r/favikon

Here are the things that immediately make me suspicious:

• The engagement doesn't match the following: 400K followers and every post gets 150 likes? Super weird.
• The comments are all generic: "so inspiring!", "love this!", "great content!" with no real conversation happening.
• Follower count spiked out of nowhere: you can usually spot this if you look at their growth over time. A random jump of 20K or 50K in a week with no viral moment to explain it is a pretty obvious sign something was purchased.
• Likes and views are all over the place: one post gets 50K views, the next gets 800. Bought engagement is usually targeted at specific posts, which creates these weird inconsistencies across the feed.
• They're huge in their niche but nobody in that niche knows them? If a creator claims to be a big deal in, say, fitness or finance but nobody in those communities has ever heard of them or interacted with them, that's a red flag.

I also use Favikon to double-check my gut feeling. It has an Authenticity Score that looks at follower growth patterns, comment quality, and whether the account uses engagement pods (those group chats where creators artificially boost each other's posts).

It basically quantifies all the stuff above into one score, which makes it a lot easier to spot fake influence instantly rather than manually going through someone's profile.

What are your red flags when it comes to influencers?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and honestly I'm not sure where I stand.

The virtual influencer market was valued at $8.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to keep growing at nearly 40% per year. That's not a niche experiment anymore, that's some real numbers… And it raises some uncomfortable questions.

For brands, the appeal is obvious. An AI influencer never goes off-brand, never gets caught in a scandal, posts on demand, and doesn't negotiate rates. From a pure risk management perspective, it almost makes too much sense. No drama, no surprises, no Content Safety issues to worry about.

But we when we look at what actually drives performance in influencer marketing, it comes down to authentic engagement?

Real comments and real people sharing their own experiences. Can an AI influencer ever generate that?

For creators: If a brand can just use a virtual creator that looks perfect, posts perfectly, and costs a fraction of a human deal, what does that mean for mid-tier creators especially? The ones who don't have massive reach but rely on consistent brand deals to make a living?

Would you ever trust an AI influencer talking about a brand in a paid deal the same way you'd trust a human creator?

And if you’re a brand, would ever run a campaign with an AI influencer?

Fridays in the office can be rough, so we decided to recreate viral memes with our Favikon team. Do you think we nailed them? 😅

April Fools' Day is lowkey the most interesting day in marketing.

Every brand tries to do something unique, but only a few campaigns actually become cultural moments.

I’ve been going down a rabbit hole on this and here are the ones that are my favorite:

1. Duolingo On Ice: A full theatrical ice skating show announcement, complete with promotional materials and a "cast." The commitment to the bit is exactly what makes Duolingo's marketing consistently great.

2. Tinder - Height Verification (2019): Playing directly into the meme of people lying about their height on dating apps. The reveal message was the best part: "Size doesn't matter." Iconic.

3. PayPal - Print Money From Your Phone (2018): One tweet claiming users could print cash directly from the app. Short, simple and drove massive engagement of course.

4. Burger King - Left-Handed Whopper (1998): BK announced a Whopper designed specifically for left-handed customers with the same ingredients, just rotated 180°. Customers walked into stores actually asking for it.

5. Pepsi – "We Love Coca-Cola" (2000): Pepsi took out a full-page ad in the New York Times praising their biggest rival. Reverse psychology lol.

What do you think is the best April Fools' Day marketing campaign of all time?

I just saw that BTS is sitting at #2 globally on Favikon's social media rankings, right behind MrBeast. A K-pop group singing in Korean is growing faster than every celebrity, athlete, and creator on the planet. But if you look at what’s been happening last week, it’s not big a surprise.

After a 4 year hiatus for mandatory military service, they just had one of the biggest comebacks in music history. Free concert at Seoul's Gwanghwamun Square to 260,000 fans, livestreamed on Netflix to 18.4 million viewers worldwide, hitting #1 in 24 countries. They just dropped their new album ‘ARIRANG’ and their documentary 'BTS: The Return' just hit Netflix last week.

And they're about to go on their biggest-ever world tour with 82 shows across 34 regions through March 2027. Their rollout is insane!!

