What are examples of influencer marketing?

There’s a lot of talk relating to influencer marketing — particularly over the past few years as the creator economy has been growing like a weed. Certainly, we’ve already established that influencer marketing is effective, but what are some real-world examples of this budding marketing style?

Before we dive to deeply into this, a disclaimer. The below examples are not campaigns we have worked on. Because we operate on strict non-disclosure agreements, we are unable to disclose specific projects we work on. As such, we will be taking a look at public campaigns that have been notable.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some recent influencer marketing campaigns that highlight the effectiveness of this marketing style.

Mr. Beast & Shopify

The world’s most popular YouTuber, Mr. Beast, has a long-standing relationship with Shopify, an online e-commerce platform. The two partnered up initially in November of 2022 to encourage viewers to open and operate their own e-stores, and the rest is history.

Image courtesy: Shopify

Mr. Beast has featured Shopify integrations in a number of videos, highlighting the long-term nature of the partnership between the two. The partnership has even expanded outside of the confines of YouTube, including an in-person activation in New York City. It’s the type of partnership every YouTuber dreams of, and given the duration of this partnership, we’d estimate it’s probably been a resounding success!

Kara and Nate & Athletic Greens

Couple Kara and Nate, who run an ultra-popular travel channel on YouTube have now been partnered with Athletic Greens and their AG1 products for quite a while now. The YouTubers often discuss the products via in-video integrations, as seen below (click image below to view the full video).

Courtesy: Kara and Nate (YouTube)

The YouTubers have now done quite a few placements for AG1, leading us to the conclusion that the partnership has been a success, which as marketers is exactly what we want to see.

Moreover, the integrations work really well because Kara and Nate’s audience tends to be individuals who are into exploring, travel, and maintaining healthy lifestyles.

Apple

Not all companies engage influencers the same way. The above examples are fairly common examples of influencer marketing. Brand pays influencer, influencer does the integration. But some companies — like Apple — don’t need to pay influencers to get the word out about their products. They can simply allow them to use them, talk about them and interact with them.

Take a look, for example, at the recent release of the Apple Vision Pro. No doubt by now you’ve seen countless videos of people wearing this headset pre-release. Here’s an example of popular tech YouTuber iJustine showing off the product (click the image below to view the full video).

Courtesy: iJustine (YouTube)

Very few companies have the power to do what Apple does in these cases, and this is because Apple products are well sought after. Apple doesn’t ‘gift’ the influencers the product. They are, in fact, required to send it back after they have recorded and released their pieces. But Apple still benefits from the exposure.

So, you might be asking yourself, what’s in it for the content creator? Exclusivity. By having pre-release access to a highly anticipated product, the creator knows they’ll be able to draw in hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of viewers. They can capitalize on those views by means of YouTube’s built-in ad solution or even other influencer marketing partnerships.

Final thoughts

We considered adding more examples to this post, but we think by this point you should hopefully understand what influencer marketing looks like and what it hopes to achieve. A trusted creator (the influencer) talks about a product or service, and the viewers who trust that influencer are exposed to a product they may consider buying in the future. As you learned in the last example, there doesn’t necessarily need to be an exchange of money between brand and creator for an influencer marketing campaign to come together.

One more note: this particular post focused on influencer marketing examples on YouTube. This is the platform our agency is most active on, but similar examples are apparent on other platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Want to learn more about whether influencer marketing works? Take a look at our recent post on this very topic.