Influencer marketing is well past its experimental phase. It is now firmly established as an important type of online marketing, and it is for more than just small businesses and startups, who can’t afford traditional advertising fees. Quite a few A-list businesses realize that influencer marketing helps them reach their target audience. In the realm of digital marketing, influencer marketing platforms have emerged as a powerful tool, representing the next best thing that is making a huge impact already.
Here are 15 examples of Influencer Marketing done right:
- 1. ABSOLUT Planet Earth's Favorite Vodka Campaign
- 2. 67 Shades of Dior Campaign
- 3. Paddy Power #SaveOurShirt Campaign
- 4. HISTORY Channel TikTok Campaign
- 5. Sony PlayStation Virtual Reality Headset
- 6. The Pepsi Emoji Product-line at Walgreens Stores
- 7. Anthem of Us Campaign for Bedrock Real Estate, Detroit
- 8. Dunkin’ Donuts on National Donut Day
- 9. Häagen-Dazs BOGO Promotions at Duane Reade and Walgreens Stores
- 10. RadioGlobe – DesignSpark
- 11. MTV Pants Off
- 12. The Rare Country Awards
- 13. “Sickhouse” SnapChat Film
- 14. Peugeot at the 2019 Brussels Motor Show
- 15. Clash of the Corps - an Original Fuse Docu-series
- Frequently Asked Questions
1. ABSOLUT Planet Earth's Favorite Vodka Campaign
The ABSOLUT Company worked with influencer agency Collectively to create a series of people and planet-centered influencer activations. This influencer campaign was the Gold Winner for the Best Food and Drink Campaign at the 2020 Influencer Marketing Awards.
The primary objective of the campaign was to increase impressions and social engagement. The campaign lasted for more than eight months.
Collectively assembled an "activist army" of bold tastemakers with a passion for protecting the planet and its people for the brand. Influencers ranged from eco-conscious sustainability advocates to LGBTQ influencers and allies.
The company created a series of experiential events shared across social media, particularly Instagram and Twitter. Collaborators brought their fans and followers into unique brand experiences showcasing ABSOLUT'S commitments to people and the planet. Events included a four-day immersion in ABSOLUT's commitment to sustainability at its Swedish production facility. They also put together a photoshoot recreating the historic march at Stonewall with renowned artist and advocate David Lachapelle.
They also learnt of Absolut's commitment to sustainability & of its contribution to the local area. Absolut Vodka has never forgotten its roots in Southern Sweden - it sources, distills, bottles and sends its vodka across the world from its base here. ?????? #SpiritOfEurope pic.twitter.com/E6UyEf7J23
— spiritsEUROPE (@spiritsEUROPE) December 4, 2019
Ultimately, 95 influencers created 612 posts. The campaign generated 68.4M total potential impressions, 7.714M views, and 739.4K comments, likes, and shares for a combined 8.6M total combined engagements.
2. 67 Shades of Dior Campaign
The Gold Winner for the Best Beauty Campaign at the 2020 Influencer Marketing Awards was Dior, who teamed with the influencer marketing agency, Buttermilk. The campaign was to celebrate the launch of Dior's Forever Foundation, which is a range with 67 unique foundation shades.
67 Shades of Skin: How Buttermilk Delivered Dior's Most Inclusive Influencer Activation to Date https://t.co/zfXpzVGGsC via @talkinfluence pic.twitter.com/xrZnjye9zB
— Winning at B2B Influencer Marketing (@winfluencermktg) September 22, 2020
The campaign aimed to create global awareness of the new Dior Forever Foundation, showcasing the wide range of shades available. In addition, they wanted to celebrate the product's diversity with an ambassador representing each shade. Another campaign aim was to create branded content suitable for reusing on Dior's owned channels.
Buttermilk set specific quantitative and qualitative requirements in their influencer selection. These included:
- High engagement levels
- Proven past performance
- Meeting authenticity tests
- Being located in specific key consumer territories (and also having audiences in these locations)
- Having audiences interested in beauty
- Usually sharing beauty-inspired and cosmetically-focused content
- Typically producing content worth sharing on Dior's channels
Ultimately, they selected and worked with 67 influencers for the campaign – each one matching one of Dior's 67 shades. In turn, the influencers made one post per day over 67 consecutive days.
