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. Have tips or news to share about influencer marketing and the creator economy? Email Gillian Follett at gillian.follett@adage.com. Sign up for our Influencer Marketing newsletter here. New deals AriZona Iced Tea and “The Rizzler”: Several brands teamed up with influencers last week to help generate buzz around their April Fools’ Day pranks, from KFC and HiSmile mailing their fried chicken flavored toothpaste to creators, to Yahoo encouraging a handful of B2B influencers on LinkedIn to “touch grass” by sending them keyboards that swapped the keys for small pieces of turf. AriZona Iced Tea went a step further and made 8-year-old social media star “The Rizzler” the literal face of its April Fools’ Day campaign, putting an illustration of his signature “Rizz Face” on a mockup of a fake “AriZZona Rizzberry” canned drink. But AriZona made a playful social media statement the next day revealing that “The Rizzler” (whose real name is Christian Joseph) had determined “the formula is not ready to optimize the American public’s rizz,” so AriZona couldn’t release the drink. Also read: This is what it means to have “Rizz” Dyson and Victoria Magrath: Dyson also put a creator at the center of its April Fools’ Day prank. In a nod to the popularity of the Dyson Airwrap hairstyling tool among beauty influencers, the brand tapped one of those influencers, Victoria Magrath, to demo the “Dyson Airbrow,” a version of the tool made specifically for eyebrows. Dyson’s glossy video promoting the fake styling tool has garnered nearly 16 million views across TikTok and Instagram. Flamingo, Talea Beer Co. and Tinx: While body care brand Flamingo’s collaboration with Brooklyn, New York-based brewery Talea may have seemed like an April Fools’ Day prank at first glance, the two brands’ limited-edition craft beer flavor and matching “shower beer” holder are, in fact, real products. Flamingo and Talea invited influencers and consumers to sample the new flavor, called Shower Beer, at its flagship Williamsburg taproom on Saturday. Among those invited: Christina Najjar, aka Tinx, whose affinity for shower beers inspired the partnership between Flamingo and Talea, according to a brand spokesperson. Cannes Lions and Robyn DelMonte: The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is gearing up for an even larger creator push than last year’s festival, where it rolled out a new “Lions Creators” programming track. Cannes Lions kicked off a campaign promoting the festival to creators over the weekend, partnering with creator and creative consultant Robyn DelMonte (aka @GirlBossTown) on a sponsored TikTok of DelMonte detailing how her social media content “gave [her] a career” and allowed her to attend Cannes Lions for the past two years—and again this summer. Also read: How Life is using influencers to market its new immunity cereals Fireball Whisky and “Grandma Droniak”: Fireball Whisky has put its Instagram account in the hands of 95-year-old “granfluencer” Lillian Droniak (better known online as “Grandma Droniak”) for the entire month of April while the brand’s social media manager takes some time off. Droniak’s characteristic sass shone through in her first post for Fireball’s account as she walked viewers through her daily routine as the brand’s new social media manager, including her taking a nap break and downing a shot of Fireball ahead of a Zoom call with her manager. Wendy’s and Connor Wood: For the Final Four games of the 2025 March Madness tournament, Wendy’s teamed up with comedy creator Connor Wood on a pair of spoofy sponsored social posts. One video parodies ads brands might create when working with athletes by instead leaning into Wood’s lack of athletic talent. For example, an overly dramatic voiceover announces, “He’s never won a championship. But he was available for this video.” The other follows Wood smashing a giant ice sculpture resembling a hamburger, a reference to Wendy’s “fresh, never frozen” tagline. Social media screenshot The TikTok ban is extended (again): Less than 12 hours before the U.S. TikTok ban was scheduled to go into effect on April 5, President Donald Trump announced he is giving TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, an additional 75 days to divest from the platform or face a nationwide TikTok ban in the U.S. The announcement follows Trump’s previous extension of the ban deadline in January. In a post on his platform Truth Social, Trump said his administration is actively working to broker a deal between ByteDance and a U.S. buyer. But, as he noted in the post, his new tariffs on China will likely complicate those negotiations. Also read: Marketing guide to the tariffs and economy YouTube rolls out Shorts updates: YouTube has been capitalizing on the TikTok turmoil by enhancing its own short-form video platform. The company unveiled several new updates to YouTube Shorts last week, including a revamped in-app video editor and a new option to time video clips and photos to the beat of a background track. And last Monday, YouTube changed how views on Shorts are counted, with “views” now simply calculated by how many times a Short is seen (with no minimum watch time requirement). Previously, a Short had to be played for several seconds to be considered “viewed”—but that metric also is sticking around under a new name, “engaged views.” Tumblr layoffs: Tumblr’s parent company Automattic laid off 16% of its staff last week, or a total of 281 people, according to a product manager at the company. Much of Tumblr’s team was gutted in the layoffs, including its chief technology officer; its director of advertising product and engineering; and a slew of software engineers and product managers. In a message to employees, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said the layoffs are part of an “organizational restructuring” meant to “improve [the company’s] productivity, profitability and capacity to invest.” TikTok of the week Despite the possibility of a U.S. TikTok ban hanging over the platform last week, TikTok creator Sydney Robinson has accumulated millions of views on her viral TikTok series, “The Group Chat.” As its name suggests, the series revolves around the drama that ensues within a group of friends (all played by Robinson) after one friend, Hailey, commits the friendship faux pas of inviting her boyfriend to a girls’ night dinner. The series, which released its fourth episode on Sunday, has collectively racked up over 77 million views, as of this writing. It’s also drawn comments from brands, including OpenTable, which plays a major role in the first episode of the series. “The Group Chat” caught the attention of celebrities, too—Charlie Puth, who left a comment on one episode saying he’s “so invested” in the series, voiced the character Justin in the TikTok drama’s latest episode.

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

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