How Ferrara brands like Nerds and Trolli use influencer marketing to boost awareness

Candy manufacturer Ferrara scored big with its Nerds Gummy Clusters ad during February’s big game, according to iSpot.tv. But that ad, which starred TikTok dancer and mega-influencer Addison Rae, who had previously posted organically about her love of Nerds, was just the beginning of a winning playbook that integrated influencer marketing into a cross channel and cross brand strategy. Keith Bendes, VP of brand strategy at Linqia, and Brian Camen, Ferrara’s senior director of content and public relations, joined Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference on Sept. 19 to discuss how that successful Nerds campaign informed future partnerships between Ferrara brands and creators, and how their focus on strategic influencer integration has sweetened their overall game plan. Ferrara teamed up with influencer marketing agency Linqia to further strengthen their creator roster across channels. Bendes was able to share some early insights from Linqia’s 2025 State of Influencer Marketing report, and its data proves just how much influencers are extending their reach beyond their own social channels. “Creators and creator content are busting through the walls of social media, and are making their way into everything including Super Bowl ads,” Bendes said. “Our data shows that 94% of marketers are using influencer content outside of the influencer’s organic channel.” While a brand’s organic and paid social are the top places to see influencer collaborations in action, Linqia reports that they’re also being featured in display, out-of-home, email, website, product detail pages on e-commerce, connected TV and online video. “They’re using creator content absolutely everywhere,” Bendes said, “and if you’re not and investing in influencer marketing, remember that you’ve already paid for the usage rights and contracting for that content. It has legs and value that you might not even be considering.” Passionate influencers create passionate campaigns Ferrara found Rae through its Sugar Rush program, the brand’s new social-listening monitoring arm. Rae already had considerable reach, with over 88 million followers on TikTok—“a Gen Z icon,” as Camen said—when Ferrara discovered she was posting about Nerds on her own. Sugar Rush also discovered that Destiny’s Child singer Michelle Williams loved Brach’s candy corn, also a Ferrara product, and Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams ate Ferrara’s Trolli gummy worms on the sidelines. The candy brand leapt to work with both. “When we find out influencers, micro to macro to celebrity, love our brand, it produces some of the greatest work that we have seen from a creative standpoint,” Ferrara’s Camen said. Bendes agreed. “Following doesn’t matter that much anymore; passion for the brand is what matters,” he said. “When finding those influencers who have brand love, the content always performs better, especially among their audience.” Set yourself up for success While influencer marketing is the flashy fun side, the analytical and organizational backend has to be game-ready for these campaigns to work. “I think the biggest obstacle to overcome is ensuring that you have the right foundations, policies and a governance across your organization in order to set yourself up for success with influencer marketing,” Camen said. “If you don’t, I guarantee you someone from Department X is going to be doing the same things as Department Y and Department Z, and you’re not going to know about it until it’s too late.” Linqia reports show that determining ROI is by far the biggest challenge marketers face when it comes to their influencer investments, but it’s also the most important for continued success. “This theory that influencers can’t be measured for lower-funnel results or the same ways as others is wrong,” Bendes contended. “There’s a lot of ways to measure—brand lift studies, social engagement, share of voice. But at the end of the day, the CMO or VP is going to be looking at some sort of holistic data visualization that integrates channels like marketing mix modeling. You have to do the work to get your influencer data into that broader data set.” Once you can quantify your successes to the C-suite—and connect all influencer content to paid media—the ability to extrapolate and scale is significant. Not only can influencer marketing be one of the highest performing channels, it can help fuel the performance of all the other channels. “A single influencer campaign could feed an entire marketing content ecosystem,” Bendes said. About Linqia Linqia is the calm in the chaotic sea of influencer marketing. As a full-service, tech-enabled platform, Linqia handles influencer campaigns for the world's leading brands, from strategy to execution to scale. While some influencer companies offer only technology and others operate as creative agencies, Linqia leverages both science and storytelling to help brands create emotive, human-first campaigns backed by full funnel measurement.

How Ferrara brands like Nerds and Trolli use influencer marketing to boost awareness

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