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 Netflix and Sydney Robinson: TikTok creator Sydney Robinson’s viral series “The Group Chat” has garnered over 104 million total views since it debuted in late March. While dozens of brands flooded the comments sections of each episode, Netflix is the first brand to partner with Robinson on a video tied to her five-part TikTok series about drama unfolding among friends in a group chat. The streaming platform tapped Robinson to create a “deleted scene” from “The Group Chat” that doubles as a promo for the premiere of the final season of Netflix’s series “You” later this month, with the members of the titular group chat texting about the creepiness of the serial-killing protagonist of the series. Also read: Inside the NFL’s social strategy PacSun and Shea Durazzo, Tara Yummy, Paige Taylor and more: Like many brands that worked with creators at Coachella this year, PacSun prioritized performance with its influencer partnerships. The clothing brand enlisted TikTok mega-influencers Shea Durazzo, Tara Yummy and Paige Taylor to film content at its “Roadside Stand” activation and promote a four-day TikTok Shop livestream during Coachella’s first weekend. The influencers included a prominent sign for the event—recorded at PacSun’s downtown Los Angeles flagship—in the background of their videos. Content from creators and consumers who dropped by PacSun’s Coachella shop amassed more than 12 million impressions across social platforms—a significant chunk of the 81.5 million overall impressions generated by the brand’s TikTok Shop campaign, according to a press release. Also read: Why influencer performance, not just reach, mattered more at Coachella this year Glossier and Quenlin Blackwell: Before announcing the return of its espresso-flavored lip balm last week, Glossier partnered with influencer and comedian Quenlin Blackwell to help tease the product as its newly hired “barista-in-chief.” In a video posted to Glossier’s Instagram and TikTok, Blackwell cosplays as a business executive taking calls at her desk while holding a blurred-out tube of the brand’s espresso lip balm. Glossier’s post contains several hints at the mystery product’s connection to coffee, from the brown shades of Blackwell’s blazer, corded phone and pen in the video to phrases such as “perfectly roasted laughs” and “brewing soon” littered throughout the caption—not to mention Blackwell’s title. Dick’s and its Varsity Team roster: Dick’s Sporting Goods last week unveiled the 50 creators it selected for its “Varsity Team,” the retailer’s influencer program that, until now, was limited to Dick’s employees. Varsity Team creators include RobertAnthony Cruz, part of the internet-famous Savannah Bananas baseball team, wellness influencer Shelby Scott and “Dancing with the Stars” winner Alan Bersten. Each creator in the program signed a 10-month paid contract with Dick’s and will receive a stipend to buy products from Dick’s to feature in their social content, along with monthly learning sessions with the retailer’s influencer team and its influencer marketing agency, Fohr. Varsity Team members will also be mentored by professional athletes such as Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall, spouses who have won Olympic and Paralympic medals for track and field, respectively. Urban Decay and Doechii (again): Urban Decay teamed up with rapper Doechii earlier this year to feature its liquid highlighter in one of her music videos—and last week, the beauty brand once again made a cameo in a Doechii music video. A bottle of Urban Decay’s setting spray briefly appears in the music video for Doechii’s “Anxiety” during a scene where a group of hair stylists and makeup artists surround the rapper to quickly touch up her appearance. Social media screenshot Instagram pilots new “Blend” feature: Instagram head Adam Mosseri last week unveiled “Blend,” a feature that gives users in one-on-one or group chats a daily feed of recommended Reels based on the Instagram activity of everyone who opts in. The new feature, which Instagram is currently piloting with select users, is likely Instagram’s response to user activity increasingly shifting into private chats rather than the main feed or the Reels tab—a phenomenon Mosseri has previously noted. TikTok introduces a community notes feature: TikTok followed in Meta’s footsteps last week and similarly announced a feature inspired by X’s Community Notes. TikTok is initially testing its feature, called Footnotes, within the U.S., allowing U.S.-based users to add relevant contextual information to other TikTok users’ posts. TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, Adam Presser, said in a blog post that U.S. users must apply to become Footnotes contributors and must be at least 18 years old with at least six months on the platform to qualify. Unlike Meta, however, TikTok isn’t completely replacing its third-party fact-checking system with Footnotes, according to Presser. TikTok of the week In just the past few days, hundreds of TikTok creators have jumped on the so-called “narrator voice” trend on the platform, in which an off-screen voiceover (typically the AI-generated voice of an elderly British man) introduces the creator and offers an overview of the kind of content they make. Of course, the creator needs to feed the script for the narrator’s voiceover to a text-to-speech generator to make the video, but users following the trend will leave gaps in the script that allow them to pretend to banter with the narrator. In the above video, TikTok creator @IntentionallyEm shared a tutorial for how other creators can participate in the “narrator voice” trend through editing in CapCut.

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

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