PayeTonInfluence: encouraging influencers to help fight climate change

[Dimaeiya333]

From promoting fast fashion and overconsumption, to influencers travelling on private jets, influencer marketing – like every industry – has an environmental impact. While some in the industry are awake to the issues and actively changing habits and communications, many continue to act as if climate change is not their problem. Enter PayeTonInfluence (PTI – PayYourInfluence), an organisation dedicated to making KOLs aware of the impact of their influence on environmental issues, and educating them on how to make a positive change, without alienating audiences. In this interview with Kolsquare, PTI co-founder Amélie Deloche explains the group’s motivations and how she hopes to bring about positive change in the influencer community.


How did PTI come into being and what are its objectives?
We are part of a collective of young students and graduates working on integrating ecological transition issues into higher education, business and engineering schools and companies. About a year and a half ago we started talking about developing our communications to reach young people who were not yet aware of these issues ; the idea of ​​collaborating with influential people quickly emerged.

Thinking about it, we realized that there is a huge problem with the influencer sector in general; there are influencers who are widely followed, have a huge impact on society , and who continue to promote lifestyles and investors mailing address list consumption patterns that are totally incompatible with the reality of climate change. We decided to create a project to shed light on the issue of influence in a time of environmental emergency.

The aim is to alert influencers to the necessary ecological awakening. We create awareness-raising content and try to interact with influencers. We provide information about the scale of the problem and the impact of their influence . We want to raise the issue in the public debate. Influencers have a huge impact on the people who follow them. They are followed by tens of thousands, even millions of people. They have the power to influence social norms, to direct and change consumer behaviour and lifestyle in general.

PTI's Instagram account has garnered 20,000 followers in just over a year; what has been the general reaction?
We try to maintain an educational and benevolent objective. The idea was to comment on the posts to explain the environmental impact of a competition, or a plane trip, etc. We have had quite a few nfluencers who are interested in what we have to say, and others who are not. They have ignored us a lot, and sometimes they have blocked us. But the idea is to create a dialgue.

Last summer, we published an article in [online environmental newspaper] Vert which gained us a lot of attention from major media such as Le Monde, Le Figaro, France Inter, etc., and allowed us to present our objectives. We have started to be recognised within the influencer world as players with a message of responsible and ethical influence . It is a topic that more and more people in the sector are thinking about. Agencies, influencers and brands have contacted us, which has also helped us to better understand the obstacles to the ecological transition in this sector , and to work with them to introduce improvements. The ARPP has also asked us to carry out a consultation on the ecological section of the Responsible Influencer Certificate .