As Jennifer Lopez is apparently learning, it’s hard to be a social influencer.
TMZ and Variety are both reporting that J.Lo (who will always be “Jenny From the Block” in my heart) has been sued for failing to sufficiently promote a hoverboard brand on Instagram and Twitter.
According to the outlets, Sidekick Group Corp claims that it gave Lopez 42 custom hoverboards back in 2015 to use in her Planet Hollywood show in Las Vegas. In exchange for those hoverboards, Lopez was supposed to promote the products on Instagram or on Twitter. The company — whose own website is down and social channels have been dark since March 2016 — claims she didn’t fulfil her obligation. And now it wants $US54,390 ($71,012), which it claims was the cost for its customised boards. (We weren’t able to locate the court filing ourselves, but we’ve reached out to J.Lo’s team.)
What’s especially amazing about this is that it doesn’t appear that Sidekick was giving J.Lo anything more than hoverboards. For someone of Lopez’s stature, $US50,000 ($65,280) of in-kind merchandise for a series of tweets seems low compared to the payments other celebrities make shilling their Instagram accounts to the highest bidder. Lopez has more than 100 million followers across Instagram and Twitter. Jenny, you can do better!
Lopez did tweet about the hoverboards once, and included a video of her dancers riding around looking like idiots as she crooned the early aughts bop “Love Don’t Cost a Thing”. It appears this plug wasn’t enough to fulfil the contract in Sidekick’s eyes.
The #AllIHave dancers killing it on their @SideKickWheels. Check them out at https://t.co/fkGTynZmrz #JLoVegas pic.twitter.com/1hHOAtuTmn
— Jennifer Lopez (@JLo) May 26, 2016
TMZ also reports that the group threatened to sue Richard Sherman last year after he backed out of a promotional deal.
Something tells me that next time J.Lo wants something for her multi-million dollar Las Vegas production, she’ll just spend the cash to buy it and leave this influencer mess behind.