FaintFlex Vol. 4 - The UK's Influencer Scene is Evolving 🇬🇧
Often overlooked, here's why we should be paying attention.
Kofi McCalla (@IcyKof), creator of The Unknown Vlogs & @SlydeOfficial + his latest viral hairstyle (via Instagram)
FaintFlex is a newsletter covering new media & personality-driven startups.
The United Kingdom is building & preparing for the future of influencer culture, which is something that doesn’t get much coverage here in the US.
In addition to London-based Kyra TV (covered in FaintFlex Vol. 2), here are the things I’ve been paying attention to and why:
1. @SlydeOfficial
Screenshot of Slyde’s Instagram Feed (each post features multiple people)
I started following the UK’s influencer scene during the Fall of 2018 after discovering @SlydeOfficial, a global youth fashion community on Instagram founded by London-based YouTuber @IcyKof. At the time, it had around 70k followers and has doubled since.
But what caught my attention was not the follower count, it was their unusually high engagement rate despite posting over 5 times per day. For context, they’re now averaging about 150 comments per post, compared to another youth favorite @FashionFuckery that only averages 40 comments, despite a larger following.
Slyde is unique because they pride themselves on curating & giving feedback to the thousands of rising micro fashion influencers, models, & enthusiasts around the globe better than anyone else.
Each post features multiple people with unique outfits, crowdsourcing the opinions of the “Slyde Fam” with every caption.
Beyond providing fashion inspiration, the core of Slyde’s content is powered by the audience rating and sharing their opinions on the outfits shared to the page. They do this in a number of ways, like hosting “Outfit Battles” & “Influencer Team Battles” on their Story, allowing the audience to vote for their favorite fits.
You can tell that there is an entire operation behind this account, considering their amount of artfully curated content and captivating captions each day. And the page gets an incredible number of tags by individuals desiring to get featured.
Additionally, I was impressed by how carefully & authentically they introduced sponsored content. They tend to partner with lesser-known yet cool accessory brands & boutiques like Purple Pesto & Back in May to do sponsored giveaways, requiring the Slyde Fam to follow their accounts to enter. It’s very on brand.
Slyde’s founder Icy Kof is an example of what next gen media moguls will look like:
YouTuber with nearly 500k subscribers (The Unknown Vlogs)
Owner of a crowdsourced micro-influencer media brand (@SlydeOfficial)
Multiple verticals underneath the umbrella (@HolyGrails & @InternKofi)
Owned Commerce (@CalabasasCowboys)
Slyde is by far one of the most powerful communities I’ve discovered on Instagram. It’s literally a public customer discovery platform with limitless potential.
2. The Digital Fairy
The Digital Fairy is a creative studio and consultancy based in London. I took a closer look after discovering their involvement with the upcoming launch of virtual influencer @LilMiquela’s private community Club 404.
They dropped a fascinating report earlier this year titled “INFLUENCERS 2025”, which summarizes their predictions on the future of digital personality advertising. It’s insightful because it gives a better glimpse into the influencer’s perspective.
I highly encourage you to read the entire report, as it’s everything that’s been in my head for the last several months. It can be found on their Instagram Story Highlight section, as well as their website. Here were my favorite predictions:
Social ‘influence’ moves beyond traditional sectors (beauty, fashion) and becomes the currency of a range of previously ‘unsexy’ industries like education (@StudywithJess), healthcare, religion, finance, government (AOC), cleaning (@mrshinchhome) & more.
Influencers will unionize for better treatment, bigger brand deals, and industry transparency. They are better together - helping each other, sharing knowledge and cross-promoting jobs - in a variety of agency, collective and platform models. These groups will eventually be bought by larger platforms & media groups such as WPP (or the Chernin Group in the US).
We will see the development of Y-Combinator-style influencer hothouses - that invest, brand build, and develop young influencers as if they were startups.
X-Factor style shows that manufacture the next big thing for pop culture will be re-imagined with shows that foster mini-influencers instead like The Like Factor or Who Wants to be a Content Creator?
Futureproofing a post-Instagram world - with an eye on the ‘next big thing’, top influencers will work together with tech/media companies to co-create future platforms and share intelligence on audience habits & preferences.
3. Our Social Collective
The various influencer brands launched on Our Social Collective’s platform
Our Social Collective is another London-based startup that incubates businesses with influencers and launches them on their marketplace. I’ve heard rumblings of similar platforms being developed here in the US, however I haven’t come across anything publicly available yet. Similar to how Fanjoy is for merch, I expect to see more iterations of this model for different products here in the US.
4. Core Influence
Influencers Lou Teasdale & Lottie Tomlinson (via Instagram)
England native & influencer Lou Teasdale (who’s known for being pop band One Direction’s primary hair stylist & makeup artist), has teamed up with influencer marketing consultant Sophie Ball to build a talent management & brand strategy company.
It looks like they already have beauty influencer Lottie Tomlinson (sister to Louise Tomlinson of One Direction) on their roster. She launched her own vegan & cruelty-free tanning brand last year called Tanologist.
This is an example of what a growing numbering of aging influencers will do to maintain relevancy with younger audiences.
Content of the Week
I came across multiple YouTube videos this week that analyze the rise and fall Complex Media. My favorite was by @HipHopMadness, however I recommend @HelloYassine’s two-part series as well.
My major takeaway is Complex Media has extended itself too broadly, damaged relationships with their former most loved show hosts, and have lost the fan loyalty they once had. Could be an interesting business to be modernized for younger generations.
(I also never realized fashion designer Marc Ecko started Complex!!)
Special thanks to those that have read & shared feedback on the first few editions of FaintFlex! I started this to spark conversations, so feel free to reach out with your thoughts or if there’s ever a subject you’d like me to further clarify.
- Aaron