101 Experts Reveal the Best Influencer Marketing Campaigns [Expert Roundup]

Last year was a great year for influencer marketing, and there’s a good reason why. Consumers have always valued word-of-mouth recommendations from their friends and families.

And with the growing popularity of digital media, 70% of consumers trust peer experiences posted online and on social media platforms.

These peers or influencers foster strong ties with their social media followers and have highly engaged audiences.

Not only do audiences trust them and engage with their content, but they also heed their recommendations.

With the kind of influence they have on their audiences’ buying decisions, brands are investing more of their time and resources into influencers.

According to a study, the marketing spends on Instagram influencer marketing alone crossed $1.6 billion in 2018.

In fact, with brands continuously increasing their social media marketing and influencer marketing budgets, influencer marketing is expected to become a $16.4 billion industry by 2022

Leading brands such as H&M, Daniel Wellington, and REVOLVE frequently leverage successful influencer marketing campaigns to grow their businesses. And you should too.

Why You Should Leverage Influencer Marketing for Your Brand

Influencer marketing generates 11X more ROI than any other traditional form of marketing. It is also the most cost-effective strategy for customer acquisition.

When it’s done right, influencer marketing can help you:

• Gain more exposure for your brand.
• Increase engagement through authentic storytelling.
• Boost the reputation of your brand.
• Drive more product sales.
• Encourage customer loyalty.
• Improve SEO.

However, you need to find relevant influencers and develop a strategy that aligns with your brand’s voice and campaign goals.

101 of the Best Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Inspire You

While a lot has been said about influencer marketing, there are still many businesses that are reluctant to work with influencers.

If you are one of them, this expert roundup post on the best influencer marketing campaigns that can inspire you to work with influencers in 2022.

Let’s take a look at the best campaigns that 101 of these experts have seen, participated in, or read about.

Please note: This roundup has been structured in alphabetical order, and not according to expertise.

Though many campaigns mentioned in the list are truly inspiring, the #1 response has been specifically picked as the best one. I found the campaign idea of incorporating music into marketing to be extremely innovative.

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#1. Alina Gorbatch – Awario

The “Superstar” campaign by Adidas featured Arvida Byström – an artist, a model, and an “Instagram” star.

In one of the photos, Arvida, a known feminist and body-positivity advocator wears a pair of the brand's shoes with unshaven legs. This was enough to cause hype in the media.

The social media marketing campaign went viral with no further effort from the brand. This also showed that Adidas understands their female target audience and appeals to them in a smart way.

#2. Michelle Miller – Magnificent Marketing

One of my favorite campaigns featured an award-winning band, an airline and a dedicated fan base.

Not to mention a killer performance on an airplane flying 35,000 feet in the air!

The music of Imagine Dragons, coupled with their album release, was the perfect instrument to fuel the strong emotion of music with Southwest’s customer base.

Destination Dragons provided Southwest a great story to tell about the brand’s connection to music, aligning beautifully with a major passion point for their customers.

The Destination Dragons partnership set a new benchmark for success regarding how brands utilize the influence of music and a band to fuel the inner passion of their most loyal customers.

#3. Aaron Brooks – Vamp

Vamp Campaign with Adobe:

Vamp’s campaign with Adobe, to drive awareness of their Lightroom CC product, was our biggest so far.

Our approach was very strategic utilizing multiple influencer tiers – leading and supporting – and multiple phases of activity. Altogether we engaged 107 influencers who represented the vibrancy and diversity of the APAC region.

Influencers created inspiring social media content in a variety of formats for Instagram including images in feed, stop motion videos and Instagram stories with ‘swipe up to trial’ options.

Influencers also hosted meetups for their social media followers.

Here they could showcase their skills shooting and editing in Lightroom and interact with their audience.

In total, 548 stunning pieces of content were positively received by an audience of 12,018,828. In terms of engagement, the average rate was 6.5%.

This is more than double Vamp’s average benchmark of 3% and well six times the average engagement of a sponsored post, 1.1%.

In case we can’t talk about one of our own campaigns…

Non Vamp Campaign – Reynolds Wrap – USA

I love this campaign. The product is the least exciting you could imagine it's just tin foil. It was run in the USA for Reynolds Wrap. They got a whole bunch of influencers to do recipe creations and create content and post on their channel.

They then re-created all the recipes the influencers made. A team of chefs cooked them and put them all on one big long table.

They then shot the table and created a huge amount of content which they post in their feed but it all sync's up you can view here. There is also a full case study here

#4. Adrian Land – Considerable Influence

On CI, Encore Tickets have been running a series of campaigns working with lifestyle and parenting bloggers on the joy and benefits of theater and musicals.

There are more to come in the future for new shows and behind the scenes, West-end visits.

#5. AJ Silverman – Quantum Sponsor

The best campaigns are run by brands that influencers are immediately attracted to. They feel a connection with the brand, and it speaks to them personally.

Influencers want to promote a brand that aligns with their values and interests so they can truly represent that brand in an authentic way.

At Quantum Sponsor, we create bridges between influencers, brands, and target audiences. Recently, we launched a successful campaign in partnership with Kia Motors.

Their video was a source of laughter for influencers’ audiences, and it speaks to millennials that need a car to get from point A to point B in affordable style, but that isn’t exposed to traditional TV advertisements.

While the video was entertaining, showcasing it through Instagram influencers in addition to traditional television, allowed the company to reach their millennial audience directly while they were engaged and focused.

Social media nfluencers wanted to share the video with the audience because of the element of humor it offered, and because they were excited by the prospect of working with a brand that their audience recognized.

By participating in the social media marketing campaign, influencers’ loyal social media followers were able to get a solid dose of Kia branding and messaging.

#6. Alessandro Bogliari – The Influencer Marketing Factory

Definitely HiSmile. They started with an in-depth market analysis, looking for only local micro-influencers with a data-driven focus and with goal-oriented campaigns.

After the first phase of micro-influencers, they opened their promotion to macro-influencers and celebrities as well.

They worked with consistency, putting a lot of effort and focus on their product more like a community rather than just a company that sells something.

#7. Allison Lee – Zoomp

Dyson recently unveiled its $500-$550 Airwrap hair styler that quickly became a must-have among the beauty community despite its outrageous price tag.

Dyson partnered with content creators who had a foothold in their target market (working women between 25-35 years old with disposable income) and could showcase their product in a very aspirational way.

They also made sure that the Airwrap could be tested on a variety of hair types, proving its superiority over traditional hair tools.

The reason why I consider it one of the best campaigns is because of its sheer success of it; the Airwrap is completely sold old.

How the heck do you convince people (including myself) to throw that much money at a hair curler?

#8. Aman Gupta – Clout Media

I have done many campaigns, but I only find few Examples which makes some impact on Audience, one of them is Adidas Campaign, in which they use Billboards in NYC & LA, that's What which attracts normal Audience and as well as Social Media Audience.

#9. Alessandro Bogliari – Americanoize

We at Americanoize worked on an influencer marketing campaign for Bloomingdales.

The project has been structured to maximize and promote the visibility of Bloomingdale’s within the Brazilian and Mexican Market through a mix of digital activities run before and during the 2018 Easter period.

The client got a total reach of 1,400,000 Instagram users thanks to an Instagram giveaway with the possibility to win a Bloomingdale's VIP Experience in-store.

The participants were really active and the winners posted stories during their VIP experience, tagging even more people and increasing the earned media value.

#10. Aris Santos – NinjaOutreach

#loveoutloud recently caught my attention. Talk about a successful influencer marketing campaign involving a number of macro-influencers PLUS Jason Mraz.

I think the biggest reason why this is so effective is because it covered a lot of different niches like beauty, travel, fashion, and mom bloggers.

The campaign is set to cover a huge audience and it did so by creating a significant buzz (hashtag) as soon as it was launched and, in fact, is still being used today by everyday regular people.

A couple of lessons here:

1. Think of a general subject that touches a significant percentage of the general population (Example: A mother's affection for her children)
2. Get the right influencers to promote you.

#11. Aundrea Worsley – Flourish Management

#RevolveFestival has to be the best influencer marketing campaign I've ever seen.

For the last few years they've succeeded in throwing the best parties, inviting the most sought after influencers for the hottest ticket in town during Coachella.

#12. Ben Jeffries – Influencer

Apple Music #MOTIVATEWITHCAS PAR

Our goal was to showcase how Apple Music gives people motivation to go out and succeed in everyday life.

YouTuber Caspar Lee lead the three-part campaign by curating his own motivational playlist on Apple Music, using song suggestions sent to him by his social media followers and also by recruited micro creators.

The playlist was full of songs that Caspar enjoyed listening whilst vlogging, working away and staying healthy.

We recruited leading UK micro creators to help promote Caspar’s playlist on Apple Music. Creators supported Caspar by posting images and videos of themselves listening to his playlist.

The three-part campaign focused on three key messages: directing traffic towards Caspar’s playlist, highlighting 50% discount available to students and also the free 3-month trial for new users.

CAMPAIGN RESULTS:

102 Content Pieces, 13.94M Total Audience, 0 5.73% Av. Engagement Rate

#13. Benedikt Seitz – Gameinfluencer GmbH

At GameInfluencer, we ran a pretty cool campaign for The Battle Cats, a very fun mobile game with flashy graphics and wacky humor, which was perfect for influencer marketing.

The publisher, PONOS, wanted to get as much user interaction as possible while reaching a sizable branding effect.

We came up with a contest where users designed their own creative Battle Cats with the winning character being implemented into the game.

The community participation in the contest was overwhelming with over 3,000 people submitting their designs and sharing them on social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram via the #NextBattleCat.

YouTube stars DanAndPhilGAMES promoted the game with a Let’s Play video and social media push. The YouTube video earned almost 800,000 views and the social media platforms collectively had a conversion rate of 6.75 percent.

The influencer marketing campaign increased installs following the release by almost 50 percent.

Lastly, it increased average daily active use by over 10 percent and had a user retention rate of over 26 percent over a 30 day period.

The quirky game with creative cats lent itself very well to the contest format and tying the game to major YouTube personalities helped give it the right exposure.

#14. Brett Bernstein – GATSBY

I'm all about real customers spreading their love for the actual products they use.

So we built a software, Gatsby, to help brands identify and activate their actual customers as influencers.

A great example of this is with Oats Overnight. Through Gatsby, they were automatically introduced to one of their customers named Adam.

The email introduction felt manual and authentic, rather than automatic, so Adam quickly responded to it.

With just a couple of emails back and forth, Adam was empowered to post a photo with the oats to his 4,000 Instagram friends. Remember, he's an actual customer.

Because the love for Oats was authentic and his social media followers were authentic, he got nearly 1,000 likes / comments on social media, or a 25% engagement rate.

#15. Brian sorel – NeoReach

This video outperformed their 5M Superbowl ads, it was effective b/c of the quality of content.

#16. Camille Brahmi – Lefty

It is no secret that influencer marketing is more than just a tactic for fashion and beauty brands. In 2018, we have seen brands from all kinds of industries setting up influencer marketing strategies.

One of my favorite campaigns this year was The World Wildlife Fund#toolatergram campaign.

The WWF has chosen influencer marketing to raise awareness for environmental issues amongst millennials.

With TBWA\Paris, they have chosen 9 French influencers, who are travelers concerned by environmental issues. The WWF wanted to show the impact of human behavior on the environment and the planet in general.

Influencers were asked to published photos of “devastated paradises” all around the world on Instagram. The first picture was a beautiful and quiet landscape – actually Photoshopped.

