28 Influencer Marketing Examples That Rock
With over 7 years of e-commerce experience, Agne has mastered the balance of creativity and performance. From guiding social media strategies to crafting high-converting ads, she’s all about results.
More businesses are waking up to the power of influencer marketing. Seventy-one percent now believe these partnerships are good for business.
However, while this marketing strategy is popular, only a few companies understand how to get it right. Yes, they’ve read the blogs and watched the theoretical videos but haven’t explored specific cases of influencer marketing campaigns that rock.
Fortunately, that’s where this post can help. We look at examples of influencer marketing from across sectors, giving you ideas for your campaigns (no matter your industry!)
ASOS
- Influencers: Various micro-influencers
- Industry: Fashion
ASOS was one of the first fashion retailers to nail the online shopping model, allowing customers to send back garments they didn’t want with ease. However, it only got into this market-leading position because of its partnerships with more than 29 micro-influencers.
ASOS’s influencer campaign worked because of the sheer diversity of its partner network. It got social media personalities to promote examples of almost every female body type wearing its clothes. It showed that anyone could benefit from its lines.
Dunkin’
- Influencers: Charli D’Amelio
- Industry: Food
How do you get Gen Z to love your brand? Simple: you partner with one of their most-loved TikTok influencers. And for Dunkin’ (formerly Dunkin’ Donuts), that meant cozying up with Charlie D’Amelio.
The teen megastar has more than 151 million followers on social media, providing the brand with a massive, ready-made audience it could tap into immediately to promote its new drinks. D’Amelio’s posts ultimately generated over 1.4 million likes and 6,400 shares for the company.
Google/Samsung
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Technology
Samsung released the Galaxy S22 phone equipped with Google’s Android operating system in 2022. However, the South Korean behemoth worried the launch wasn’t generating enough excitement.
To change this, it partnered with various Instagram and TikTok influencers to highlight the new phone’s voice recognition features. Users treated their devices like computers on the Star Trek Enterprise, showing off a new level of capabilities.
Care/of
- Influencers: Tiffany Ferg (and others)
- Industry: Health
Care/of is a vitamin supplements company that sells personalized vitamins based on your requirements. Users take a quiz and then the brand sends them the required pills and potions.
However, given the sheer number of supplement companies, the firm wasn’t having the online impact it wanted. Therefore, it teamed up with multiple influencers, like Tiffany Feng, to promote its concept and how audiences can use it to improve their health.
Care/of used its influencer campaign to extol the virtues of personalized vitamins, generating thousands of new views and impressions. The idea that you could customize supplementation became mainstream.
Dior
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Beauty
Dior launched an influencer campaign in 2020 called “67 Shades of Dior,” showing what products look like on varying skin tones. The campaign drove brand awareness across countries and improved the label’s reputation.
Gymshark
- Influencers: Nona Bayat (And Others)
- Industry: Sport
Gymshark is another brand with a reputation for engaging in world-class influencer marketing. The fitness label partnered with numerous influencers to promote its athleisure clothing and encourage more people to wear it.
Nona Bayat was a clever choice. She had over 3.7 million followers on social media who engage strongly with all her content, generating tens of thousands of likes and comments.
Aumio
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Parenting and family
Aumio makes an app that helps parents and young children sleep better at night. However, it found it challenging to make conventional marketing interesting (since it only sells one product).
Therefore, it worked with multiple influencers to increase sales. Parents showed off using the app in different ways to help their kids drift off to sleep, driving user engagement higher.
Sony
Influencers: Karl Conrad
Industry: Gaming
Japanese electronics company Sony engaged with Canadian gamer Karl Conrad to promote awareness of its PlayStation VR headset. It needed someone to sell the idea to their audience and gain traction.
Konrad started the trend but soon after, other influencers and users began uploading their experiences of the technology, showing off how it was transforming their gaming experience.
By the end, the company attracted a bevy of user-generated content (UGC), turning it into one of the best influencer marketing campaigns ever. Virtual reality headsets went from a fringe purchase to something mainstream.
