Month: April 2023

Since then, the brand’s partnership with Mulvaney has continued to make headlines as it has some fans of the brand calling for a boycott for working with a trans creator. At the same time, comments made by a marketing exec for the brand on the need for it to be less “fratty” and more inclusive have also drawn criticism. (Bud Light did not respond to requests for comment. However, Anheuser-Busch did release a statement works with “hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics.”)

“Unfortunately we’ve come to expect this in today’s climate and on the contrary, we need more brands to take a similar clear stance in support of trans influencers,” said Mae Karwowski, CEO of influencer marketing shop Obviously.

Bud Light’s work with Mulvaney comes as brands are pushing to be more inclusive with influencer marketing campaigns — a trend they expect to continue, three influencer marketing execs told Digiday.

Younger generations, particularly millennials and Gen Z, are paying closer attention to what brands say about various social and human rights issues, the execs explained, and they tend to spend their dollars with brands that align with their values.

“Gen Z and millennials specifically put their dollars toward people and brands that align with their value set,” said Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing. “And value set doesn’t mean political affiliation, that is a component. Value set alignment — anything from environmental impact, do you have women of color in leadership positions, etc. it is a very long list of things we as humans care about — the more a brand aligns with our values the more we’re willing to buy what they’re selling.” 

While influencer marketing agency execs expect the push for inclusion in influencer marketing to continue, they did note that the partnership between Bud Light and Mulvaney was surprising. “You don’t usually see a brand that has a majority of a demographic under one value set risking their potential business at broad scale to go in the other direction,” noted Segar. “You have to compliment them for doing it.”

Bud Light has previously highlighted the LGBTQ+ community in its advertising before. Last May, for example, the beer behemoth announced a partnership with the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) while highlighting the brand’s “20 years of support of the LGBTQ+ community through various organizations and activations.” 

“Brands are increasingly being more up front about what their values are and aligning with influencers who match those,” said Danielle Wiley, founder of influencer marketing shop Sway Group, who added that the current political climate will likely mean brands should expect to deal with backlash when they do so. “There will be more of this but I wouldn’t tell brands to step back or influencers to step back. They just have to be prepared.”

So far, there haven’t been ripple effects of the ondsagoing backlash cycle to influencer marketing agencies and the requests they get from clients. Influencer agency execs say that brands are still seeking to be more inclusive with their influencer marketing efforts and that brands haven’t been asking questions about how the Bud Light situation could impact them.

Going forward, influencer marketing execs believe brands need to be prepared for potential backlash and be ready to back their decision to support trans influencers.

“If a brand is working with a trans creator, they’ve already done the calculation and they’re making a value statement that they won’t stand for bigotry and discrimination,” said Karwowski. “They want to work with creators who align with their values and their customers’ values. It goes both ways — in the last few years, we’ve seen creators more diligently vetting brands too before they agree to collaborate.”

“It’s hard to overstate the impact of influencers in terms of shaping brand perception, word of mouth and getting the word out,” Kelly said. “It’s truly one of the most effective ways to get the word out at this point.”

Like a slew of other advertisers, including wellness brand Liquid I.V. and startup pet health company Fuzzy, Lilly Pulitzer is pushing to become less reliant on performance marketing tactics to make space, in terms of spend and effort, for experimental marketing and brand awareness channels like influencer marketing, Kelly added. For Lilly Pulitzer, those efforts are in partnership with digital agency PMG.

In a new paid partnership campaign and strategy shift to diversify its media mix, the clothing brand has tapped major TikTok influencers like Natalie Marshall, who goes by @corporatenatalie on social media and has more than 500,000 TikTok followers, Taryn Dudley, who has more than 20,000 TikTok followers, and Taryn Delanie, better known as Miss New York, who has more than one million followers on TikTok, among others. 

“We wanted to go big with influencers of course because we realized the power that influencers have to build brand relevance, change perception, promote key styles and things like that, and their ability to do it quickly,” said Lindsey Lehmann, head of influencer and branded content at PMG.

Last year, Lilly Pulitzer’s clothing business spent $10.5 million on media, according to Vivvix, a Kantar Company, including paid social data from Pathmatics. That figure is up from the $7 million the company spent in 2021. 

Influencer marketing isn’t a new strategy for the clothing brand, per Kelly. But in the past, Lilly Pulitzer’s influencer marketing strategy was more grass roots, relegated to partnering with people who were already familiar with the brand. This year, those efforts are triple what the brand has ever done in a single year for influencer marketing, she added. (The brand did not respond to a request for specific figures in time for publication.)

“We actually just wanted to go a bit broader and have more people involved to get the word out faster and at a bigger scale,” Kelly said. “We were putting the word out, but weren’t shouting. We were whispering the word before.”

Across the board, influencer marketing has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have line item in media budgets, especially when it comes to younger shoppers, according to agency executives. In fact, Digiday+ Research found that the percentage of brands who invest in influencer marketing jumped from 62% at the beginning of 2022 to 73% in the first quarter of 2023.

And new data reported by Business Insider revealed that young people are influenced more by TikTok than word of mouth. Looking to get in on that trend, close to 75% of U.S. marketers were expected to leverage influencers for campaigns in 2022, up from about 70% in 2021, per Insider Intelligence. Insider Intelligence also reported that those influencer-brand partnerships were predicted to cost $4.14 billion in 2022, compared with the nearly $240 billion expected to go toward digital marketing overall.

Even as economic uncertainty and a potential TikTok ban loom above the marketing industry, Gabe Gordon, co-founder of social shop Reach Agency, said influencer marketing is an important piece of the marketing pie.

“Who knows if the TikTok ban is going to happen and how it’ll impact it,” he said, adding that marketers should keep their current plans in place for now. “Until then, there’s great other avenues, especially for a forward-fashion brand like [Lilly Pulitzer], on Instagram and Instagram Reels, both a great area to focus your marketing spend,” he added.

That’s the plan for Lilly Pulitzer, according to Kelly, who emphasized the importance of a marketing strategy that includes performance marketing strategies in addition to brand awareness strategies like influencer marketing. 

“I’m hoping to not swing back all into performance marketing just because it’s safe and measurable,” she said. “I hope that we’re able to keep the more full funnel and balanced marketing mix top of mind no matter what the economy throws at us.”