Securing the Brand Bag 💰

Should we be worried about brand deals as the only way to make money in food media?

It was a whoopsie heard ’round social media: Last year, SHEIN, a fast-fashion manufacturer in China, brought over influencers to tour their “factories” in order to green-wash and virtue-wash (just fully suds up) their manufacturing and labor processes, which have been the subject of important scrutiny. One of these influencers, Dani Carbonari, referred to herself as an “investigative journalist” in a since-deleted video, and this set off waves of earned criticism. On what planet was this person—most well known for content creation based on clothing—an investigative journalist? For going on a brand trip?

Much of my own travel of this planet of ours was enabled by press trips I went on while writing absolutely mindless pieces of work for little money. I went on the trips in order to see the places, and everyone who is skilled at press trips knows that you do the little dances the publicists want you to do, and you hustle in any free time to eat the food, drink the drinks, see the sights you really want to experience and interview the people you really want to talk to—to do the things that will enrich your work in ways that media-trained spiels from the owners won’t enable. (I haven’t been on a press trip since 2019, and I don’t see myself doing them again without a lot of different conditions being met.) I have also seen things I wouldn’t have seen without these trips—indeed, I cried in a cooperage in the Cognac region, so beautiful was the making of the barrels of French oak by a fairy-tale-huge Frenchman. I’m a sucker for craft.

All of this to say: I know the deal, to an extent. Influencers have replaced beauty and fashion editors as those most on the pulse of trends or techniques, or the editors and other experts have learned to do content creation. They get plus-ones to Tokyo and Dubai; they’re flown in first-class (writers are found in 23B, right in the middle between two people who don’t understand how to keep their arms on their sides of the armrest, desperate for a glance from a flight attendant in the hopes of being served a thimble of water). This is because they’re creating content about the billion-dollar beauty and fashion industries, though one could assume major spirits brands—as similarly wasteful and money-making—could also impress in this way. But why impress someone who knows about water waste when they could just throw a party for people who don’t care?

Folks with journalism training are turning to content creation rather than legacy media, which is understandable: The pay is bad; the jobs are going away. It’s as simple as that. What’s been interesting is that food writing and recipe development, as media forms that are also suffering this collapse but are very ripe for content creation and brand deals in the same way that beauty and fashion are, is extremely comfortable with creating ads and even enabling huge launches for new products.

For a Vox piece I wrote last year on food creators on TikTok (you’ll notice that 2023 was my year of monetizing my scrolling), I spoke to Justine Doiron of the 2.3 million follower account Justine_Snacks. She’s a content creator in the mold of a recipe developer, someone you can easily envision on the Times or Bon App channels.

One thing she said that struck me is that she has an ad-monetized blog and takes on sponsorships for videos or recipes rather than rely on a paid subscription base for her newsletter or other service because it works out better for her. And it does seem like a win-win: She has a free relationship with her audience and gets paid (one assumes) good money for brand partnerships that she chooses. A recent ad she did with Loacker (whose wafer cookies I love…) had many commenters posting, “I love this ad!” Because the recipe, for a frozen whipped cream with preserved lemon and raspberries, garnished by the cookies, was very true to her style and so was the partnership.

I would say that Doiron’s work shows a very low-stakes type of brand reliance: She posts ads on occasion, and they fit into her work rather seamlessly. Simply put, I think she’s carved out a wonderful niche, and I appreciate how much she focuses on making vegetables and grains delicious. 

It’s a business strategy that works for her, and works for other influencers with millions of followers, but what happens in a crowded space when there’s only one ticket to fat, reliable paychecks? When corporate algorithms control who sees what? And what truths are no longer told when brands need to be appeased in order to keep food on the table? Will the actual investigative journalists please stand up?

Food media has rarely been a space of investigative journalism, to be sure. Most of us who write about food don’t come to it because we want to expose the terrible conditions of corporate meat processing operations—though thank the Lord for writers like Alice Driver (pre-order The Life and Death of the American Worker) and outlets like Civil Eats and FoodPrint, who actively do—but because we like to think about food, because it’s something that provides the bones to our thinking and relationship to the world. Newspaper sections and magazines devoted to food emerged out of the home economics boom, to give women’s pages recipes, nutrition news, and other types of pieces that were chiefly for entertainment and education. They weren’t for big works of investigation or for questioning ever-increasing corporate consolidation and control of the food system. For the most part, this remains the case.

