Olympic athletes emulating influencers, LoveShackFancy and Stanley's influencer trip to the Hamptons and Skims’ Team USA sponsorship are some of this week’s creator economy headlines.
Welcome to Ad Age’s influencer marketing news roundup. Each week, we’ll be highlighting the latest developments at the intersection between brands and the creator economy, including new partnerships between brands and creators, notable new features across social media platforms and the growth of creator-led businesses. Sign up for our influencer marketing newsletter here.
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Influencer brand trips galore: Dozens of influencers shared photos of themselves lounging by the pool or partying in pastel dresses last week as five different brands all hosted influencer trips: Benefit Cosmetics, Olipop, ColourPop, LoveShackFancy and Stanley.
To promote their new product collaboration launching next week, LoveShackFancy and Stanley co-hosted a getaway to theHamptons with a handful of “LoveShack girls,” including influencers Halley Kate and Jasmine Graves (aka JustJazzy), and beauty creator Isabelle Graff.
Also read: Back-to-school marketing news to know about
Olipop took a group of nano-influencers on a trip to “Lake Olipop” in Minnesota, complete with summer camp-inspired T-shirts and canoes filled with cans of its lemon-lime prebiotic soda. ColourPop invited about a dozen beauty and lifestyle influencers to stay in a cozy Nantucket cottage.
Benefit Cosmetics, meanwhile, organized the largest, most lavish influencer getaway of the bunch, which it dubbed “The Porefessional Seaside Summit.” The beauty brand hosted 38 influencers (including Mikayla Nogueira, Monet McMichael and Golloria George) in a Santorini villa to generate buzz around two new products in its “Porefessional” product line.
Skims and Team USA: In another influencer trip of sorts, a slew of other brands put their efforts toward sponsoring the hundreds of Olympic athletes who descended upon Paris last week. Athletes from the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Philippines and Belgium, among other countries, shared their hauls of clothing and accessories gifted by team sponsors including Ralph Lauren, Nike, Lululemon, Samsung and Adidas. Skims may have generated the most TikTok buzz for the large collection of loungewear and activewear it gave to each member of Team USA.
Peacock and Alex Cooper: Athletes aren’t the only ones partnering with brands at the Paris Olympics. NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock is teaming up with Alex Cooper, host of Spotify’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, on “Watch with Alex Cooper,” a series of live, interactive watch parties during various Olympic sporting events. Cooper and Peacock kicked off the series on Sunday with a watch party for the women’s soccer match between the U.S. and Germany.
ADT, Shaun White and Sydney Leroux: Security company ADT is also leaning into the Olympics for its latest campaign. Over the weekend, ADT partnered with Olympic gold medalists Shaun White and Sydney Leroux on a social push around how their home security systems give them peace of mind when they’re competing away from home.
Edie Parker Flower and Ashtin Earle: Cannabis accessory brand Edie Parker Flower tapped Ashtin Earle, the younger sister of TikTok “It Girl” Alix Earle, to be the face of its limited-edition “Boobs on Drugs” collection. The product line, a nod to the “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” PSA campaign of the 1980s, includes smoking accessories such as lighters and pipes as well as clothing productsincluding a sweatshirt and T-shirt.
LTK prioritizes shoppable video: Creator-led shopping platform LTK last week introduced two new features as part of a video-first overhaul of its app: a shoppable video feed on each creator’s LTK shop (effectively collecting all of the videos scattered across their LTK shop in one place) and a new “Daily Drops” tab on the app’s home page that rounds up all the videos creators they follow have posted in the past 24 hours.
Twitch rolls out a TikTok-like video feed: Twitch, too, revamped its mobile app to revolve around a video feed. But unlike LTK’s “Daily Drops” tab, Twitch redesigned its main feed to serve up livestream previews suggested by the Twitch algorithm rather than those from creators users already follow. The new app layout is designed to both help mobile viewers discover livestreams relevant to their interests and assist streamers in growing their audiences by putting their content in front of users who don’t follow them, according to a Twitch blog post.
Reddit partners with sports leagues: Reddit last week announced new partnerships with the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA Tour and NASCAR to supply the platform with more sports content, such as game highlights and Q&A sessions with athletes. The platform is a “go-to destination for sports fans” and has over 1,000 sports-related communities, according to Reddit Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong.
Publicis Groupe plans to acquire Influential: Publicis last week announced its plans to acquire influencer marketing agency Influential to meet soaring client demand for influencer campaigns. The deal, which is expected to close in August, follows similar acquisitions from rival holding companies WPP and Stagwell to boost their respective influencer offerings.
See also: Inside Publicis Groupe’s plan to buy influential
Ogilvy launches an influencer risk management offering: Ogilvy PR last week rolled out Influence Shield, a new offering encompassing services such as influencer risk assessment, an augmented influencer vetting process and crisis management for influencer campaigns, among others.
Over the past week, dozens of Olympic athletes (especially those who are Gen Zers) have been flooding TikTok with videos that follow the typical influencer playbook, from TikTok dances to trending audio clips to the aforementioned clothing hauls. Several athletes (including the above duo, Alena Saili and Manaia Nuku of New Zealand) have nodded to the rush of TikTok content they’ve already been pumping out surrounding their Olympics experience by comparing themselves to “full-time influencers.”
Few brands have explored creator partnerships on Threads in the year since the platform’s launch. Poppi last week joined that small group of brands by sponsoring a Threads post from comedy creator Connor Wood.
