Looking for influencer marketing examples and ideas to expand your business’ reach and engagement? It’s a pretty smart move if you ask me.

By teaming up with popular and relevant social media influencers, you can get your message in front of a whole new audience.

And the best part?

These influencers have already built trust and credibility with their followers, so it’s like an instant stamp of approval for your product or service.

In this post, I’m going to share some examples of influencer marketing done right along with what you can learn from each of them. So sit back, relax, and let’s dive in!

Disclosure: This content may contain a few affiliate links, which means if you click on them, I will get a commission (without any extra cost to you).

The Best Influencer Marketing Examples & What to Learn From Them

Without further ado, let me walk you through successful examples of influencer marketing done right by different brands. I’ll also help you analyze what they did right and how you can implement the same to get maximum ROI for your next campaign.

Let’s get started.

1. Chipotle’s Enhanced Partnership with Top Influencers

Chipotle launched a program, Chipotle Creator Class, to enhance its relationship with its top influencers. The brand took this initiative to follow a creator-first approach instead of the traditional transactional relationship between brands and creators.

This program included 14 viral stars and digital creators such as Newton Nguyen, Zahra, Zack Fairhurst,  and Moneysigneric.

For the 15th member selection, they ran an influencer campaign on TikTok using the hashtags, “#chipotlecreator” and “#entry.”

@newt #ad Want to join the squad of @Chipotle creators? 😩🤞🏼Make a vid using #chipotlecreator + #entry ♬ Lazy Sunday – Official Sound Studio

They offered these members:

  • Monetary compensation
  • 50 free entrees from the brand
  • Access to a catered Chipotle party for up to 25 people
  • Priority consideration for future paid influencer campaigns
  • Exclusive Chipotle merchandise
  • A visit to the chain’s test kitchen in Irvine, California
  • A promo code for 500 free burritos for the influencer’s followers, every time they hit a milestone

What you can learn from this campaign:

  • Build meaningful influencer relationships that focus on rewarding, thanking, and empowering your greatest supporters.
  • Help each other grow to create win-win partnerships.

2. Dunkin’ Donuts Launched “The Charli” Drink in Partnership with TikTok Star, Charlie D’Amelio

Dunkin’ Donuts successfully maximized the ROI of its influencer marketing strategy by partnering with TikTok star, Charli D’Amelio.

The brand introduced a drink called “The Charli” on its menu, and D’Amelio promoted it as her favorite.

@dunkin @charlidamelio 17th bday means a present for you!! 😎🎁 Stay tuned. #charlidunkinremix #dunkin ♬ original sound – Dunkin'

The brand also shared images of D’Amelio ordering the signature drink from them.

They launched a contest together with the hashtag, “#CharliXDunkinContest,” encouraging fans to share photos or videos of recreating the iconic Charli and Dunkin’ moments.

The five lucky winners would get a chance to join D’Amelio in a video conference.

participating videos of charlixdunkin contest

This partnership resulted in fans ordering hundreds of thousands of drinks within the first five days of this campaign launch. It also helped:

  • Increase daily downloads of the Dunkin’ Donuts app by 57%.
  • Boost sales for Dunkin’ cold brews by 20% and 45% on the first and second days of the launch.

What you can learn from this campaign:

  • Partner with a popular influencer to promote your brand and products to a new audience.
  • Create a product or campaign that is personal to the influencer. With an authentic and personal touch, your campaign is more likely to appeal to the influencer’s fans.
  • Using contests and hashtags can help spread the word about your influencer campaigns and encourage user-generated content.

3. Daniel Wellington’s Campus Influencers Community

The Swedish watch brand, Daniel Wellington leveraged influencer marketing to become a $220 million brand. They are known for their partnerships with micro-influencers and their branded hashtag campaigns like the “#DWPickoftheDay” campaign.

The brand still continues to use influencer marketing as a key part of its marketing and sales strategy.

They launched “#DWonCampus,” a community of university students to promote their timeless watches on campus and off campus.

For every successful collaboration, the campus influencers:

  • Earn points that they can redeem when purchasing a Daniel Wellington product.
  • Win exclusive prizes and incentives such as gift cards, concert tickets, and passes to relevant events.
  • Get a chance for your posts to feature on the official Daniel Wellington Instagram account.
  • Gain real-life experiences of partnering with a global brand, which would look great on their resume.

As their target audience is primarily GenYers – university students and young professionals, this social community has contributed greatly to the brand’s global success.