The second was revealing the illusion, that the place has been devastated by pollution or construction, #toolatergram.

The campaign was a hit, communicated throughout the world with no translation needed because the images spoke for themselves.

WWF has managed to reach a young global audience and to raise awareness for a topic usually covered by traditional media.

#17. Carla Marshall – Tubular Labs

One of the most innovative influencer marketing campaigns I've seen in 2018 was the partnership between the US retailer Wish and a collection of international soccer superstars.

The premise was to highlight the footballers who wouldn't be attending the FIFA World Cup for various reasons, and what they were doing to occupy their time while the tournament was on.

It was a sensitive subject handled in a humorous but respectful way with Gareth Bale, Robin van Persie, Gigi Buffon, Claudio Bravo Muñoz, Tim Howard all posting their clips across their own social media platforms.

The campaign was so successful that Wish added Paul Pogba and Neymar to the mix, even though both players were very much in attendance in Russia.

During the last 90 days, the influencer campaign generated nearly 25M sponsored video views on Facebook for the 25 videos uploaded to the soccer star's Page.

#18. Chelsea Carter – Whalar

In a collaboration between fashion retailer River Island, and antibullying charity Ditch the Label, we produced a social media campaign that mocks outdated and irrelevant labels given to people based on their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or religion.

It has reached more than 6.4 million people, generated more than 345,000 likes and triggered more than 5,000 comments.

The campaign involved 80 of our “creators with influence” to customize T-shirts with the phrase “100%____” on it and to write “a chosen positive, tongue-in-cheek label,” Whalar said in a statement, adding that the labels created included “100% Creative” and “100% Me” as well as “100% Feminist” and “100% Free.”

With every T-shirt sale, River Island is donating 3 pounds to the Ditch the Label charity. In addition to this, for every share on Instagram with the hashtag #labelsareforclothes and @riverisland, River Island donated a further [1 pound] to Ditch the Label.

Influencers who participated included @y.asmeena, @okdeon @iconaccidental and Jiawa Liu of @beigerenegade, among many others.

#19. Chen Wang – SocialBook

As reported by TapInfluence, “92% of consumers turn to people they know for referrals above any other source.”

People by nature gravitate towards personalized advice from someone familiar to them.

This makes influencer marketing campaigns the social media equivalent of receiving purchasing advice from a trusted “analog friend.”

The inclination towards the familiar is a helpful clue in discovering which influencer marketing campaigns appeal the most and why.

And it allows brands to broaden their reach using the established relationships that influencers have with their social media followers.

One of my favorite examples is from Revolve, the LA retailer whose #revolvearoundtheworld campaign photographs cool-girl Instagram influencers in captivating locations around the world.

The chosen influencers are enviably well turned out, of course, but each still looks like she could be one of your friends.

At least one of those select few friends who inspire you and bring out your more aspirational side.

This campaign strikes a terrific balance between making the user feel like she’s getting advice from her best girlfriend and energizing her to stretch and reach for something bigger.

And therein lies the allure of the creative offering: It makes that stretch seem possible.

#20. Chris Detert – Influential

We had a great campaign with Hyundai last year that was featured in Adweek. Rather than try to explain why it was great, I'll let you read the article. The quote from Hyundai CMO, Dean Evans, about tripling their spend with us next time is priceless!

Adweek
How Hyundai Found Its Footing on Social Using This AI Influencer Technology
The car brand scored 100% positive sentiment using Influential Select

By Katie Richards|November 17, 2017
The car brand used this AI influencer technology to its benefit.

Over the summer, Hyundai was looking for the most effective way to promote the new 2018 Hyundai Sonata on social media.

The brand quickly found a partner in influencer platform Influential, to help build a campaign that was not only powered by IBM Watson, but also driven by the perfect influencers for the brand.

“People have learned how to become influencers, so brands have to utilize influencers more all the time,” Dean Evans, Hyundai CMO, said.

“What we loved about Influential’s model is it helps us sort through that, and in this case finding those 10 specific people that were perfect, not just for the vehicle, but for our brand and what we were trying to do.”

Hyundai pioneered the platform’s Influential Select technology to promote the 2018 Sonata in a campaign that scored 100 percent positive sentiment on social media.

So how does it work?

Influential Select essentially helps match a brand with some 20,000-plus influencers in the Influential network, using machine learning and transparent data, and delivers results in real-time.

“It’s basically a fancy way of saying we are using real-time API’s (which is done in partnership with our IBM Watson partners) and are able to match influencers based on demographics, based on their contextual relevancy–like saying things that are around automotive partners or around a certain brand–and then psychographically.

Are they speaking in the same tone and [do they] have the same personality type as the brand?” Ryan Detert, CEO and co-founder of Influential, said.

When it comes to personality type, Influential Select relies on the Big Five theory, “which says that a human being or brand is comprised of 47 key traits or attributes. Adventurousness, altruistic, hedonistic,” Detert explained.

“And through what is called NLP, natural language processing, we are pulling the last 22,000 words spoken by both a brand and an influencer, and if you match them accordingly you see a big lift in engagement overall.”

Brands can use Influential Select to search for their own brand name and find all mentions of the brand on social.

The tool, “provides back-end analysis of who that brand is on social, what is the approximate age demographic and what are they speaking most about,” Detert explained.

It “ingests billions of data points every day from the social landscape.”

One of the key insights Hyundai found through using Influential’s platform and social listening was that people that were talking about Hyundai online were also driven by giving back to their communities.

All in all, the influencers selected for this particular campaign reflected Hyundai’s “Better Drives Us” platform and used their social media posts to show how they were giving back, while driving the new Hyundai Sonata.

“The only thing I said after the team reviewed the results was, can we triple it next year?” Evans said. Outside of the 100 percent positive sentiment, the campaign drove 15 million gross impressions overall.

Added Evans: “As we learn about marketing and as we learn how to use content more effectively, this kind of thing, influencers coming into the market and helping spread the word about our brand, especially around brand building, has been really important. We see it as an important investment to go deeper in.”

#21. Chris Parnell – Kairos Media Ltd

Kairos Esports was tasked with handling KFC’s entire gaming and esports strategy, including entry into the landscape.

As a “big bang” launch for KFC Gaming, Kairos Esports delivered a bespoke trailer-style hype video and supplementing build-up on social, paired with over 71 social influencers across Twitter and IG Story amplification strategy in-parallel, this was one incredible launch.

Delivering 16,600,000 impressions over the launch week alone, generating 17,100 social media followers for @KFCGaming and over 788,000 engagements in just 7 days along with press in the UK, USA, China, France and Germany.

#22. Christoph Burseg – VeeScore

I love how the magazine, Architectural Digest, started uploading videos of “cribs” of famous influencers to their YouTube channel since October 2017.

They have tours through the houses of musicians like Zedd and just uploaded another tour through Wiz Khalifa's house.

It is super smart how they grew from a few thousand subscribers in 2017 to more than 600,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel today.

They were able to convert viewers into fans and when they still had around 30,000 views on their videos per week last year, they now have up to 10,000,000 views on their videos per week.

The magazine, Vogue, is going a similar strategy and was first – but I am more impressed that a product like “ad” was able to create such a great content series with such a huge YouTube fit – with measurable business success!

#23. Daniel Martin – Aston Social

In my opinion, it was the original American Express “power women” social strategy that was launched nearly a decade ago.

Long before the time on official social media influencers, the platform leveraged the existing American Express customer base to expand their reach, utilizing the social connection of women to grow engagement.

It essentially turned every customer into a social media influencer!

#24. Danielle Wiley – Sway Group

One of the best influencer campaigns Sway Group has worked on recently was the #DominosNYE program that encouraged consumers to include pizza in whatever their New Year’s Eve plans were to be.

We activated close to 100 millennial micro-influencers in the days leading up to, and including NYE via blog posts, social media posts on Instagram Stories, Facebook, and Twitter.

This was a quick turn program for us here at Sway – 20 days total including recruitment, content development and approval and launch which added to the excitement.

But what made this a stand-out campaign for me, is the strategic use of influencer marketing – the timing and content theme were a perfect way to utilize influencers.

Influencer content anchored to an event or time of year, in this case on New Year’s Eve, ties brand messaging to the larger consumer conversation already in progress.

When combined with limited time offers (which this campaign had) it can also drive significant traffic.

Finally, campaigns like #DominosNYE often catch the eye of traditional media – in this case it was included in a Vox article, which greatly extended Domino’s influencer investment.

#25. Darby Barton – XOMAD

Influencer campaigns that engage influencers in highly curated, real-world branded events and activations, such as the 2018 campaigns from national multivitamins brands where influencers naturally interacted with the brands and produced overwhelmingly successful reach and engagement, as well as stunning visual content.

Because the influencers shared real-world experiences, and made memories with the brand(s), they were able to create more organic content that stayed true to their personal brand, and thus generated stronger audience engagement.

With over 1.2B impressions combined and engagement rates that were 67% higher than industry standard for branded content from over a half a million dollar spend, these campaigns were successful for influencer participants and brands alike by driving website traffic and free trials.

#26. Dave Dickman – Tagger

Nation LTD strives to be the go-to destination for elevated, comfortable basics.

Inspired by women who know the value of owning the ultimate t-shirt, the clothing brand wanted to build overall awareness and drive sales through influencer marketing for Nation LTD’s Fall 2019 collection going into the 2018 holiday season.

In order to build credibility and brand awareness in this market, Nation LTD targeted effortlessly chic fashionistas – trailblazing women who are confident, open-minded, and have influence over the fashion space.

Their strategy was to activate an influencer with a follower range between 25,000-150,000, who were women between the ages of 21-35 with fashion-focused content and an affinity to Nation LTD.

Using Tagger, a complete influencer management platform, they were able to filter results to the criteria and found Delaney, the founder, creator and editor of @thestyledseed, a lifestyle blog focused on fashion, beauty, travel and fun.

After the post went live, Nation LTD had more than 4,000 users driven to their website from sources including organic search, direct, social media and more.

Delaney had a total of over 57 users click her link to go to the Nation LTD website. Her two posts received over 5,500 and 4,800 likes and 324 and 209 comments respectively.

From her direct story, she had 33 link clicks to Nation LTD, 17 sticker taps to Nation LTD’s Instagram profile and 4,134 impressions. In fact, one of her posts received a reach over 33,411.

This campaign was so effective because Nation LTD was able to search for the ideal fashion-focused metropolitan influencer using Tagger.

They were able to strategize identifying a mid-tier influencer with high audience affinity to another successful fashion influencer who had participated in fashion campaigns before.

They were also able to confirm that the influencer’s top performing content aligned with Nation LTD as a mix of fashion and lifestyle content.

#27. David Dekker – 

The best aspect of influencer marketing is that there is no such thing as the best influencer marketing campaign.

Facilitating collaborations for thousands of influencers and brands throughout Europe has enabled me to compare campaigns – creatively, strategically, and purely based on results.

The key learning from comparing these campaigns is that different goals ask for different approaches.

The only aspect that is recurring in all successful influencer marketing campaigns is creative freedom. Your campaign works best if you provide a framework for your influencer.

Clear enough to guide them in the right direction, but broad enough for them to fill in creatively. Trust your influencer and give him or her the supplies to do what they do best – engage their audience.

#28. David Duncan – BrandSnob

At BrandSnob, we know that building trust and credibility with influencers and their audience is paramount for brands wanting to run a successful influencer marketing campaign.

