The IG Partnerships Elena Taber Has Are Dubious At Best

If you head on over to Elena Taber’s Instagram account, you will find many, many posts that say “paid partnerships” at the top. However, this is extremely misleading because most of these posts are not actually paid partnerships. As in, they were not coordinated with the brand or approved by them. This is very easy to see for yourself, and I am going to explain how with screenshots and other sources. It should be noted:

Though the ad reels that Elena has tagged with this label that are not approved may not entirely mean “no sponsorship”. That is hard to tell. What is known is that those reels were never an approved collaboration by the brand. As such, it could mean anything from her entirely pretending to be sponsored (ie: making a fake ad reel or post to look sponsored); it could mean she has an affiliate link (that anyone can get), it can mean that she got into a very easy-to-get-into program for “influencers” to get an affiliate link; or she’s otherwise very minimally engaged with the brand. The point here is to show that she is not officially representing the brands with these ad reels in the way she claims to be representing them with this “paid partnership” label if the brand is also not approving these ads.

Now, this may be a little complicated to explain but I will do my best. Once you understand how to look for this, you will be able to easily see it yourself.

Take a look at the image above. This is a real paid partnership with a company because as you can see, next to her name there is the word and with the company name next to it which is Ray-Ban Meta. Under the paid partnership label, you can see that there is a link back to the product. This is an official and real paid partnership with Ray-Ban Meta. Very easy to see, right? (Source)

Now, look at the image above (source). See how it says paid partnership, but there is no and with a brand next to it? No link under her name back to the product? That is because it is not a real paid partnership, or at the very least, the brand did not approve this post as an ad. The brand in question for this specific post is Asus, and it’s supposed to be an ad for their Zenbook A14. This company never approved this to be an official ad. Is it possible they sent her a free Zenbook, and she turned it into an ad? Yes. Is it possible she bought the Zenbook herself and pretended she was sponsored? Also yes. Since Elena does not disclose this information, we do not know the extent of her association with the brand, other than that they never approved her to post this as an official ad. Which means they never approved her to advertise their product in this specific way, which is very odd, since this is a very easy thing to approve if brands intentionally want people advertising their products.

You may think:

Oh, big deal, she lied a few times about brands she’s representing, so what?

Except that is not the case. This is a pattern on Elena’s account. A huge one. In fact, if you go through all of her posts, you will easily see that the majority of things she claims as a paid partnership have not been approved by that brand. This includes brands like Expedia, Sony, Ferragamo (which, ironically enough, she lists on her own website as working for when there’s actually no proof they ever did anything other than gift her a bag, which may have only been in relation to her dating Jamie Campbell Bower at the time), Dolce and Gabbana, Miu Miu, and other high-end brands. You will also note that the few times she did get a real paid partnership with a good brand such as Calvin Klein or Anthropologie, she only ever got that one time. Which indicates that the ad that she did underperformed enough that they didn’t want to work with her again, which is a bad sign. From my research, brands will typically partner with someone who performs well and continue to give them paid deals until it stops working. For her, all it took was one “ad” for the company to realize never to hire her again.

Recently, she did an ad reel for Songmont (bags), and she had them tagged as a paid partnership. However, Songmont got word of this and had her remove the ad because she was not, in fact, associated with them as a brand. The only existing proof this happened is an image from Google when you look her up in association with Songmont, but if you attempt to click on it to see the reel, it no longer exists. Allegedly, Songmont would have told her to remove this (or simply not approved it on their end, because when you tag a brand as a paid partner, they do have that option).

In the end, Elena’s alleged career as an “influencer” seems to be more exaggerated (or outright lying) than it seems to be an actual job. As a disclaimer, once again, I will say that these ignored reels by the brands do not absolutely prove that she did not get a gift, affiliate link, or affiliate program with them but they do show that the brands are (in large) not approving the ads that she is making. If she were truly getting these brand deals and had this much engagement and influencer by her name alone, believe me, the companies would be approving her reels. They would be reposting her. They would be sharing her. They would be tagging her. Since about 95% of these brands don’t acknowledge her in any way, it is to be assumed that she is not associated with them at all or as officially as she attempts to present herself. Just something to keep in mind about her “career” and how lucrative it may or may not be.