What you can learn from this influencer campaign:

  • Focus on nano and micro-influencers. When relevant, they can help generate more engagement and sales than celebrity and macro-influencer partnerships.
  • Find influencers who have direct access to your target audience.
  • Offer affiliate discounts to increase product sales.
  • Repurpose influencer-generated content and post it on your official Instagram account. Doing this can save you from the hassles of creating new content every day.

4. Magnum’s “True to Pleasure” Campaign with Singer, Halsey

Magnum, the popular ice cream brand, has launched several influencer marketing campaigns to promote its products.

One such influencer marketing example is the brand’s “True to Pleasure” campaign, where they partnered with singer, songwriter, and activist, Halsey along with other individuals.

The campaign encouraged people to overcome all warriors in their pursuit of happiness and, truthfully, do what actually makes them happy.

The campaign promoted Magnum’s Ruby ice cream, a velvety white ice cream with a swirl of raspberry.

Many users, including Magnum partners and general consumers, took to Instagram and TikTok to share their own “#truetopleasure” photos and videos.

The brand also shared the recipe for Halsey’s Magnum on its blog.

This campaign increased user-generated content and social media engagement, which also helped grow the sales of Magnum’s Ruby ice cream.

What you can learn from this campaign:

  • Prioritize authenticity over everything else. Magnum chose Halsey to convey its message of being true to one’s pleasure because she is known for her bold and fearless personality.
  • Instead of running a one-influencer campaign, try featuring a diverse group of individuals to engage a wider audience and promote inclusivity.

5. Tinder Capitalized on the Rise of TikTokers

Tinder is an online dating app where you can like or dislike your potential partners’ profiles by swiping right or left. When two people swipe right on each other’s profiles, they get to communicate.

To promote their service, they roped in influential TikTokers between the age of 18-25, which is their core target audience, as their brand ambassadors. One of them is Tayler Holder, who has 20 million TikTok followers.

Taylor shared his own dating story on Tinder in one of his TikTok videos.

@tinder ok the way that nothing i ever do will top @itstaylerholder’s date story 😭 #dating #tinder ♬ original sound – Tinder

He also created content in collaboration with Noah Beck (34M TikTok followers), wearing Tinder’s branded tshirts.

@itstaylerholder Back with the Lil bro! @noahbeck @tinder #tinderambassador ♬ Throat Baby (Go Baby) – BRS Kash

With this campaign, the dating app brand was able to:

  • Get 697.6M views of TikTok alone.
  • Increase brand awareness among Gen-Zers.
  • Increase Tinder’s social media followers, views, and even app downloads.

What to learn from this influencer campaign:

  • Increase brand awareness and brand love by partnering with influencers who match your ideal consumers – the same age group and a similar personality.
  • Value a series of posts or longer partnerships over a one-time partnership or one sponsored post.

6. Häagen-Dazs’ Buy One Get One Promotional Campaign

This is another influencer campaign for ice cream promotions.

Häagen-Dazs partnered with local influencers based in New York City (mostly, millennials) to promote the BOGO (buy one get one) offer on their ice creams. The aim was to remind customers that these ice creams were an essential part of their summer experiences.

The campaign highlighted Häagen-Dazs’ BOGO promotions at Duane Reade and Walgreens stores in NYC. The influencers created original content from rooftop parties and sampling events.

Here’s a photo by Styled Snapshots, from one of Häagen-Dazs’ summer ice cream parties:

The influencers also hosted the “#HDOpenContainer” challenge on Instagram to encourage people to attend the brand’s sampling events and share their own experiences on IG.

The campaign generated:

  • 14.3 million impressions
  • 27,400 social engagements, a whopping 400% above the average engagement rate
  • 148% increase in the share of voice for the brand
  • Greater sales

What to learn from this influencer marketing campaign:

  • The best way to drive footfall to retail stores is to leverage hyper-local targeting.
  • Host sampling events to promote your product and make it more accessible to local customers.

7. Adidas’ “Impossible is Nothing” Campaign

Adidas partnered with a variety of athletes and other highly-documented individuals from across the globe. They documented their journeys to achieving success.

The campaign included stories of people from different sports, ethnicities, and backgrounds. This included the likes of Lionel Messi, Peres Jepchirchir, Beyoncé, Siya Kolisi, and Candace Parker.

The aim was to inspire all individuals with their stories of hope, seeing their own possibilities, and striving to achieve what they want.

