“Do you have a case study?” That’s the first question any media planner or marketing manager asks when a new vendor gives them a presentation. If you’re looking to drive more influencer marketing and content creator campaigns for your agency, let’s take a look at some of the most innovative companies using content creators today.
Gymshark is a $1 billion dollar fitness apparel and accessories brand founded by Ben Francis and Lewis Morgan. They offer mens and womens sportswear that is both fashionable and built for performance. With no discernable product differentiators, they had to build a brand and develop word of mouth to drive sales.
Gymshark was an early adopter of using influencers and building a community around these influencers and content creators. The key to their success was long-term investment. They didn’t partner with creators for short-term, one-off campaigns. They invested in these relationships. They partnered with fitness related creators and gave them merchandise to wear in all of their videos. Week in and week out you were seeing creators wearing their gear.
Some of the creators do host-read ads, where they give a shout out to Gymshark and give the audiences a promo code. Others just flash the Gymshark logo in the video and have a link and details in the video description. There are a few sponsored athletes, like Nikki Blackketter, who make branded videos with Gymshark.
When I watch YouTubers who partner with Gymshark, I know right away. I also know that I likely don’t have to listen to a hard Gymshark pitch. That’s why, when I was coming up with brands for this article, Gymshark came top of mind.
Brands can learn a lot about how Gymshark uses influencers and content creators. Here are seven things Gymshark did well that any brand can learn from.
If you are looking at example case studies on how to sell influencer marketing to your clients, use Gymshark as a case study to help seal the deal.
Podcast listeners in the US and YouTube subscribers are sure to be familiar with the brand Athletic Greens. The nutritional supplement drink brand has built a name for themselves by partnering with content creators for the long-term. The result - deep connections with people who might not have otherwise ever sought out the brand.
The Athletic Greens strategy is simple; find creators (mainly podcasters, but not exclusively), partner with them long-term, track effectiveness, and adjust spends accordingly.
Easier said than done.
ALSO READ: Influencer Marketing Case Study: Athletic Greens
The most important part of any influencer marketing and content creator campaign is defining what type of content creator you want to partner with. In the case of Athletic Greens, they were looking for people who are “taking ownership of their health, their personal finances, their relationships.”
A quick look at Athletic Greens and someone might say they should target fitness influencers. Those are the types of people that work out, are healthy, and take supplements. But Athletic Greens did what many brands fail to do, they looked at the audience traits, not the content. Who is the audience? What type of content do they listen to? It’s not always a straight line.
This is crucial. Athletic Greens made a point to stand by creators even during economic downturns. They are focused on building the relationship for the long-term. By giving creators peace of mind when it comes to revenue during hard times, they become more loyal.
The rule of seven states that people need to have seven touchpoints with your brand before they take action. Frequency and across channels and creators helps accelerate this. If you only invest in a few podcasters or do one or two branded piece of content, you are not maximizing your creator spend.
I first became familiar with Athletic Greens from the Tim Ferris podcast. I then heard them on the Pod Save America podcast and I most recently saw them on Mikey Chen’s YouTube channel. Across those podcasts, I must have heard at least 8-10 ad reads. If I were living in the US right now, I would 100% have bought them to try out.
Every marketer needs data to back up their decisions and justify their spends. Everyone wishes their media metrics were as cut and dry as display advertising. Influencer marketing is especially tricky. Finding the right metrics takes a little extra effort. There are three primary ways a brand can track the effectiveness of their creator marketing spend.
Stitching these three tactics together will help brands understand how effective their creator marketing can be.
The number of companies selling supplements is huge. Walk into a GNC and the average person won’t be able to pick out which brands are more trustworthy. Athletic Greens has done a fantastic job of building their brand through the voices of content creators and riding their audiences to purchase.
The female fashion e-tailor Revolve is a staple on Instagram. THey have more than 1,2000 brands and 13 in-house labels. Follow any Instagram model and they are bound to be posing in one of Revolve latest fashion lines. What makes Revolve standout from other influencer and creator campaigns is their addition of events.
Revolve has built a brand image around aspirational content. When you think of Instagram influencers posting in beautiful locations with perfectly curated looks, Revolve is a big player in that movement.
Aspirational is the key word when Revolve selects influencers to work with. They are looking for women with an aesthetic that matches their brand. Beautiful, elegant, fun, are three adjectives an outsider might use to describe the brand and their influencers. Girls and women who consume their content want to be like them. They aspire to be them. While many can only dream of traveling like them, they can dress like them.
Herein lies the genius of Revolve’s influencer strategy. They help curate this aspirational life for their influencers. Several times a year, they host events at luxurious locations or popular events. Revolve at Coachella was well known.
Coachella, a trendy music festival in the desert of Southern California, hosted a gaggle of influencers at their Coachella house.
On the other coast, Revolve sponsored 34 influencers to live in a beautiful summer home off the coast of the well known summer town, known as the Hamptons.
These Instagram influencers enjoyed the luxuries known to only a select few, with ample opportunities and locations to create content that anyone would envy.
These types of events drive the messaging and aesthetic that embodies the Revolve brand. The result? Thousands of women not only buying Revolve products, but then staging their own Instagram photoshoots in the same vein as the influencers.
Regular Janes, with no official affiliation with Revolve, start posing in the Revolve attire, with the perfect lighting, on their own vacation. They voluntarily tag Revolve and use the brand’s hashtags, to legitimize their content. Thus creating a repeatable cycle of social media promotion for free.
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