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 CoverGirl’s #BeACoverGirl contest: CoverGirl is on the hunt for a new generation of brand ambassadors, and it’s turning to social media for potential candidates. The cosmetics brand last week launched its #BeACoverGirl online contest, partnering with about a dozen beauty influencers—including Aysha Harun, Emira D’Spain and Leilani Green—to spread the word about the opportunity to become one of the brand’s CoverGirls. The winner will receive “amazing prizes to help [them] launch [their] content creation journey” and a trip to CoverGirl’s New York headquarters to meet some of the beauty creators involved in the campaign, such as D’Spain. @aysha_harun Hey besties, it’s time for you to be a COVERGIRL!! 🤭 Share a video on why you want to #BEACOVERGIRL by April 19th, 2024 for a chance to win a trip to NYC, learn from beauty experts and launch your platform as a @COVERGIRL! 🥹🫶🏾 #COVERGIRLpartner ♬ original sound - Aysha Harun Little Caesars and Alexis Frost, Malia Elaine and more: Little Caesars’ new “Crazy Puffs” menu item—essentially mini dough cups stuffed with cheese and pizza sauce—are taking social media by storm. And at least part of the hype around the puffs can be traced back to the restaurant chain’s “P.U.F.F.Y Fest” event where foodie influencers including Stefan Johnson, Alexis Frost, Malia Elaine and Luke “Lukefoods” Collins gathered to try Crazy Puffs for themselves and offer their reviews. @littlecaesarspizza Pull up for Crazy Puffs™️ @kellllllllllls @Malia 💋🫶🏽 ♬ original sound - Little Caesars Prime and Andrew Glaze: Glaze, a runner whose social content revolves around his daily jogs and training for different races, wore an unusual outfit for his latest marathon: a bright blue costume shaped like a bottle of Prime, Logan Paul and KSI’s drink brand. On Friday, Glaze posted a TikTik video featuring screenshots of a DM conversation with Paul about a potential partnership, and by Sunday, Glaze was donning the costume while running in the Los Angeles Marathon. @glazeruns It's always great to set a World Record. Smile, or you're doing it wrong. . #runtok #lamarathon ♬ original sound - Andy Glaze Half Magic Beauty and Dylan Mulvaney: Following in the footsteps of TikTok influencers such as Addison Rae, Mulvaney is branching out into the music industry with her debut single “Days of Girlhood,” inspired by her TikTok series of the same name. For the song’s music video, Mulvaney partnered with beauty brand Half Magic to do the makeup of all the dancers in the video, including Mulvaney herself. Half Magic shared a few behind-the-scenes videos from the music video production on its own TikTok channel over the weekend. @dylanmulvaney DAYS OF GIRLHOOD VIDEO OUT NOW- link in bio 💓💓💓 Glam by @Half Magic #daysofgirlhood ♬ original sound - Dylan Mulvaney Social media screenshot TikTok rolls out new features amid legislative tension: It’s been a busy few days for TikTok, to put it mildly, as it battles the latest ban threat from the U.S. government. But that political backdrop hasn’t kept TikTok from introducing a slew of new features for both advertisers and creators over the past week. At Shoptalk on Monday, TikTok revealed several new e-commerce tools, including the ability to place Shop Ads within TikTok’s shop tab and Video Shopping Ads in the platform’s search results. Last week, TikTok dropped a new “Creator Search Insights” tool, which allows creators to identify topics users are frequently searching for to inform their content strategies; and added “Voice Clips”—pre-recorded audio templates from TikTok creators such as Matt Buechele and Devin Halbal—to its Commercial Audio Library. Read more: TikTok pitches new ad formats as it faces US ban threat We're making it even easier to drive product discovery and sales with new updates to our commerce solutions. We're also unveiling new research that proves TikTok's power to drive commerce everywhere—online, in-store, and in the app itself. Read more: https://t.co/kIBKh1UFFZ— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) March 18, 2024 Reddit turns brands into Redditors: Reddit last week rolled out a new “Free-Form Ads” format, designed to help brands fit more seamlessly into threads on the platform with posts that can include text, images and videos. The platform envisions Free-Form Ads as a way for advertisers to offer deep dives into a brand or specific product or meet Redditors where they are with product recommendations—a common use case for the platform. Read more: Reddit’s new ad format looks like user posts Creating businesses MrBeast brings his YouTube game shows to TV: Rumors that Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson would be launching a TV competition series have circulated on social media for weeks—and yesterday, Donaldson confirmed they were true with a post on X, formerly Twitter. Donaldson is producing the game show, “Beast Games,” with Prime Video, and it will include more than 1,000 contestants and a $5 million grand prize, according to his X post. “Let’s just say Amazon will give us the most creative control,” Donaldson said in an interview with creators Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry. “And by most, I mean all creative control, and they’ll let me do whatever I want.” Big news gamers I’m going to be filming the largest game show in history and releasing it on Prime Video! Over 1,000 contestants, $5,000,000 prize, and many other world records.. I’ll reveal more later this year but let’s just say, it’s gonna be an insane show :D— MrBeast (@MrBeast) March 18, 2024 TikTok of the week @thefirstgenmentor A TikTok ban would violate our freedom of speech and affect countless small business owners and creators, (like myself!), who rely on the app to stay in business ! TikTok is where I go to connect with my community, find entertainment, and stay up to date on global issues. Call your elected officials and let them know you want to #KeepTikTok ♬ House of Cards (Main Theme from the TV Series) - House of Cards Main Title As rumblings of a TikTok ban in the U.S. have started back up—this time intensified by the House of Representatives passing legislation that would require TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform—many creators have spoken out about the possibility of TikTok disappearing in the U.S. But some creators, including Giovanna “Gigi” Gonzalez, took their protests even further by going to Capitol Hill last week to make their appeals to lawmakers in person. Threadspotting Post by @porsche View on Threads Threads may be a text-based platform, but that doesn’t mean multimedia posts don’t perform well on the app. Case in point, Porsche’s Threads post including a brief audio clip of one of the automaker’s vehicles revving up. The post racked up more than 3,000 likes within eight hours of being posted yesterday. 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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