So how did LuLaRoe retailers build their followings online, and what was the reality vs. the image they were creating? Author and Under the Influence podcast host Jo Piazza joins us this week to break down how social media and influencer culture contributed to LuLaRoe’s success.
LuLaRoe’s rise coincided with the rise of influencers and platforms like Facebook Live which retailers used extensively to sell their products and host online events. These platforms became the perfect medium for depicting the aspirational lifestyle that LuLaRoe was selling. Top sellers were encouraged to show off a flashy and upbeat lifestyle by posting about their achievements and using the hashtag #becauseofLulaRoe. So how did LuLaRoe retailers build their followings online, and what was the reality vs. the image they were creating? Author and Under the Influence podcast host Jo Piazza joins us this week to break down how social media and influencer culture contributed to LuLaRoe’s success.
Want more of the LuLaRoe story? Stream "The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe" documentary on discovery plus. Go to discoveryplus.com/lularoe to start your 7-day free trial today. Terms Apply.
Find episode transcript here: https://the-rise-and-fall-of-lularoe.simplecast.com/episodes/becauseoflularoe-the-dream-vs-reality
Episode 2: #BecauseofLuLaRoe: The Dream vs. Reality
THEME IN
Intro
Stephanie: Hi everyone! This is The Rise and Fall of LulaRoe. I’m your host, Stephanie McNeal and I’m a senior culture reporter at Buzzfeed News. In this podcast we are diving deep into the world of LulaRoe - we speak with retailers whose lives were turned upside down. We also talk to experts who can shed light on how these MLMs really work...including the red flags you should keep an eye out for.
This week I'm talking to author, reporter and podcaster Jo Piazza about influencers and LulaRoe. Jo has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Elle and more. Her latest podcast Under the Influence documented the history of influencer culture and particularly mom influencers, which we'll see has some overlaps with how LulaRoe consultants built their brands.
Let’s get into it.
THEME OUT
Interview
Stephanie [00:00:22]Hi, thanks for joining us. We're so excited to have you, Jo, especially as an expert on all things mom influencers, which is definitely my cup of tea as well. So thank you so much for coming on.
Jo [00:00:38]I love talking to a fellow influencer expert. We are few and far between. So this is an absolute joy for me.
Stephanie [00:00:44] // I'm so excited to dig into influencers in general, but also, of course, all about their role in LuLaRoe, because I think when a lot of people hear the LuLaRoe story, they don't think influencers off the top of their head. But actually, social media played such a big role in LuLaRoe, and your podcast Under the Influence is all about the rise of mom influencers. I found it fascinating. So how did you get interested in reporting on this topic?
Jo [00:01:24]Oh my gosh, it is. It is definitely not something that I ever thought I would be reporting on, but then I became a mom for a second time. And when you have a newborn, you're holding them in one hand. There's very little you can do except scroll Instagram // the only appendage you have is a thumb. And so I was on Instagram more than ever, and because I believe our phones are listening to us, they 100 percent knew that I had a baby, that she was very, very little. And I just kept getting served up mom content after mom content. All of these women in like long flowing Laura Ingalls Wilder style prairie dresses in their very clean white homes and their white kitchens with their organic, bottle nipples and organic baby outfits, organic everything. And I didn't know what to make of it. And as a journalist, when I don't understand something about the world. I just start reporting the hell out of it. So originally under the influence was going to be kind of an exposé of the world of moms influencers. I was like, Who the hell are these women? And // Why is everyone trying to sell me something? Why is every mom I see on Instagram trying to sell me something? But when I got deeper into it, I just realized that the world of influencing is so much more complex that really the history of mom influencers is the history of women. And if you look at it as how women have been treated in the world and in business and marginalized in so many aspects of human life, you know, it really does mirror directly the world of of influencing. So it went from what I thought was going to be a saucy, sassy take down to a really intensely reported look at the world of influencing and how that how that relates to what it means to be a woman in the world today.
Stephanie [00:03:16]I love that so much because I cover influencers as part of my day job, and I think we need people who are actually taking a serious look at this culture at this industry. This is a multibillion-dollar industry that most of the time in the mainstream media really only gets mocked. //
Jo [00:03:49]Totally. // we cannot ignore the creators who are creating this content because they're also creating the content that is propping up multibillion-dollar gazillion-dollar social media platforms. And so by ignoring it and not taking it seriously, mostly because it is mostly created by women, I think that we're doing a huge economic disservice pretty much to the entire country.
