Influencer activations are gaining ground in marketing. Whereas these creative partnerships used to be primarily about driving awareness at the top of the funnel, today they stretch across all parts of the customer journey, according to Traackr’s cofounder and chief executive officer Pierre-Loïc Assayag.
Speaking alongside Unilever’s Casey DePalma McCartney at the WWD Beauty CEO Summit in a panel moderated by Amanda Smith, chief executive officer of Fairchild Media Group, Assayag noted that Unilever is “leading the pack” in its influencer aims. The company’s CEO Fernando Fernandez has laid out ambitious goals, stating plans to have a creator in every zip code and grow its current pool of partners 20 times over.
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“Creators are truly at the heart of our new marketing model,” said DePalma McCartney, chief strategy and brand communications officer at Unilever U.S.
To scale influencer marketing successfully, it takes more than a bigger budget. DePalma McCartney emphasized the importance of relationship building and social listening. For instance, Dove heard its audience talking about smelling body odor at concerts and decided to launch a personal care campaign around it. The brand’s existing relationships enabled it to activate the initiative quickly, launching in days rather than weeks or months.
“Dove stands for making beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety, and its audience and the creators that work with the brand also share that same value,” said DePalma McCartney. “That shared value built over time, and then the ability to activate with that speed comes along with it.”
Echoing the need for long-term partnerships, Assayag said, “The building of relationship between creators and the brand is essential to growth. The only way that the brand can scale their program is through loyalty with the creators, to avoid having to do a rinse and repeat of recruiting with every campaign, and rather focus on the impact of the content that these creators can create, and have that feel authentic with the audience.”
Another brand with its finger on the pulse of social conversations is Vaseline. After hearing consumers’ off-label uses of its product, such as applying it before perfume to give fragrance a longevity boost, the brand leaned in. The “Vaseline Verified” campaign tests out hacks and partners with creators to tell stories around this.
“If a brand has a strong sense of self it gives you a lot of leeway on the marketing strategies that you can implement on top of this, because you can trust that those around the brand will understand what the brand stands for,” Assayag said.
Campaign concepts should also reflect a brand’s unique identity. Traackr has witnessed the #getreadywithme concept decline because it became too popularly used, leading to a lack of differentiation and lower consumer interest.
Another ingredient for success is experimentation. “This is not a one and done,” said DePalma McCartney. “The most successful brands are learning continuously about what is working, what isn’t, and really taking the time to put in the effort around content to do that.”
AI is set to change the influencer marketing space in the next few years. According to DePalma McCartney, AI presents an opportunity to automate workflow management, freeing up time for creative strategy and fostering relationships. Assayag sees AI supporting data management and decision-making, and suggested companies start organizing their data to prepare for their future AI strategies.
“There’s a lot of disruption that is being created by AI, a ton of opportunity. Much of it is still out of reach,” said Assayag, adding that this unpreparedness can be tied to “human infrastructure” or the tech itself. “The technology is gearing up. We’re not quite there yet on a lot of it, but the pieces are starting to come together.”