A Melbourne court has ordered a café to cough up over $1600 to Instagram influencer Chloe Roberts after the cafe’s owner accused her of deleting paid posts promoting the Camberwell foodie spot.
Yep, welcome to 2019.
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As per the ABC, the court heard that the verbal contract between the health and fitness influencer, who boasts over 125k followers on Instagram and promotes everything from music festivals to supplements to ab stimulators, turned sour when the café owner, Con ‘Costa’ Katsogiannis, accused Roberts of removing posts promoting his business, Legacy.
Legacy relies heavily on the power on influencers to advertise and promote its Camberwell spot, with micro and macro-influencers regularly tagging themselves in at the café, including Bachelor universe alumni Bill Goldsmith and Keira Maguire and Love Island / I’m A Celebrity‘s Justin Lacko.
Roberts argued that a post on Instagram tends to get the bulk of its results in the first week and that she archives promotional posts after a period of time to keep her feed fresh and attractive for her followers.
The initial contract had Costa paying Roberts $300 per post, but it wasn’t until she went to collect her outstanding payment of $2250 that Costa took issue with her practice of archiving posts once they had passed their prime of traffic and engagement.
The court found worth with Roberts on her argument that new images posted are seen more than older posts thanks to the app’s algorithm, and ordered Legacy’s Con ‘Costa’ Katsogiannis to pay her two-thirds of the amount owing, plus her filing fees of $276, bringing it all to a total of $1676.
Apart from this being a weirdly alarming reality of advertising that we now exist in, it’s all probably serving as a stark reminder that if you’re going to agree to do something as an influencer or whatever, then please, please, write up a physical contract.