The 67 influencers had a total audience reach of 2.66M. In addition, their posts had 1.85M impressions and resulted in 592K engagements.
3. Paddy Power #SaveOurShirt Campaign
Paddy Power signed a year-long sponsorship with English football club Huddersfield Town. They worked with Ball Street Network to create a Reveal campaign.
At the start of the 2019-20 season, the Huddersfield Town team turned out in a new shirt, with a gigantic 'Paddy Power' sash dominating the front. They would later reveal, to the fans' relief, that this shirt was fake. Paddy Power then "unsponsored" the shirt by giving Huddersfield the opportunity to play in a blank shirt for the remainder of the season.
The campaign aimed to get fans talking about this ugly shirt, using the #SaveOurShirt hashtag. Ball Street Network selected groups of creators and curators to represent the community voice. These influencers knew about the stunt and were happy to leverage their supporters to talk about the campaign. It didn't take long for the discussion to go viral, and before long, football fans across the world were talking about the hideous Huddersfield shirt. The team's wearing of the shirt during a friendly they played caused outrage online.
Soon afterward, this same group of creators and curators revealed the actual Huddersfield shirt for that season sans advertising.
In terms of an influencer campaign, it was a tremendous success. It became the talk of the football world. Paddy Power then announced that they would "unsponsor" a few other lower league sides. The reveal of the actual Huddersfield shirts received 42K Twitter likes, nearly four times the number Manchester United received for their shirt reveal.
? Here it is!
? #htafc can today reveal the ACTUAL @UmbroUK home kit!
? The shirt is part of @paddypower's new #SaveOurShirt campaign; an initiative that is backing a move towards unbranded football kits, effectively returning the shirt back to the fans.
More ?
— Huddersfield Town (@htafc) July 19, 2019
Unfortunately, there was one adverse effect, however. The Football Association wasn't impressed by the stunt and fined Huddersfield Town £50,000 for the fake shirt reveal. They believed that the kit broke the FA's kit and advertising regulations.
4. HISTORY Channel TikTok Campaign
When The HISTORY Channel debuted its official TikTok account, it had a goal to quickly reach and connect with a new set of potential followers and position itself as a relevant and entertaining source of information for younger generations.
The HISTORY channel partnered with NeoReach in this effort who created a campaign with the theme “Stay Curious.” NeoReach put together a team of TikTok creators across a diverse range of audiences who produced high-quality videos to show how engrossing the HISTORY channel can be.
@cookingwithlynja #sponsored Staying Curious with @HISTORY #todayilearned ♬ original sound - Lynja
The videos made by the creators performed exceptionally well, even outperforming many of the creators’ non-sponsored posts. The campaign reached over 21 million accounts, was collectively viewed 12.2 million times, and grew the HISTORY Channel’s new TikTok account to 50,000 followers after its launch.
5. Sony PlayStation Virtual Reality Headset
Sony developed an influencer marketing campaign in Canada for PlayStation VR, their virtual reality headset. The company chose to work with Canadian tech and gaming mid-tier, micro-, and nano-influencers on Instagram and YouTube. Influencers were @karlconrad, @stalman, @justin.tse, @canoopsy, and @the.girly.geek.
The campaign's theme was to demonstrate the positive gaming experiences that gamers have with Sony's products. The influencers shared posts of themselves having fun using the Sony PlayStation VR headset.
Most influencers uploaded two posts for the campaign, predominantly showing images, although one included a short looping video. There were nine posts in total. The influencers included the hashtags #PlayStationVR, #ITriedPSVR, and #PSVR, and tagged @PlayStationCA.
Overall, the Instagram posts by the relatively low-level influencers received 12,728 likes and 230 comments, with an overall 3.64% average engagement rate. YouTube engagement was 28,322 views, 2,324 likes, 368 comments, with an overall average engagement rate of 3.19%.
6. The Pepsi Emoji Product-line at Walgreens Stores
Pepsi aimed to increase its sales at Walgreens, so they created limited edition packaging and the #SayItWithPepsi hashtag. They chose to target millennials, so decided social media engagement be the best promotion - even for in-store purchases.
