Your 🆕 Weekly Creator Marketing Update 🚀
28/04/2024
Happy Sunday and welcome to your weekly Creator Marketing Update. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so below and feel free to share this with your friends & colleagues!
📖 KFC CMO Nick Chavez says brand’s influencer strategy helps attract a younger audience
TL;DR
How is KFC utilising creator marketing to tap into younger audiences?
HEADLINE QUOTE
“It’s important to me that as we build these programs, we listen to (influencers’) communities and jointly promote that content we create in such a way that they can genuinely endorse it,” Chavez said. “Bad Granny just posted some content saying how her partnership with KFC changed her life. That’s what we want.”
OUR TAKE
The article mainly focuses on ensuring authenticity, and driving a win/win relationship between brand/creator. I don’t want to focus too much on this portion of the article, but I think the below quote with an emphasis of listening to influencers’ communities is vitally important when building out creator strategies and campaigns.
“It’s important to me that as we build these programs, we listen to (influencers’) communities and jointly promote that content we create in such a way that they can genuinely endorse it,” Chavez said. “Bad Granny just posted some content saying how her partnership with KFC changed her life. That’s what we want.”
However, the quote from this piece I’m most interested in is the below around developing creator-partnerships that combine online with offline to maximise the impact of all channels under a singular campaign approach. We’ve noticed an uptick in articles mentioning this or similar approaches recently. As the creator function becomes more prominent for brands, there is an increased emphasis on ensuring that partnerships are fully embedded into a brands’ cross-functional ecosystem, and contracts are maximised to drive efficiencies beyond a (paid) mention on a non-endemic channel.
“A lot of these types of content partnerships are currently primarily designed for social media,” Chavez said. “But we were really excited about our Chizzeria event that was this sort of physical and digital takeover. It took over all of our social channels, our e-commerce channel and influencer and partner channels, but it was also this living, breathing physical event with people lined up 2½ city blocks. This triangulation of the physical world, the digital world and the world of creators comes together for these remarkable experiences that I think are going to continue to scale.”
🚀 An update on my new role
It’s been two months since I joined air up as creator marketing team lead UKI&BLX - and this week I’ll deviate slightly from the normal format of the newsletter, as I would like to share a creator partnership that the UKI team have set up - with special thanks to Karin for being the master-mind behind this fantastic partnership.
OVERVIEW
The UKI team has kicked off a longer-term partnership with Chuffster and agency Kairos. The main goal for the announcement video was to ensure a playful and authentic integration that is true to Chuffsters’ content delivery style in order positively introduce the air up brand to his audience as part of a longer-term approach. You can watch the integration below.
IMPACT
📈 575,000 video views in 48 hours + trending on YouTube
🌞 Sentiment; a few examples below.
🏭 This week’s must-reads
🚨'Brands aren't selective enough' - Havas Red UK boss on influencer marketing pitfalls
“I think a lot of brands aren’t perhaps selective enough about what they’re putting out there because they’re so busy trying to jump on, when actually, the way you really get depth and authenticity is by being selective and curating the conversation you want to have with the right community.”
🎙️The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report: In Influencers We Trust
Free download - for those who are interested!
💵 Most influencer-driven purchases happen on Amazon, new data shows.
“An April report by influencer-marketing firm Izea found that 59% of social-media users surveyed said they'd purchased a product after seeing it used by an influencer, and 94% of those consumers had made influencer-inspired purchases on Amazon.”
📲Glossy+ Research 2024 Influencer Index: The level of engagement top influencers can harness for brands
“A study by Influencity found there are 103.7 million Instagram users in the U.S. and, of those users, 10.2 million can be considered influencers. This means that 9.8% of Instagram profiles in the U.S. are potentially shaping the purchasing decisions and behavior of their audiences. Only four years ago, in 2020, this number was much lower at 2.5%. “
✍️ Media Buying Briefing: How influencer agencies are adapting to TikTok’s SEO incentives
“Would you rather search for something on Google and be hit with a wall of text, or would you rather search on an app and have that kind of ‘show don’t tell’ effect where you can try something actually before you buy it?”
💎Brands vs. influencers: Who holds more power?
It’s also why some brands are starting to slowly pull back from these firm strategies. “Brands that are cool with a capital C don’t want your unboxing or a tag,” says Weischer, “they want to appear organically in your feed.” Charrière adds: “When you’re doing street style, you’re attending as yourself and should keep your personality, otherwise you’re not adding any value to the fashion conversation”