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Paris Hilton really loves her Xiaomi products. Really.
July 11, 2025
New York Fashion Week wrapped up on Friday, and all your favorite fashion icons were there.Paris Hiltonwas turning heads with her white designer shades,Bryan Boywas blogging about fashion in black vinyl pants, and supermodelAlla Kostromichovamade a bold statement in her gold jumpsuit.
Oh, and all of them were coincidentally photographed with theXiaomiMi Power Bank Pro.
Influencer marketing is when a company pays celebrities to promote its products by simply being photographed using them. Kim Kardashian, arguably the queen influencer when it comes to social media,reportedly charges $250,000 for an Instagram postof her using a product.
There’s no proof thatParis Hilton,Bryan Boy,Alla Kostromichova,Krystal Bick, orMisshattanwere paid to promote Xiaomi products viaInstagram, but it does seem highly suspect that so many influencers were caught using a product from a Chinese company witha tiny footprint in Americain one single week.
And Xiaomi doesn’t appear to be playing it cool, either.Its three-month old Instagram accountstarts with generic pictures of Xiaomi products, and then ends with about a dozen photos of fashion influencers “casually” using a Xiaomi Power Bank throughout NYC. The reblogs of the images all have Bit.ly links (i.e. trackable links) tothe Amazon product page for the power bank. Real subtle, Xiaomi.
The most recent image is the one of Paris Hilton holding the power bank up in front of a picture of herself, as seen at the top of this article. The caption is this:
Fashion blogger Bryan Boy even directly links to the Amazon listing of the Mi Power Bank Pro in his Instagram bio. He has over 669,000 followers.
In 2016,Warner Bros. settled with the FTCafter paying video-game influencers to positively review and promoteMiddle Earth: Shadowof Mordorwithout disclosing that’s what they were doing. And Lord & Taylor, the department store clothier,also dished out some bucks to the FTCafter paying influencers to wear the same dress in Instagram posts, and not disclose that they were paid for the images.
Regardless of Xiaomi’s alleged unethical advertising practices, is this a sign that Xiaomi is going to make a bigger push to break America in 2018? While the Mi Power Bank Pro is certainly notone of its flagship smartphones, this is the first time Xiaomi has run a prominent ad campaign in America. If in fact, of course, this is an ad campaign (it is).
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