Post Performance Report: Influencer marketing campaigns taking over our feeds

It’s time for another edition of the Post Performance Report (PPR), a series where we showcase social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and explore what makes them so genius. We unpack how your brand can use these examples to spark your own scroll-stopping ideas—while maximizing your budget and doing more with less.

According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, 81% of marketers agree influencer marketing is an essential part of their overall social strategy, but almost half struggle to measure the effectiveness of influencer campaigns. Since the opportunity for influencer marketing looms large, we decided to round up some of our favorite recent influencer campaigns, and demonstrate how they drive business results the C-suite cares about.

Let’s dive into our lineup of brands who excel at influencer marketing, and takeaways you can use to deliver compelling results.

Plot: The brand excelling on LinkedIn

Plot, the up and coming creative management platform, mastered influencer marketing on LinkedIn—a platform even large tech companies struggle to harness. And they’re only in the beta phase of their product launch.

The brand collaborated with trusted voices in the social media industry for the #PlotPartner program to tease their launch and encourage people to sign up for the waitlist. Like Chi Thukral, a Forbes 30 under 30 winner who works in social at HubSpot. In her recent post about the brand, she points out how she uses it day-to-day, and hits on specific pain points social marketers know all too well.

Another post from Lia Zneimer, the VP of Marketing at Teal, shares her candid feedback about how great she thinks the product is, and talks in more detail about the product itself.

The influencer buzz surrounding this new product coincided with Plot raising a $3 million investment round, which the brand will use to accelerate product development and launch the brand publicly. A moment all of LinkedIn is eagerly awaiting. 

The play: Consumers are discerning. They know influencer marketing isn’t the same as word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, and they don’t take influencers at their word. But you can still achieve genuine anticipation by allowing influencers to describe how they use your new product in their own words, and take consumers on a BTS journey.

But remember to always look for influencers and partners who actually use your product and understand how it works, especially if you’re in the tech industry.

YSL Beauty: The best date for Valentine’s Day

YSL Beauty, the luxury skincare and makeup brand, rained love on influencers this Valentine’s Day to promote the launch of their new Candy Glaze lip product. From gift giving to quality time to acts of service, YSL had every love language covered.

Leading up to the product launch, the brand sent heart-shaped Candy Glaze gloss press boxes to various beauty influencers. Every video was in the influencer’s unique style, suggesting YSL empowered them to give candid product feedback and put their own creative spin on the videos.

They also hosted an influencer YSL Beauty party during New York Fashion Week attended by celebrities and influencers-turned-celebrities. The YSL event featured lipgloss engravings, lip-print readings and a performance by Jack Harlow. The event was attended by YSL influencers and spokespeople like Dominic Sessa and Noah Beck.

The beauty brand topped off their Valentine’s Day activations by sponsoring the makeup looks of internet personalities, like Amelia Dimoldenberg. Dimoldenberg’s YSL Beauty post was one of her most liked in February.

According to Sprout Social Listening data from February 4 to March 5, 2024, mentions of the new Candy Glaze lipgloss and YSL Beauty increased by 3634% from February 11 to 12, and then leveled off after Valentine’s Day. The week of Valentine’s Day, the posts resulted in over 40 million impressions and more than 554,000 engagements on X and YouTube. That week, the brand and #CandyGlazeLip boasted an impressive 100% positive sentiment. 

The play: YSL Beauty’s campaign launch was an elaborate ecosystem of influencer content that made a major awareness impact. For your next launch, remember to make influencer marketing an integral part of your marketing strategy—not a peripheral tactic.

Disney: “Echoing” what their audience wants

Disney’s newest Marvel miniseries, Echo, tells the story of Maya Lopez, an antagonist-turned-protaginist who embraces her Choctaw family and community, while battling a criminal organization. Maya Lopez is a deaf, indigenous, amputee woman—identities typically underrepresented in superhero franchises.

To create hype for the series premiere, Disney strategically partnered with indigenous and deaf influencers who celebrated the series’ portrayal of the Choctaw nation and a deaf, disabled hero. This included a roundtable discussion between influencers and stars of the show.

