State Farm’s follow-up to its TikTok Super Bowl campaign, Snapchat and Microsoft’s new advertising partnership and Essence Cosmetics’ upcoming TikTok awards show 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.
Have tips or news to share about influencer marketing and the creator economy? Email Gillian Follett at [email protected].
Essence Cosmetics and Erin Dugan Jurchak: This week, beauty brand Essence Cosmetics began mailing out nominations to beauty micro-influencers such as @ahliyahmichelle and @anggelzz2 for its upcoming TikTok awards show, “The Effortful Makeup Awards.” Over the next few weeks, TikTok users will vote for their favorite makeup looks from these nominees, who will be revealed in a makeup awards show uploaded to Essence Cosmetics’ TikTok channel in late October. Beauty creator Erin Dugan Jurchak will host the event. Along with celebrating brand fans, the awards show is meant to challenge the “effortless makeup” trend on TikTok and acknowledge the complex, time-consuming makeup looks that beauty influencers create using Essence products. Essence developed the show in partnership with creative agency Movers + Shakers.
Green Giant and Tariq, aka “Corn Kid”: Green Giant is once again teaming up with TikTok’s “Corn Kid,” whose real name is Tariq—but this time, instead of corn, he’s helping push its new line of dinosaur-shaped “veggie tots” launched earlier this month. The kid influencer stars in a 15-second spot in which he trots across the kitchen in a dinosaur suit before picking up one of the veggie tots and excitedly announcing, “It’s vegetables!” in a nod to the “It’s corn!” phrase that propelled him to TikTok virality.
Read more: Top 5 food and beverage marketing ideas
State Farm and Khaby Lame: When many brands were jockeying for a coveted TV spot in the Super Bowl earlier this year, State Farm was instead concentrating on a TikTok campaign in partnership with the platform’s most-followed user, Khabane “Khaby” Lame. Along with videos featuring Lame and other influencers alongside spokesman Jake from State Farm, the marketing push invited fans to guess how many times the brand would be mentioned during the Big Game, which was held in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Fans who guessed correctly had the chance to be featured in one of Lame’s TikTok videos. Now, that winner has been revealed as Mat Cronje, who frustrates Lame in a new video by wrapping a car in bubble wrap to prevent potential damage. Lame uses his signature silent yet exasperated hand gesture to point Cronje to a simpler solution: Jake from State Farm.
Snapchat partners with Microsoft for AI chatbot ads: Over 150 million people have leveraged Snapchat’s generative AI-powered chatbot, “My AI,” since the feature was opened up to the app’s user base in April, according to Snap data. And through a new partnership with Microsoft, that chatbot will begin serving up sponsored links in response to users’ queries about topics from which dress they should buy for a birthday party to which restaurant they should eat at. Snapchat will be leveraging Microsoft’s Chat Ads API to connect brands’ sponsored links to relevant prompts, according to a Microsoft blog post.
More: What brands need to know about Microsoft’s AI chat ads
Reddit introduces a potential revenue stream: Reddit on Monday announced the launch of its “Contributor Program,” which allows qualifying users to earn real money for their Reddit posts. These earnings, given out monthly, will be based on the Reddit karma each of their posts receives—or, in other words, how many upvotes they amass across their content. With the Contributor Program, Reddit is following in the footsteps of other social platforms looking to entice content creators with a potential source of income.
TikTok expands e-commerce efforts with “Balance”: Earlier this month, TikTok unveiled an in-app shopping platform, TikTok Shop, to encourage users to purchase the products they discovered through TikTok content directly in the platform. Now, the platform is rolling out a feature designed to further consolidate users’ shopping activity into the app. “Balance” will allow users to manage “transactions on TikTok” and keep track of any rewards or coins they receive as tips on their videos. With TikTok looking to keep consumers on the platform through every stage of the buying process, from product discovery to checkout, having a dedicated space for users to track their TikTok Shop purchases seems like a natural next step.
Skims readies for a 2024 brick-and-mortar launch: Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims selected a West Hollywood storefront for one of its two brick-and-mortar stores with a planned opening date of early 2024. The other store will be in New York. Though Skims is already available in retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, the two new locations will be wholly dedicated to Skims products, making Skims one of the first influencer-owned brands to make the jump to its own brick-and-mortar space.
Though many elements of influencer marketing have evolved in the past few years, the rates that creators charge for sponsored content are as unpredictable and wide-ranging as ever. In the video above, Chanelle Garrow—founder and CEO of influencer and social media agency Social Lens Media—divulges the rates her agency saw in one day from five different creators, along with each creator’s follower count. Those rates varied significantly, even among influencers with similarly-sized followings. For example, one influencer with 74,600 Instagram followers was charging $1,500 per Reel, while a creator with 89,000 followers on the platform was only asking for $600 per Reel. As Garrow says in the TikTok, influencer rates remain a “wild, wild west” among creators.
The latest meme to catch fire across the internet is a painfully awkward Getty Images stock photo of actor Kevin James shrugging and smirking at the camera on the set of the show “The King of Queens.” As when any meme begins to make the rounds on social media, brands are eager to participate—but because of the Getty Images watermark, several brands have hesitated to share the photo on their accounts due to potential copyright issues. Others, including T-Mobile, have found a workaround: recreating James’ uncomfortable-looking pose in their own photo. T-Mobile’s post lampoons the legal gray area surrounding the meme in the caption of its photo recreation, and Universal Orlando Resort took a similar approach. The latter’s photo also cleverly includes a custom watermark that reads, “Universal Images, Credit: Social Team.”
