Virtual Influencers Are The Latest Branding Tool

Virtual Influencers are brands’ lastest social tool. 

- Patrick Kulp

Shudu Gram, a South African Instagram model with flawless dark skin and a perfectly symmetrical face, has garnered 130,000 followers since appearing on the platform a little over a year ago. She’s modeled Fenty Beauty lipstick, and she’s currently penning an editorial for a major online publication.

She also happens to be completely fake. Shudu is the computer-graphic creation of a British artist named Cameron-James Wilson, who intended her as a modest art project before social media fame took hold.

Her artificiality hasn’t stopped “countless” fashion and beauty brands from trying to contract her for product plugs, according to Wilson, who claims he’s yet to take money for a sponsorship but remains open to the idea.

“I consider all of them, but I have to think about what direction I want to go in, what direction I want Shudu to go in,” Wilson said. “It has to be fitting—I don’t want to just use it as a gimmick.”

Shudu is not alone. She’s one of a crop of virtual influencers who are challenging the notions and significance of reality on the internet. And marketers are starting to take notice.