More and more consumers are now influenced by social media influencers when deciding which products they like and support. But consumers crave authenticity and prefer real and organic over perfectly branded content.

This means for brands, that getting authentic content and reviews created by real people that identify with their brand should be their top priority when trying to attract customers on social media.

An example of a standout campaign was for one of our favorite brands, Patchology. Promoting the launch of their new

Breakout Box 3-in-1 acne treatment kit, Jill Sherman the VP of Global Marketing wasn’t sure how well it would do on social media.

“The acne patches are clear and hard to see, and not exactly an easy product to incorporate into a beauty routine video” mentioned Sherman.

However, by choosing to work with influencers that suffered from acne and skin breakouts, Patchology were able to create a genuine connection with them and their audiences.

“The influencers we worked with were so creative and had a ton of fun with the kit. Each created authentic content that spoke to their respective audiences, resulting in 4x the views of our average influencer campaigns” said Sherman.

Some BrandSnob influencer standouts for this campaign included instagrammers @thebeautyelite, @looksbylexington, @kevinrupard and @willdoughty.

Here are a few tips that we’ve found help generate more authentic content for your brand, connect with a broader range of consumers and drive better sales conversion:

1. Consider running gifting rather than paid campaigns.

When accepting a gift in exchange for posts, influencers are posting to their social media followers because they genuinely like your product. This frees them to share a more genuine, personalized review about your product to their audiences.

2. Choose Micro or even Nano influencers.

Micro-influencers (5K to 100K followers) and nano-influencers (1k to 5k followers) are much more likely to have a higher percentage of engaged and loyal social media followers than larger influencers or celebrities.

Additionally, rather than shelling out a big budget for a few larger influencers, you can afford to gift more product and reach potentially hundreds of influencers. This helps you reach a wider range of potential customers.

3. Personalize your approach.

Paying or sending product to an influencer without getting to know them is at best hit and miss. Take the time to ask some questions and build a more meaningful relationship with them.

By understanding the influencer’s personal style you’ll also be able to pick the right product or combination of products for them to promote, ensuring a more genuine exchange.

Remember authenticity is your social currency!

#29. Deepak Sakhuja – Ripple Links

Here is one campaign that we recently executed for OnePlus.

For the launch of the OnePlus 6T, we worked closely with the OnePlus India team to build engaging content to encourage the creation of user-generated content from the OnePlus community.

We collaborated with illustrators, food stylists and photographers to capture the letter T. This sparked users' imaginations and acted as a starting point to generate their own content.

Then, in the lead up to launch day, we collaborated with a smoke artist, to create a countdown to launch.

#30. Dennis Doerfl – Fourstarzz Media

Groupon Plus (Groupon+ is the easiest way to save at restaurants near you. Claim deals for free and earn up to 30% cash back automatically to your card.)

For the campaign Fourstarzz Media (a Lincoln, NE based influencer marketing firm) was engaging micro-influencers in US metro cities who produced and distributed compelling content about Groupon+.

Influencers signed up for Groupon+ and visited one of the featured restaurants. Afterwards they were talking about their experience wrapped in their own story.

For this campaign we activated 26 influencers – from celebrity to mommy blogger – who published 22 sponsored blog posts and 94 social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+ including 7 videos.

Reach was exceeding 20 million producing beyond 100,000 quality engagements.

What made this campaign effective were the following ingredients: micro-influencers experiencing the service, blog/video content, plus cross-channel social shares, plus paid amplification of influencer content.

#31. Dorit Roest – TIM | The Influencers Movement

Personally, I believe in the power of creative freedom. An influencer has withstood the test of finding out what resonates with their social media followers.

Therefore, when collaborating with an influencer you should trust that they know what they’re doing.

As a brand you should share the message or feeling you wish to get across to your target audience, but at the same time give the influencer enough creative freedom to translate it into content they know their audience will love.

On our platform TIM we mainly work with micro-influencers, where we have switched supply and demand around.

Normally a brand would approach influencers they find fit their brand (story), whereafter they come to an agreement to collaborate.

However, at TIM we believe influencer marketing works under the condition of true authenticity and enthusiasm.

Hence, this is the reason we switched things up a little, resulting in influencers from our network pitching on campaigns they feel connected to!

A good example of this is the campaign one of our partners We Are First – Dutch agency specialized in influencer marketing – did through our platform.

They asked our community the following question:

“We live in busy times. Many people love to take a moment for themselves by enjoying one of our tea blends. Are you one of those Pickwick fans? And do you know a nice authentic way to share a typical moment like this? Let us know by pitching on this campaign.”

This campaign sparked the interest of a large part of our network, that pitched their ideas for this campaign, enough to sink a battleship.

Of these influencers, 50 were selected. They created relevant, engaging and authentic content to spread the brand story, which in turn truely adds value for the brand.

What can we take away from this? Giving influencers creative freedom, will yield the most optimal results for your brand. This way they will create the most authentic content for your brand, which resonates with their audience.

#32. Eliott Maidenberg – JIN

My favorite recent campaign was Healthy Together, by Nature Made Vitamins.

The brand ran a national study to understand Americans' health routines, and what were the hurdles that commonly prevented them from being healthy.

Then, Nature Made partnered with 6 influencers on Facebook and Instagram, all experts in their field (parenting, fitness, beauty, nutrition…), to use the survey facts as conversation starters with vitamins users while promoting Nature Made's product range.

The influencer posts were supported by an ambition paid social media plan. The Healthy Together campaign generated more than a million engagements.

It was effective because:

• the survey results added substance to the influencer posts, resulting in deeper conversations
• the combination of authentic influencer posts on social media and Facebook ads ensured both high reach and engagement
• photo posts were great at generating conversations in the comments section while videos captivated audiences with best practices from trusted voices.

#33. Emily Overholt – Sideqik

Since Coke ESports worked with nearly 100 influencers over the course of the year, it was incredibly important that they track the results of their gifts and see which influencers proved to be true friends of the brand.

In order to know which influencers to continue working with, they needed an easy way to track who was providing the most value over time

Coke sends a pipeline of swag to influencers who are passionate about Coca-Cola products. Since these “surprise and delight” gifts are sent with no contract, there is no obligation to post.

However, when influencers do post, especially when it yields high engagements, they are rewarded with more Coke rewards.

Coke used Sideqik to track the results of their delivered gifts and move influencers up the scale ultimately netting them huge returns.

Sideqik helped identify what influencers were true friends of Coke, with the activation gaining nearly 1 million impressions.

#34. Erkki – Moju

I think Paco Rabanne really hit the ground running with influencer marketing campaigns in 2017.

They picked the right influencers and crafted a message that spoke to their audience.

Brilliantly classy!

This resulted in a 42678% Growth in their Instagram Followers in 2017.

#35. Ertan Anadol – Tanke Agency

For me the best campaigns are those that not only deliver against set KPIs, but that also generate engagement and excitement with the target audience – making them ask for more.

Creativity plays a big role in this. When combining a good idea with a program instead of a one off campaign brands can create meaningful campaigns with coherence, authenticity and thus a storytelling going beyond simple product placement.

The Team at Tanke did just that when Gucci challenged us to work on the launches of their Perfumes.

After analyzing the brands context including the specific art direction of Gucci, the proposed strategy was to target artists communities.

The idea was not only to reach them but actually make them participate by identifying artists on Instagram and ask them to create an interpretation of the perfumes brand universe through their artwork.

Convincing a luxury brand to have someone else create brand content for them and post it on social media was obviously also a big challenge…

The selected micro influencers created artistic content in a multitude of formats ranging from photos, collages to cinemagraphs, stop motion animations and videos.

The program started in 2018 and is still running in 2019 as for each perfume launch a distinct crew of artists is identified to create content.

Over 200 content pieces have been created already some of which are also used by the brand on their social channels.

A great indicator for the campaign's success besides the great engagement rates and the creativity of each content piece is that for each launch the audience is now waiting for the new wave of creations to be published.

The campaign has won 3 prices already in different awards in France.

A video case study of the campaigns first 3 waves can be found here –> Gucci Influencer Program case study by Tanke

#36. Esme Rice – The Goat Agency

One of my favorite campaigns featuring influencers was our Simba mattress campaign.

Whilst mattresses aren't the most engaging product for promotion, we drove our own creative twist and thought outside of the box to deliver more engaging content.

This involved a group of close-knit parkour influencers who demonstrated the comfort and reliability of the mattresses… by throwing themselves off of rooftops with just the mattress to land on. Check out one of the videos here.

This campaign drove a huge sentiment change and allowed Simba to stand out in a saturated market. The point was to stand out from competitors, hit the right target market and drive clicks.

With over 12,000 clicks recorded to the purchasing site from influencer content, taking another approach to marketing allowed Simba to see real business results from social content.

#37. Evan Asano – Mediakix

The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land is the official mobile game of AMC’s hit TV series and cult phenomenon, The Walking Dead, from the leading mobile game developer, Next Games.

The overall objectives were to drive awareness with target audiences, increase positive social sentiment and drive installs of the game from U.S. and global audiences.

Next Games aimed to develop an influencer marketing strategy and creative for the game to promote their mobile gaming app to a primary target audience.

In partnership with the leading influencer marketing agency Mediakix, Next Games conceived, strategized, and executed an original campaign with creative content and themes tied to the game and storyline starring top YouTubers including Lele Pons, Anwar Jibawi, and Rudy Mancuso.

The YouTubers published their content on June 14th and 20th of 2017.

Mediakix worked with each YouTube channel to script and produce creative video content that tied the game’s storyline and themes into the individual videos.

The videos included comedic skits and skills/tools needed to survive and fend off imminent zombie attacks and organically showcased feature gameplay, highlight missions, and unlocking special characters from the hit TV series.

To capitalize on the record-breaking cable TV show’s buzz and zombie culture popularity, the team at Mediakix crafted a viral campaign with top YouTubers that tapped into audiences beyond just gaming enthusiasts to strategically reach Next Games’ target demographics.

To achieve global reach and drive as many downloads as possible, the team identified a selection of consistently high-performing YouTubers across a myriad of video categories.

Mediakix analyzed trends, formats, and engagement levels of their most popular types of content to help determine and craft creative content styles and angles for the campaign videos that would drive the highest reach and engagement for the campaign.

Mediakix worked with each YouTube influencer to ensure each piece of sponsored content would naturally integrate the game, characters, and storylines while also showcasing actual mobile gameplay footage to meet Next Games’ KPIs and objectives.

The team orchestrated three sponsored YouTube videos and social amplification across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter serving to organically create a strategic and methodical “blitz” of highly engaging Walking Dead and zombie apocalypse-related media served to global audiences.

Within hours, Next Games’ mobile game marketing campaign became a worldwide trending event.

The campaign successfully ran with exceptional, high production value content that included professional level visual and make-up effects and creative storylines to bring the experience of playing the Walking Dead mobile game to life.

The YouTubers published their videos on their owned channels. There was no boosting or paid media to help support or further distribute the videos. All of the views were organic and drove authentic engagement and app installs.

Two of these videos ranked in the top 10 of YouTube’s global trending leaderboard. This is a rare and remarkable achievement for sponsored video content on YouTube.

Next Games’ The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land marketing campaign achieved exceptional results. The campaign achieved over 23 million organic video views across YouTube.

The total social media reach (total followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) was over 46 million.

Additionally, there were nearly 10 million organic video views on Instagram at an 8% engagement rate (7% overall across social media).

