Business1 min read

‘Don’t lie to me to get free stuff’: how small businesses are fighting back against influencers

By · Via The Guardian Business · Published by Everything Blog

In short

In Lenoir, North Carolina, Brews and Mews cat cafe owner Nicole Flanagin published CCTV footage to counter a viral video posted by an influencer with over 170,000 followers. The creator had claimed cafe employees treated her crying child coldly, but the time-stamped surveillance tape revealed a calm exchange lasting under 40 seconds. The establishment restricts visits from children aged six and under to set sessions to safeguard its shelter foster cats. After the security video accumulated hundreds of thousands of views, the creator deleted the complaint and issued an apology.

Key points

  • Small business owners are successfully using unedited surveillance recordings to defend s…: Small business owners are successfully using unedited surveillance recordings to defend staff against inaccurate social media claims.
  • Public digital rebuttals from businesses can achieve viral reach that rivals or exceeds t…: Public digital rebuttals from businesses can achieve viral reach that rivals or exceeds the original complaints.
  • Documented evidence empowers business owners to enforce operational safety policies witho…: Documented evidence empowers business owners to enforce operational safety policies without yielding to influencer pressure.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

Nicole Flanagin remembers exactly the moment an influencer came after her business. It was the early hours of a March morning and the cat cafe owner in Lenoir, North Carolina, got a message. “At 1.37,” she says, “a friend sent me the link to this girl’s TikTok.”

The 41-year-old was already having a bad 24 hours. A mother of four, Flanigan also works at a pet rescue shelter and had spent the previous day unsuccessfully fighting for a dog not to be put down. She got home exhausted and promptly conked out in bed. Then she woke up to the message.

The video began innocuously enough with a local influencer sitting in her parked car. “For those of you who know me,” she stated, “I do reviews of local businesses. One very special thing about me is I don’t make bad reviews – but I’m kinda mad right now!” The woman had just taken her child to an unnamed cafe with “animals you can pet”, only to be coldly turned away because she had got its visiting hours wrong. In…

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