Five Great Examples of Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Are you trying to decide whether influencer marketing campaigns are an option for your brand or company? In our previous blog post, ‘Influencer Marketing: What It Is and Why You Should Be Using It’, we detailed exactly why companies should be exploring the impact of social influencers and offered five positive advantages to employing influencer marketing campaigns.

Below, Active Internet Marketing (UK) have detailed five influencer marketing campaigns that worked fantastically to drive sales and increase brand awareness – with the intention of presenting exactly why, and how, brands should utilise the power of influencers within their own marketing strategies.

Daniel Wellington’s Instagram Endeavours
Founded in 2011 as a simple, $24,00 start-up, Daniel Wellington (DW) has employed user generated content and social media platforms to generate astounding profits. From 2014 to 2015, the Daniel Wellington brand amassed an increase in profits at over 214%, a fantastic example of how influencer marketing campaigns can wholly improve your brand awareness – in fact, in 2015, Daniel Wellington was named one of ‘The Best Brands Working with Influencers’, and their collaborations with social media influencers have only continued to grow and flourish. The watch company have worked with the likes of Kylie Jenner, Tanya Burr, and Kimmy Schram to draw attention to their products through channels such as Instagram and Youtube, both of which are fairly populated with their target demographic.

Why was this campaign effective?
With every Daniel Wellington influencer marketing campaign, an individual promo code specific to the social influencer was promoted alongside the image or feature of a Daniel Wellington watch, offering discount and encouraging audiences to take advantage of the code to buy what would otherwise be a substantial purchase. Due to this marketing push, the Daniel Wellington brand has since become synonymous with cool, edgy, and on-trend influencers who lead a lifestyle that their followers may wish to emulate – and by advertising the watches at a discounted and thus attainable rate, their followers are one step closer to realising their Insta-dreams. This particular influencer marketing campaign is a great example of how utilising the most appropriate platform and providing discounts to make the product seem more appealing will allow direct connections with your target audience.

Bootea
Bootea describes itself as a ‘passionate health and weight loss company that strives to promote an active, healthy, and balanced lifestyle.’ They claim that their weight loss products, of which include shakes, brownies, and ‘teatox’, combined with regular exercise, will help users to shift the pounds quickly. Bootea carried out an extensive social influencer campaign, working with stars such as Scott Disick, Vanessa Hudgens, and Britney Spears to reach millions of social media users.

Why was this campaign effective?
Bootea’s campaign highlights the importance of your chosen influencer platform. Instagram is inundated with images of sculpted bodies and fitness tips, so promoting a brand that promises weight loss so overtly will immediately catch your audience’s attention when that very thing is on their mind. Using influencers that are known for boasting a fit body and healthy lifestyle to promote Bootea’s products will mean that their followers associate Bootea with health and weight loss, strengthening the brand’s image and ethos. Constant exposure to the ‘perfect body’ will no doubt lead to Instagram users feeling hyper aware of their own ‘flaws’, therefore persuading them to chase the ideal solution presented by their idols – Bootea.

Make it Count with Casey Neistat and Nike
Casey Neistat, American Youtuber and filmmaker who is known for his unconventional editing and storytelling techniques. In 2012, Nike hired Neistat and Max Joseph of Catfish fame to create a commercial for Nike’s new product, the FuelBand. Neistat and Joseph took the cash and went rogue, travelling 34,000 miles across the globe, visiting 16 cities in 13 countries across 3 continents in 10 days and filming every moment. Neistat states that he thought to himself what the phrase ‘make it count’ meant to him – packing a bag and travelling around the world with just a camera and his FuelBand.

Why was this campaign effective?
Whether Neistat’s insistence that Nike had no idea of his travelling plans is true or not, you can’t argue with the perceived authenticity of the campaign. By accepting Neistat’s offhand and spontaneous persona and approach to his videos, Nike’s FuelBand was given fantastic exposure (the video has over 24 million views to date) and the product’s use was wholly fulfilled and displayed within the video. The video gained 790,000 views within 24 hours of its launch, an unqualified viral hit. As with many influencer marketing campaigns, the persona of the chosen influencer is integral for ensuring the success of the promotion. Nike’s solid relationship with Neistat meant that Neistat could go out on a limb and take a creative risk, ‘making it count’ by producing content that is in line with both parties’ ethos and brand.