As a result, several of Next Games’ influencer videos received viral traction on YouTube’s global Trending leaderboard including Rudy Mancuso’s “The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land by Rudy Mancuso & Anwar Jibawi” (#2 trending in June) and Anwar Jibawi’s “The Walking Dead: No Man's Land by Anwar Jibawi & Lele Pons” (#8 trending in July).

The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land is the official mobile game of AMC’s hit TV series and cult phenomenon, The Walking Dead, from the leading mobile game developer, Next Games.

The overall objectives were to drive awareness with target audiences, increase positive social sentiment and drive installs of the game from U.S. and global audiences.

Next Games aimed to develop an influencer marketing strategy and creative for the game to promote their mobile gaming app to a primary target audience.

In partnership with the leading influencer marketing agency Mediakix, Next Games concepted, strategized, and executed an original campaign with creative content and themes tied to the game and storyline starring top YouTubers including Lele Pons, Anwar Jibawi, and Rudy Mancuso. The YouTubers published their content on June 14th and 20th of 2017.

Mediakix worked with each YouTuber to script and produce creative video content that tied the game’s storyline and themes into the individual videos. The videos included comedic skits and skills/tools needed to survive and fend off imminent zombie attacks and organically showcased feature gameplay, highlight missions, and unlocking special characters from the hit TV series.

To capitalize on the record-breaking cable TV show’s buzz and zombie culture popularity, the team at Mediakix crafted a viral campaign with top YouTubers that tapped into audiences beyond just gaming enthusiasts to strategically reach Next Games’ target demographics.

To achieve global reach and drive as many downloads as possible, the team identified a selection of consistently high-performing YouTubers across a myriad of video categories.

Mediakix analyzed trends, formats, and engagement levels of their most popular types of content to help determine and craft creative content styles and angles for the campaign videos that would drive the highest reach and engagement for the campaign.

Mediakix worked with each YouTube influencer to ensure each piece of sponsored content would naturally integrate the game, characters, and storylines while also showcasing actual mobile game play footage to meet Next Games’ KPIs and objectives.

The team orchestrated three sponsored YouTube videos and social amplification across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter serving to organically create a strategic and methodical “blitz” of highly-engaging Walking Dead and zombie apocalypse-related media served to global audiences.

Within hours, Next Games’ mobile game marketing campaign became a worldwide trending event.

The campaign successfully ran with exceptional, high production value content that included professional level visual and make up effects and creative storylines to bring the experience of playing the Walking Dead mobile game to life. The YouTubers published their videos on their owned channels.

There was no boosting or paid media to help support or further distribute the videos. All of the views were organic and drove authentic engagement and app installs.

Two of these videos ranked in the top 10 of YouTube’s global trending leaderboard. This is a rare and remarkable achievement for sponsored video content on YouTube.

#38. Evangeline Leong – Kobe Global Technologies

In Singapore, I have seen many good influencer marketing campaigns and in particular, I would like to share this marketing campaign by Circles life – #3dollarballer.

This campaign happened in early 2018. It had attracted many media attention and online buzzes.

The objective of this marketing campaign was to build awareness for their new plan that offers their customers unlimited data with a tag of low price as compared to the other teleco.

However, there were 3 challenges that the team needed to address:

1. Circles Life is the new telco player in the industry with 3 strong existing telco brands.
2. Broadcasting marketing messages to as many audiences as possible.
3. High ad evasion and skepticism amongst the target audience.

To overcome the challenges, the content strategy would need to revolve around these few elements:
1. Authenticity
2. Relatability and Relevancy
3. Curiosity

To create a hype campaign that was able to attract attention as well as conveying the message of value, this campaign was about the idea of #cashvendingmachine and #3dollarballer.

By inserting $3 into a “vending machine,” the participant would be getting back $50 in return.

Focusing on authenticity and to create a conversation around it, micro-influencers were chosen instead of the bigger ones. To create authentic content, the influencers themselves must be excited about the campaign.

And to achieve this authenticity, tertiary student influencers were specifically selected for this campaign. From the student point of view, they would be the one getting the most value and would share the $50 excitedly with their friends.

It was also made intentionally that they waved their $50 to create the excitement so tertiary students would be attracted by it.

To spark curiosity and ensure conversation continuity, the element of secrecy was used. The brand behind this campaign would not be disclosed until 3 days later to encourage conversation among the crowd.

This would make people think, guess and ask their friends and families for more information. In addition, on the other hand, there would also be many media covering this event, and it was intentionally made this way for them to make guesses on the brand behind this campaign.

This would encourage them to further promote this campaign.

Various media platforms such as the Straits Times, Today, and Channel News Asia also covered the campaign extensively. Eventually, even the authorities had to step in to manage the crowd.

This is one of the best examples as to how small word-of-mouth from influencers can make a huge impact and generate a lot of publicity for a campaign.

Because of the secrecy and curiosity factors, more than 50 earned media were garnered based on the hype created.

Before this campaign, the public is not familiar with the brand. Now, Circles.Life is part of the consideration funnel when deciding on which telco provider to go for.

The conversation of Circles.Life has since shifted to, “Who are they?” to “Which plan is better?” or “How is the coverage?” The volume of enquiries has significantly increased since before the campaign.

The snowballing effect of word of mouth had resulted in this campaign is one of the best marketing campaigns I know to date.

#39. Firdaus Helmy – SushiVid

In Malaysia, definitely McDonald's. They have effectively use influencer marketing together with other marketing initiatives. They managed to remarket old and new products and got phenomenal success.

1. The #3bitechallenge

Those who record themselves finishing a McChicken in three bites get to earn another McChicken for free.

Besides the usual social media, radio, television advertising, they utilize popular social media influencers and celebrities to help amplify their other advertising effort and get people to join in the trend.

I have not eaten McDonald's for a year. I keep seeing social media influencers Instagram posts and Facebook live and decided to try it myself with work colleagues.

2. Ayam Goreng McD (McDonald's fried chicken)

Promoted the product with ASMR advertisement + getting social media influencers to show them eating the product all over social media.

Marketing and influencer tactics are still the same but in larger scale. The reception was so good they dried up chicken supply for the whole country, and the product was always sold out in the initial stage of the campaign.

This is an old product revitalized by a great marketing campaign supported with social media influencers. They recently won awards for this campaign. Crazy huh.

Why it was so effective? They utilized a growing internet trend, advertise as usual, and utilize social media influencers as support to get people who are already bombarded with the advertisement to cave in. I was one of those people.

These are two of their many campaigns this year, but this two stands out the most.

#40. Genevieve Maslin – Hello Social

The best campaigns for influencer marketing are those that achieve or exceed their initial objectives.

Selecting talent who create well aligned and high quality brand content is imperative, but it is also essential to run background checks on their audiences to ensure the campaign message is reaching your target demographic.

Influencer marketing campaigns all have different objectives based on the product or brand they are promoting; the best campaigns are those that reach their targets and add value to the business.

Campaigns that push influencers to create content that doesn’t align well with their existing style, generally doesn’t perform well and generate an optimum response from their target audience.

So, selecting the right influencers for your campaign, researching their target audience and coming up with a realistic and engaging creative brief are all factors that contribute to making the most and generating the best results out of your influencer marketing campaign.

#41. Georgina Castellucci – Mavrck

Reebok's recent #AlterTheIcons campaign has been one of the most powerful of the year.

Not only did they activate an impossibly stylish selection of influencers, they asked them to share how they have altered their path to success.

The resulting creative and stories were remarkable.

From young mothers regaling how their own childhood has propelled them to new heights for their own sons and daughters, to the everyday struggles of musicians and dancers, students overcoming stereotypes, young professionals battling health problems – Reebok is running one of the most DIVERSE campaigns of the moment.

Everyone can relate with these young influencers and therefore connect with the brand and their new take on an ultimate classic.

#42. Georgina Rutherford – IMA

I think the most important influencer marketing campaigns are those that leverage the voices of influential individuals for the better.

Such as UNICEF’s #ENDviolence campaign for #SaferInternetDay this year.

Safer Internet Day has been around for a while but there needed to be more done than just talking about the harm that the internet can cause.

The campaign saw UNICEF partner with influencers who come face to face with cyberbullies every day.

It started with a video of a powerful spoken word poem by influencer ClickforTaz to kick off the conversation.

Then influencers around the world who have truly been subject to cyberbulling shared their stories in their own format – whether that be Instagram stories or a written post – to actually make a difference.

It also called for followers to to take action and turn dislikes into likes, and hate comments into words of encouragement.

Thought provoking content invited input from the public, turning each post into an opportunity for meaningful dialogue.

#43. Gil Eyal – HYPR

My absolute favorite campaign is the Care France “Stories from the other side of the world.”

In this campaign, they filmed the lives of seven different women in third world countries and then invited people to contribute their Instagram channels to share the content.

The campaign garnered millions of views and a tremendous image boost for the campaign and the cause.

#44. Mike – Glambassador

DazzlePro teeth whitening. It was everywhere (popular social media influencers) in a short period of time.

#45. Gokhan Celiker – Fango

Best one by far is Nusr-Et Steakhouse's ongoing influencer marketing campaign.

It started as the founder, Nusret Gokce, turned himself into an influencer by combining his masterful butchery skills and creativity of their agency, becoming the Salt Bae.

Then he started taking roles in shows and hosting celebrities for promos. It ushered an era of Turkish food influencers dominating social media.

#46. Guy Avigdor – Klear

Influencer marketing in 2018 should be and is in fact already being viewed by many top brands around the world as a brand's influencer program rather than just a single campaign.

This means a realization of the long term effort and commitment required by the brand to build an army of advocates that experiences the brand and has a strong connection to the brand in a meaningful way which in turn produces authentic exposure that is invaluable.

Huawei (the the 3rd seller of smartphones after Samsung and Apple) is probably one of the best examples that comes to mind in that respect.

Walter Jennings has managed to build one of the most impressive KOL programs today, carefully choosing the most relevant influencers in each target category across various countries around the world, and focusing on building relationships and brand experiences in a very meaningful way, bringing tremendous success.

#47. Hayim Makabee – KashKlik

I really liked Coca-Cola’s #ThisOnesFor Instagram campaign in Western Europe. It used 14 Instagram influencers that generated 22 social media posts with average engagement rate of almost 8%.

This was a good example of a campaign using multiple influencers simultaneously.

It also used a special combination of macro and micro influencers. I believe that this kind of campaign with many influencers in parallel is more likely to become viral, motivating the influencers' followers to use the campaign's hashtags in their own social media posts.

If the campaign's goal is to create a buzz, a short-term deal with multiple influencers is certainly more effective than a long-term relationship with brand ambassadors.

I believe that in the future we will see more such campaigns using many influencers in parallel to create a viral effect.

And I also expect to see more campaigns using a big number of micro influencers instead of a small number of macro influencers.

But, for this to happen, the agencies will need new tools to provide them automation and scalability, enabling them to work effectively with this large quantity of influencers.

This is exactly the goal of KashKlik, a platform created to support campaigns being promoted by hundreds of influencers simultaneously.

And, by enabling the agencies to work with many micro influencers, we will finally enable these micro influencers to monetize their target audience.

#48. Influencialia – Influencialia

This campaign in which we collaborate for the antivirus company Karpersky is one of the best brand integrations in a YouTube video.

Through different situations that can happen when surfing the Internet, the aim is to make users aware of the dangers of surfing the Internet without adequate protection.

