Influencer marketing is constantly expanding and is empowering brands from every industry to reach larger audiences. Instead of completely relying on traditional advertising and promotional media, influencer marketing paves the way for more targeted and effective marketing. It provides you with an opportunity to let other influencers talk about your brand and foster a positive brand image in the eyes of potential customers.
By 2022, the influencer marketing industry will hit the $15 billion mark. From tech giants like Google to small businesses; brands are extensively benefiting from influencer marketing.
We have gathered the top 10 Influencer marketing campaign examples by global brands for marketers to drive inspiration and help build successful strategies. Want to create a cool result oriented influencer marketing campaign? Reach out to us at ANIKETH@MINDSTORM.IN and checkout Influencer & Blogger Marketing Services offered by Mindstorm.
Influencer Marketing Campaigns by Global Brands
1) CRED
Most consumer brands first think of Facebook and Instagram for their collaborations. Cred, however, has a qualified target audience on LinkedIn. Professionals on LinkedIn are most likely credit card holders, and a target group that makes large spends. So teaming up with an influencer on LinkedIn made perfect sense. Rather than running only ads.
Walk in Rahul Subramanian! An ex- brand manager and now comedian, Rahul understands the world of brands and marketing, thus, the power of Linkedin. His LinkedIn profile is full of fun corporate jokes that are satirical and even resonate with the audience. As a result he has a following of a little over 750,000 followers on Linkedin who see his posts every day.
Through the lockdown, the comedian launched a series called #BuildingUncles which gained immense popularity. This series spoke about everything – from the pandemic to the building goss and more. Cred found an opportunity to collaborate with Rahul to take the brand through his network.
Through the Building Uncle Series, Rahul weaves Cred seamlessly into the content and now has close to 10,000 likes and 300+ comments.
2) Durex
Durex does a fun take on social distancing with their campaign #endthebedroomdistancing The campaign was created to promote their flavoured and extra thin condoms.The brand collaborated with celebrities, artists and content creators across platforms to drive the campaign. From a pre buzz campaign and TVC to social media influencing, the brand pulled out all stops to push the campaign.
The brand chose celebrities such as Radhika Apte, Prateik Babbar, Anita H Reddy, Prince Narula, Badshah, Ritabhari Chakraborty to cater across target groups. They also tied up with micro influencers to push out the first leg of the campaign.
Celebrities spoke about how the product works, the benefits and why its quite good. More importantly, the brand did not stick to the regular norm of pushing the products through male influencers alone.
3) Dream11
Remember that tagline – Dimaag laga na hai, toh Dream 11 pe lagao? Indian cricketers, team owners and celebrities- almost everyone – were using this tagline on TVCs or OOH.
Dream 11 took this a step further to drive global appeal with leading instagram and Tik Tok influencer Khaby Lame. Khaby Lame is an international face collaborating with several other international celebrities, personalities to create content online. He rose to fame with his videos that demonstrate how things can be done simply instead of complicating them. But in a fun and light hearted way.
Dream 11 wanted to leverage Khaby’s international appeal and launched this funny video
Life is simple. You just need to use your 🧠 in the right place!
— Dream11 (@Dream11) September 27, 2021
Ain’t it true, @KhabyLame? 😜 #Dream11PeDimaagLagaNa #Dream11 #D11 #LearnFromKhaby @viraj_ghelani pic.twitter.com/O63aGORVhj
The video also has Viraj Gehlani – an Indian influencer. With this campaign Dream 11 became the first Indian brand to sign an international influencer for a campaign. Influencer campaigns have become fairly common now. Thus, standing out of the clutter and reaching a global network requires a different approach
4) IndiGo
Flying post lockdown, meant multiple tests, security checks and renewed hygiene protocols. However, a simple lip service about how safe it is to fly Indigo airlines was not going to suffice. To instill trust in the consumers and have them rethink air travel again meant a deeper, more meaningful campaign. IndiGo turned to influencer marketing with their Lean, Clean Flying Machine campaign.
The brand chose a more sustained marketing effort with 3-4 Influencers travelling every month to ensure consistent brand awareness, instead of concentrating everything at one time.