Barbie
- Influencers: Dua Lipa (and others)
- Industry: Music and entertainment
The Barbie movie was one of the biggest releases of the summer of 2023. But part of its rise to prominence had to do with the sheer number of influencers supporting it, including Dua Lipa
The film’s marketing team decided to get various celebrities and social media personalities to pose in Barbie filters and post their creations online to generate hype for the film. Their campaigns generated massive social media buzz that pumped people up for the movie’s eventual release.
HelloFresh
- Influencers: Olivia’s World
- Industry: Wellness
Food prep company HelloFresh wanted to promote its content more widely. Therefore, it teamed up with Olivia’s World to discuss how the brand solved her problems (i.e. providing her with the ingredients she needs to cook delicious, fresh meals every night). The campaign eventually went viral and made HelloFresh the number-one box meal delivery service in the U.S.
Animalhouse Fitness
- Influencers: Noah J. Richter (and others)
- Industry: Fitness
Animalhouse Fitness works with various influencers to promote its products, showing them in action. However, it also varies its approach with video tutorials, images, unboxed videos, and more, similar to its influencer marketing ads.
AnimalHouse sent its MonkeyFeet to over 100 fitness influencers on various platforms. Eventually, it garnered the interest of Joe Rogan, the podcast host listened to by more than 11 million people worldwide.
Bioessence
- Influencers: Jonathan Van Ness
- Industry: Sustainability and environment
Bioessence is a sustainability-focused brand that sells clean skincare to eco-conscious customers online. It’s had massive success over the past few years but sought to supercharge its progress even more.
For this reason, it teamed up with Queer Eye and Gay of Thrones guru Jonathan Van Ness. The brand wanted to use the online influencer with more than 5.3 million followers to promote its products to an audience with the same values. Bioessence was successful because it chose someone already passionate and obsessed with its brand. Van Ness’s authenticity sold the products for it.
Air Wick
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Home and interior design
Air Wick is in the business of helping people make their homes smell wonderful. But it got tired of its products languishing on homeware store shelves for weeks and months.
To change this, it partnered with various lifestyle and interior design influencers to improve brand awareness by showcasing its products in action. The partly user-generated content (UGC) boosted product recognition and increased its baseline engagement rate by 39%.
Honey
- Influencers: Mr. Beast (and others)
- Industry: Finance and investment
Honey is an online coupon plugin that helps shoppers get discounts on ecommerce websites and platforms. The concept was wildly popular in its own right, but it also launched some of the most successful influencer marketing campaigns ever.
The brand worked with over 56 influencers, including YouTube superstar Mr. Beast (who generated a whopping 2 million views for the company). The influencer content was interesting because people could see how much they could save using the app in real-time.
Absolut Vodka
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Beverage
Absolut Vodka also ran one of the most successful influencer marketing campaigns ever. Its campaign worked because it chose influencers whose values align with its brand themes (including sustainability).
Häagen-Dazs
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Food
Häagen-Dazs knows that its potential market is everyone. (After all, who doesn’t like ice cream?!) As such, it’s partnered with actors, fashion enthusiasts, make-up artists, and countless others to promote its frozen desserts.
But why? Part of the company’s focus is finding people who share its fun and family energy. It wants to work with individuals who complement the message it wants to deliver to its audience.
For example, the European ice cream brand decided to work with singer-songwriter Leslie Grace. The collaborations (involving an “event activation”) drew over 233,000 new TikTok followers for the brand and 20.8 million views.
NordVPN
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: IT and technology
NordVPN was once just another VPN provider. However, it created the most successful brand in the industry by working with numerous influencers on YouTubers and other platforms.
The company focused primarily on macro-influencers – social media personalities with over 100,000 followers, but less than one million – to reach a broader audience. It leveraged influencer platforms to find suitable people to talk to their audiences about its products.
What was so clever about NordVPN’s strategy was how compelling an offer it was. Of course, users watching IT and technology channels wanted privacy. It was hard to argue against. But it didn’t compete with other vendors using these influencers. Instead, it slotted in beside them.
Also, NordVPN incentivized action by offering limited-time deals. Influencers told their audiences they had until the end of the week to take advantage of special offers on subscriptions before they would disappear forever.