Throughout the video, Karperky is presented as a hero who helps the protagonist to get rid of the malwares that are causing him problems.

#49. Jack Holt – Mattr

All our shopper campaigns are challenging but a couple have stood out this year.

We ran two very successful shopper campaigns for a major publisher this year and, like all shopper campaigns, they were nail-biters during the workup.

Shopper campaigns involve a regional retailer, the brand, shopper agency (usually), and the enterprise. So you could have a lot of people involved.

Luckily, the shopper agency for these campaigns assigns just one person to approve the influencers and their content. Strong learning point.

What's hard about them?

First, you have to look at the influencers and their audiences and ensure they’re local to the retailer.

Then, of course, you need to ensure their audiences fit the personas of both the brand and the retailer.

But when you get it right, as we did in these campaigns, it’s magic. Conversion links to download coupons hover at 3-5%, which is huge.

#50. James Waddington – Vizified

Ebay Inc partnered with Vizified and our influencer Carhoots with the goal of increasing brand awareness and followers of the eBay brand.

Through a combination of exclusive content creation on the newly launched ‘Ebay Guides' platform, launching a dedicated Ebay board and sharing content on Pinterest, a successful 1-year campaign saw an increase in signups, site visits, awareness and engagement.

• 13 Million Impressions
• Triplied eBay Pinterest Referral Traffic
• 255% Follower Increase
• 150,000 Saves, likes and Comments
• 120,000 site visits

#51. Jamie Reardon – Find Your Influence

One of our favorite influencer campaigns was Zappos Couture’s holiday fashion push with Lauren Conrad.

Zappos Couture (rebranded to Zappos Luxury) made the decision to feature a celebrity fashion blogger — someone who could make a big impact with one post. Conrad’s blog frequently featured the type of clothing found at Zappos Couture and represented the brand and the brand’s target audience beautifully.

Within the content, Lauren Conrad highlighted ten fashion picks and linked back to their Luxe Report — a section of the site featuring a curated experience and fashion recommendations.

Lauren Conrad’s celebrity presence and fashion-forward fanbase made this a powerful campaign.

“For me personally, the biggest success story comes from Sarah Jessica Parker being so excited about her SJP Collection being featured in the blog post that she sent a note to Lauren personally; it doesn’t get any cooler than that”, stated Zappos Couture Social.

What better way to top off a campaign than with a bit of celebrity buzz?

#52. Jenna Aston – TAMBA

I would say that the best influencer marketing campaign I’ve worked on, to date, has to be the one TAMBA did for StriVectin – a global skincare brand, specialising in providing clinical anti-aging skincare solutions to men and women worldwide.

They wanted to undertake an influencer marketing campaign to launch their new-to-the UK skincare product in a bid to drive greater awareness, engagement and sales, build a positive reputation and establish a level of trust for their brand and products within the UK market.

I believe the reason it was so effective was down to the caliber of influencers TAMBA sourced for the campaign.

They were not only trustworthy and reliable, they were also loyal to the StriVectin brand.

They believed in the products they were testing just as much as StriVectin themselves did.

And that came across in their posts which ultimately helped to engage their followers and essentially “influence” the choices their social media followers made in regards to purchasing skin care products.

They built up a trusted brand name for StriVectin through their posts on social media channels and that in turn helped the target audience to identify them as a reputable brand name that they could believe in.

The campaign was so effective, to a point where TAMBA managed to get the client over 25,000 unique impressions, engagement and interactions across the campaign posts and videos on social media and one influencer in particular reached nearly 4,000 likes on their social media post in just one day.

The results they saw far surpassed and exceeded the expectations of the client! The client was so impressed with the influencer marketing campaign that they’ve since come back and we’re now working on our 3rd project with them!

So why was the campaign so effective you ask? Because not only did our client reap the rewards (and the sales!), TAMBA did too!

#53. Jennifer Li Chiang – MuseFind

The Children's Place back to school campaign is one of the best ones we're witnessing right now.

We have the honor of working with this team and have watched them transform the brand to appeal to digitally savvy moms and families.

Their back to school campaign certainly does not shy from showing that a retail legacy brand can be just powerful digitally.

Some of the best campaigns we've seen aren't even really campaigns. Influencer marketing campaigns are just one way of working with influencers.

aden + anais has an ongoing and evergreen relationship with influencers on a weekly basis; growing with the families.

#54. Jens Wirdenius – Veloce Network

It’s no secret that influencer marketing is tremendously effective.

But what I’ve found (which isn’t very surprising, really) is that the most successful influencer marketing campaigns that drive the best results aren’t the campaigns that follow the traditional influencer campaign formula.

This means identifying a suitable influencer, reaching out to them, paying them or giving them something to promote your brand, have them share a post on one of their social media platforms, and then the campaign is over.

While these campaigns do work tremendously effective when executed properly, the influencer marketing campaigns I’ve found to be the most successful have been the campaigns that activate the target audience of the influencer and use the target audience of the influencer as amplification for the campaign.

There are several reasons why this strategy creates the most successful influencer campaigns:

First off, rather than running influencer campaigns where the whole campaign is centered around a sponsored post from an influencer, the more successful influencer marketing campaigns I’ve seen are the ones that instead create a marketing campaign,and then make the influencer campaign a part of a bigger objective.

Doing this extends the life of the influencer campaign significantly, and most importantly, it gets people involved, and makes them part of the campaign, as opposed to being bystanders.

Not only does this lead to reaching more people with the help of the influencer campaign, but it also leads to a greater customer engagement, which ultimately helps the brand build customer relationships through the influencer.

That’s smart if you ask me.

The two most common ways that brands create influencer campaigns that activate the influencers’ audience are, from what I have observed giveaways/contests, and UGC campaigns.

There are many great examples of brands that have created giveaways and UGC campaigns and then leveraged influencer marketing campaigns to help give the campaigns traction.

What this has ultimately resulted in is them seeing better marketing results with the influencer than a regular campaign would have generated.

I won’t go into a specific campaign, but more so focus on this interesting concept and approach.

Both of these campaign types have a life duration that stretches far longer than just a regular influencer post.

Normally, UGC campaigns and giveaways last at least a week, and what this means is that the brands continue to benefit from the audience of the influencer who are activated for as long as the campaign is active, not just until the post of the influencer gets pushed farther down their feed.

The reason why you’ll see more success with your influencer campaign when using these strategies is that you incentivize them with something of real value because a giveaway wants the prize and the ”winner” of the UGC campaign wants a reward.”

When you get the influencer to share a regular post, they only provide value that isn’t concrete in the form of information, inspiration, entertainment, etc.

But when you partner influencers to have them share a post about a giveaway/contest, compared to a regular post, they incentivise people with something of real, concrete value, and this is something that humans are drawn towards for obvious reasons.

#55. Joe Anderson – MightyScout

Time and time again I find that Daniel Wellington is creating some of the most effective influencer marketing campaigns.

A lot of their success has to do with good product (beautiful watches, pricing/margins, and quality) along with leveraging a new distribution channel (early chronological feed Instagram before influencer marketing was a thing), coupon tracking, and their willingness to constantly experiment with a variety of influencers around the globe.

When I look through the influencers discovered on our platform that have mentioned Daniel Wellington, it always amazes me how far reaching the company’s efforts are.

They work with the smallest bloggers with only a few hundred subscribers in Tokyo, to local influencers for physical store launches in the UK.

I think one thing rising brands underestimate and can learn from them is the sheer amount of UGC that can be used for their own social channels, website, and print.

One quick look at the Daniel Wellington Instagram feed and you can see the strategies they layer on top of their ongoing influencer marketing efforts that allow them to reuse content produced by their influencers, community, and customers everyday.

#56. Joe Sinkwitz – Intellifluence

One of the best influencer campaigns I've seen in the last couple months is what I've seen from the GhostBed.com team.

Normally one might think a seller of $1000+ merchandise might struggle to use influencers appropriately, but they've been smart.

Instead of trying to go for high end influencers to review expensive products, they've taken a path of engaging medium sized influencers with their category entry products (pillows to be specific), and if you'll pardon the pun, have been blanketing social networks with these reviews.

I love it for a several reasons:

1. Digital marketing is a complex beast, but they seem to understand how to use the pillows not just as a means to sell more pillows but both for branding purposes as well as funnel entry purposes.

The mattress space is hyper-competitive, so filling sales funnels with probable mattress buyers is of the utmost importance.

2. Since similar technology exists in the pillows as does the mattresses, getting honest reviews of the pillow is essentially allowing the audiences of these influencers to grasp how the bed would also feel/look/be perceived.

3. Pillows cost a lot less than mattresses, so significantly more ground can be covered for the budget; this is key for social branding, where quantity of reviews is almost as important as quality of reviews.

#57. John Hall – Influence & Co.

The best influencer campaigns I see are a blend between influencer marketing and distributing strategically so it has a spread effect of traction.

Once they get the influencer to post something that supports their product or service then the company leverages that post wherever they can. In email lists, have friends share it out, paid distribution.

I just saw an agency that offers a service that gets their clients a post by an influencer in a publication or blog, then they get additional posts pointing to that original post to increase the likelihood of the original post showing up for valuable keywords. It resulted in very consistent leads to the company.

#58. Jolien Berkel – The Cirqle

At The Cirqle, we’ve seen many different types of influencer campaigns as we connect the most renowned brands to different types of influencers.

The campaigns are focused on content creation, raising awareness, and driving sales/conversions through our proprietary Qard technology.

Up until today, no technology existed that enabled clients to attribute influencer campaign to actual sales/conversions.

This unique technology enables brands to drive conversions on influencer content and build on-going relationships with customers through their iOS or Android wallet.

Through this feature we track customers’ purchase intent and have the ability to keep pushing offers, driving repeat-purchase behaviour as a result of one single influencer campaign.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve activated groups of influencers to post about a immersive VR experience on their Instagram channel, driving card downloads to their followers by integrating a swipe-up into the influencers post.

While sharing epic moments through the influencers Instagram Stories, they offered their social media followers the possibility of downloading a time-sensitive discount card.

The card incentivized potential customers to visit the experience with a discount by booking the VR experience using the card they downloaded into their phone.

The results included driving potential revenue in the tens of thousands of dollars while integrating the ability to trigger geo-tagged push notifications around other moments the client had planned.

Driving repeat-purchasing behavior while deploying the client messaging into the followers phones.

This is one of the ways this campaign was deployed and we see this technology, and any influencer campaigns for that matter, to be the future of influencer marketing.

Clients this way, can finally connect influencer campaigns to commerce, in our view: the full circle of an influencer program: from i) content creation to ii), distribution and iii) attribution.

#59. Jolique Möller – Influentials

I admire brands like CLUSE and Daniel Wellington who were capable of building strong independent Instagram brands.

Daniel Wellington has over 4 million social media followers on Instagram, almost 2 million #danielwellington posts on social media were created and they’ve become a strong brand.

The secret to success is to invest in top influencers who truly matches your brand.

CLUSE invested in a collaboration with Negin Mirsalehi and together they designed a limited edition CLUSE watch. Then, focus on brand ambassadors and invest in long-term relationships.

You will see that you will get the attention of many influencers who would like to collaborate. Make sure that you always go for quality over quantity. Authenticity is key for successful influencer marketing.

Don’t forget that you as a brand are an influencer too so your Instagram feed needs to be on top.

Customers love to be inspired by beautiful content and this is why it’s crucial to repost great content made by influencers.

