FIR #471: Can You Be Influential and Anonymous at the Same Time?

Jul 7, 2025

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There’s a new brand of influencer. Faceless creators wield their influence while never appearing on camera, while VTubers — virtual YouTubers — employ AI-generated avatars instead of showing their faces. This is no flash-in-the-pan trend. One network of faceless creators grew from 5,000 to 21,000 creators in just three months, with some raking in as much as $40,000 per month from brands eager to add their content to the mix. There are numerous reasons this shift is happening, from social networks like TikTok elevating its algorithm over follower counts (enabling someone with few followers to see a post go viral) to the ability for brands to pay for performance instead of impressions. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel look at the pros and cons of faceless creators.

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, July 28.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

@nevillehobson (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 471. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK.

Shel Holtz (00:07)
And I’m Shel Holtz in the U.S. And there is something going on that’s quietly shifting how brands reach audiences. Faceless creators, social media influencers building massive reach without ever showing their faces. This isn’t just another social media trend. This is a fundamental change in content creation and monetization. And we’ll dig into it right after this.

So let’s start with what we’re actually talking about. Faceless creators publish videos and clips without appearing on camera. Affiliate network grew from 5,000 to 21,000 faceless creators in just three months. Top performers are pulling in 30,000 to $40,000 a month from brand deals. Man, I’m in the wrong line of work.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Many of these faceless creators are students or part-timers running multiple accounts, posting hundreds of pieces daily, some of them posting as many as a thousand posts per day. They’ve cracked the code, if you will, on algorithmic discovery, understanding that in the attention economy, volume and optimization often trump polish and personality.

Three forces created this explosion. First, have platforms like TikTok that have deprioritized follower counts. Algorithmic feeds boost engaging content regardless of creator size. A faceless account with zero followers can reach millions of people. Second, AI democratized production. You can call it AI slop, but text to video bots, AI thumbnails, multilingual dubbing, mass content production is now scalable by one

person who’s got the right tools. Third, performance-based compensation. Creators are getting paid on views and conversions, not flat fees. Brands can experiment at scale without upfront investment. VTubers, virtual YouTubers, use AI avatars and motion capture to create remarkably human personalities. Blue, and it’s spelled B-L-O-O, has millions of subscribers and seven-figure revenue.

It editing, thumbnails, and multi-language dubbing.

Brands aren’t just attracted to the novelty. They want autonomy, cost efficiency, and creative control. No scheduling conflicts, no scandals, no contract renegotiations, just consistent on-brand content at machine speed. This isn’t just about marketing. It’s also organizational communication. Scalability and ROI are becoming non-negotiable, but authenticity trade-offs are real. The lack of a human presence raises questions about trust in

and alignment. Best practice is emerging though, and that’s to blend human content with virtual elements, have virtual influencers interact with real people, or introduce faithless content through recognizable human voices. The most successful organizations embrace new formats without abandoning the human elements that build trust.

Mass production can border on manipulation. AI generated content poses authenticity challenges we’re only beginning to understand. When virtual influencers promote products, are consumers aware they’re engaging with AI? What transparency is required? These aren’t abstract questions. They’re practical challenges communicators have to address now before regulators step in with solutions that could stifle innovation. So what does this mean for organizational communicators? First,

First,

experiment, but do it strategically. Explore faceless formats and AI-assisted production, but anchor everything in your organization’s values. Second, maintain trust. Use hybrid models, faceless clips introduced by named team members. Embed real testimonials and human voices. Third, measure performance. Shift towards CPC, leads, click-throughs. Test faceless versus traditional content to understand what works in your niche.

