The private channels introduced Spaniards to unprecedented audiovisual modalities until the expansion of the offer on the small screen, as it was then called, long before the irruption of smartphones, consoles and the long et cetera of devices that make up the current landscape.
One of the services that attracted the most attention was the so-called "teleshop", that is, the sale of products that were promoted with a very different format from conventional advertisements and that, in general, could be purchased after sun · request them by phone. Even today they take up hours and hours of broadcasting, preferably in the morning.
Four decades later, social networks like Instagram are also redefining genres and formulas that have little to do with traditional ones in classic media or new media. And, in this context, a reinvention of the teleshop emerges with force, which is also based on the distribution of fake or second-hand items.
As it should be assumed on this platform, the main actors of the phenomenon are young people, and even teenagers. These are young people who, thanks to their expertise with the internet or their personal contacts, are able to get imitation clothes, accessories or other consumer items at a very good price.
A complementary business is based on already used material, especially technology, which is also cheap. After getting this catalog, the young people offer it on Instagram. But they don't do it by taking advantage of the resources that this page makes available to them. Its advertising artifacts are more measured: explicit texts, with some emoticons, on a static black background.
One might think that this proposal clearly contradicts the standard in this network... Nevertheless, it works. The customers of these accounts, whose managers must previously accept the surfers who request it, are fully aware that the products are fakes or second-hand items.
And they know that the sellers have got them at a lower price than they will pay. Even so, it makes sense to buy them, since the same parts, on the legal market, would be much more expensive. This modus operandi is similar to that applied by professional profiles of the great counterfeiting powers such as China, Thailand or Turkey.
The formal preoccupation of audiovisual spots, succinct and synthetic, continues to be far removed from the obvious and redundant blogs of the teleshop. On Instagram, most of the stories, in their intent and finish, are the stylistic antipodes of the digital billboards of these modern legal, or perhaps illegal, advertisements.
According to analysts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), imitations account for around 2.5% of world trade. The second-hand market is booming, as certified by Boston Consulting Group and Vestiaire Collective technicians. Without the complicity of digital screens, both growth rates would be lower.
