Power of companies is extremely big.

In photos/video market it is all same, companies form groups of influencers who are invited and they try to answer with appropriate content.

Shit happens

Let’s talk about followers and followers mattering. I’ll tell you that I booked a huge job — it would have been the biggest job of my career, commercially. I’ll just say it: with Canon. To shoot an ad campaign for them. I got the job, it was amazing. And then literally 20 minutes later, after I had already started making calls to start booking a crew because it was coming real fast, they called me and said, “Oh my God, we can’t hire you.”

And I said, “Why?”

And they said, “Because you don’t have 50,000 followers on Instagram.”

So, actually it is reach that is being sold here for cheap (but such numbers are pretty low really), not skill.

https://petapixel.com/2019/01/28/photog-canon-dropped-me-because-i-dont-have-50k-instagram-followers/