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 Revolve, 818 Tequila and True Religion host Coachella influencer parties: Coachella is often dubbed “the influencer Olympics,” and for good reason—it’s become one of the biggest influencer marketing events of the year. Dozens of brands, such as Neutrogena, Poppi, Red Bull and Alaska Airlines, flew influencers out to the California desert for the annual music festival’s first of two weekends; some, including Dove and Australian fashion brand White Fox Boutique, put them up at swanky villas. The buzziest influencer marketing activations at Coachella, however, were the exclusive events and parties hosted by several brands around the music festival. Revolve hosted its eighth annual Revolve Festival in a new 80,000-square-foot location with hundreds of influencers and celebrities (including Alix Earle, Cardi B, Normani and sisters Charli and Dixie D’Amelio) in attendance. Kendall Jenner’s tequila brand 818 broadened its invite-only 818 Outpost event to include new brand partners including fellow creator-founded brand Rhode. And True Religion hosted hundreds of influencers and many of its brand ambassadors (collectively called “Team True”) at its second annual "Buddhafest" party. Simply Pop and Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz: Prebiotic soda brands Poppi (which was acquired by PepsiCo last month) and Olipop have both leaned heavily into influencer marketing. Now, Coca-Cola is following in their footsteps to market its recently launched prebiotic soda, Simply Pop. For its first major influencer push, Simply Pop is sponsoring an upcoming live tour of Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz’s podcast “Pretty Basic.” The “Spill the Pop” tour kicks off in Los Angeles later this month and will also hit Denver, Miami and Atlanta. Max and Jackie Aina, Ashley Yi, Achieng Agutu and more: To celebrate the season three finale of “The White Lotus” earlier this month, streaming platform Max invited more than 100 creators and influencers to a three-day wellness retreat at the Four Seasons Westlake Village, which Max transformed into a “real-life” White Lotus hotel. Attendees included beauty and lifestyle influencers such as Jackie Aina, Ashley Yi and Achieng Agutu, along with several members of “The White Lotus” cast who spoke on a panel (moderated by fashion designer and “Queer Eye” star Tan France) after a screening of the finale. Marketing agency RQ led the creator strategy and programming for the event. Hootsuite and Jayde Powell, Brandon Smithwrick and more: Business-to-business brands have been getting more creative with their LinkedIn influencer campaigns lately, from Notion’s campaign promoting its “Notion Faces” avatar generator tool with the help of Snoop Dogg to Yahoo urging social media professionals to literally “touch grass,” or spend time offline, by shipping them keyboards with bits of turf for keys. The latest brand to join this wave of B2B influencer marketing innovation is social media management platform Hootsuite, which enlisted four top social media voices on LinkedIn—Jayde Powell, Brandon Smithwrick, Sophie Miller and Jazmin Griffith—to run Hootsuite’s “social media help desk” and offer advice to social media managers via their own comments sections. Crocs and @KidWithCrocs: For the past several weeks, an anonymous artist known as @KidsWithCrocs on Instagram and TikTok has been 3D-printing Crocs to fit various statues around New York, from a duck statue accompanying a statue of Hans Christian Andersen in Central Park to the cartoonish figures of animals and people scattered throughout the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue Subway station. Last week, that artist revealed the eight-episode series was a collaboration with Crocs that resulted from an Instagram DM the artist sent to Crocs in September 2020. Social media screenshot Meta’s FTC trial heads to federal court: Meta and the Federal Trade Commission headed to federal court yesterday for the first day of an antitrust trial that’s expected to run for about two months. The trial comes five years after the FTC filed a lawsuit against Meta alleging the company created a monopoly by acquiring rival social media apps Instagram and WhatsApp. If the court sides with the FTC, Meta could be forced to sell off the two apps. In a blog post, Meta Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said the FTC’s lawsuit against the company is “weak” and “ignores reality.” TikTok unveils new brand safety tools: TikTok, which is also facing an uncertain future in the U.S., is continuing to court advertisers with new brand safety controls on the platform. The tools, announced in a blog post yesterday, allow advertisers to prevent specific videos or users from appearing next to their ads. But those brand safety features won’t mean much if the U.S. TikTok ban takes effect on its newly extended deadline of June 19. Snap allows brands to sponsor creator workshops: Snap last week invited advertisers to sponsor upcoming “Snap School” workshops, where brands can connect with creators in its “Snap Star” creator program. Snap will host nearly two dozen of these creator workshops through the rest of 2025. TikTok of the week Scammers have been leveraging AI-generated deepfakes of celebrities such as Taylor Swift to generate false product or brand endorsements for months. But content creators are the latest targets in a new wave of deepfake scam ads. Last week, beauty and wellness influencer Arielle Lorre highlighted an Instagram ad from Korean skincare brand Skaind that used an AI-generated replica of her to promote its products in a fake podcast interview. Skaind responded to an Instagram DM Lorre sent after encountering the ad, telling her that its marketing team “accessed this content through an artificial intelligence platform without being aware that it was a recognized person or [sic] with image rights.” But Lorre said in her video highlighting the deepfaked ad that Skaind pulled several video clips directly from her TikTok account and episodes of her podcast, meaning the brand would have needed to comb through her content to locate those clips. The brand blocked Lorre after her lawyer sent it a cease and desist letter, she said. And when she reported the video to Instagram, the platform responded that Skaind’s post “does not go against [Instagram’s] Community Standards.” “Not only is it illegal, but it also dilutes my brand [and] affects the trust that I’ve been building with my audience and community for years on end,” Lorre said in her video.

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

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