#60. Karin Swanson – Julius

This summer, /Nyden (an H&M eCommerce fashion brand) partnered with 10 influencers, such as East Coast Fox and The Blonde Collective, to gather consumer feedback on designs for their next dress collection.

Using Instagram’s polling feature, /Nyden tapped into the crux of successful influencer marketing, a creator’s ability to inspire and organically connect with their target audience in ways a brand (generally) cannot.

This campaign, which garnered views numbering over 425,000, was successful for three primary reasons:

1) Audiences were given a specific call to action, which empowered them to feel like they were a part of the creative process.

2) It lasted only two weeks, making measurement easier to attribute.

3) The results armed /Nyden with critical consumer data, such as dress style preferences based on consumer geo-location.

A polling campaign isn't ideal for every brand. However, /Nyden was able to successfully pull off something that every brand should do – incorporate influencers into their creative process in an actionable and engaging way.

#61. Kim Leitzes – PARKLU

This article is a wonderful example of a brand that thought outside the customer relationship building box by creating their own influencer.

The jist of the article is about how one brand saw a fabulous opportunity to work with a unknown creator to document and share her epic journey from Mexico to Canada.

I believe many brands are missing a big opportunity in the age of social media.

They are not connecting with their customers by providing value first via educational and entertaining content that builds communities. Influencers are filling that gap.

This campaign worked because providing value first is deep-seated in Chinese culture and one of the foundations of guanxi.

As advertising goes digital, brands are failing to give prospective customers a virtual gift and therefore losing the chance to build relationships of mutual benefit. But influencers are.

This brand let go of how it wanted to present itself and re-strategize by connecting with real individuals to introduce their brand to their circles of influence.

#62. Kim Westwood – Shopping Links

Let me start by prefacing that at Shopping Links we would define “the best” influencer marketing campaign as the one with the highest amount of “conversion” for a brand, not necessarily the one that included the most popular influencer or most beautiful content.

That said, the most effective in terms of traffic and sales conversion would be an influencer gifting campaign we facilitated for Marks & Spencer to drive brand awareness in the USA ahead of last year’s holiday season.

In this collaboration, the sheer power of gifting influencers at scale made itself clear: the number of conversations sparked about the brand, the volume of content created, and the size of the target audience reached was staggering considering no influencers were paid to post.

Drawing on our experience of facilitating in excess of 1000 brand collaborations, gifting influencers at scale has proven to be one of the most effective Influencer Marketing strategies we have seen.

That’s because gifting product to a range of different influencers creates numerous micro-moments where a brand’s offering is showcased to a wide cross-section of audiences with ease.

Gifting at scale doesn’t just keep a brand front of mind for consumers, it also allows brands to leverage a wealth of user-generated content for a fraction of the cost of an in-house campaign.

It’s a return on investment you just wouldn’t achieve with any other marketing channel.

For a budget of less than USD $5k, Marks & Spencer were able to reach in excess of 3 million potential customers: all they had to do was strategically gift influencers with personalized products and a handwritten note.

This personal touch made all the difference in terms of results:

Marks & Spencer were able to foster meaningful relationships while receiving a huge amount of brand awareness, traffic and sales.

Facilitating personal influencer relationships that are measurable in terms of conversion, is at the heart of what we do at Shopping Links.

From our experience, when you approach influencers as valued partners, you not only create authentic conversations around your brand, but you have the ability to convert influencers into lasting advocates and long term brand ambassadors.

It’s these lasting relationships that ultimately drive the highest ROI and prove to be the most effective – and yet often most overlooked – aspect of a successful influencer strategy.

#63. Kirk Crenshaw – Traackr

One of the best I have seen is not so much focused on a specific campaign – it is a company mentality:

“We never talk to someone just once. We crave something more meaningful. A connection; an ongoing relationship. We hold this view whether it’s someone buying our gin or someone who creates content about us.”

– Shelley Macintyre, Global and UK Marketing Director at Sipsmith

More here.

#64. Lara Daniel – Pulse Advertising

This is a hard question to answer; there are many ways to determine what makes the best influencer marketing campaign.

Although data and numbers are important, it doesn’t always mean that it has left an impression on people – and this is part of what makes an effective campaign.

Campaign goals and objectives are important, but influencer marketing has evolved enormously in the past couple of years and is no longer about merely placing a product in a picture.

It has grown into a form of authentic communication and trusting relationships between the influencer and their target audience. The best campaigns connect and get a reaction from the audience so that it peaks their interest and moves them.

One of the most effective influencer marketing campaign we have worked on did just this – it moved the audience and exceeded the brand’s initial goals and expectations.

The Telekom K2 campaign created a sense of community, which ultimately peaked the audience interest for the campaign.

The K2 campaign promoted a then unknown musician named ELI through the support of multiple German influencers.

This campaign raised awareness for ELI by influencers telling their audience about his songs, and tagging him on their social media accounts.

Towards the end of the campaign, the influencers promoted his live show in Cologne where they invited their audience to tune into the live stream of his concert.

The end goal of this campaign was to gain attention of ELI and grow his fanbase.

ELI ended up gaining more than 20,000 followers on his Instagram and had upwards of 30,000 people stream his live concert.

Through the data alone, this campaign is incredible.

Not to mention, ELI was No.1 on the German Top 50 on Spotify. However what really makes this the best influencer campaign is the meaning behind it.

Telekom prides itself on connecting people and being sure to include everyone. It is important for them that everyone can be seen through Telekom and have their own voice.

The campaign was so effective because ELI did not exclude one person. He wanted everyone to be included in his music no matter what.

The live stream of his concert proved that he cares about his fans and values the art of music. The K2 campaign was deeply personal and portrayed that it cared about creating a strong relationship with the target audience.

Telekom K2 campaign is one of the best influencer marketing campaign I have recently seen – it created relationships, connected with the audience, performed well through numbers, and exceeded the brand’s expectations.

#65. Lassana Dioum – Ifluenz

One of the best influencer marketing campaign I have heard about is the Estee Lauder-Kendall Jenner collaboration.

Estee Lauder, the 71-years old skincare brand, created a noise by looping on Kendall Jenner, a member of the Kardashian clan who had more than 81.2 million Instagram followers.

The brand sought to appeal to a younger audience on social media platforms through the influencer campaign, which required Jenner to showcase her Estee Lauder products on her social media profile.

The social media marketing campaign performed remarkably well by not only increasing the reach of the brand but also garnering trust of consumers on various social media platforms.

After the brand and the celebrity shared an identical photo, the brand’s social media profile picture got more than one thousand likes, and Jenner, about 1.2 million!

The brand has ran a number of influencer campaigns using a range of influencers from the mega-influencers like Kendall Jenner to comparatively smaller players like vlogger Chrizelle Lategan and Irene Kim.

Ester Lauder ensures authenticity which is key by handing over complete creative control to its influencers to review their products and generate high quality content across both images and videos.

#66. Lea Benichou – Influence4You & Influence4Brands

I work for Influence4You, an European leading company in Influence Marketing, where we provide 2 types of services:

The Agency for the big operations with the big influencers that we manage for the brands from A to Z.

The Platform (Influence4Brands.com) that we have created to allow brands to manage their collaborations very easily.

On the platform, one of the best marketing campaigns was made with Deejo, the custom made knife company. We got more than 300 social media posts in various countries!

With an average brief fulfillment of 99,5%, the social media posts were very qualitative and have reached more than 6.3 M social media followers, with more than 216 K likes and an average engagement rate of 4%.

The influencers were not even paid, they received a product in exchange for their post.

By using the platform the brand has greatly increased its visibility while saving lots of money and energy.

Our company has recently raised 2 M € to accelerate the international deployment and technological development of the platform, Influence4Brands.com, to become The European leader in Influence Marketing by 2021.

You can find some business cases and studies here and here.

#67. Magdalena Urbaniak – Brand24

One of the best performing influencer marketing strategies I have seen took the place here in Poland.

One of the fashion blogger mentioned in her post one of the not-that-popular perfumes.

That kind that everyone knows but it's not a hot trend at all.

One day after this publication I found a post on Facebook where one of the women described a situation in a shop, where all of these perfumes were sold and two girls were fighting for the very last perfume bottle.

It was clearly the effect of this blogger's post and shows how influencer marketing via recommendation can work on social media.

In that marketing campaign, the goal was to sell the product and the goal was 100% accomplished (along with building the brand awareness – super nice side-effect).

#68. Manny Medina – Outreach

We created something called the Nucleo Awards, which celebrates exceptional customers for their ability to drive success at their organizations through their outstanding use of Outreach.

The awards not only recognize the central role our customers play in everything we do at Outreach, but they help rally a fervent group for sales and marketing influencers to talk about our brand in a positive way and detail how our platform helped them succeed.

It's a great way to encourage well-known and respected professionals to promote our sales engagement platform, our brand, and our mission (while helping them build their personal brands too).

To amplify the Nucleos impact, we held an awards ceremony at our annual conference, Unleash, and even created an eBook detailing the ways our award winners use Outreach to achieve sales excellence.

It was a great experience for everyone involved.

#69. Mark Zablow – Cogent Entertainment Marketing

Beats by Dre set the bar of what “Influencers” at all levels can do to disrupt a category when executed at scale and with leverage – led by true influencers in Jimmy Iovine, Dr. Dre, and the entire Interscope machine.

#70. Marta Buryan – Socialbakers

My #1 influencer marketing campaign is the one developed by the hair care brand, Coco & Eve.
The company created a large-scale campaign involving multiple influencers who created short videos showing the before-and-after of using Coco & Eve's flagship product – a coconut and fig hair masque.

What's especially great about this campaign is the way Coco & Eve highlighted the multi-purposeness of their product.

By involving influencers with different hair types – curly, thin, dyed, long, fake, you name it – the company was able to show that their masque is the right fit for anyone, and will work wonders for all sorts of hair.

Sure enough, this kind of message is perfect for boosting your sales.

Another cool tactic employed by Coco & Eve is unifying the visual style of their influencer campaign.

Even though the campaign content was created by multiple influencers, all posts on social media feature Coco & Eve's brand colors, which helps to instantly recognize the brand.

This smart trick is something any company working with numerous influencers can benefit from.

#71. Matija Martek – Mediatoolkit

I see great learning value in two influencer endorsed campaigns which turned out vastly differently.

The first one is The Ice Bucket Challenge. A viral campaign which served two purposes, raising ALS awareness and raising funds.

Both of those proved great, with an overwhelming internet presence of the campaign endorsed by influencers, micro-influencers and celebrities alike and raised more than $115 million.

The goal was praise-worthy, influencers and other participants actively engaged and the results turned out to be fantastic.

The second campaign is the exact opposite, showing us what influencer marketing shouldn't be.

Fyre Festival wasn't a failure of influencer marketing – influencers managed to bring the visitors to the festival.

The failure was towards the community those influencers gathered around themselves, and the lies they fed their community backfired.

While it's a bit unfair to compare voluntary cause with a commercial one, same rules should apply to both.

Influencers should exclusively promote content they can stand behind. Otherwise, it's not influencer marketing, and they're not influencers, but more like a jukebox. Insert coin, and and they'll play the song you want.

#72. Michael Quoc – ZipfWorks

I think a particularly great example is Tom’s of Maine, an eco-friendly toiletry company.

They reached over 4.4 million people within the first three months by using micro-influencers.

The Tom’s campaign focused on Instagram influencers with 1,000-5,000 social media followers with a strong interest in earth-friendly products, and had them post user generated content.