According to data from Sprout Social Influencer Marketing from January 1 to March 5, 2024, conversations on social media resulted in over $1 million in earned media value, with some posts garnering an engagement rate of 10%, like this post from @TheDeafFamily

Post-launch, Forbes reported the show performed better (with audiences and critics) than recent Marvel Cinematic Universe ventures with higher budgets.

The play: A series like Echo has been a long time coming for fans of Disney and the MCU. But without the input of indigenous and disabled communities, the series might not have delivered a fair or accurate portrayal of the character. Disney took care when telling Echo’s story—and that includes choosing with influencers to partner with on promotion. When finding influencers to partner with, remember representation matters.

Porsche: Luxuriously whimsical content races to the top

When you visualize auto industry influencer marketing, you might picture luxurious vehicles and idyllic adventures. You probably don’t think of fashionable grandpas or adorable gray cats. But, those are exactly the influencers German automobile manufacturer Porsche is partnering with on TikTok. A far cry from the car-centric, sleek content on their other channels like Instagram and Facebook (and their competitors’ content).

User comments—both on the influencers’ pages and their own—suggests fans of the brand are loving it. These influencer partnerships are helping Porsche create their own cultural moments and reach younger consumers.

Porsche’s quirky TikTok content helps them soar past auto industry competitors on social media. So far this year, Porsche’s influencer marketing content delivered $56 million in earned media value, according to Sprout Social Influencer Marketing data from January 1 to March 5, 2024. Porsche is driving more engagements and earned media value than the other top three auto brands on social, according to Sprout Influencer Marketing data.

The play: Highly edited, promotional content is not the best use of any brand’s influencer content efforts. Especially when all your competitors are doing it. It’s important to find influencers who can present your product in new and creative ways.

Reformation: Vote in style this election year

In a stunning move that took the internet by storm, Reformation named political icon Monica Lewinsky the face of their new campaign, “You’ve Got the Power,” in partnership with Vote.org. The campaign is meant to encourage voter awareness, while launching a new line of elevated workwear with “strong silhouettes, excellent tailoring and sustainable deadstock materials.”

The reaction to the campaign was overwhelmingly positive, with influencers, creators and internet culture commentators weighing in on its significance. TikTok user @BlakelyThonton said, “This is the most culturally relevant thing Reformation has ever done. Any brand that exists right now must create an emotional reason for being…[Lewinsky] is the perfect vessel for a message about workplace power dynamics.”

The initial post announcing the campaign received more than 39,000 likes on Instagram and almost 17,000 views on TikTok. According to Sprout Social Listening data from February 26 to March 11, 2024, the launch was so iconic, it has a 100% positive sentiment rate. Even the brand relished the success of the campaign’s launch in an Instagram Carousel, where it reposted some of the best fan reactions.

The play: The ingenuity of Reformation’s partnership with Lewinsky is how well it speaks to the specific issues their audience cares about. In an era where many brands are shying away from the political limelight, brands can still use influencer marketing to make their values known. Just be careful to work with influencers who have a high “approval rating” with your audience.

Influencer spotlight: Corporate Erin

Though not technically an influencer marketing brand deal or campaign, we are so inspired by the humor, satire and realness Corporate Erin brings to her social presence, we decided to include her in the lineup.

Her humor is a spot-on impression of the pitfalls of corporate culture—including corporate jargon, unrealistic expectations of employees and atrocious work-life balance.

See more from Corporate Erin (aka Lisa Beasley) in Sprout’s on-demand webinar about building data-powered social strategies.

The play: The best influencer content feels genuine—conveying relatable truths and capturing the creator’s unique artistic style. Corporate Erin’s videos are a reminder of why overly prescriptive creator briefs tend to result in lackluster content, while authentic posts perform well. Influencers understand what their audience wants, and that isn’t neatly scripted, overly promotional content.

Grow your discoverability with influencer marketing

That concludes this month’s installment of the PPR. Stay tuned for next month’s edition where we’ll be digging into brands who use AI to enhance their social content. Until next time, keep these points in mind:

 

Looking for more on influencer marketing ROI? Read up on this six-point framework for cracking the influencer ROI equation.

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.