Dillon Eisman, 18, runs a nonprofit in Southern California that restores damaged apparel for homeless teens. That work earned him publicity as a People magazine "Hometown Hero" last year, but Eisman still never thought of himself as an "influencer."
So Eisman was surprised when a casting director reached out to him to make an audition video promoting a skincare brand. "At first I thought it was a scam," says Eisman. "It was just so random."
Now, Eisman is among the teens who star in videos for Johnson & Johnson's Clean & Clear—his video alone has received more than 3.2 million YouTube views since June. Together they have helped boost Clean & Clear sales 19 percent since February, according to the company.
Eisman still doesn't have much of an Instagram following—he's at 1,471 as of this writing—but says he thinks it's kind of cool to have a Screen Actors Guild card, which he had to get for the project. And his modest earnings from work that took him about 30 hours in total are helping him start a new chapter of his nonprofit, Sew Swag, at Washington University in St. Louis, where he's a freshman.
While many companies look to land Kim Kardashian-style mega-influencers (she has 116 million Instagram followers) to push their products, J&J is trying a much more moderate approach for Clean & Clear. In February, the company began to use teens with about 500 followers each who, like Eisman, might never label themselves influencers at all. The brand and its agency, VaynerMedia, are betting these teens will resonate with their peers during a time when social media is rotten with fake followers and questions are growing about how real influencer endorsements really are.
The brand opted for "trying influencers who weren't famous per se but [are] doing things that other kids responded to authentically, letting them tell their story and building the products and brands from there," says Simon Geraghty, U.S. acne portfolio lead for J&J.