A Melbourne cafe ordered to honour $1600 verbal contract with Instagram 'influencer'
A café in Melbourne’s Camberwell has been ordered to pay an Instagram ‘influencer’ more than $1600 after a verbal contract between them turned sour.
Legacy café, which only advertises through Instagram influencers, had agreed to pay fitness Instagrammer Chloe Roberts $200 to $300 per post to promote the café.
However, Legacy owner Con 'Costa' Katsogiannis was not happy when the posts were deleted after a period of time, and withheld a $2,100 payment to Roberts, saying he felt she "was seeking payment for nothing".
Roberts, who has a following of more than 120,000, maintained she had creative control over her account and regularly archived old posts.
Roberts argued that "90 per cent of the views of an image occur in the first week" and that Instagram accounts with too many old posts become "unattractive for followers".
Ultimately, a tribunal agreed with her.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) found in her favour and likened Roberts's advertising service to that of a billboard, and accepted her argument that she was entitled to be paid for posts she later hid.
The tribunal ordered Katsogiannis pay Roberts two-thirds of the sum she sought ($1400) as well as her filing fees of $276.
Sheridan Randall, 10th May 2019