Now, with the magazines and newspaper sections having fewer jobs for fewer folks, people who’d like to make food their lives turn to content creation and brands are there to support.

It’s the unquestioned nature of this that troubles me: Why will people be so excited to ride a wave for an olive oil, for example, so thrilled to be included in the influencer marketing, that it will be wildly financially successful immediately? Will any tasting of it be colored by its seal of approval from the food influencers? If they like it, surely it must be good! Will this type of wave only be available to certain companies with a lot of access to capital to do campaigns such as this? How does this type of relationship between brands and food content creators thirsty for content and relevance keep wealth in certain hands? What stories won’t be told because we’ve killed real outlets and no freelancer gets paid enough money to do real reporting? Ads in major outlets have allowed Big Meat to green-wash, so how can you trust the reporting on agribusiness if they’re also the sponsors? It’s happening from the Times on down to your favorite influencer; from JBS to the hip brand at the shoppy-shop: Everyone’s for sale.

It’s nothing new: Ads have long been the way for magazines to make money. We know of arguments between fashion designers and editors, the former pulling ads because the latter weren’t featuring their work enough in editorial. But like with many things, the internet has sped up timelines, drowned our algorithms in ads, and individualized the questions of ethics.

I know that if I were to launch a bigger publication, there would need to be ads in addition to a subscriber base; it’s how the economic cookie crumbles. In my fantasy of my future magazine and publishing effort, I have rigorous rules for who fits the standards of a company who can advertise with me. I also know I’m naive.

There’s been a movement among style writers and others in the fashion sphere to deinfluence endless consumption: Can we deinfluence in food around the normalization of corporate and start-up quid pro quo—thanking brands for an invite to dinner; product for posting and looking “cool”? Without someone getting offended because it’s suggested that maybe Walmart isn’t a great corporation to be in cahoots with? They should be begging for a cosign, not the other way around. If the cost of doing business is one’s soul, what’s the point of the business? (And I’ve answered it: The point of business is make money—I’m the goofy one here for hoping there’s something else to it, something about doing public service and being, as a culture writer, a public eye.)

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade: It’s hard to make a living out here, and more people deserve to do so in order to tell new stories, give new recipes, provide fresh inspiration. But I want to ask questions about what is really happening when brands are in charge of the money, and thus the narrative: What food media are we building? Could we be doing it better?

Paid Subscriber Notes

This Friday’s paid subscriber post is the next edition of The Monthly Menu, a chronicle of what I’ve been eating and cooking, with a wine recommendation. It includes cookbook adventures, lots of recipe links, and reminders of what’s in The Desk Cookbook plus updates on any additions.

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For March and April, The Desk Book Club is reading Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal by Hanna Garth. Buy it from Archestratus for 20 percent off!

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Next Monday will be the third Desk Dispatch contributor essay, for which each writer is paid $500 thanks to subscribers. I so appreciate getting to have this ad-free space for essays and cultural criticism in food. If you’d like to make this sustainable and perhaps enable it to expand in the future, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid.

The eggplant and guineos en escabeche from Leña Eh!!!

News

I talked to writer and documentarian Kelly Spivey for New Books Network about No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating—which will be out in paperback in June! Pre-order it!

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This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. EST, I’ll be doing a live podcast recording of “TALKTALKTALK” with host ViVi Henriette and writer Cameron Steele of Interruptions. We’ll be talking about my work, and they’ll be offering insight into how my astrological chart might influence my writing—fun! You can sign up here.

Reading

I liked the experience of listening to the new Leslie Jamison, Splinters, as an audiobook—I noticed different things about structure and sentences than I might have had I been reading. But I’m back to paper right now, reading Annie Ernaux’s The Years.

A Lifestyle Note

I’ll let Almodóvar muse Rossy de Palma give the best reason I’ve ever seen to put on perfume every day, describing it as: “A moment of love between you and yourself before going to the terrible outside world.”