Stephanie [00:04:19] every Fortune 500 company is is paying so much money. That's the one thing that people always are surprised by //But you actually tried to become an influencer on your podcast. What was that experience like?
Jo //[00:04:57]It was a really special version of hell, to be honest. I'm a journalist. I'm so used to writing things. I also write books. I thought that this would be incredibly easy. I'm like, You just take a picture and you write a caption and you hashtag itand then people pay you for it. It was so hard. // to gain an audience is ridiculously difficult these days, but to have that drive to photograph every aspect of your life, to put it out there and then to craft these captions, which are unlike anything I'd ever written that have to be vaguely relatable but also aspirational, but also confessional. And to do that every single day, while putting out content that is mostly just your face and your kids faces. it's difficult, but it's also demoralizing. It makes you question everything about who you are. And I just didn't. I didn't have it in me to try to sell my life to the masses. That said, I gained a tremendous respect for what influencers do. They are not just taking a picture and posting a quick caption, you know, for a couple of minutes of work a day, they're essentially creating multimedia brands // good on the women that can do it and do it well because it is not me. //
Stephanie [00:07:26] So a lot of people don't know all the intricacies of how social media really helped fuel LuLaRoe's rise and how big of an impact MLMs have in the influencer industry as a whole. There are a lot of top influencers // who are actually MLM sellers, and they do both, and they have really lucrative careers because of it. But with LuLaRoe specifically, I'm curious what is your impression of LulaRoe? When did you first hear of LuLaRoe?
Jo [00:08:09]So I only first heard of LuLaRoe , oh, maybe a couple of years ago, but only once I really started paying a lot more attention to what was happening on Instagram. // And I think it's because they were such genius early adopters of how influencer marketing works. And frankly, so many influencers, really the top influencers, almost all of them are working or have worked with some MLM or another because frankly, when you're in it early and you're able to be one of the top sellers, it's a really easy way to make money if you get in at the right time, right? and I think because a lot of the bigger influencers, they're showing you so many different aspects of their lives that //You don't think about it as if they're participating in an MLM or you're being sold into an MLM. And I think that's what makes influencing the best kind of marketing for a company like that
Stephanie [00:10:42] And I think one thing with LuLaRoe in particular is they were able to harness the power of social media honestly, really before Instagram influencing was even close to what it is now. I mean, we're talking 2014, 2015, and this was all happening on Facebook, but they were able to do this intense influencer style marketing of their brand through these interconnected Facebook groups. And I always just found that so interesting because it is. It's selling your lifestyle, you know, if you follow this woman on Facebook and she's posting every single day // Wow, look at this beautiful house I just built. Look at all of my nice things. Look, you know, look at my Louis Vuitton, look at my car. You know, all of this stuff and you follow her on Facebook and you're in her LuLaRoe group. Why would you not join?
Jo [00:12:02] of course, someone is going to feel a connection that makes them want to purchase what these people have. It's really a tale as old as time. Why have companies used celebrities in marketing for so long? It's because, you know, celebrity people admire celebrities and want to feel like those people are their friends. //What has replaced celebrities in those advertisements //are influencers. And it's so much more intimate. They're not on your TV. They're on a screen that lives in your pocket that you reach for when you're in the bathroom or when you're rocking your baby to sleep. There's actually not a more intimate moment than that. And that's why you feel such a connection to these people selling you, these things // It doesn't seem crazy to me at all.
Stephanie [00:14:08] //yeah, I think a lot about LuLaRoe's aspirational lifestyle. What do you think that LuLaRoe or any MLM is selling because they're not just selling power and money, they're also selling a sense of like friendship and community?