The brand picked a mix of macro and micro influencers with a healthy mix based on their engagement rates and followers across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The plan was to have a balance between quality driven influencers with perhaps lesser following but more non-sales content.And have influencers above 100K followers to talk about flying with IndiGo and its experience.The brand reached over 60 million people on social media with 99% of positive conversations.
5) Levis #IShapemyworld
Levi’s is globally known for brand campaigns with a message. The I Shape My World influencer marketing campaign is no different. Levi’s collaborated with influencers from all walks of life.
The central message of the campaign is to highlight gender equality and achievements of women. While the campaign was conceptualised way back in 2017, it made waves in 2020 and 2021.
“Women’s achievements are human achievements. Historically these stories – stories of women changing the world, changing their communities – have not been told,” said Jen Sey, chief marketing officer of Levi Strauss & Co. Global Brands. This year’s campaign taps into female change makers who are making an impact without the gender qualifiers that can imply they are the “female version” of this or they are good at that “for a woman” which downplays their roles
6) Protein X
A good quality of Life is what matters most to everyone. This means eating well and living well – mentally, emotionally and physically. Physical health plays a major role when it comes to quality of life. During the pandemic however workloads increased, and physical health took a back seat. To drive awareness of better health, Protein X launched The Protein Week to help increase the protein intake. Which in turn is good for health.
The campaign was called Add #MoreToLife with Power of Protein. They tied up with nutritionists to educate their consumers through live sessions on facebook and QnA’s on Instagram.
They also tied up with mommy bloggers, fitness experts and fitness influencers to talk about how Protein in the diet is essential.
7) SPRITE
Sprite decided to tap into the influencer network with their latest campaign ‘Friday release’. They partnered with popular creators who showcase how they live through the different days of the week using Instagram reels.
Influencers such as Yashaswini Dayama, Rohan Shah, Viraj Ghelani, Kareema Barry, Jake Sitlani opened up about their lives and got candid! They spoke of creating content, dealing with trolls and facing mental blocks on a daily basis. Basically, taking the audience behind the scenes with the collaborators. This ties in well with Sprites’ campaign of ‘ Dimaag Ki bati Jala’
The Insta fam were also encouraged to go buy a bottle of Sprite to enjoy Zee5 premium passes to watch early releases.
1) Nike Air Vapormax: Nike
Nike, the global leader in sportswear has teamed up with various sports personalities, actors, and famous influencers to spread the word about their products. But, to promote their Air Vapormax shoes, they took an unconventional path. Instead of partnering with niche-specific influencers, Nike collaborated with a father-son duo who like cutting things in half. “What’s Inside?” is a popular YouTube channel known for cutting random objects into two pieces and checking what’s inside them.
As part of the campaign, Dan and Lincoln Markham of “What’s Inside?” created a series of seven videos documenting their trip to Nike’s headquarters and splitting all-new Nike Air Vapormax shoes to showcase what’s inside. They used their other channel, “What’s Inside? Family” to create vlogs and Q&A sessions. The YouTube channel also featured behind the scenes from Nike’s headquarter, interviews with Nike personnel, and the inspiration source behind the Air Vapormax shoes.
Check out the video, to know What’s Inside Nike’s Air Vapormax?
The father-son duo spread the brand message in an exceptional way and garnered more than 7 million views for Nike’s newly launched product. This is an amazing example of how brands can be benefited from established creators by framing the messages creatively.
2) #DalgonaCoffee Trend: Nescafe
If you are an avid user of social media, you might have come across the popular Dalgona Coffee trend during the lockdown phase. Nescafe hopped on this trend to scale up its influencer marketing game when the whole social media was flooded with #dalgonacoffeechallenge. Nescafe featured influencers on its official Instagram account with #HomeBarista, #dalgonacoffeechalenge, #dalgonacoffee tags. The campaign left Nescafe’s entire feed decorated with stunning images.
As part of the campaign, Nescafe encouraged engagement by asking users their favorite snack that they would pair with coffee. The campaign makes it an important example worth mentioning because of two reasons;
- Nescafe fueled engagement with user-generated content and in turn generated visual assets for its brand.
- Another one is the reachability of the campaign. Nescafe used an already trending challenge for fostering brand awareness. Hence resulting in an increased probability of reaching a large audience base.
