Wimbledon’s online series hosted by a fashion influencer, L’Oréal’s Essence Fest partnerships and the rise of a new MySpace-Twitter hybrid are some of this week’s creator economy headlines.
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L’Oréal and Corporate Erin: CeraVe, NYX Professional Makeup, Carol’s Daughter and several other brands in L’Oréal’s portfolio activated at the Essence Festival of Culture, an annual celebration of Black culture held in New Orleans, over the weekend. To prepare for its plethora of booths, panels and other activations at the festival, L’Oréal “hired” Corporate Erin—a character created by actor and comedian Lisa Beasley who exclusively speaks in business jargon—to help its team wrap up any loose ends.
In one video from their collaboration inspired by “The Office,” L’Oréal’s employees shoot exasperated looks at the camera in reaction to Corporate Erin’s jargon-heavy questions or last-minute demands. The other revolves around her weaving business terms into a “get ready with me” video, i.e., “We’re going to move onto our next talking point, the eyelid department.”
A slew of other brands partnered with creators at Essence Fest, too, including Amazon Prime Video, Target, Coca-Cola and Unilever-owned Shea Moisture.
Wimbledon and Morgan Riddle: Last week, Wimbledon renewed its partnership with fashion influencer Morgan Riddle, the girlfriend of pro tennis player Taylor Fritz, for a second iteration of the online video series she launched with the tennis tournament last year, “Wimbledon Threads.” Riddle returned as the host of the series and has spent the past several days roaming the Wimbledon grounds interviewing attendees and offering a behind-the-scenes look at the tournament, including what it’s like for the tennis players competing in it.
Reebok, Brandon Cohen and Bryan Baker: In most of their videos, comedy creators Cohen and Baker deliver rapid-fire jokes centered on themes such as “POV: us as your lawyers” or “POV: us as news anchors.” Their partnership with Reebok continues that pattern in two videos (one from each creator) featuring a flurry of quips based on the topic “POV: us on set.” If not for the Reebok sneakers resting conspicuously in their laps while they sit in movie set trailers (and sponsorship disclosure hashtags such as #ReebokPartner, of course), the content could be easily confused for some of their ordinary, unsponsored videos.
Cohen and Baker also recently teamed up with Max to promote its new “House of the Dragon” season in their same characteristic TikTok format.
LoveShackFancy, Cotton Incorporated and Sunisa “Suni” Lee: As the Olympics inch closer, most eyes are fixed on gymnastics phenom Simone Biles as she makes a comeback after dropping out of the Tokyo Games due to mental health struggles. Brands focusing on Biles include Athleta, Powerade and K18 Hair, which have all recently released new ads or announced partnerships with her. Clothing brand LoveShackFancy and nonprofit Cotton Incorporated instead looked to Biles’ teammate (and 2020 Olympic all-around champion), Sunisa “Suni” Lee, to promote its new “Americana Capsule Collection.” Lee’s gymnastic abilities are on full display in the photoshoot of her modeling the clothing line.
Threads celebrates its birthday: Threads commemorated the first anniversary of its launch on July 5 with a platform-wide celebration that included mini party hats placed on users’ profile pictures, a rhinestone-decorated birthday cake and confetti blasts for those who posted about Threads’ first birthday. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a more business-oriented approach toward the occasion and noted that Threads currently attracts 175 million monthly active users.
Noplace rockets up the app store charts: Noplace, a new social media platform aimed at Gen Z that blends the interest-based profile pages of MySpace with the text-based content feed of X (formerly Twitter), officially launched last week after spending several months in beta mode. Almost immediately after its release, Noplace shot up the charts of Apple’s app store and even briefly held the top spot. The launch followed a months-long TikTok campaign from Noplace that resulted in roughly 500,000 people signing a waitlist to join the app.
Estée Lauder partners with TikTok on a creator program: The Estée Lauder Companies is the latest beauty products marketer to launch a TikTok initiative designed to uplift creators. The program, called “The Catalysts,” comes from the company’s New Incubation Ventures arm and invites beauty creators looking to launch businesses to apply via a TikTok video. Two winners, set to be revealed in October, will each receive $250,000, mentorship from those in the beauty industry and “financial and marketing support,” according to a press release. The Catalysts will also be posting several masterclasses about launching and scaling a brand on its TikTok page (including this 17-minute one).
Over the past few months, TikTok has been a hotbed of discourse around influencers’ often murky sponsorship disclosures (or their complete lack of disclosures) on the platform. In the above video (which has over 900,0000 views as of this writing), travel and lifestyle creator Dana Alyss described a recent video from “the two largest creators on TikTok right now” that lacked any indication that the creators had worked with a brand despite including several gifted products throughout. Though Alyss didn’t name the creators, many commenters on her video assumed she was talking about TikTok’s viral “tall couple” Tyler Bergantino and Gabby Gonzalez.
The same day Alyss uploaded her video, Bergantino posted a TikTok rife with Alo Yoga products, including two pairs of new sneakers he unboxes on camera, without any sponsorship disclosure. In her video, Alyss highlighted the FTC Endorsement Guides’ requirement that any influencer’s video featuring “valuable, unsolicited product[s]” given to them by a brand is an endorsement of that brand and needs to be disclosed as such. Neither the two creators nor Alo have responded to Alyss’ video.
Several brands and organizations posted about Threads’ first anniversary and received the tiny party hat icon on their profile pictures, including National Trust, King Arthur Baking Company and eos, among many others. Ryanair, meanwhile, used the celebration as an opportunity to plug its own 39th birthday.