Jo [00:15:03] LuLaRoe and a lot of the other MLMs that are very successful right now, they're not. They're really they're not just selling the idea of an aspirational lifestyle, as we used to think of it in terms of, Oh my gosh, I look at that beautiful house, that car I want, I want to live that fancy life. They're selling the idea of community and friendship and comfort and also, you know, wellness with a capital W. All of those things, connection, things that I think women are desperately desperately craving today and // millennial women feel very disconnected despite being so connected on social media because, you know, job prospects are pretty terrible these days. It's harder to live in the same neighbourhoods as your friends. You're talking to so many friends only on text and not seeing them face-to-face. And then you jump up, you know, an age group and you have moms who are feeling more disconnected than ever because they're stuck at home with their babies. We have such a, you know, lack // of community these days. And so I think these women are hungry for what LuLaRoe tried to represent in so many of their marketing campaigns, which is community connection, comfort, wellness and friendship.
Stephanie [00:16:33]I think that a lot of times when this LuLaRoe story is being told, people just focus so much on the monetary aspect of it, and they don't talk about the lifestyle aspect, and that's something that a lot of the women that I have interviewed always talk a lot about to me is, you know, when I joined X Y Z's LuLaRoe team. I had 50 girlfriends who I could call up and hang out with virtually, or then eventually in real life. And I would do my lives on Facebook. And all of these comments would pour in for my teammates being like, You look so amazing. And that is like, so powerful. //I think I think that is one thing that I wish people were getting out of the LuLaRoe story a little bit more, to be honest, is it wasn't just about scamming and money, it was about community and, you know, kind of taking advantage of this thing that people really, really needed.
Jo [00:18:36]Yes, yes. yes, yes and yes. //There has been a crisis of community, and when people are able to get connected in a way that does feel organic, they're excited about it. And I want people ask me this a lot too. They're like, It just seems crazy. Like the LuLaRoe was a cult for these, for these women. I'm like, Oh yeah, how many Peloton Facebook groups are you a part of my friend? Because I think Peloton, while, it's a totally different company, right? But they were also marketing geniuses in saying this isn't just an exercise bike. You're joining a community of like minded people and these instructors, they care about you. They're going to do shout outs during the ride. They're your friends and you can ride along with your friends and then talk to them in Instagram groups and on Facebook groups. And you know that it's that same hunger that has driven the success of Peloton that I think drove people to join LuLaRoe.
Stephanie [00:20:13]That is so spot on. There is no parasocial relationship like the ones I have with the Peloton instructors. // I honestly sometimes think they're actually talking to me 100 percent. So let's talk about everyone's favorite topic Instagram versus reality //So one thing that I think people are always really fascinated by with MLMs and LuLaRoe in particular is a lot of the women were kind of faking it till they make it and putting these veneers on Facebook being like, I love LuLaRoe, everything's great. And then when I talk to them after they've gotten out of LuLaRoe, they're like, Oh yeah, actually, I was miserable // when I was on the cruise, you know, posting about how much I love LuLaRoe. I was crying in my room every single night, and, you know, that kind of speaks to the whole criticism of social media in general, which is that people can kind of only show the good side of it. So how do you think this social media flexing kind of drove people astray to join something that maybe they weren't prepared for?
Jo [00:21:56] Well, so the trends in social media are constantly shifting, and until pretty recently, perfection was the name of the game on on Instagram, the most popular accounts and frankly, still the most popular accounts are very pristine and beautiful and even if sometimes the captions are confessional. I like to say it's like, you know, they're like ugly, beautiful. Like, // It still looks really good. You might be crying, but you have really great fake eyelashes on while you're doing it and your mascara definitely isn't running. So perfection has long been the key to getting more followers and building a big brand on Instagram. It is a fake it until you make it. And when a lot of these women were buying into the LulaRoe lifestyle and growing and growing their personal brands, frankly, it's I don't think it's just a LuLaRoe thing. It's just do you want to grow your personal brand on Instagram? Because that will be a way for you to make money in this brave new world of the social media economy? OK, well, then you have to put your best foot forward and show off your beautiful house and beautiful car and beautiful family and beautiful body. And so I think a lot of women were driven to the brink trying to show off a perfect life that they definitely didn't have because no one's life is perfect. //But you know, the flip side of that is, again, like, I think we make it sound like so like crazy. Like, there's this fake it till you make it lifestyle. That's also all of Silicon Valley. And look what Elizabeth Holmes just got convicted for. Like every company out there has been like, we are going to pretend that we are amazing until we are. And a lot of times you fail at that and a lot of influencers failed at that.