In all videos, the sportsperson emphasized on Adidas’ campaign’s focus area – “sustainability.” For every 10 minutes of running or an equivalent sport, Adidas and Parley would clean up the oceans (equivalent weight of 1 plastic bottle, up to 500,000 lbs).

The campaign launched in over 50 countries and resulted in over 1 billion social media views and 18M+ engagements.

What to learn from this campaign:

  • Be inclusive of people from different ethnicities, genders, colors, races, and nationalities.
  • Tell stories that people will be able to relate to.
  • Inspire and empower people.
  • Support a cause to increase engagement and pay back to the planet and the society.

8. American Express’ “#AmexAmbassador” Campaign

American Express has been setting themselves apart with their advertising campaigns for years. They often partner with influencers to promote their Amex cards and share the many exciting experiences that their card members get to enjoy.

They launched the “#AmexAmbassador” campaign to promote the premium rewards available with their different cards.

These benefits included:

  • Luxurious travel upgrades
  • Exclusive event access
  • Other premium rewards

The brand felt that the luxurious lifestyles of influencers are perfect to emulate the card’s features. So, they worked with a wide variety of influencers on Instagram, ranging from top celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal to niche micro-influencers.

What to learn from this influencer program:

  • You don’t necessarily have to sell a physical product to use influencer marketing.
  • Create unique experiences for your influencers so that they can share their genuine opinions online. This can help you sell experiences.

9. Tru Earth’s Campaign Changes Based on Social Listening

Tru Earth is a leader in eco-friendly consumer goods. They launched eco-friendly laundry detergent strips, which can clean the dirtiest laundry and come in plastic-free packaging.

With an influencer campaign in 2021, they roped in Talitha Hanks, for a video on, “Things You Should Never Mix With Water.”

But on the first video post, they received comments from the audience that they were just showing a woman.

The brand listened to their audience and released another video, featuring Talitha's husband, Trey Warner, doing the laundry. And the results of the “Real Men Do Laundry” video were outstanding.

This video resonated more with Tru Earth’s audience and garnered thousands of views.

That’s because the brand understood the audience’s interests in the inclusivity of men and women doing house chores and created a campaign that fulfilled those.

They also created behind-the-scenes videos (like the ones embedded above), which also drove massive engagement for the brand.

What to learn from this influencer campaign:

For this one, let’s hear it right from the people behind this campaign:

“The most crucial factor that makes or breaks an influencer campaign is listening to what the audience wants and needs. This means understanding their values, interests, and aspirations to create content that resonates with them authentically.”
Ryan Mckenzie
the Co-Founder & CMO of Tru Earth

10. Absolut Vodka’s #NoSugarCoating Campaign

Absolut Vodka partnered with 50 micro-influencers belonging to the lifestyle niche to promote Absolut’s new Grapefruit-flavored vodka with no added sugar.

These influencers created their own cocktails using Absolut’s new spirit, and posted photos and videos of their at-home happy hours to Instagram. They used the hashtag, “#NoSugarCoating” with every post.

The campaign also featured Jesse Tyler Ferguson in a series of humorous videos that showed life doesn’t need to be sugarcoated, just like vodka.

With this campaign, the brand generated:

  • 50 Instagram posts and 50 IG Stories
  • 1.6 million total reach
  • 62.9K total Instagram engagements, including likes, comments, and saves
  • 4.31% average engagement rate per influencer post
  • Posts with the influencer in shot generated maximum engagement (5.84%) as compared to other videos and product shots.

What to learn from this campaign:

  • Be honest and straightforward with your audience to build trust.
  • Use humor to convey your message lightly, if it’s relevant. This will help make your brand more relatable.

11. Leesa’s Partnership with Bloggers Who Generated High Engagement 

Leesa is a luxury mattress manufacturer that exclusively sells its products online. Since there’s no showroom for customers to try out the mattress, it is a bit challenging to convince people to buy from them.

Although they provide a 100-night risk-free offer for customers to keep the mattress, they still have to build enough trust to get people to order.

For this, they decided to launch an influencer campaign, partnering with bloggers who specialize in DIY, style spaces, and interior design, and had high engagement rates.

Here’s one such review post by Sleepopolis:

leesa mattress review by sleepopolis
Source

They also leveraged unboxing videos by YouTube creators with a special discount offer to build trust and increase sales.

The campaign helped them:

  • Drive over 100,000 clicks to the Leesa website.
  • Generate over 400 mattress sales.