The purpose of the campaign was to demonstrate that incorporating the specially-packaged Pepsi emoji bottles - found exclusively at Walgreens - into your summer activities made everything more fun.
Pepsi used influential creators to develop original organic-style content about the 200 Pepsi emojis who then distributed the content to their Millennial-age followers. The shared content included original blog posts, photography, and branded video content. It drove the teenagers to Walgreens and Duane Reade stores to buy Pepsi Emoji bottles to help them have an exciting summer adventure.
Pepsi then analyzed the performance of all of the content that these primary influencers had created and shared. They selected the best performing content and arranged for 40 secondary influencers to share this high-performing content with their audiences - again they were targeted at Millennials. This second stage resulted in an additional 26,000 clicks on the shared content. The campaign was topped off with two Twitter parties celebrating #SayItWithPepsi and the Pepsi Emoji bottles.
The #SayItWithPepsi campaign ended up receiving 46 million impressions, and there were more than 50,000 engagements with campaign content.
7. Anthem of Us Campaign for Bedrock Real Estate, Detroit
Bedrock Real Estate wanted to produce a film showing that the cliched downtrodden views of Detroit are wrong. Detroit is not a broken-down city of the past. It is a positive city that is going places.
Bedrock wanted to produce a film that would make Detroit residents feel proud of where they live. They chose to use local influencers like Shinola, Detroit Bikes and the creator of Slow Roll (a local bike tour phenomenon) to help create the film, Anthem of Us, using striking images paired with a powerful, yet unscripted, narrative.
Local celebrity, Big Sean, made an emotional endorsement, which lead to more media impressions, both traditional print and broadcast, as well as online. Other local influencers like Pure Michigan and Quicken Loans helped with the outreach.
Bedrock relied on their influencers’ organic reach to communicate their message, and the video received 500,000 views before Bedrock activated a paid strategy.
8. Dunkin’ Donuts on National Donut Day
Dunkin’ Donuts and their agency, Trilia, wanted to create an awareness of National Donut Day. They partnered with digital talent network and entertainment studio, Collab, to create a national Snapchat campaign, featuring visually enticing creative content.
Dunkin’ Donuts made a special offer for the day, and Collab selected lifestyle creators to spread content about the offer in their cities on SnapChat. They chose eight popular influencers to create and distribute teaser content.
The eight influencers then “took over” the Dunkin’ Donuts SnapChat channel on National Donut Day. This covered more than 24 hours because they ran the campaign across three time zones and three cities across the USA. The influencers used their content to drive their supporters to the Dunkin’ Donut Stores and take up the special offer. Also, Dunkin’ Donuts supplied the influencers with Snapchat Geofilters which people could use in-store.
The result was that Dunkin’ Donuts gained ten times more followers to their SnapChat channel on National Donut Day than they usually did in a month. The campaign reached 3 million people, with 40,000 cases of engagement.
9. Häagen-Dazs BOGO Promotions at Duane Reade and Walgreens Stores
This campaign aimed to remind New Yorkers that ice cream is an essential part of summer. It promoted the Häagen-Dazs BOGO (buy one get one) promotions and sampling events at Duane Reade and Walgreens New York stores.
Häagen-Dazs partnered with New York City local influencers who targeted the millennial lifestyle. The influencers created content around the theme "Häagen-Dazs Open Container" - #HDOpenContainer – which was a play on words connected with current events in New York at the time. It positioned Häagen-Dazs as the indulgent yet mature treat to enjoy with friends.
The campaign included covering rooftop parties and live social updates from sampling parties. The content was given a highly New York-centric feel.
Additional influencers helped disseminate the posts, segmented by digital zip codes. They specifically targeted people on their phones in the vicinity of the stores.
They then widened their influencer campaign to cover Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. This ensured that an even wider audience shared the content.
Overall, the campaign generated 14.3 million impressions and 27,400 social engagements.
