
“My account is really focused on plus size fashion and there’s not really that much plus size fashion locally to be had,” Clemons said. “There’s not a lot of plus size local businesses for me to be working with, which might be why it is limited.”
Clemons said that she sees more local businesses working with business accounts meant to connect bloggers and influencers, such as the Nashville based boutique, Curves With Purpose, and less with the individual accounts.
“There’s a lot of size inclusive online brands and that’s who I see people collaborating with the most,” Clemons said. “I think a lot of local businesses could benefit from working with influencers. Especially local ones because we can see in our insights and in our metrics where our followers are located and generally the majority of your followers, like the largest amount of them, are going to be from your area.”
There has been a rapid expansion of online retailers marketing themselves as inclusive of the plus-size community.
“I think that size inclusivity and body positivity are really hot key phrases, they are hot button things, they are really trendy right now,” Clemons said. “A lot of brands have reached out to me that think they are size inclusive but with my size, because I’m a 4X(L) and a size 26, I am outside of the range of a lot of ‘size inclusive’ brands.”
Clemons said that she has had to turn down a lot of brands interested in collaborating with her or that have offered free products because they aren’t actually size inclusive.
“I don’t want to push brands to my audience that I know not everyone in my audience can wear. I would prefer to only promote brands that would carry a size 0 to like a 6X(L) because that’s really size inclusive,” Clemons said.
While local businesses are slow to move towards working with plus size influencers, the body positivity movement online continues to generate a conversation about what it means to be inclusive.
“Right now, inclusivity is very trendy,” Clemons said. “Hopefully that is not a trend that goes away. Hopefully it sticks around.”
Online
Lexi Nimmo is a 27-year-old Instagram influencer from Nashville. She started building her brand in 2017 and now has over 28,000 followers on Instagram. Nimmo uses her platform to promote body positivity and mental health awareness.
In August, Nimmo was contacted by Omle Athletica, a young online athletic wear retailer, to collaborated with their brand. Online the company promotes itself as an all-inclusive brand, as their Instagram bio reads “inspired by every shape” and “designed with her in mind”.
In exchange for payment of nearly $300, Nimmo was expected to make two Instagram posts, two posts on her story and a blog post. She agreed to work with Omle and after reviewing their size chart she believed that a size 2XL would be the right fit for her.
When she received the clothing, Nimmo said that she was unable pull the pants up past the top of her knees and after pulling the top over her head and sticking one arm through, she got stuck.
She said she knew that if the 2XL was so incredibly small, the 3XL would not make too much of a difference.
“The problem is a lot of people are bigger than I am. I would say I am somewhere in the middle when you talk about the plus-size community. And so what about all of those people?” Nimmo asked. “What about all of those people who are a genuine 3X(L)? What are they supposed to do? They can’t wear the 3X(L) that this brand offers them, there’s nowhere to go from there.”
Despite the frustration, Nimmo reached back out to Omle to let them know that the clothes that they sent didn’t fit her and she would like to try the next size up.
In addition, Nimmo asked if they would welcome her feedback, which they agreed to. She sent them what she described as a detailed “report”, including data from competing brands and her own personal experience.
After a month went by, Nimmo received the next size up from Omle. While the clothes technically went onto her body, they once again did not fit properly, as her back was compressed between the straps and her chest poured out from the sides.
“I hated the way that I felt about myself in that moment,” Nimmo said, trying to hold back her emotions.
This time Nimmo made a video for Omle so that the company could hear and see what she was experiencing. She accompanied this with another written report, while also offering consultation for her professional insight.
In response, Olme said that they would take her feed back into future consideration but had decided to terminate their agreement and requested that she returned payment due to “services not rendered”.
“My words were definitely passionate. It was definitely considered strongly worded but I never said anything negative,” Nimmo said. “I felt like it was definitely powerful but in a good way because I was telling them this is how I felt in your clothes. You don’t want that.”
Nimmo took to social media and online groups for plus sized influencers to share her story. She said she was met with mixed reactions from members of the community.
While many responses were positive, she said some people were very “compliant”. A few individuals were encouraging her to move past the situation and accept that not all brands cater to larger sizes.
“This is a serious issue. I know for a fact that I am not the only one that feels this way,” Nimmo said. “This is a real problem because brands are trying to monetize off of a movement that is meant to bring awareness and fight against the discrimination of fat phobia.”
The afternoon after Nimmo sent her email, Omle changed their Instagram bio from saying that they carry sizes between 0 and 22, to saying that the largest size they carry is a size 20.
“Brands call themselves inclusive and pat themselves on the back for being so progressive and then not offering sizes for anyone bigger than a two ex or a three ex or not offering custom sizing, which I know is difficult but it’s time for that.” Nimmo said. “Or the fit is just so just bad, it’s so poor, that most plus size people can’t fit it but they don’t care because they have plus sizes on their website and that’s all that matters. They’ve ticked the boxes necessary to call themselves size inclusive.”