When proposed with the idea of creating a hoax, I had to think of my own guilability. I reflected on what has grabbed my attention and made me research further, despite my cognizance of it most likely being a hoax. I realized that these advertisements are most successful when they target my insecurities and as a young woman, those insecurities are mostly about my self image. I knew that I was certainly not alone in this, as almost every single female friend of mine would like to change their body. Recognizing this issue, I felt that a hoax centered around weight loss would be a successful hoax, especially if it targeted its marketing towards teenage girls. I had the idea to create a weight loss tea brand because, despite the fact that the idea that drinking tea will make you lose weight is absurd, it is also a real product sold in today’s market. The hoax of Skinny Legend Tea is perpetuated through the medium of an Instagram account that pushes forth its nefarious agenda through the use of branding and advertising. 

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On the surface, my agenda for this project is to convince teen girls to buy Skinny Legend Tea. I am doing this through the methods of branding, advertising, and the words of doctors and influencers. My branding was based off of interviewing teen girls about what branding was effective to them, as well as inspired by Juul’s “Vaporized” campaign. The interviews revealed a theme of teen girls enjoying bright colors and clean lines, as well as acknowledging that packaging played a role in their interest in a product. These findings reminded me of Juul’s “Vaporized” campaign, my original idea for this project. Juul was accused of targeting teens with their ads, persuading them to buy nicotine products, and so I figured their campaign would be effective inspiration. I borrowed their balancing of bright geometric shapes with white space. I incorporated equilateral triangles and squares to portray a sense of balance and symmetry. I balanced vibrant colors with cooler pastel tones. Cool pastel tones insinuate calm and tranquility, qualities generally associated with tea, which is why I included them in the design. The vibrant colors counteract this by bringing a youthfulness and energy to the packaging. When my friend’s reply to seeing my tea box mock up was “I would buy that just for the packaging, not gonna lie,” I felt confident that my branding was successful. 

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People are often influenced by other people. Giving a face to a statement can make it seem more genuine and trustworthy. Teens in particular are very impressionable. By incorporating doctors and influencers into advertising, this works on two different levels. The  appearance of doctors in an advertisement presents a sense of reliability and scientific backing. It makes seemingly outrageous claims, like losing weight simply by drinking tea and no other lifestyle change, seem more believable. The presented benefits of the superfood ingredients in the tea are assumed to be backed by research. Human beings are lazy by nature, especially teens, and are most likely not going to research any further into the scientific backing of Skinny Legend Tea’s claims after seeing a doctor reinforce them. As for the influencers, they portray what is cool and a different sort of trustworthiness. Influencers are pop culture figures and by being famous, they have influence over what is considered cool and “in,” hence the name influencers. Teens strive to be cool; they want to not only fit in, but have an elevated social status. Teens believe that by mirroring influencers, who are already established as cool, they will attain a similar social status themselves. If an influencer claims that drinking Skinny Legend Tea is a part of their daily routine, teens will want it to be a part of theirs. Besides this, teens often feel a sense of companionship with influencers. Influencers are constantly posting and so their followers feel like they have a clear view into their lives and feel that they know them quite well. The lives of influencers are transparent, or at least seemingly so, and that makes people feel as though they can trust them. When influencers recommend a product, it is as though a friend is recommending a product. Teens believe that if it works for the influencer, who is going to “always” be open and honest with their fans, it should work for them. This is why famous figures are so often included in commercials. The more famous a person is, the more reputable they seem and the more influence they carry.

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The true agenda of Skinny Legend Tea, which is much more nefarious, is to exploit the insecurities of teenage girls. Teen girls are the target audience because they are incredibly insecure, especially about their bodies. I cannot list a single friend of mine that does not think she needs to lose weight. The only thing more appealing than weight loss is the notion of weight loss with no lifestyle change because, as previously stated, teens are lazy. Skinny Legend Tea claims that the superfood ingredients in the tea naturally promote weight loss. The brand states that drinking the tea alone will be enough to make you lose weight. This is incredibly tempting for teen girls. It makes perfect sense for a weight loss tea to target the group that is obsessed with their image.

 

This obsession with their image stems from social media. The average teen spends six to nine hours every day on social media (Rich). Teens seek companionship and validation from these media platforms (and seek it for about a quarter of their day). Advertisers play into this and when it is through social media, it appears to be a much more personal attack. They present teens with unrealistic ideals and sell methods to achieve these impossible standards. Young adults feel as though they need to distort themselves to that ideal in order to fit in and get the validation they desire. It becomes a competition with oneself. Getting 300 likes on one post and 250 likes on the next can be a devastating thing, especially if the one with more likes was a more distorted image. Advertising intentionally exploits these insecurities. In more extreme cases, social media can perpetuate eating disorders. Although seeing one post will not make a teen have an eating disorder, living in the world of social media where these unrealistic standards are commonplace can lead a teen into a downward spiral about themself and their image. This negative view of themselves can make them go to extreme measures to look a certain way. Media and advertising through social media perpetuates an unhealthy relationship between teens and their bodies, increasing their insecurities and minimizing their self worth (Rich).

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The use of influencers in advertising has a nefarious side as well. Teen girls want to be like the influencers they follow and although this is often copying what they wear and the music they listen to, it is also wanting to look like them (and by them I mean people who are likely to have personal trainers, know the most flattering angles, and/or edit their pictures to present themselves in the best way possible). Skinny Legend Tea presents influencers’ before and after pictures, showing fit women get even skinnier. When teen girls see an influencer, who is already fit, promoting a weight loss product, the viewer feels even further behind and even larger. They think “Well if this influencer thinks they need to lose weight then I really need to lose weight.” This is the most intense attack on female insecurity, especially because teen girls see these promotions coming from their “friend,” someone they can trust. Through these tactics, the end goal of Skinny Legend Tea is to make teen girls so insecure about their image that they feel desperate enough to purchase a diet tea. 

The influence social media has on young adults is the reason I chose it as the medium for my hoax. Although creating a fake diet tea brand is a hoax on its own, creating a social media account for a fake diet tea is all the more effective. I could have just made a physical model of a tea box, or built a website for the brand, or produced a commercial, but I felt that a social media account best connected to the target audience. Social media advertising seems more personal. Instead of seeing an advertisement on a TV, one that speaks into an entire room, social media advertisements are most likely seen on your phone. You hold the advertisement in your hand, a foot away from your face, and it is much more intimate.

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 I chose to use Instagram as my social media platform because it is image based, unlike platforms like Twitter. An instagram post has to be an image. Even if the image is of text, it is still an image, most likely an image that was designed and considered. Instagram perpetuates our image-based and image-obsessed culture. As of 2018, 72% of American teens age 13-17 used Instagram, the majority of which were female (“Youth Statistics: Internet & Social Media”). By advertising through Instagram, Skinny Legend Tea has access to the majority of their target audience. Instagram was also chosen because it is the social media platform that birthed the influencer. Instagram itself is currently ranked the most influential social media platform and that is because of its successful use of influencers in advertising (Bailis). 

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I believe that my hoax is both successful and unsuccessful in its “truthiness.” As for what is working, I think my branding is believable. I think my education as a graphic designer has allowed me to create a professional looking logo. I designated a color palette and typography for the brand and kept it consistent throughout my posts and advertising. The images were saved high quality, specifically designed for instagram, as stretched, poorly sized, and pixelated images would look unprofessional and interfere with the hoax. I constructed a tangible Skinny Legend Tea box to photograph and for the influencers to take pictures with. This brings a sort of tangibility to the digital platform, making it seem more real, and thus, more believable. I think that an image of an influencer holding and/or using a product makes the influencer’s word stronger. It seems less like paid advertising if the influencer is using the product, rather than just sharing pictures of it or merely used in their ad campaign. Another thing I did to make Skinny Legend Tea more believable was create actual accounts for my fake influencers. I did this so that the influencers could be tagged in Skinny Legend Tea’s posts and they would not be dead links. I think being able to click from one account to the next makes it a more natural Instagram experience. Plus, having influencer accounts up that have regular content, as well as content advertising Skinny Legend Tea, makes the partnership seem more real. 

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The Skinny Legend Tea Instagram account fails through its account interaction. In order for Skinny Legend Tea to appear as a real and reputable brand, the account would need thousands (ideally tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of followers, as well as likes. The more followers and account interaction a brand has, the more reputable the brand seems. Considering the Skinny Legend Tea account does not even have 100 followers, trustworthiness and believability of it being a real weight loss tea brand is low. 

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Skinny Legend Tea set out to exploit the image insecurities of teenage girls in order to get their business. The brand did this through targeted branding and advertising, as well as the use of fake influencers. The hoax is exposed through the lack of interaction on the Instagram account. The methods Skinny Legend Tea used in my hoax are not far fetched. Brands often target the insecurities of their target audience in order to convince them to buy their products. In terms of weight loss products in particular, they do this on top of providing selective scientific claims to make the product seem legitimate. The weight loss industry is full of nefarious hoaxes and I merely added one more brand to the market.