10. RadioGlobe – DesignSpark
DesignSpark is the engineering community of RS Components, one of the largest B2B distributors of electrical components globally. There had been plans for the 10th birthday of the DesignSpark engineering community. However, celebrations were canceled due to the Covid pandemic. So, with four weeks until the birthday, RS Components hired creative technologist (and micro-influencer) Jude Pullen to come up with a replacement using a tiny (less than £1K) media budget.
Pullen worked remotely from his 2x2m shed with members of the engineering community to create an open-source project called RadioGlobe. It is a physical globe that you can rotate to any city in the world, and you can play any of 2000+ web stations from that location. You can build RadioGlobe with around $150 of electronic components if you have access to a 3D printer.
RS Components decided to create a daily vlog for YouTube and a TikTok video to show the RadioGlobe in action. The TikTok video amassed over 400k views and was shared on Reddit, with RadioGlobe becoming one of the Top 5 trending topics on their homepage. An additional 35 placements were generated through Pullen's network as an influencer in the design and tech communities. As a result, RadioGlobe earned coverage on leading technology social channels, including Mag Pi, Hackaday, Electronics Weekly, DesignBoom, and Interesting Engineering.
A goal of the campaign was for DesignSpark to reach 1 million members by 2021. They attained that milestone in early October 2020.
11. MTV Pants Off
MTV Pants Off is a SnapChat sex ed show, hosted by Laci Green, best known for her sex ed channel on YouTube, which has more than 2 million subscribers. The aim of the SnapChat show was to provide sex ed information to young people, giving real information and advice.
MTV’s aim was to use Laci, already known as a sex ed influencer, to give help to confused teenagers on what was a different medium for MTV - SnapChat. Every Saturday for eight weeks Pants Off “played” on SnapChat - just like a regular show.
MTV decided that the best way to build an audience was to ensure that the show contained relevant subject matter for the teenage audience, to use influencers as guests, and to create stunning graphics.
Their guest strategy was to invite influencers with huge audiences, who were comfortable enough to talk about sex and relationships, to be filmed for the show. There were many authentic conversations with guests from across social media.
Each episode received between 3 and 5 million views and was shared hundreds of thousands of times. In total there were 13.9 million unique views and 439,000 shares, not counting additional cross-posting to Facebook. There can be no doubt that MTV managed to help many young people’s sexual understanding as a result of this campaign.
12. The Rare Country Awards
Cox Media Group wished to draw attention to its country division - Rare Country. They decided to create the fan-voted "Rare Country Awards," to expand their reach to more country fans.
Rare Country already had a strong Facebook presence but was in its early stages of running a Twitter account. They asked Insightpool, an influencer marketing platform, to set up an influencer campaign for the awards on Twitter.
The Insightpool team identified and engaged with suitable influencers to spread the Rare Country Awards message. They segmented influencers into the following categories:
Current @RareCountry Followers
Artist-Specific Influencers
General Country Fans
Country fans that followed the @Rare account but not the @RareCountry account
Press- Media/Bloggers/Radio Stations
Insightful then created relevant Twitter copy and engaged with influencers in each category. Each influencer was tasked with both voting for their favorite artist and stirring up their own audiences to vote in the Rare Country Awards.
Insightpool invited 20 top influencers to participate in a Twitter takeover - changing their accounts to match the Rare Country Awards branding.
The awards quickly gained recognition, and top country artists then began to share links about them with their fans.
Insightpool then selected three “superfans” to create videos announcing the winning artists.
In all, 5,151 influencers helped with this campaign, with a spread of more than 55 million followers. The campaign generated 1.8 million impressions and nearly 1 million votes.
13. “Sickhouse” SnapChat Film
Indigenous Media focuses on producing video for a variety of platforms, from traditional television to new-style social media. One of their filmmaking teams created a project they called “Sickhouse.”
“Sickhouse” is a film in the same vein as “The Blair Witch Project,” in the sense that it is not clear to viewers, as to whether it is scripted or real-life (in reality, it is scripted). The whole film was shot in real time, in chronological order, on iPhones. Indeed it was the first scripted SnapChat film. Influencer, Andrea Russett, posted 10-seconds Snaps over a five day period, questioning how real this film was, and opening up discussion with her audience. Although Andrea Russett was chosen to a large extent because of her 2.5 million YouTube following, she was also asked to participate because of her strong acting skills. “Sickhouse” had to look as if it could be real, with Andrea sharing her “home video.”