I believe it was so effective because of their choice to focus on micro-influencers, who resonate much more deeply with their audience, given their high engagement and niche expertise.

According to HelloSociety, micro-influencers drive 60 percent higher engagement rates, are more cost effective, and drive 22.2 times more weekly conversations than average consumers.

#73. Michelle Jun – BrandBacker

BrandBacker helps brands engage with over 30,000 influencers to create original sponsored content.

While we have worked with brands on hundreds of influencer marketing campaigns, one of the best campaigns we've helped with was when we paired up with Evian Facial Spray to launch a campaign called “Mark the Hottest Spot in your City.”

We asked influencers to show off “how they stay cool” with Evian Facial Spray in the most iconic spots of their city.

This campaign was effective because it blended a playful theme that allowed for unlimited creativity and yet still had enough constraints so that the campaign felt cohesive.

The campaign resulted in working with 50 micro-influencers from all over the states and reaching over 4M people. The hashtag we encouraged influencers to use was #EvianHotSpot.

#74. Mike Schmidt – Dovetale

The best influencer campaigns I’ve seen combine a balanced mix of voice, uniqueness, virality and authenticity.

My favorite influencer campaign of all time was the original deal between Michael Jordan and Nike.

In February of 1984 Nike had reported huge losses and they were still pursuing Jordan as a potential sponsor.

The contract was for ~$500,000 per year for 5 years which shattered the previous record for the highest paid sports ambassadorship (James Worthy with New Balance).

Funny enough when the first pair of Air Jordans were released in 84’, they were banned by the NBA because of dress code issues.

That one deal brought Nike back from near bankruptcy to the multi-billion dollar goliath it is today.

The uniqueness and pure authenticity of Jordan pairing with Nike is the premise of modern day influencer marketing.

Today, brands are fighting for attention through these same methods like Outdoor Voices' promotion with CGI influencers.

#75. Mikyron Padayachee – Webfluential

The best campaign I have participated in was the Absolut Elyx influencer campaign we ran at the beginning of the year.

The objective of the campaign was to drive traffic and awareness to the South African Elyx Boutique, Absolut Elyx’s online store for South Africa.

We used 11 Instagram influencers, who had had to post 2 images. We used influencers who create content that is creative and “arty.” We wanted influencers to create content that was aesthetically pleasing.

The influencers were briefed to create content that included the Absolut Elyx bottle as well as the copper pineapple drinking vessel, available on the Absolut Elyx online store.

Each influencer was given a unique code that gave their audience a discount on products on the online store. The influencers included a their unique code in their caption.

The campaign was a huge success.

Not only did the influencers send their audience to the Elyx Boutique and drive sales, the content that was created was of high quality and extremely beautiful.

Absolut used some of the content on their international Instagram page and website.

A relationship was developed with the influencers who were outstanding, they were used in other campaigns.

The success of the campaign was due to a few factors.

Firstly, influencers were chosen based on their content, not on their engagement rates or number of followers, like in most campaigns.

This strategy was based around everyone involved knowing 2 things: the objectives and boundaries of the campaign. Everything else was creative space.

Secondly, the influencers LOVED the product they were selling. This passion can be seen in their final content.

Finally, the influencers we used were conscientious and hard working. Deadlines were met and communication was professional and  to the point.

We were able to find these influencers on the Webfluential platform. Webfluential allows marketers and brands to rate influencers after they have completed a campaign.

We only used influencers who had 5/5 star ratings and great comments from other marketers and brands.

It was an Absolut pleasure being part of this campaign.

#76. Nader Alizadeh – LINQIA

The most successful influencer marketing programs are fully-optimized for performance to drive meaningful business results.

Properly aligning brand goals with the right execution strategy is the difference between an ad-hoc campaign or a program that offers significant ROI beyond the life of the organic program.

Our partnership with GOODFOODS is a great example of how brands can leverage an influencer marketing program to impact their paid media strategy.

With a goal of building a library of re-purposable content, Linqia influencers created over 2,000+ pieces of original content that generated more than 70,000 social engagements.

Linqia identified the top-performing content, which drove a 2X lift in Instagram and a 3X lift in Facebook paid social performance, as well as a 44.5% conversion rate when blog content was re-published through Nativo.

#77. Nicholas Montemaggi – iambassador

24 Hours in the UK, a large-scale content creation campaign that saw a team of ten British and international iambassador influencers travel across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and document 24 hours of their travels on video.

This resulted in 32 individual videos that were then shared on the hour, every hour over a 24-hour period on 15th January 2018.

This day is so-called “Blue Monday” because research suggests it’s one of the saddest days of the year, but this campaign aimed to turn that on its head and inspire travelers from all over the world to enjoy some of the best activities and experiences on offer in the UK.

After the 24-hour campaign, fans were asked to vote for their favorite experiences. Voting videos were released asking fans to choose between two experiences at a time.

The voting videos performed very well receiving more than 150,000 views and interactions.

In total, the campaign reached over 3 million individual social media accounts and the Facebook videos were watched by over 500,000

More information about the campaign can be found here

#78. Nick Stagge – ExpertVoice

Columbia: Tested Tough

Rather than paying, or incentivizing influencers with a massive social reach to discreetly promote their brand, Columbia tells the story of remarkable people who actually use their product (aka, their influencers).

What’s more? Columbia distributes the content themselves, rather than relying on the influencers community of followers and bots.

This unorthodox approach to influencer marketing brings authenticity and trust to the forefront; something many brands are struggling to give their consumers.

In this series of Tested Tough, Columbia brings together three women who have never met, but have a shared passion for the great outdoors.

Each woman connects with the wilderness in a unique way: sound, sight, and taste. Columbia documents their experience enduring and connecting with the Pacific Northwest coastline – pulling in the viewer.

I admire a brand bold enough to tell someone else’s story.

Sure, there’s strategic product placement throughout the five minute video, but the narrative captures the passion, adventure, and budding friendship of these three women.

In an age where brands are competing for three seconds of attention through “skip ads” and interruptive marketing, Columbia has found a way to connect with their audience in an emotionally meaningful way minutes at a time.

Well done Columbia, well done.

#79. Oddie Randa – Gushcloud

It's not the flashiest, but the one that I can't get out of my mind is Skyscanner's application of Pirate Metrics in influencer marketing.

Led by Tika Larasati, as she presented in PING Helsinki, the campaign focuses on influencer marketing from Growth Hacking perspective.

How can we work “together” with an influencer, not only to flash our products in their feed but also measure the user journey for those exposed to the content.

What's so effective about it is the way they focuses on several specific influencers and REALLY tried to understand the influencer's audience and what they want instead of what the brand owner wants.

Hence, their content is a spot-on, music-to-my-ears kinda content.

That and, of course, using pirate metrics to focus on ROI (read: revenue generation) while tracking and find the right infuencers to become their long-time Ambassador.

#80. Pete Borum – Reelio

I have to mention two for completely different reasons:

The first would be the project 20th Century Fox did with Casey Neistat for “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” in 2013 because it's the video that opened my eyes to what's possible when brands trust creators.

They reached out to Casey to see if he'd make a video that would inspire people to do something they've never done before under the theme, “live your dreams.”

Casey offered to take the entire budget to the Philippines and “spend every penny helping people in need” just 5 days after the worst typhoon in recorded history devastated the country.

With over 7 million views to date, the resulting video, titled “what would you do with $25,000?” is as impactful as it is because a) they identified an extremely talented creator and b) they gave him complete creative freedom to tell the story his way.

From a pure customer acquisition standpoint, I'd also have to mention the work Reelio is doing with thredUP, the largest online consignment and thrift store.

Full disclosure, I'm Reelio's CEO, but I honestly think we're running one of the most sophisticated influencer programs in partnership with thredUP from a digital marketing standpoint.

They are taking an extremely strategic, always-on approach with influencer content. Through sophisticated tracking, we are able to assess the value of each piece of content and the number of signups and conversions it's driving.

We are also seeing a huge halo effect from their long-term commitment to influencer content as a majority of their customers say they found out about thredUP from YouTube.

And beyond that, we are even taking their best performing organic influencer content and reusing those assets for TV commercials, significantly cutting their production budgets.

Acquisition driven marketing is definitely possible with organic influencer content and thredUP is leading the way.

#81.  Philip Agnew – Brandwatch

According to this report, influence engagement is still absolutely vital to ensure performance.

In fact, out of the campaigns we measured 20% of the most successful used an influencer:

96: Conor McGregor + Barclays, 89: Ariana Grande + AMEX, 87: Keanu Reeves + Corona, 75: GOT7 + Barclays, 68: Zlatan / Beckham + IKEA, 56: GOT7 + Adidas, 55: Louis Tomlinson + Adidas, 44: Rob Gronkowski + Tide, 34: KAI + Levi's, 26: Harry Styles + Gucci, 21: Justin Timberlake + Pepsi, 19: BTS + Unicef, 17: David Harbour + Greenpeace, 10: BTS + BBC, 7: BTS + Coca-Cola, 6: Exo + Gucci, 2: BTS + Unicef

The most successful of all, however, was Nike + Kaepernick. That generated over 8 million conversations online, more than any other campaign.

#82. Prateek Mishra – Buzzoka

Below are few of our influencer marketing case studies:

Influencer Marketing takeaways from StayUncle

Influencer Marketing Case Study : SPN – Sports and Buzzoka’s #DadaGiri to salute Saurav Ganguly

Nicotex leveraged influencers to drive home an important message

#83. Rachel David – Hashtag Communications

One my favorite campaigns my company Hashtag Communications has executed is the Google Home / BestBuy Canada launch.

Because the Google Home is such an interactive product it we knew it would naturally lend itself very well to comedic content.

It was important for us to select Instagram influencers who were talented at writing and acting in skits and to create an over arching theme for each video.

This resulted in high engagement and authentic content that helped generate a ton of awareness with over 1 million impressions.

On the other hand, one of the coolest campaigns I ever participated in personally was the TELUS free wifi in cabs promo.

They sent a cab to pick me up, my best “influencer friend” was already sitting inside, they provided a chef in the back seat of the cab and a guitarist to play my favorite songs to sing along to as everything was being filmed.

They got shots of my reactions and clips of me Instagram Story-ing my experience therefore inadvertently showing people that you can document cool experiences in the cab simply by connecting to the wife.

#84. Rebecca Xiong – TargetGrow

We were fortunate to help with a smartphone launch by a top US-based manufacturer.

There were 3 keys:

1. Segmentation: TargetGrow advised the client against “top influencers” whose audiences are large but have diffuse interests, and instead to focus on key segments matched to their new phone features: Photography, Gaming, and Fashion influencers.

2. Freshness: the usual online-only coordinated barrage of #sponsored posts on social media with not-so-subtle product plugs in Instagram photos induces sponsored-post fatigue.

Bringing influencers together in physical events across 5 cities really cut through the noise.

3. Creativity: Offline parties allowed for a much wider variety of experiences, with the venues, decor, music, food and special guests all tailored for each city.

And it added value to the influencers, bringing them and their audiences together.

Engagement metrics before, during. and after the launch far exceeded the client's expectations!

#85. Robert Levenhagen – InfluencerDB

InfluencerDB’s picks for the top three hashtag-driven campaigns for the year so far were Marvel’s #InfinityWar for the newest Avengers movie, LiketoKnow.it’s shopping alerts (#ltkunder100, #ltkunder50, #ltkstyletip and #ltksalealert), and Fashion Nova’s always-on brand-building campaign, #Novababe.