It’s funny because BTS basically invented the playbook for K-pop. When they debuted in 2013, K-pop was promoted through traditional Korean TV. BTS couldn't afford that because they came from a small company, so they went to YouTube and Twitter instead, which was unheard of at the time. They did behind-the-scenes content, 2am live streams and direct fan interaction for years before anybody was doing it. Every K-pop group since has copied their strategy.

Do you think artists who avoid social media even have a chance today? And do you think success in music today is more about talent or being good at marketing/knowing how to work the algorithm?

The Hannah Montana anniversary special completely took over the internet and I don't think we're talking enough about what that actually means.

This is not a reboot or a new season by the way. It's an anniversary special for a show that ended in 2011 (!!), and people are going absolutely crazy. It's trending everywhere, full episodes being rewatched, the theme song charting again, grown adults having genuine emotional breakdowns in Tiktok comments (I'm one of them).

I also checked out Miley Cyrus's profile on Favikon and her most viewed and liked posts of all time are all Hannah Montana content. Not Flowers or Wrecking Ball, but Hannah Montana!!

The people who grew up with that show are 25-35 now, basically the most online generation alive. And I think there's this slow realization setting in that nothing today is going to hit the way the stuff from our childhood did. So when something from that era comes back it doesn't just get views, it gets this completely disproportionate emotional response from people.

Which is wild when you remember it's a Disney channel show about a girl with a wig lol... But that's kind of the point. It was never really about the show, it was about being 10 with no responsibilities and everyone around you watching the same thing and just having fun.

Did you watch the special? What did you think of it? And what other brands do you think are doing nostalgia marketing the best right now or could pull something like this off?

Apple wiped their entire TikTok overnight and replaced it with brain rot content. People thought they got hacked, but they didn't.

Overnight, Apple deleted their whole TikTok feed and went full lo-fi chaos mode: a MacBook stuffed into a denim pocket, fruits FaceTime-ing each other, their Finder icon reimagined as a matcha-drinking mascot etc…

Their comment section is full of people genuinely questioning whether the account had been compromised. It hadn't, they did this on purpose.

This is tied to the launch of the $599 MacBook Neo, and it's a calculated play to reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha: an audience that doesn't respond to boring product demos anymore.

Apple isn't positioning itself as a tech brand here. It's positioning the MacBook as a lifestyle object.

According to Favikon, Apple's total views on TikTok have increased +89.7% over the last 90 days since the strategy launched. For a brand that just wiped its entire feed and started posting fruits on FaceTime, that's kind of insane. Love it or hate it, the strategy is actually working.

Which brand do you think might be the next to do something like this? And would it actually work for them, or only for Apple?

Here are the Top 10 LinkedIn Creators in Business/Entrepreneurship this week according to Favikon:

1. Alex Hormozi - straight-to-the-point business growth & scaling advice
2. Tony Robbins - leadership, performance, and high-level strategy
3. Leila Hormozi - operational excellence & company building
4. Rizwan Sajan - real estate entrepreneurship & wealth mindset
5. Kunal Bahl - startup investing & founder lessons
6. Harsh Mariwala - legacy brand building & leadership
7. Sanjiv Mehta - corporate strategy & transformation
8. Amy Edmondson - psychological safety & team performance
9. Sir Richard Harpin - scaling businesses & entrepreneurship
10. Mo Bunnell - business development & relationship-driven growth

I’ve also noticed recently that brands have been investing more and more in LinkedIn influencer partnerships. Here’s why:

• Decision-makers reach: the platform is full of founders, executives, and other high-level professionals, so messages have a direct line to people who can take action.
• Expert-led content: creators aren’t just posting for fun, they are operators, CEOs, and subject matter experts sharing actionable knowledge, which builds credibility and trust.
• Strong organic distribution: unlike other platforms where reach is heavily pay-to-play, LinkedIn still allows good quality posts to travel organically.
• Better conversion intent: because the audience is professional and solution-oriented, content can more easily lead to pipeline growth

LinkedIn influencer marketing is really more about credibility and actionable insights than just visibility, unlike some other platforms.

Do you think LinkedIn creators are the next big wave in influencer marketing, or is the space already too saturated?