And finally, lead on transparency. Disclose AI-generated content, avoid misleading impressions. In a landscape where trust is fragile, transparency isn’t just good ethics, it’s good business. Now, the bottom line here is that the rise of faceless creators signals content as productive, scalable, and detached from identifiable faces. This isn’t replacing human storytelling, it’s complementing it. The organizations that will thrive will blend deficiency with authenticity,

scale with soul. Whether your voice is faceless, virtual, or distinctly human, it needs strategic alignment and authentic connection. The question isn’t whether to embrace these formats, it’s how quickly you can use to learn them effectively while maintaining the trust that great communication requires. And by the way, Neville, just yesterday I read an article that didn’t specifically call out faceless creators, but it made a point that this type of content that the faceless creators are

producing is something that you actually don’t need a creator to do. You can do it in-house and a lot of companies are starting to bring some of that work back in-house. So an interesting trend.

@nevillehobson (05:26)
Yeah, there’s lots, lots about this that I find fascinating. By the way, you mentioned Blue, a virtual persona, and you spelt it out B-L-O-O. That’s actually the name of a toilet cleaner here in the UK, spelt like that. So I just sort of mentioned that as a just saying kind of thing. Yeah, so I was reading through the eMarketer report on this. It’s quite interesting, their take. One thing they said struck me as an obvious that

Shel Holtz (05:39)
Ha!

@nevillehobson (05:56)
some may grasp, I certainly did. AI slop, more of it now because of this. But they do qualify that. They say concerns are definitely valid, more AI slop, but the creative shift is equally very clear indeed. Production is being automated and value now lies in ideas and execution. Yeah, you could see that. I find it interesting the trend away from influencer identity, i.e.

promoting the individual who is the creator through to promoting what has been created. So if it’s about a brand or it’s a theme or something topical, that’s what you see and hear, not a talking head or some person who’s the prominent focus. It’s the actual message. That’s the thing. So that’s one of the reports I read say that is emulating TikTok.

to a certain extent. And I think fine, if this is a trend, then this does add a new dimension to the content that you will encounter in various places online. You mentioned the Vtube. I think it’s great. Vtube, the virtual tube. it’s super. Faces, creators and Vtubers. E-Marketer says they’re redefining the creative space. I can see it.

My only worry is is precisely going back to concerns about AI slop is that this therefore makes it easier to to literally deluge everything with slop. But you have to also accept, as I do, that one man’s slop is another man’s venison steak or whatever you might want to describe it as. So it’s like all things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just think, though, that this is likely to open the floodgates to

to AI generated content of dubious quality. It’s a bit like whenever I turn the TV on during the daytime, which sometimes happens at lunchtime, I want to see the TV news and rather than see it all online all the time. That’s when it seems to me in the UK that it’s poor quality slop all over TV at that time in terms of advertising. The ads you see,

are usually about cremation services, pet insurance, or other things that niche audiences might want. Insurance for seniors, how to pay for your funeral ahead of time, all that kind of stuff. That scripting is dire. Clearly, I’m not the target audience, although I’m probably in the right age bracket for that. But you’re now seeing this likely to be the case online too. I think, though, you mentioned something quite interesting, that it opens equally another avenue.

to user generated content within organizations. So VO, you mentioned VO3. But again, I raise the question to myself more than anything that does that mean we’re gonna see more dubious quality content coming at us in waves that you can’t ignore it everywhere? I noticed things a lot on LinkedIn, Facebook in particular, and luckily they have a way to say, us about this ad.

And I said, don’t want to see that anymore. It’s just dreadful. And it goes away. I think I can’t see that lasting that long, to be honest. your exposure is diminishing in quality. And this will accelerate that because it’s already diminishing in quality, arguably, certainly on LinkedIn. So will this also kickstart, perhaps, explorations and experimenting by real influencers online into niche communities?

away from the slop. Who knows? But nevertheless, I agree with eMarketer in particular, because they mentioned quite clearly, this is absolutely a trend. It’s gaining momentum. It’s been around a while. Now seems to be the time for this to pick up steam. One of the other links you shared from Axios, an interview with Jim O’Leary, the CEO in North America of Weber Shandwick, the big ad agency.

that he says, he talks about five things, the attention economy, creator economy, stakeholder economy, experience economy, intelligence economy. I mean, these are all great things, but they’re all being not led, but pushed along fast by influences and influence. So this then is taking that in a different direction. So

Basically, what I see from all of this and from the links, the reports that you shared, and your own assessment of it all, is that this is upon us. You could say if you don’t pay attention to it, you’re going to be overtaken by those who do and that probably is a valid point to make. I would argue too, though, that you only need to pay attention to it if this is something is value to you, your brand, your messaging, everything. That said, though, if you say no, it’s not, then you do risk being overtaken because

I don’t think you can say no it’s not. You have to explore how it is and realize that this is upon us. So it is an interesting time. I just hope we are not overwhelmed with the slop though.