Deeper Sonars
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Sports and recreation
Deeper Sonars is a company that makes sonar systems for anglers and has become a leader in the fishing equipment world. The company is famous for bringing advanced technology to the mass market, allowing anyone to find prime catch spots.
What’s more, the brand believes in the power of influencers. It dedicates an incredible 70% of its marketing budget to its ambassador program.
The company differentiates between various influencer levels. Some of its partners are hobbyists and fans of the brand who like its sonars but don’t necessarily use them. Another group is its “Deeper Heroes” – professional anglers – while a third group is paid partners on long-term deals.
Deeper Sonar’s influencer program is successful because it accounts for churn. Even if some ambassadors leave the brand, others are always willing to join.
Furthermore, it provides additional incentives to its top partners. Those on long-term deals stick around and generate tremendous value.
Last Crumb
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Food
Last Crumb is another brand that provides lessons in influencer marketing. The Los Angeles-based label operates a unique business model where it deliberately sells out of cookies (often in minutes) to drive engagement. If customers want to get their hands on its special creations, they must follow the brand-associated influencers who promote them.
People wouldn’t pay Last Crumb’s high prices if their products were always available. But the exclusivity creates demand. The company uses its partners to get prospective customers to sign up for its text messages and emails so they can hit the buy button when the legendary cookies become available. Then, influencers amp up the hype by posting images and videos of the cookies in action and how epic they are compared to conventional store-bought varieties.
Touchland
- Influencers: Naomi Campbell
- Industry: Health And Wellness
Touchland didn’t take the usual influencer marketing route by contacting social media personalities and asking if they wanted to work with it. Instead, the luxury hand sanitizer brand sent free products to mega-celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, and waited to see what would happen.
Ultimately, Touchland generated over 2,000 collaborations in a single year. The partnership program managed to drive conversion rates at over 5% – an astonishing achievement.
However, the company’s actions weren’t random. It looked for influencers with a history of using hand sanitizers on social media it thought could benefit from its products.
At the same time, it donated over 5,000 hand sanitizers to hospitals, healthcare workers, and workers. These drove word-of-mouth marketing within wards about the quality of the brand’s products.
UberEats
- Influencers: Rebel Wilson
- Industry: Food
Uber Eats, Chipotle, and Hinge decided to band together to improve dating with the help of Rebel Wilson. Yes, it sounds complicated, but here’s how it worked:
- Chipotle introduced its “Chuffing Season Menu”
- Customers ordering it had a chance to win dating advice from How to Be Single star Rebel Wilson
- The Chuffing Season Menu was only available on the UberEats App
- The meals on the chuffing menu were inspired by data on Hinge dating habits
Yes, it was a bit convoluted. But every company in the arrangement benefited. Chipotle began to associate itself with date-night food, Uber Eats normalized staying in (Netflix and chill), and Hinge saw customers gravitating to its platform, wanting to take advantage of the special offers and deals (users taking part got $20 off their subsequent three Uber Eats-delivered Chipotle orders).
The inclusion of Rebel Wilson, though, was arguably the masterstroke. The famous influencer defied the unattainable flawlessness of most influencers and celebrated her curves, presenting a friendly face to the brand.
Mcdonald’s
- Influencers: Travis Scott
- Industry: Food
McDonald’s is a brand that goes through cycles. Most recently, it’s been on a low ebb, finding it challenging to keep its prices down.
To push back, it recently collaborated with Travis Scott (Cactus Jack) to turn its fortunes around. The month-long deal saw the fast food brand working with the Astroworld star to promote his favorite meal – the quarter-pounder with cheese, bacon, and lettuce with fries and BBQ dip.
What made the campaign so successful was Travis Scott’s mass appeal. At the time, he had over 73 million followers on Instagram, many of whom love McDonald’s food. During the month-long campaign, this single influencer racked up an incredible 426 million impressions for the food company.
Penguin Teen
- Influencers: Various
- Industry: Publishing
Penguin Teen, the young adult division of book publisher Penguin, wanted to drive interest in upcoming releases on social media to support authors writing for the under-18s. Therefore, it borrowed from the existing strategy of its main business arm and used influencers to generate buzz about the novels and other works it publishes.