Together, these social media influencer campaigns produced over $95M in earned media value, or equivalent advertising value, so far this year.

Of these three social media campaigns, my favorite is LiketoKnow.it, where influencers used hashtags to alert their followers to potential deals on the  social media platform.

This campaign shows how influencer marketing can be used across the marketing funnel, from introducing potential customers to products and brands, to direct conversions at the decision-making stage.

LiketoKnow.it’s work with bloggers showcases how working with influencers can build a brand from the ground up, and help new entrants to go head-to-head with more established products and services.

#86. Sandra Cobo – Heepsy

Working for an influencer marketing software, I have participated and assisted in many influencer campaigns.

I have seen that the ones that perform the best with our clients are the sampling campaigns with micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers offer more credibility on average than a more popular influencer, since they have rarely been contacted by brands and their recommendations feel more like the ones of a friend.

Also, while popular influencers usually charge fees to promote your brand, micro-influencers will sometimes work in exchange of product, which benefits both the brand and the influencer.

This moves away from the traditional approach of picking a high profile influencer and paying thousands of dollars to reach their followers.

With micro-influencer campaigns, you will usually work with between 20 and 30 influencers to earn twice the engagements at a fraction of the cost.

This is easy to do with influencer marketing tools like Heepsy, which helps you find and contact large numbers of micro-influencers in a matter of minutes.

#87. Shara Khan – Influicity

The best influencer campaign I have participated in so far; was for a local bank in the US.

For a bank to use influencers was such a bold and out of the box idea; it was refreshing to work on a brand with a different concept.

The concept that made this campaign so effective was that this bank utilized a variety of “mommy bloggers” all across 7 States (where they had a presence in) with all different types of followings from 10k -100k.

We focused on engagements vs. # of followers and the type of content they produced.

We then gave these influencers creative flexibility to create content that was authentic to their brand voice. Which is so important for any successful campaign – really involve the influencers in the creative process.

Every month, influencers connected personal stories to the services available at the bank.

Some topics included: saving for college, buying a car, planning for retirement and even though themes like death insurance.

We got some amazing and touching stories that really resonated and inspired followers to check out the bank themselves!

Not only was this a very effective campaign but one that also impacted the next steps families took for them and their children's future.

#88. Sree Devi Sowndarya Kishore – Social Animal

Fashion Nova’s influencer marketing campaign was one of the most interesting campaigns that we came across.

Fashion Nova sought thousands of micro and macro influencers to build an army of #NovaBabes (That’s the hashtag popularly used by Fashion Nova’s Influencers).

The models and influencers select 10-15 items from the store and have them delivered. Most of the time there’s no monetary compensation. They just get free clothes.

The brand has thus managed to take over Instagram and grow its business to 600 employees in three short years.

Fashion Nova’s success also relies heavily on it being accessible to all and for promoting body positivity (Fashion Nova caters to all sizes and has a separate page – @Fashionnovacurve to showcase plus-size models and influencers.)

Now, this online fashion store is also backed by dedicated celebrity influencers like Amber Rose, Cardi B, Blac Chyna and Kylie Jenner.

#89. Sunil Gupta – Media Tribe

You can check this and this.

#90. Susan Moeller – BuzzSumo

At BuzzSumo, our most organized and involved influencer campaign to date was built around the launch of the 2018 Content Trends Report.

We released it during Social Media Marketing World at a luncheon we hosted with Mark Schaefer.

The luncheon was by invitation only and included many of the speakers at the conference. We presented the findings of our report and asked for input and discussion from everyone there.

The content has performed very strongly. The trends report has been widely cited–mentioned in at least 134 blog posts and articles.

It has been shared 2.4k times and has 343 backlinks. The post has also driven considerable traffic to our site.

The lunch also gave us an opportunity to connect face-to-face with many influencers, and because we held the event at a nice restaurant, we hope that they felt encouraged by the hospitality.

Because we took the lead in a discussion with industry implications, the content launch and lunch also helped position BuzzSumo as a thought leader.

#91. Teagan West – Scrunch

The best influencer campaign Scrunch has been involved in is with Youfoodz, a meal delivery service in Australia.

We've worked with Youfoodz on a number of influencer marketing campaigns and have developed a really great micro influencer strategy that is strategic and data-driven.

The best performing campaign was the recent Summer Menu Launch and it was so effective because influencers were identified and engaged based on their alignment to one of five consumer pillars so that messaging could be targeted and segmented.

Influencers also shared discount codes in their content so the ROI of the campaign could be clearly tracked and measured.

#92. Terilyn Wallker – AspireIQ

I think any time an influencer marketing campaign serves a purpose beyond just a  socail media post on Instagram or a video on YouTube, it’s a win in my book.

A great example of this is a campaign MakeUp Eraser did on Revfluence.

Makeup Eraser was launching a new product called Cello-Cup on Sephora.com and needed a huge influencer push the day of launch in order to spread awareness.

The brand reached out to moms, fitness gurus, and beauty influencers to source images and how-to videos featuring the new product on social media sites.

The Makeup Eraser team ended uploving one of the videos they sourced from an influencer so much that they actually used in on the cellu-cup landing page on Sephora.com.

The content is a lot more authentic that what the brand could have created in-house and acts as a customer review by a trusted source (resulting in the product being one of the top selling body care items in Sephora.)

Things the brand did well:

• used a diverse variety of influencers to target several markets authentically
• repurposed content on different marketing channels instead of limiting the campaign to social media posts on Instagram
• had clear marketing objectives which, in this case was to promote a product launch

#93. Terrence Ngu – StarNgage

One of the most successful campaigns we have seen lately is a product launch campaign in November 2018, for Trichoderm – a hair growth product from Hong Kong, with R&D in Japan.

Influencer mix of both macro-influencers and micro-influencers. The sales revenue generated was more than $100k in less than a month. Sold thousand of boxes of the products solely through influencer marketing.

Content mix includes Facebook Live, Instagram Videos, Instagram Stories and Blog articles.
The Live video (5000+ comments and 200k viewership). The video collage from micro-influencers.

One of the underlying reasons for the success is because of the right mix of influencers and the right social media channels for the outreach.

#94. Tina Zafiropoulos – Phlanx

When food delivery app Deliveroo launched in Australia, they used influencers from the Phlanx.com platform to invite bloggers, Instagrammers and content creators to an event in 3 cities – each event reached 3 million people, making a total launch reach of 10 million people.

This approach ensured that their launch into the food service market reached a bulk amount of people at once – a highly effective mass marketing approach!

#95. Tom Augenthaler – 551 Media, LLC

Hands down, the best program I've been a part is HP Enterprises' B2B influencer program.

I led its design and execution which included over 35 campaigns during my tenure.

Eight years running, it helps HPE penetrate markets that are sometimes dominated by competitors, generate leads, connect with customers — and make sales.

Effectiveness is determined by ROI tied to the company's internal goals rather than artificial KPIs.

Perhaps the best part is their team is committed to working with influencers who are congruent with their brand, products and strategy.

They value long term relationships with influencers and foster them whenever possible.

#96. Varun Tyagi – Qoruz

One of the recent influencer marketing campaigns that caught my attention was done by Budweiser during the pre-launch phase of the movie Deadpool 2 in India.

Budweiser collaborated with Fox Studios for the promotion of the second movie in the fan-favorite franchise.

To promote their association and create a nationwide buzz for the movie, the brand came up with the idea of an exclusive pre-release screening.

The focus was on handpicking social influencers with an organic affinity for comics, superheroes, entertainment, and Hollywood.

Instead of doing a typical celebrity screening, Budweiser instead wanted to invite real aficionados and enthusiasts both to create genuine buzz and give true fans a rewarding branded experience.

Along with screening tickets, influencers received exclusive Deadpool merchandise that further enhanced their experience!

The “invite-only” nature, clever selection of influencers, and exclusive branded merchandise spurred creative and buzzworthy content from influencers, proving that sometimes giving the right people a great experience is all you need to get your brand's message across.

More details here.

#97. Victoria Harrison – The Exposure Co.

One of the most interesting campaign trends in influencer marketing is the collaboration between brands and CGI influencers on social media.

Digital avatar Lil Miquela has over 1 million followers and has promoted a range of large fashion labels including Diesel and Prada.

There has been some negative talk around CGI influencers, particularly in the fashion and beauty industry, as some people think it could endorse heavy distortion and Photoshop of real images.

However, I think the opportunities for brands are hard to ignore.

An influencer can be defined as someone who has established credibility in a specific industry.

So I think as long as the CGI influencer has a voice, an opinion to share, and are transparent about the fact they aren’t a real human, followers can get the same value from them as they do other online influencers.

In fact, depending on the CGI influencers transparency, some people might be able to relate to them more so than they do the heavily filtered / Photoshopped images we see on social media accounts so often.

I think the trend presents a very powerful opportunity for brands, with potential for them to even craft their own virtual brand ambassador that speaks to their target audience on a personal level.

#98. Victoria Jones – The Insiders

The best campaigns for influencer marketing are the ones which give creative control to the influencer to allow them to promote the client's brand or product in a way that's most authentic, informative and entertaining for their audience.

Working with Australian brand Farmers Union Greek Yoghurt, Nagi from top food blog RecipeTin Eats produced a series of content to promote how versatile the yogurt is.

The brief from the client wasn't too prescriptive and Nagi was given full creative control to produce recipes, videos and social media content that she knew her audience would love.

This resulted in an increase in social media likes for Farmers Union and a 5% uplift in sales of the yoghurt at Woolworths.

#99.Vikas Chawla – Influencer.in

Hike – India's first home grown messaging App with a user base of 100k social media followers introduced a new feature- discover section their app.

As a part of this exercise, our team worked with Hike team as the sole partner for the initiative. Our team identified and onboarded ~1000 Influencers over a 45 day period in March 2018.

It was a highly successful platform launch leading to significantly higher engagement from the users. There was no monetary incentives to the Influencers.

#100. Vivien Garnès – Upfluence Inc.

It may not be a glitzy campaign with millions of views and Instagram models but I remember the campaign that changed my entire perception of influencer marketing.

It was 2013 and our company, Upfluence, was only a couple months old. A small business owner from Germany writes to us claiming that he can find no suitable influencers and wants our help.

So we set up a call.

This particular businessman happens to own a horse stethoscope company. The rationale is simple: horses have thicker skin than most farming mammals. As a result, regular stethoscopes don't work well.

Here's the tricky part: He's targeting veterinarians, so he is looking for blogs that are read by vets.

However, just not ANY kind of vet blogs, he wants bloggers that target veterinarians specialized in taking care of horses.

Oh, and all this, in Germany only.

At this stage of the conference call, I was sweating bullets. Our influencer identification technology was in its infancy at the time, but we took a crack at it.

…And it worked! By leveraging keyword identification and geo-location data, we managed to identify dozens of bloggers that fit his requirements.

In the end, he received the niche content he was looking for and profited from a surprising amount of conversions.

Now who says influencer marketing only works for fashion and beauty verticals?

That campaign taught us the full potential of influencer marketing when paired with tech, an invaluable lesson for marketers, even today.

#101. Zakary Stahlsmith – ApexDrop

The absolute best campaign I've been involved in was with PACT Apparel using  ApexDrop micro-influencer content with Curalate to distribute the content on social media.

This fast-growing fashion brand increased their conversion rates by 245% within a month.  The numbers were nuts just check out the full case study here.

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