3) #DanielWellington: Daniel Wellington
The Swedish watchmaker startup, Daniel Wellington is the epitome of influencer marketing. Began with $15k dollars in 2011, the startup has now transformed into a multi-million dollar company. Wondering how? The brand ditched traditional advertising and extensively promoted its products across social media platforms. By strategically implementing an influencer marketing campaign, Daniel Wellington has now become the fashion staple with its iconic “Nato” strap watches.
The brand leveraged the power of influencer marketing by giving away free watches to famous influencers and influencer-specific coupon codes. With efficient use of user-generated content and targeting influencers from diverse niches, Daniel Wellington’s influencer marketing strategy has reaped unparalleled success. Not just it, the brand even reached out to pet influencer accounts, to promote its products.
The varied approach of Daniel Wellington has resulted in its social media popularity while promoting a positive brand image. At first, the brand only targeted micro-influencers and later on switched to popular influencers. The approach has helped the brand create a 4.9 million follower base on Instagram from 850k followers back in 2015. And the hashtag, /#danielwellington has generated more than 2 million posts.
4) Greatness Awaits Inside: PlayStation
Offering gifts is a very common strategy used by brands to get their products highlighted on influencer’s accounts. The engagement rate and impact of PR gifts are often limited. But, this is not the case with PlayStation. The brand surprised International gaming sensation, Felix Kjellberg, the owner of the YouTube channel “PweDiePie” with a custom-made cake carrying a game controller hidden inside it. The cake had a message written on it “Greatness Awaits Inside”.
PweDiePie has over 100 million subscribers on YouTube where he shared a video revealing what was hidden inside the cake, and tweeted about it. The video attracted 3.2 million views in a day and the event trended on Facebook for an entire day. PlayStation earned press coverage from Entertainment Weekly to Polygon for a total reach of 10.8 million people. Innovative and unique ways of promotion increase the probability of getting more attention from the audiences. Only targeting relevant influencers won’t suffice if the brands aren’t employing innovative approaches to market their products.
5) #MeetAnOwner: Subaru
The #MeetAnOwner is a campaign run by Subaru, an automobile company. The campaign was run on Instagram and YouTube with the intent of enhancing brand awareness to reach wide-ranging audiences. Subaru collaborated with 20 influencers from diverse backgrounds such as artists, adventures, photographers, professional athletes, etc. The extraordinary selection of influencers helped Subaru foster a positive brand image in extremely artistic ways. The influencers highlighted Subaru cars in the most creative ways possible and encouraged remarkable engagement.
Checkout ZachKing’s imaginative #MeetAnOwner sponsored post on Instagram.
Another influencer, Devinsupertramp, went ahead to slide off 500 Foot Cliff to promote Subaru’s cars.
The campaign was a huge success and generated 58 sponsored posts, with an average engagement rate of 9% on Instagram. The hashtag received 1.9 million likes and 9k comments on Instagram. Apart from Instagram, the YouTube engagement rate was 5% with 2.5 million views and 73k likes. The campaign effectively portrays the influence of cross-platform promotion and social media’s ability to attract people from all walks of life.
6) #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia: Turkish Airlines
Influencer Campaigns are a great way to build brand awareness and promote a positive brand image in the eyes of audiences. Brands have been investing in charitable causes to foster brand loyalty and image. With similar intent, Turkish Airlines partnered with Snapchat influencer Jérôme Jarre to raise funds amid the drought and famine crisis in Somalia in 2017. Turkish Airlines decided to send a plane containing food and water extending humanitarian aid for the people affected. The cause was then promoted by influencer Jérôme Jarre through #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia. Within 24 hours, Jérôme Jarre’s Tweet was retweeted for 83,000+ times, and the hashtag attracted 58,000+ likes on Instagram.
His tweet soon attracted celebrities and notable influencers including Casey Neistat and Ben Stiller. Within 24 hours, Jérôme Jarre’s Tweet and Instagram post helped raise $1 million dollars. While the campaign raised $2 million dollars in the time period of 5 days, reaching 80k contributors. The money helped Turkish Airlines send 10 planes full of food and necessary supplies, instead of one plane that they had intended to send.
