What fronting campaigns for L'Oreal, Tecno and Infinix taught me about brand trust

Fronting youth campaigns for brands like L'Oreal, Tecno and Infinix taught me something most influencer marketing gets backwards: audiences are not fooled by enthusiasm. They can tell, almost instantly, whether you actually use and believe in what you are promoting.

I turn down more brand conversations than I take. Not because the money is not good, it usually is, but because the moment an audience senses a mismatch between who you are and what you are selling, the trust does not just dip for that campaign. It dips for every future one too.

The campaigns that worked best were the ones where the brand let me talk about the product the way I would talk about it off camera, flaws included. Young audiences do not want a polished commercial. They want a person they already trust telling them something useful.

That principle now runs through everything Roylandz Media does for clients: we would rather turn down a brief that requires dishonesty than deliver a campaign that burns the trust it took years to build.

It is a harder way to run a media business. It is also the only version of it I am interested in running.