Shel Holtz (10:48)
Yeah, Jim O’Leary says that creators are no longer just a media channel, their culture itself, their content consistently outperforms brand owned content because audiences trust them more. The new reality is that brands must co-create with those who shape culture, measuring actual influence over vanity metrics. And it’s important because creators increasingly drive earned strategies, capturing attention that attracts traditional media coverage and fuels broader cultural conversation. I think he’s absolutely right. ⁓

about

that. In terms of the AI slop, I think we’re going to be experiencing a deluge of that whether there are faceless creators or not. On the one hand, you hear about the one creator who’s cranking out a thousand pieces a day. On the other hand, if you’re get paid for this, you’re gonna have to get impressions. And that means it has to be something that people are gonna wanna look at. And I don’t wanna minimize

@nevillehobson (11:28)
Exactly.

Shel Holtz (11:45)
the problem that is posed by AI slop. But there’s also a lot of really good content being produced with this. I just saw yesterday a speculative TV commercial. It’s not really being aired, but it’s for a real product. It’s for Liquid Death, which is a canned water product. I don’t know if they have it in the UK, but it’s popular here.

@nevillehobson (12:07)
We’ll see that.

Shel Holtz (12:08)
know, skull and crossbones type of logo. But it’s a guy being pulled over on a highway by a sheriff type who walks up and says, do you know why I pulled you over? And the sketchy type in the car says, is it because of my busted taillight? And the cop says, no. He goes, is it because of the human trafficking? And he’s showing the family that he’s got tied up in the back. And the cop goes, And they just keep going through.

@nevillehobson (12:12)
Listen.

Shel Holtz (12:35)
these different scenarios of really horrible crimes that he’s committed and the cop says, no, it’s because it’s your birthday, And gives him a cake.

And they tell you that the entire commercial, which looks incredibly professional, was made with Google’s VO3, the entire thing. So it is very likely that we’re going to see high quality content coming out of this space. It’s not all slop just because it’s coming from AI.

@nevillehobson (13:01)
No, it’s

not. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s not all slop. Of course it’s not. That’s absolutely right. I agree with you that it’s likely to be that way. So this is upon us. There will be good things amongst all the slop, but we’ll see more slop. There’s no question about that. I just wonder, though, you mentioned the guy who’s cranking out a thousand pieces of content every day. I’m reminded of our conversation with Craig Silverman recently about

people who do that in the mobile phone farms out in Southeast Asia with workarounds to get around the limits imposed by platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to limit you to a certain number of posts. This breaks all those limits. So I doubt respectable agencies like Web of Shamwick are going to be doing that kind of thing. But nevertheless, that’s going to be part of the landscape too, because therefore you’re going to have people breaking all the current rules. If your brand is associated with a rule break,

don’t think you want to go there. So it may force some changes there, I suspect. So it would be a good thing, I’m sure.

Shel Holtz (14:03)
Yeah, if they’re in fact breaking rules as opposed to dishing this out to multiple brands who are pushing it out through different accounts if you’re just the creator.

@nevillehobson (14:08)
They seem to be.

the argument then is it may be legal, but is it moral? mean, that’s how the argument’s going to go, or ethical, know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it’s an interesting development.

Shel Holtz (14:19)
Well, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I’d need to know more about

what that that creator is doing. But yeah, I find it fascinating and certainly something worth paying attention to as this landscape just continues to shift. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of for immediate release.

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