Influencer marketing is used by most major brands. For instance, if you are a football fan, then you have probably seen your favorite player featured in at least one Nike or Adidas commercial. These mega-brands use celebrity influencers to promote their products and increase their brand value. Moreover, online personalities like YouTubers also collaborate with different companies to promote products through sponsorships. Plarium is a great example of this! They are the developers of the mobile game Raid: Shadow Legends, and they promote it by partnering up with popular gaming YouTubers to feature it on their channels. In this article, we are going to be outlining some of the most notable influencer marketing campaigns that brands have created to promote their business.
What Companies Use Influencer Marketing?
Below we have outlined some of the most prominent brands that use influencer marketing to promote their products. This list is in no particular order and the criterion for choosing them was mainly based on how well these campaigns performed.
Adidas
As already mentioned, Adidas is one of the most prominent users of influencer marketing. A vast majority of their promotional campaigns revolve around world-class athletes and sportspersons. One such noteworthy partner of Adidas is Lionel Messi, the Argentinian Football World Cup Winner, who the brand collaborates with on a regular basis to promote their latest lineups of football gear. Moreover, Adidas introduced its own influencer marketing program called “Creators Club”, which is a reward program for its customers who create and share content featuring the brand’s products. The program was a massive success, with many customers participating and sharing their own content featuring Adidas products on social media.
Audible
Audible is an audiobook platform owned by the tech and e-commerce giant Amazon. The platform holder has collaborated with several well-known influencers, especially on YouTube, to promote their offerings to the masses. Audible has collaborated with a number of online personalities from niches such as gaming, entertainment, lifestyle, etc. Most of these promotional campaigns involve Audible giving out a special code to the influencer, which is then passed on to the viewers. Using this code, the influencer gets a certain percentage of commission and the customer gets a discount. One of Audible’s most successful campaigns was with Neil Gaiman, who is the author of books like “American Gods” and “Coraline”. Through their partnership with the writer, the company generated a lot of exposure for the audiobook platform, which resulted in a lot of sales.
Fashion Nova
As one of the most notable fashion brands in the world right now, Fashion Nova has garnered a lot of its success through influencer marketing. If you are into the fashion industry, then you are bound to have at least heard of this brand’s name. They have taken full advantage of social media platforms by utilizing popular influencers to sell their products. Their most profitable platform was Instagram, through which they collaborated with celebrity influencers like Kylie Jenner and Cardi B, as well as micro-influencers. Using this star power, Fashion Nova became one of the most searched fashion brands in 2017 and 2018. Although brands like H&M and Zara were still quite dominant with a huge market share, Fashion Nova disrupted the industry by identifying the secret ingredient that led to their meteoric rise – fashion influencers on Instagram.
Tesla
Tesla is a rather strange entry in this list as the company itself is owned by one of the most popular tech influencers and entrepreneurs – Elon Musk. In essence, the market position of Tesla is highly dependent on the actions of Elon Musk. In most cases, this does not usually happen as the CEO of a company is thought to be a separate entity from the organization. That is not the case with Tesla. For instance, Elon Musk’s recent decision to buy Twitter caused Tesla’s stock price to plummet as fans of him did not approve of his action. Besides, Tesla has also been utilizing influencer marketing in YouTube as famous tech reviewers like MKBHD have been quite active on the platform talking about the new vehicles from the company. However, the most unique aspect about Tesla’s marketing efforts is that the company does not necessarily go out of its way to market its products as fans of Tesla and Elon Musk do it for them.
Samsung
Similar to Tesla, a lot of the marketing work for Samsung is also done by its fans, who creates content for social media and video streaming platforms in order to share their thoughts on the latest devices by Samsung. A great example of Samsung’s influencer marketing campaign can be seen from the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 (CES). If you are not familiar with CES, it is one of the most prominent tech events that happens only once every year. The event features all the big names in the tech industry under the same roof so that they can show off what they have been working on and what is about to be released. For the event, Samsung hired several influencers and agencies to cover its showcase, especially the new 8K LED TVs. As a result, Samsung became the most mentioned brand of CES 2020.
Sony PlayStation
In 2022, Sony PlayStation designed an influencer marketing campaign for the PlayStation VR in Canada. The gaming giant decided to work with a range of influencers, from nano to mid-tier, in order to spread a positive message about gaming with PlayStation products. The influencers posted images and short clips of them playing with the VR headset, which included the hashtags #ITriedPSVR, #PlayStationVR, and #PSVR, and mentioned @PlayStationCA in their post. With just 9 posts, 12,728 likes and 230 comments were generated, with an overall 3.64% average engagement rate on Instagram. Moreover, on YouTube, the content garnered 28,322 views, 2,324 likes, and 368 comments, with an overall average engagement rate of 3.19%. Overall, the campaign was a huge success for Sony PlayStation.
Other Companies That Use Influencer Marketing
Apart from the aforementioned companies, there are several other notable organizations that use influencer marketing for their promotional campaigns. Such as:
- H&M
- Nike
- Sephora
- Puma
- Uniqlo
- Fenty Beauty
- GoPro
- Beats by Dre
- Fitbit
- Adobe
- Netflix
- Coca-Cola
- McDonald’s
- Subway
- KFC
This list is in no way exhaustive as there are so many brands that use influencer marketing, it would be impossible to list them all. Plus, the number of companies that are adopting influencer marketing is growing rapidly. Hence, the key takeaway from this is, influencer marketing is becoming the new norm in the digital landscape as they hold a lot of power over the hearts and minds of people.
