No Discount for Reach: Sam McKnight and Us

Sam McKnight published an opinion piece in April that will resonate longer in the industry than most campaigns he has been involved in. Five words stuck with me: "It's time for a new deal."

I had to think of that sentence immediately when I opened the first email of the day the next morning. A request, as it comes in about every two weeks. Wording roughly: "We love your aesthetic, I have 42,000 followers, is there a possibility for a content exchange?"

Who is Sam McKnight anyway?

In case the name isn't immediately recognisable outside the hair world: Sam McKnight has been one of the most influential session stylists worldwide since the late seventies. Over 200 Vogue covers. Campaigns for Chanel, Fendi, Balmain, Tom Ford. He was the one who advised Princess Diana to go short in 1990 – the Patrick Demarchelier image for British Vogue is now an artefact of pop culture.

In short: He's not shooting against the fashion world. He is part of its foundation. Which makes it all the more significant when he now says: The deal on which this foundation is built needs to be revised.

The new version of the same deal

The requests are now routine. Let me summarise the main variants, because nobody else does.

• Variant one: "I'm an influencer, can I get a free cut? In return I'll post several stories and a reel."
• Variant two: "I'm doing a campaign for brand X, we'd need a free styling, you'll be tagged of course."
• Variant three, the most honest: "Is there any discount if I post about you?"

I always reply politely. And I always reply the same: No.

Not because I have anything against the people who ask – most are friendly and doing their job. But because the logic behind it doesn't work. For anyone.

Three reasons, soberly listed

Firstly. The moment a haircut is exchanged for visibility, the price everyone else pays is no longer defensible. If one person pays 140 euros and the next pays zero euros plus three stories, then the price becomes a claim that can be pushed depending on negotiating power. That's simply unfair to the paying clientele.

Secondly. A content appointment is not an appointment. It's a shoot. Lighting, angles, pauses for shots, repetitions for the better setting. Attention moves away from what's happening on the head and towards the camera. That's the opposite of what this salon exists for.

Thirdly. Once you start accepting reach as a means of payment, you negotiate every booking. Every email becomes a price negotiation. Every decision a trade-off. That shifts the energy in the whole operation – away from the work, towards positioning.

What reach is actually worth

Now comes the part that nobody in the industry says out loud.

A post on Instagram with 20,000 to 50,000 followers brings an average of zero to three bookings. That's not a feeling. That's the result of over ten years of salon operation, during which I regularly asked out of interest where new guests come from. The answer is almost never Instagram. The answer is: personal recommendation, Google, Treatwell reviews, occasionally editorial.

Even if reach had a noticeable effect, it wouldn't be the currency that sustains a salon. Rent in the Hackesche Höfe is paid in euros. Electricity. Wages. Training. Sustainability. None of that can be converted into likes.

The deal with us

At its core, McKnight is demanding for the editorial world the same thing we already do at the salon: Pay for work. Full stop. Stop offsetting craft against visibility. Stop making the value of a service dependent on how shiny the picture looks at the end.

A person with a million followers differs in this salon in exactly one respect from a person without an Instagram account: in the parting line perhaps. Nothing else.

The deal with us is the old one. And that's precisely why it's the new one.