In 2022, it wanted to promote the book All My Rage By Sabaa Tahir to a South Asian audience. To make this happen, it partnered with dozens of regional influencers and got them to promote the release on TikTok by reviewing the book. The result was hundreds of thousands of additional book sales that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
CapitalOne
- Influencers: Samuel L. Jackson, Andrew Zimmern, Martha Stuart, Whitney Port
- Industry: Finance and Banking
CapitalOne wanted a way to make its credit cards sexier. But it didn’t know what to do. Conventional advertising hadn’t worked so it reached out to big personalities in the social media space and asked whether it could work with them to promote its products.
To grab the attention of Millennials, it reached out to Whitney Port, the reality-star-turned-fashion-designer from the hit show The Hills. The brand leveraged her 1.5 million Instagram followers (93% female), sending them a more authentic message it hoped they would remember.
The campaign ultimately worked. Whitney created content showing her using CapitalOne credit cards at small businesses supporting local artisans.
Big Fig
- Influencers: Stefani Nicole
- Industry: Home
Big Fig makes mattresses for “bigger figures.” It’s a company for plus-size customers who want a mattress to help them get a good night’s sleep, focusing on health, body positivity, and self-love.
However, the brand found it tough to get its message out to its audience through conventional channels. Selling plus-size mattresses is hard.
Fortunately, Stefani Nicole, a plus-sized travel and fashion influencer, wanted to help. The brand liked her stylish posts and ability to get her photography just right, and decided to use her for its marketing.
Stefani only had 77,500 followers on Instagram during the campaign, but that’s exactly what Big Fig wanted. It was looking for social media personalities with the characteristics it needed to promote its products and get people to use its superior technology. Ultimately, the mattress-maker generated an average engagement rate of 1.32% and got more likes and conversions for its products using Stefani’s channel.
Bobbie
- Influencers: Ashley Graham
- Industry: Family and Baby
Bobbie is a formula milk company that believes that every parent should have a say in how they feed their baby. However, it couldn’t expand this message to a wider audience.
That’s when it decided to partner with model Ashley Graham. The collaboration, called the “Your Best Is Best” campaign, focused on normalizing the idea of using formula and gave more power to mothers.
The campaign on social media tried to change perceptions of formula milk, with 64% feeling “judged” for their choices. Ashley Graham posted empathetic comments, giving mothers more confidence in their child-rearing abilities. “It’s time we decide what’s best for ourselves,” Graham said. “For me, that looks like a combination of breast milk and Bobbie. Join me as I share my untold feeding confessional as a new member of the Bobbie fam.”
The campaign generated over 5.8 million views on Graham’s Instagram account. It even made it into the real world, with campaign posters appearing on New York and Los Angeles billboards saying “There is no one size feeds all.”
Fiji Water
- Influencers: Katie Couric
- Industry: Beverages
On the face of it, Fiji Water isn’t doing anything special. Countless companies already bottle water.
As such, the brand felt inspired to take the next step in its marketing. It decided to use influencers to promote its products and get people interested in what it does.
To this end, it began a partnership with the journalist, Katie Couric, to create various collaborative posts. One idea was for Couric to interview people on the street to see if they could tell the difference between Fiji water and locally sourced products to answer the question, “Does water from various places taste that differently from other waters?”
The campaign was a success for several reasons. People trust Katie Couric, so having her behind the brand was an immediate boon. However, the taste test was also blind. Participants didn’t know which water was from Fiji, but they still identified it as the best, supporting the company. The reactions weren’t staged, driving trust and authenticity.
Moncler
- Influencers: Bella Poarch
- Industry: Fashion
Finally, fashion brand Moncler wanted to drum up some interest in its products on TikTok. To get the ball rolling, it asked Gen Z influencers to recreate its signature bubble coat look using items from around the home. Bella Poarch decided to get involved, recreating the coat from some stuffed toy sheep and cats. The campaign generated 7.8 billion views and millions of comments (with Bella getting over 3,000 alone).
Creative Manager
With over 7 years of e-commerce experience, Agne has mastered the balance of creativity and performance. From guiding social media strategies to crafting high-converting ads, she’s all about results.
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