Zoella’s ‘Book Club’ Partnership
In June of 2016, Zoella, a.k.a Youtuber Zoe Sugg, launched a ‘book club’ of sorts in partnership with bookshop giants W.H.Smith, presenting her favourite picks to her 11.5 million viewers. The books featured within Sugg’s first video, My Book Club Picks, were all of the YA (young adult) genre, a clever attempt to ensure that Zoella’s following, the majority of whom are aged 13-18, will happily engage with the content and purchase the recommended novels. The partnership between WHSmith and Sugg makes a lot of sense. WHSmith obviously recognised Sugg’s sizeable following – a multitude of teenage girls who were willing to be influenced by Sugg in a way that could absolutely pass as authentic.

Why was this campaign effective?
Just one glance at the books featured within the first book club bundle shows that Sugg’s viewers were definitely the perfect audience for WHSmith’s young adult category. In fact, the day after Sugg released her video featuring the picks, the sales of each book advertised had skyrocketed between 1,817% and 11,164%, with WHSmith reporting an 8% rise in annual profits a few months after the launch. Sugg’s ‘big sister’ persona wholly helped to push the campaign and make it an all-round success, her happy disposition and boundless enthusiasm able to persuade even the most casual of viewers to peruse through the WHSmith website to find the titles. This particular influencer marketing campaign helped to increase brand awareness, attracting younger audiences to the stores and driving sales exponentially. Sugg’s partnership with WHSmith is one that can continue for as long as both parties desire, with new and appropriate young adult titles released every year and the ideal audience ready-and-waiting to receive wisdom from the one and only Zoella.

Audible’s Youtube Bonanza
Audible, one of Amazon’s business ventures, is a seller of audio entertainment, featuring over 180,000 audio books, tv programmes, and radio shows from across the globe. In order to promote their services, Audible teamed up with Youtube, targeting viewers they highlighted that would actually be interested in engaging and receiving the content available within Audible’s subscription accounts. Youtubers such as Caspar Lee and Grace Helbig have worked with Audible in the past to highlight the company to their followers.

Why was this campaign effective?
The Youtube-Audible strategy was to take a sophisticated approach – asking their chosen Youtubers to simply mention the company name or services within their own original content. Jim Chapman subtly mentioned Audible within his ‘May Favourites’ video, whilst Caspar Lee brazenly states within the description box of his Audible-featured video (disguised as a Q&A) that ‘this is a paid for advertorial.’ Sitting pretty at nearly 1 million views, Lee’s audience evidently aren’t perturbed by the advert, an integral factor to consider when using social influencers. Careful considerations must be examined when selecting your social influencer – is their brand popular enough to earn views and influence enough people, even with a glaring ‘ad’ attached to their content?

Here at Active Internet Marketing (UK), we retain a database of over 5,000 social influencers, making sure that no matter your brand or product, we can find a suitable influencer that is both in your budget and in regular communication with your ideal target demographic. This selection process is vital for ensuring the success of your entire influencer marketing campaign – by highlighting your audience upfront, our team can shape your campaign around the chosen influencer and offer content suggestions that are creative, original, and authentic to the influencer’s online branding.

Here at Active Internet Marketing (UK), we wholly understand the impact an influencer marketing campaign can have for your brand. From sifting through our expansive influencer database to gathering the results of the campaign, our expert team can carry out a variety of professional influencer marketing campaigns, keeping your business goals right at the forefront of the campaign strategy. We are confident that you will be pleasantly surprised by what our team can offer to you in regards to influencer marketing, so do not hesitate to contact Active Internet Marketing (UK) today on 0800 772 0650 to begin your journey with us.