Is specfluencing the quickest route to a paid brand collaboration for creators?

New Delhi: India’s influencer economy has matured fast. Recent industry estimates pegged the domestic influencer marketing landscape at Rs 5,500 crore in 2024, with expectations of 20-25% annual growth through 2026-28. By 2028, experts project that over 80% of brands will allocate up to 30% of their marketing budgets to influencer deals.

Within this growth story, a surprising trend has taken root. Creators are now producing branded content without any formal association, contract, agency booking, affiliate programme, or payment from the brands they feature.

For lack of a better phrase, the industry is calling it “specfluencing.”

What is specfluencing?

At its core, specfluencing is about aspiration. Creators post content that looks like a paid collaboration, product reviews, tutorials, unboxings, brand-centric reels, not because a brand has commissioned it, but because the creator wants to be seen as someone worth commissioning.

As Kalyan Kumar, Co-founder and CEO of influencer intelligence platform KlugKlug put it, there is a distinct category of UGC that often gets overlooked. It is driven by influencers who want to get pegged as influencers.

When creators move from a few thousand followers to early scale, they are often “not pay-worthy yet”, but eager to look the part. So they start posting about brands as if the brand reached out to them.

They tag brands like Mamaearth, L’Oréal or Lakmé. The content is not sponsored. The brand may not even be aware it exists. But to an outside observer, another brand, an agency, or a marketer scanning feeds, it creates a perception of association. The logic is simple. If someone appears to have worked with credible brands, they must already be in the system.

“This is an aspect of UGC that we see a lot in our data. It is essentially about wanting to position yourself as an influencer, so you start tagging brands and talking about them. Other brands then assume you have worked with three to five brands already, so you must be credible,” said Kumar.

Big brands as credibility anchors

For brands, especially large ones, this creates an interesting dynamic. Kumar pointed out that big brands often become anchors for influencer identity. Influencers tag them not just for reach, but to borrow credibility.

In many cases, brands are surprised by how often they are tagged. Kumar recalled speaking to clients and showing them data where thousands of influencers had mentioned their brand, prompting disbelief from marketing teams who had not commissioned any such activity.

“Many influencers tag big brands simply to appear pay-worthy. I have gone to clients and shown them data where 2,000 influencers have tagged their brand. Their reaction is usually of surprise,” he told BestMediaInfo.com.  

The data behind the behaviour

According to KlugKlug’s platform data shared by Kumar, Between June and September in one observed period, 14,000 influencers created 77,000 posts, generating 20 million likes, 20 million comments and over 1.2 billion views. It would be nearly impossible to manufacture this volume of conversation through paid campaigns alone.

If brands had paid for this, the math would look very different. They would likely have deployed a limited number of mega and macro influencers, supplemented by affiliate-linked creators. Instead, the data showed something else: 11,000 nano influencers creating over 52,000 posts, often without direct engagement.

Specfluencing as a bridge strategy

This behaviour also exposes a structural reality of the creator economy. While influencer marketing as an industry continues to grow, monetisation remains uneven. A small percentage of creators capture a disproportionate share of paid opportunities. For the rest, specfluencing becomes a bridge strategy: unpaid today, but potentially paid tomorrow.

The tagging, the unsolicited content, the speculative endorsements, all of it reflects creators attempting to professionalise themselves before the market formally validates them.

This transition from organic posting to paid collaboration is not unique to India, but Kumar noted that Indian creators are among the fastest to adopt behaviours that can accelerate monetisation. Specfluencing, in that sense, is not deception as much as ambition made visible.

“Influencers are trying to define themselves within the creator economy. This tagging and UGC activity often leads to a transition from organic to paid partnerships. This trend is global, not limited to India. That said, Indians are among the fastest to adopt anything that can help them earn money,” Kumar said.

As the influencer economy matures, the rise of specfluencers forces brands, agencies and platforms to rethink how influence is identified. In a landscape where association often precedes agreement, visibility itself has become a form of currency. And for many creators, making free content is not charity, it is a calculated bet on becoming part of the system they are trying to enter.