Stephanie [00:25:05]One thing final thing on the fake it till you make it thing. There's been a lot of talk and thought about this hashtag because of LulaRoe, and it's such an interesting social media thing that LuLaRoe rather geniusly implemented that whenever you posted something that was a huge win in your financial or emotional or personal life that you felt like was because of your LuLaRoe business, you would put this hashtag on it. So then if you scroll the hashtag because of LuLaRoe on Instagram or Facebook, it's just cars and clothes and houses. I saw one woman posted that she felt like she only was able to adopt her daughter because of LuLaRoe. what do you think about the marketing genius of this hashtag and what it sold to women?
Jo [00:25:57]It is, but honestly, one of the best marketing hashtags that a company has ever created. It really is. //they were doing it long before. I think a lot of other companies were doing it with that created such an aspirational tsunami for so many women and again, two groups of women that I want to say I think were very vulnerable to to this company and to this, this kind of kind of MLM. We're looking at millennial women who, as I said before, the job market has been terrible for for the past few years. Getting a job is awful and then rising in a job and making a living wage these days, even with a college degree, has been so hard for millennial women //And then you have the other group of women, which is youngish moms, both millennial and, you know, little bit of Gen X, who it's real hard to work when you're a mom, it is really hard to support your family and make money and you still want to contribute. But society doesn't make that entirely easy when you look at the cost of childcare. So, of course, they're like, Oh my gosh, look at these other women doing it, I can do it, too. It's so brilliant because it was not the company getting up there and saying, If you work for us, you'll get a car and you'll get a car and you'll get a house. They got the other women to say it, and that is what made it feel so intimate and so accessible.
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Audio Cue for Ad Break
Stephanie //I always think a lot about how. And how MLM's been so supercharged with social media, obviously, MLM's have been around for a long time, right? // Avon Lady, all of that kind of stuff, but it wasn't until they really started taking off on Facebook that I feel like they've really got their foothold into my generation. How do you think? Social media platforms really just lit a fire for MLM's among young Gen-X and millennial women.
Jo [00:28:55]I think that for a long time, MLMs seemed like something in the not so distant past, it seemed like something Oh, maybe I know someone's older mom or grandma, that did that that sold Avon or Mary Kay or Tupperware? But They just did not seem to be a big part of my consciousness. I'm forty forty 41 year old woman until they really caught fire on social media. And I think that's because they really evolved to from something that felt like a lot of housewives sitting around having a party talking about, you know, what containers would keep, what food as fresh as she wanted it for as long as possible into // the more visual sexier medium on on social media, but also social media is where so many people were going to connect for the past 15 years. It's where you were having your book club. It's where PTA moms were to get together. But then also where dudes would get together to talk about Dungeons and dragons, or women would go to get beauty tips or watch tutorials on how to bake something, how to put on a certain kind of eye makeup. It's where we're going for everything else and the fact that MLMs figured that out really early on and got in and got in with, you know, also figuring out how to exploit this demand and need for community, I think, is what made them start to take off again recently, just in the past decade.
Stephanie [00:30:37]Yeah, I think we all have been on the receiving end of a Facebook message from a random person from high school asking us to join. // Did you see that you have that in your personal life? What are some other MLMs that you've seen really supercharged by Facebook?
Jo [00:30:54]Oh, yeah, yeah. The ones are the ones I saw the most on Facebook, probably. And I'm not on Facebook as much, except for work now. But I do remember about five years ago it was by these vitamin supplements or this belly fat buster. And then really, my feed was mostly and still is a lot of beauty counter, and I cannot tell you how many women reach out to me on a very regular basis. Women that either are still have or did have very high powered jobs that are like, I'm a beauty counter rep, and at first it's like, I think you'll love these things. And then it starts to get desperate. It's like I have to make my quota for this month. You have to buy this from me and I'm like, Oh my God, I don't want this tinted moisturizer. I'm all filled up on tinted moisturizer, but then I feel so guilty.