What you should learn from this influencer campaign:

  • Instead of simply focusing on the influencer’s following, look at their engagement rate, especially when your campaign goal is to boost conversions.
  • Choose influencers who are trusted in your niche and encourage them to do unbiased reviews of your product.
  • Offer a discount coupon to encourage sales.

12. MVMT’s “#JointheMVMT” Campaign

Just like Daniel Wellington, MVMT Watches also decided to showcase their watches through social media influencer partnerships. From top influencers to micro-influencers, the brand teamed up with some of the most notable Instagram accounts in the fashion and lifestyle industries.

They launched the “#jointhemvmt” campaign to raise awareness about their brand and watch collection. They also provided followers of their influencers with a unique discount code.

This campaign helped them:

What to learn from this campaign:

  • Instead of sticking to mainstream celebrities, work with influencers in different niches with a following of 30,000-500,000.
  • Use affiliate discount codes to encourage sales and identify your top-performing influencers.

13. Motorola’s “InASnap” Campaign to Promote Moto Z and Moto Mods

Motorola wanted to define itself as a game changer in the smartphone industry with the launch of Moto Z and Moto Mods.

They launched an influencer marketing campaign with the hashtag, “#InASnap” and a custom finger snap emoji to highlight their innovative features. The campaign also gave participants a chance to win a Moto Z and Moto Mods package.

The campaign created:

  • 95% positive sentiment about the brand
  • 87M brand impressions on social media
  • 24,000 “#InASnap” hashtag mentions in one day

What can you learn from Motorola’s “#InASnap” campaign?

  • Help consumers think about how your product can make their lives easier.
  • Present new features of your product in an innovative way to grab people’s attention.
  • Use relevant content to gauge purchase intent among your target audience.
  • Give creative freedom to your influencers so that they can introduce your brand or product using their unique voice.

14. Almond Breeze Promotional Campaign

Blue Diamond, a Korean company wanted to promote their new line of almond milk, known as Almond Breeze. They wanted to showcase all the ways to use their product for cooking.

So they worked with several food and cooking-related influencers, who created unique recipes using Almond Breeze.

Here’s a post from the blog, Love and Lemons, which gives away the recipe to prepare an almond-ginger dressing for noodle bowls:

The post generated massive engagement, about 100+ comments.

The campaign included dozens of other blog posts and social media posts, which drove similar results and helped improve awareness about Almond Breeze.

What to learn from this campaign:

  • Leverage different channels for your influencer campaigns, including blogs, Instagram, YouTube, and more.
  • Give creative freedom to your influencers so that they can create unique content.
  • Showcase how people can use your product.

15. BECCA Cosmetics Involved an Influencer in Product Development

Usually, brands collaborate with influencers to promote their products and services. But BECCA Cosmetics took the initiative to involve an influencer in their product development process.

They partnered with the blogger and influencer, Chrissy Teigen, to launch beauty products. One of these was a new range of highlighters.

The model posted a video on Instagram announcing their partnership, which received close to 5 million views.

Later, she also updated her fans about the launch of the palette so they can check it out.

This post received over 136K likes and several comments.

With all posts, the influencer used the hashtag, “#BECCAxCHRISSY.”

What to learn from this campaign:

  • Build stronger relationships with your influencers and go for long-term partnerships. This will help you build trust and increase the ROI of your campaigns in the long run.
  • Co-create content with your influencers to keep them motivated and give an energy boost to your brand promotions.
  • Even if you work with just one or two influencers, ensure you choose the right ones – who can help drive more relevant engagement.

Are You Ready to Launch Your Influencer Marketing Campaign?

Influencer marketing has helped brands leverage the influence these creators have on the minds of their followers to build trust in their products and services.

The influencer marketing examples we’ve discussed in this article can help you brainstorm ideas for your next campaign. You can learn:

  • How to choose the right influencers for your campaign.
  • How offering special affiliate discount codes can help you increase sales and vet your influencers.
  • How you can win the trust of your audience and garner loyalty by co-creating valuable content about your product/service.
  • The different kinds of campaigns you can run in partnership with influencers.
  • How to ensure that the influencer communicates your brand’s message accurately with their audience.

Do you know of any influencer marketing examples where brands nailed their campaign strategy? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

8 Comments

  1. Chetan rm says:

    This is one of the best of the best articles I ever read … Great job

    1. Shane Barker says:

      Thanks Chetan! 😉

  2. Matt Cambell says:

    I had some confusion regarding the success rate after the implementation of influencer marketing for my business but got it cleared by now. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Shane Barker says:

      Hi Eirol, that’s so nice of you to say.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *