Current Events I

High school students, millennials, young adults – all now use a social platform called Instagram. A few years ago, its usage was not that popular as now. These days, literally everything is happening there, as I mentioned in my previous posting.

Usually, my routine goes this way: I wake up, visit my Instagram and scroll a bit to get informed what my friends doing there in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. We have 7 hours of difference between UB and Prague, which means that when I am waking up, there is already an afternoon. So I get enough updates just in 5 minutes.

So, this happened. There is a Korean Cosmetics company called Tony Moly which has many branches in my city. I think recently their manager has changed, thus, the advertisement strategies have also changed. I scrolled for a few minutes and ALL my content was only about one thing. Tony Moly. REPEATEDLY. In both stories (which disappear after 24 hours) and posts (which last). I immediately closed the application because it was annoying. Moreover, throughout the day, I visited Instagram but kept closing it because Tony Moly was still here.

On that day, I understood that timing is an important aspect of online advertising. Bunch of postings at the same time, on the same day, to the same audience was too much. A little bit of separateness in timing could have worked. Since they are doing a non-written contract of a paid partnership, the company of the product can tell their preferences. They should work beneficially, not annoyingly.

The second important aspect, in this case, was that these Instagram models who worked with the Korean cosmetic product were the people I know in real life. One was my friend, another one was the wife of my other friend, one was my high school acquaintance and the rest I knew from mutual friends. I met all of them and hung up several times. RECENTLY. And, you know, girls talk about everything including cosmetics. I remember we once had a discussion about sensitive skin was a huge problem for me and for them (of course we did not meet altogether at the same time, but we have these occasional meetings in summer during my vacation).

I told them a story I used Tony Moly that afterward, I went to a dermatologist because I had an unbearable allergy. We were talking about this and I remember we all agreed that Korean products, especially skin products, are not preferable to our skin due to our climate and sensitive skin. A Korean climate is much softer and moisturized, however, our climate is the opposite, it is very dry. So women usually use extra moisturizing toners and creams, for instance.

I messaged to these people because they wrote something really magical in their descriptions that seemed not true. I know that all of them use different skin products, such as Chanel, Clinique, etc. Some of them responded, some of them not. Nearly got an argument between us just because of the advertising product.