To add to the illusion, all the other actors avoided social media during the production of the film - the only updates of their whereabouts were posted on Andrea’s SnapChat account.
Eventually, Andrea was able to share with her fans that she had survived “Sickhouse, ” and there was a 70 minute extended version on Vimeo.
“Sickhouse” was viewed 100 million times on Snapchat alone.
14. Peugeot at the 2019 Brussels Motor Show
In 2018-2019 car manufacturer Peugeot's overall marketing theme was "unboring the future." As part of this, they used influencers and influencer marketing.
When participating in the 2019 Brussels Motor Show, Peugeot recognized that they had a different target audience than they have for their more traditional advertising channels. They wanted to target 18–24-year-olds spontaneously and change this age group's perception of the Peugeot brand. In addition, they wanted this age group to connect Peugeot with design and technology.
They were presenting the new e-Legend concept car at the Brussels Motor Show. It is a fully autonomous and electric coupé, innovative and never boring.
Peugeot chose to work with a mix of micro-influencers and macro-influencers, with different types of audiences. To find these influencers, they used the Influo Platform.
They used a two-pronged approach for their campaign. First, they generated quality content their high-end macro-influencers could share. Then they worked with micro-influencers with a give-away contest and storytelling.
The campaign performed at an above-average engagement rate of 12.99%. The Peugeot brand reached more than 1 million people.
15. Clash of the Corps - an Original Fuse Docu-series
Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, definitely has a huge following. He has 57 million followers on his Facebook page, alone.
When Fuse created their Clash of Corp docu-series, which documents the lives of drum corps members on the road to the Drum Corps International Championship, they wanted to expose their series to as many people as possible.
Brand New Episode of Clash Of The Corps TONIGHT
Another brand new episode of our hit Seven Bucks Productions series #ClashOfTheCorps airs TONIGHT at 11 pm on Fuse. Make sure to tune in and see what all of the noise is about. We're talkin' FUSE's most DVR'd show in history and the records don't stop there...#ForwardMarch ??
Posted by Dwayne The Rock Johnson on Wednesday, October 19, 2016
They decided the best way was to work with Dwayne Johnson and encouraged him to broadcast the first episode of their series via his Facebook page. Dwayne also recorded an exclusive video introduction to the series which fans also watched on his Facebook page.
This was the first time that a series premiered on Facebook Live, and more than 7 million people watched it - 835,000 on that first showing. It generated more than 55,000 Facebook likes and 7,000 comments.
Frequently Asked Questions
What brands use influencer marketing?
Many brands use influencer marketing to reach their target audience. Big brands like Motorola, Adidas, Pepsi, and Dunkin’ Donuts all use influencer marketing. Adidas has been using influencer marketing to promote their products for years now. They use influencer marketing to target a younger audience through Instagram.
Who are the Top 10 influencers?
These are the top 10 influencers in social media:
Cristiano Ronaldo
Justin Bieber
Taylor Swift
Ariana Grande
Selena Gomez
Katy Perry
Kim Kardashian West
Beyonce
Felix Kjellberg (PewdiePie)
Kylie Jenner
Who are the top 10 influencers in social media?
These are the top 10 influencers in social media to follow:
Cristiano Ronaldo
Justin Bieber
Taylor Swift
Ariana Grande
Selena Gomez
Katy Perry
Kim Kardashian West
Beyonce
Felix Kjellberg (PewdiePie)
Kylie Jenner
How brands are using influencers?
Brands use influencers to reach their target audience. Of the 81% of marketers who use influencers and influencer content, 51% of those said their influencers content outperformed brand-created content. Influencer marketing can be a cost-effective way to reach a new, different audience - and big and small businesses can use this method.
How do I start an influencer in marketing?
Starting to use an influencer in marketing can be tricky. To start, set out clear expectations when it comes to the influencer and the marketing. For example, increasing brand awareness or converting leads into paid customers. Remember that you may need to repeat the campaign to achieve high impact, like any other marketing tactic.