Stephanie [00:31:42]Yeah, for me it was Rodan and Fields, // there was a lot of skincare selling coming my way. // So let's move on to moms specifically because we've been talking about them a little bit. But moms were obviously a huge demographic for LuLaRoe. I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said, these are young moms who are looking for a way to bring in income because unfortunately, a lot of times when people have their first baby, they crunch the numbers, they look at their paycheck and then they look at the cost of daycare and they say, Wow, I'm only bringing in $100 a month or I'm actually losing money because I'm not making enough to even pay for daycare. And so one thing that LuLaRoe really did emphasize was you're not going to be working full time. And when you are working, you know, you can watch your kids simultaneously. You know, you're your child can be in their bouncer or they can be watching Cocomelon or something while you are doing your work. And so you won't need to pay for childcare, but you will still be making that money. And it's interesting and really dovetails with your work // So I'm curious why you focused on moms// And what was your biggest surprise you found in your reporting on mom and mom influencers?
Jo [00:33:53]You know, I chose to focus on mom influencers for a lot of reasons. One, I was a new mom. It felt like something that was very, very close to my life at the time two. It felt way more ignored than other aspects of influencing like beauty and fashion, influencing again, because I think that our society tends to write off women, but particularly women once they've had children. And three, because I feel like they're such a vulnerable population for like to get sucked into the world of influencing. And when I say that, I also mean into the world of MLMs, moms are treated terribly in our society. We've seen that during the pandemic. We're not given the social support system that we need, and the majority of jobs are not set up so that moms can do their work but also care for their children or pay // The astronomical cost of child care in this country, in a country where child care is neither subsidized nor tax deductible. So I know so many women, so many women who had climbed to the top of their damn careers, who after they had a child one, realized that they would be making no money once they deducted daycare costs. But two realized that very few companies are at all, conducive or flexible when it comes to caring for a child // It's such an antiquated working system that was created for men with wives who stayed at home // So moms are particularly vulnerable and desperate to find ways not just to make money. Yes, moms want to help support their families. A lot of moms have to support their families, but also to find a new sense of purpose. Women, women want to work. They want to feel like they're doing something productive. // So if someone comes along and says, Hey, you can still make really great money, but you've got flexible hours and you can do it from home and you can do it when your kids are around, it feels like an angel has come down directly from heaven. And that is why so many moms are very sucked into the world of influencing, but also very vulnerable when an MLM like LuLaRoe comes knocking.
Stephanie [00:36:55] And that's kind of what we were saying before, which is // I get why you would be sucked in. You know, you see everything on social media and then you believe in yourself, you know, you believe that you can do it. You believe that, you know, if you just try hard enough that you'll be a success. And it's really it's really sad because I think it is preying on this really impossible situation that women today are in //
Stephanie [00:43:59] And it really puts the onus, too on the woman where it's like, if you can't do this, it's your fault.
Jo [00:44:09]it's not fair at all. It's terrible. And the onus is always on the women. It's like, if you can't do it, it's not because society doesn't provide subsidized child care or because absolutely no careers are flexible to a mother's needs. No, you are just a failure.
Stephanie [00:44:27] One of the phenomenons that I'm really, really interested in, which I have a feeling that you might be interested in, too, are these MLM sellers who are at the top of their MLM //you know, there are women who have half a million followers and they've really kind of came up as the same time as skyrocketed to the top of their MLM and also skyrocketing to kind of the pinnacle of becoming a mom influencer. And I find it so fascinating because they're kind of the pinnacle of what we're talking about, where they're able to use their lifestyle as an influencer to make $2 million a year. I think with some of them off of their MLM company. And I'm curious if you think that this is going to become a bigger thing, where even more influencers are gonna have these two revenue streams where they can do both at the same time. And what are the pressures involved in, you know, running an MLM and running an influencer career because it seems like a lot to me.
Jo [00:45:48] //I actually don't know if you can be incredibly successful anymore or if you'll continue to be successful running an MLM. If you don't have a great social media following. I think that so much of this marketing and the direct to consumer selling is done on social media. Now that you have to build a really strong personal brand on social media in order to be successful at an MLM, I think that that's now but really becoming a prerequisite. But it is a lot of pressure to grow, but then also to keep followers. I talked to influencers all the time who say I just edit the hell out of myself. I can't post what my life is really like or what I really think, or I'm going to lose followers. I talked to a woman yesterday who said, I can't post what I really think about people getting vaccinated or about COVID or I when I did, I lost 10000 followers in a single day. And so I think that that's exhausting, and it's so much pressure to constantly be putting only your best face forward, which is just incredibly psychologically damaging. I've talked to so many influencers who have had their mental health deteriorate, who've had intense weight loss and eating disorders, all from trying to create the perfection needed to keep their brand going in order to then work with other brands or to sell products for an MLM to keep the money coming. And it's a it's all a house of cards, is what it is.
