Creator and influencer trends brand marketers need to know about right now

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. Have tips or news to share about influencer marketing and the creator economy? Email Gillian Follett at gillian.follett@adage.com. New deals State Farm and Kai Cenat: Major brands such as T-Mobile and McDonald’s have enlisted YouTuber and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat to star alongside Hollywood talent in their marketing campaigns. State Farm is the latest company to do so, partnering with Cenat on a 15-second ad teasing its “Batman vs. Bateman” spot and giving him a cameo at the beginning of the full 60-second commercial. State Farm extended the collaboration by having Jake from State Farm make a guest appearance—in character—during one of Cenat’s livestreams to watch the ad’s premiere. View this post on Instagram A post shared by State Farm (@statefarm) Pepsi, JetBlue and Sabrina Brier: Comedy creator Sabrina Brier is known on TikTok for her skits in which she portrays the viewer’s hypothetical “friends” with various personality quirks, such as “that friend who HATES a change of plans” and “that friend who NEEDS your approval.” Pepsi and JetBlue leaned into that series of “that friend who” skits for their collaboration with Brier last week, recruiting her to play “that friend who travels so much she thinks she’s a flight attendant.” Brier performed that role by pushing a Pepsi- and JetBlue-branded drink cart around New York’s Madison Square Park and handing out cans of Pepsi Zero Sugar to passersby. View this post on Instagram A post shared by pepsi (@pepsi) Data-Driven Marketing Playbook Join us May 22 in NYC to explore how data powers marketing Learn more here Fenty and Puma influencer trip: Rihanna’s beauty and fashion empire Fenty teamed up with Puma to fly dozens of influencers to Barbados (the Caribbean island that Rihanna is from) to celebrate the launch of the two brands’ latest footwear collaboration. Many of the influencers invited on last week’s trip have follower counts in the millions, including Achieng Agutu, Rickey Thompson, Katie Fang, Eric Sedeño and “Love Island USA” couple Kordell Beckham and Serena Page. View this post on Instagram A post shared by PUMA Sportstyle (@pumasportstyle) Hulu and “Shop Cats”: The social media series “Shop Cats,” which revolves around host Michelladonna visiting cats who live in bodegas or other New York establishments, has had a handful of pet brand sponsors since its launch in September. Last week, the series had its first non-endemic sponsor: Hulu. The streaming service partnered with “Shop Cats” to promote its new comedy series “Deli Boys” in an episode of the social media show that features cameos from “Deli Boys” actors Tan France, Poorna Jagannathan and Alfie Fuller. @shopcatsshow Meet Benito in Crown Heights. You never know what secrets lurk behind a deli counter. Binge the entire season of Deli Boys on @hulu! Host: @MICHELLADONNA Producer/DP: Drew Rosenthal (@Be Happy For Once) Editors: Drew Rosenthal & Sean Fitzmaurice Translator: Sabrina Sanchez PA: Vivienne S A show by @madrealities.tv #HuluPartner #HuluShow #bodega #nyc #shopcats ♬ original sound - Shop Cats H&R Block and Vienna Ayla: H&R Block’s reality TV parody “Responsibility Island” brought the cast of season 1, including TikTok comedian Vienna Ayla, together for a reunion episode last week. The reunion comes after H&R Block’s four-episode series originally aired on YouTube and Roku in February 2024. View this post on Instagram A post shared by H&R Block (@hrblock) Social media screenshot Facebook adds Stories to its creator monetization program: Facebook last week announced that creators can now generate revenue from their public Stories on the platform in addition to their Reels and other Facebook posts. To be eligible for these performance-based payouts on their Stories, creators must join the Facebook Content Monetization program, which the platform introduced in beta in October. Meta introduces Community Notes: Meta officially began rolling out its new Community Notes feature across Facebook, Instagram and Threads in the U.S. today. As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January, the Community Notes feature will replace the company’s third-party fact-checking program and put content moderation in the hands of users of its platforms. The feature will function similarly to X’s Community Notes tool—in fact, Meta announced that its Community Notes feature is built on the same algorithm as X’s. Reddit lets users block ads: Reddit has spent the past year courting brands by expanding its ad inventory and rolling out new ad formats. However, the platform seemed to backtrack on its efforts to woo advertisers last week when it introduced the ability for users to hide ads that pop up in their feeds. And, when a user removes an ad from their feed, Reddit automatically prevents future ads from that brand from appearing for that user for an entire year. Introducing Hide an Ad byu/cozy__sheets inRedditSafety Creating businesses Alix Earle invests in SipMargs: Just under a year after Alix Earle announced she had become an investor in prebiotic soda brand Poppi, the TikTok star has revealed she’s joined another beverage brand as an investor and brand partner. Earle is the largest individual investor in the newly relaunched canned margarita brand SipMargs, joining live entertainment company Palm Tree Crew; Speight Family Ventures; and influencer Jake Paul’s venture capital firm Anti Fund, among several other investors. As a brand partner, Earle will be contributing to SipMarg’s marketing and creative direction—and, indeed, she’s helmed much of the social media campaign promoting the brand’s relaunch since the announcement last Tuesday. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alix Earle (@alix_earle) Mikayla Nogueira launches a skincare brand: Nogueira, a beauty influencer with over 16.3 million followers on TikTok alone, has partnered with a slew of makeup and skincare brands over the past four years. And last week, she announced the March 26 launch of her own DTC beauty brand, Point of View. The initial line of products (which took two years to develop, Nogueira said in a video) includes skincare staples such as a toner, moisturizer and makeup primer. @mikaylanogueira We all have a @pointofview - what’s yours? Launching March 26th. Thank you to @SandyNicha @Ohemaa @IG: makeupbymakiyaa @MAJ 🖤 @jazzi manalo 💄 @Michelle Spieler PRO MUA ♬ original sound - Mikayla Nogueira TikTok of the week @martinifeeny Im SOOO bored by all these influencers lol #nycinfluencers #imo #nyc #tiktokgirls #bored ♬ original sound - MartiniFeeny The latest conversation dominating “For You” pages is a debate over whether influencers who live in New York all create the same bland and nearly identical content. TikTok user @MartiniFeeny kicked off the viral discourse with the above video, in which she declares, “I hate all of the New York influencers. I think that they’re boring as f–k and they’re all carbon copies of one another.” Her video has since garnered over 2.2 million views, as of this writing, and has driven hundreds of TikTok users and content creators to join the conversation in her comments section or with videos of their own. Some have agreed with @MartiniFeeny and named New York-based influencers they think exemplify her argument, while others have argued she’s filling her feed with these “boring” influencers by not engaging with content from New York influencers who post a broader range of content beyond the generic daily routines of pilates classes and matcha lattes. Follow us on social media X Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn YouTube

Creator and influencer trends brand marketers need to know about right now

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