The brand awareness and reputation, that the brand garnered with help of the campaign is significant and beyond comparison.
7) #TeamPixel: Google Pixel
While the effectiveness of micro-influencers is still unexplored by many brands, Google is effectively benefitting from it. For the promotion of Google’s Pixel phone, the tech giant included 51 Instagram influencers on its list. 14 of which were macro-influencers with more than 100k followers and 35 of which were micro-influencers with less than 100k followers. The campaign created 61 sponsored posts, stating the photography potential of the phone and effective use of “Google-Assistant”. Today, photography enthusiasts are constantly using the #teampixel tag and the hashtag has more than 2 million posts.
Checkout Justin Main’s sponsored post for /#teampixel
The campaign has attracted millions with an average engagement rate of 7.8%. It’s high time that brands include micro-influencers in their influencer marketing strategy, as they tend to have a niche-specific and highly engaging follower base.
8) #Becca Prismatica: BECCA Cosmetics X Barbie Ferreira
Becca Cosmetics has effectively built its influencer marketing campaigns by pairing up with popular influencers. Back in 2017, Becca partnered with Chrissy Teigen and launched Becca X Chrissy Teigen Cravings Collection. The launch video attracted 5 million views with a huge success and the collection is still purchased by many. Becca executed a similar strategy and collaborated with Barbie Ferreira for launching their face palette collection. Both the brand and the influencer cross-promoted the newly launched collection, Prismatica, with the hashtag, #Beccaprismatica.
Barbie Ferreria has more than 2.7 million followers, while her sponsored posts collectively have generated more than one million likes and 500+ posts on the hashtag. Influencer marketing has been the top choice for many brands when launching a new product. The amazing part is that the brand can easily reach its target audience by selecting the right influencer. And in turn, the cross-promotion benefits both the brand and the influencer.
9) #MakePotatoGreatAgain: TacoBell India
TacoBell paired up with comedian Tanmay Bhat for the launch of Crispy Potaco, a new addition to their menu. The campaign was all about making potato a hero instead of the vegetable’s identity as a sidekick with most meals. Tanmay Bhat made a series of short videos giving the campaign a humorous touch and posted them on Twitter. The brand promoted the videos on Facebook, Instagram, and the campaign even attracted the media’s attention. The hashtag created a buzz around the potato and garnered the attention of celebrities and other influencers.
The #MakePotatoGreatAgain generated 2 million+ impressions according to Tweetbinder. Instagram influencers such as Mister Tikku, Food Talk India, and Munching Murmurs were also part of the campaign. This influencer campaign effectively portrays how entertaining and humorous content can help brands reach their target audience if used correctly.
10) #MBPhotopass: Mercedes
When talking about influencer marketing, it’s inevitable to mention Mercedes. This international brand is utilizing user-generated content and social media platforms at its best. Instead of putting out promotional videos, the brand collaborates with photographers, adventurers, and popular influencers who can portray Mercedes in an extraordinary way. On a similar note, for the promotion of Mercedes Benz the brand teamed up with Instagram fame, Loki the wolf-dog, and his adventurer owner Kelly Lund. As part of the campaign, a 360-degree video was launched on YouTube starring the adventurous ride of the dog and its owner.
The brand also collaborated with other influencers and promoted Mercedes Benz across multiple social media platforms. Instagram alone, generated 173 million impressions, 2.3+ million likes, and $4 million worth of earned media. Further, the influencer posts collectively created around 1700 visual assets which are still featured on the Mercedes Benz website. The influence of influencer marketing can be determined with this mind-blowing example of /#mbphotopass. This campaign is run by Mercedes for several years and continues to generate mesmerizing results attracting millions of views. Marketers can learn the impact of a long-term influencer marketing approach, effectively leveraged by Mercedes.
Level-up your Influencer Marketing Strategy now!
These brands have extensively utilized the power of Influencer Marketing Campaigns with a dedicated and long-term strategic approach. While many marketers confuse influencer marketing as a one-off promotion opportunity, these brands continue to attract diverse audiences through visual assets and hashtags. Need help to employ an effective influencer marketing strategy? Well, our expert team at Mindstorm can help you generate desired results through Influencer Marketing. Leave us a message at ANIKETH@MINDSTORM.IN!