Stephanie [00:47:33] // I always say that it's not hard to get followers, it is hard to get followers, don't get me wrong, but it's way harder to maintain them. // So I'm curious about if you have any thoughts on the future of MLMs when it comes to social media, because basically right after there was this huge push for MLMs on social media, we got the anti MLM campaign. And now, you know, Gen Z is very attuned to MLMs. It's very mocked on TikTok. // How do you think social media will continue to evolve in selling this stuff? Or do you think that eventually people aren't going to buy into it anymore?
Jo [00:49:47]I think that MLM has kind of become a dirty word, especially in the past year, and influencers are absolutely downplaying how much what they're selling is involved in an MLM. Companies don't want to be called an MLM, obviously, but I think that they're just going to find ways to get around that, you know, to skirt the fact that that is what they are and find new buzzwords and new codes to get these, get these products in consumers hands and get the influencers getting these products in consumers hands. But I absolutely think that there is a huge backlash against appearing that you're this kind of company and that brands will do anything that they can to to try to dissuade people from believing that they that they're buying into an MLM.
Stephanie [00:50:36]Yeah, you mentioned beauty counter earlier, and I've actually written a piece about how a lot of. Kind of old school, like healthy living bloggers were selling beauty counter at one point and I was like, This is just out of left field, but it was very different than what you would see with, say, a lularoe Five years ago, you know, it was very subtle. there was not a lot of recruiting going on. There wasn't a lot of people saying, Hey, join my team. It was more of just like, I love these products, you know, like a typical influencer. And then, you know, you kind of have to go on the website and look around and see it'd be like, Oh, wow, this is this is a multilevel marketing company. I had no idea. //
Stephanie [00:52:19]One final thought I have here is I keep thinking about how you've said so many things about how easy it is to fall into this multilevel marketing lifestyle. If you are a woman who wants to have it all, who wants to stay home and I can't help thinking about the pandemic and how it's been so hard on mothers, especially or primary caregivers, especially, // do you think that we're going to see even more of these companies targeting moms who are in this situation and what can moms do to kind of make sure that these business opportunities that they're getting are actually legit?
Jo [00:53:05]There's a lot more companies emerging right now, mostly women run that are trying to help regulate the industry. Fuck you, pay me is is trying to be the glass door of the influencing world. But so much of the onus is always going to fall on women to do their due diligence and find out who they're working for, what their background is and what their motivations are before they commit to working with them. it's on you. You have to do that research and you have to reach down deep inside you and think about who do I want to be working for? We're talking a lot about this on the new season of Under the Influence, influencers make a lot of money on Instagram. Some of them do, some of them make no money. But the people that are really getting rich are the investors and executives at Facebook and Instagram. Most most of them are men, and they're getting rich on the backs of millions of women creators. And that's wrong. And frankly, women need to think about what power they do have and who's making money off what they're creating and and their power. And that's one of the things that we're hoping to help people realize.
Stephanie [00:54:29]Absolutely, and I think the only way that people are going to be able to have that knowledge is journalists like yourself who are actually thinking critically about these issues and who are reporting on them and putting media out about them. So I really appreciate the work that you're doing and really appreciate you coming on. So thank you so much for sharing with us.
Jo [00:54:50]Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun.
END CREDITS
OUTRO
The Rise and Fall of LulaRoe is a Discovery Plus podcast.
From Discovery, our executive producer is Michael DiSalvo [Deh-Sall-vo]. From Buzzfeed, our executive producer is Karolina Waclawiak [Vahts-LAH-vee-ACK].
Special thanks to Shelley Sinha [Sin-Ha] at Discovery, Samantha Henig and Richard Alan Reid at Buzzfeed, and Pete Ross at Left/Right.
Our show is produced by Neon Hum Media. Jonathan Hirsch and Shara Morris are the executive producers. Our lead producer is Muna Danish. Associate Producer is Rufaro Faith. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Sound design and engineering from Mark Bush. Our theme music is from Epidemic Sound.
See you next week!