Influencer Advisory™

Our use cases for Influencer Marketing Helps…

Dennis Ksendzov
Dennis KsendzovVerified

Founder · May 7, 2026 · 24 min read

  • Restricted claims. In a regulated category the law limits what a brand can say, and some rules keep influencers off a product entirely. Finding creators who can promote the product within what the law allows.
    • Write the claim list first: M1 Finance was fined $850,000 by FINRA for not reviewing 1,700 influencers' posts before they went out, then adopted written supervisory procedures requiring review. FINRA, March 2024
    • Use creators the rules already trust: Differin partnered with board-certified dermatologist Dr. Camille Howard-Verovic and the Fat Mascara podcast for its fifth annual Retinoid Education Week, an FDA-approved over-the-counter acne retinoid campaign. PR Newswire, March 2022
    • Measure it without a code: Cann, a cannabis beverage that cannot advertise to its 100,000 Instagram followers, tracked creator Jaz Melody's TikTok videos by watch time, gaining 9,000 new customers. Marketing Brew, November 2024
  • Local and franchise brands. A national creator advertises for every location that shares the same name, though most of those locations never paid for it. Choosing creators known in the specific area a single location actually serves.
    • Pick creators by the town: First National Bank of Omaha hired local influencers across its footprint for a debit card campaign, picking them for engagement over follower count. American Banker, November 2020
    • Film where people walk in: Fallow, a London restaurant, posted a croissant photo filmed in house that got 1.6 million views, filled Saturday brunch for four months, now serving 1,000 guests a Saturday. Entrepreneur, July 2026
  • Long sales cycles. When a buyer takes months to decide and several people must sign off, one post cannot close it alone. Reaching the people who decide through creators already known inside that industry.
    • Pick on who the industry knows: Snowflake fills its Data Superheroes programme with people it calls a leader in the data community, judged on data expertise and content, not audience size. Snowflake's own programme page
    • Show up for the whole cycle: Cisco ran its Champion customer and partner influencer program for over five years by 2018, not as a single campaign, and had earned two industry awards. Cisco's own blog, November 2018
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  • Seasonal windows. The selling window is short, it opens earlier every year, and the team that would make the content is already busy inside it. Bringing in creators to make the seasonal content the internal team has no time to produce.
    • Pick creators the season belongs to: American Eagle is working with five sorority chapters and more than 25 RushTok creators for back to school, which CMO Craig Brommers called a proper business partnership. Glossy, July 2026
    • Book before the season: Best Buy ran influencer campaigns for the 2025 holidays, after more than 1,000 influencers had signed up for the program it launched in April. Modern Retail, November 2025
    • Film it out of season: Andie Swim shoots its summer campaigns in the winter, with its marketing team traveling from New York to Miami and the Bahamas, founder Melanie Travis said. Glossy, June 2024
  • Your own events. An event is a room that has to be filled, and an empty one costs about the same as a full one. Booking creators who can fill the room and get the right people to show up.
    • Invite creators who can come: Beyond Yoga opened a pop-up in New York's Flatiron District and had movement classes led by local favorites Ali Brunson, Jada Covington and DanceBody founder Katia Pryce. WWD, September 2026
    • Build the room so it films: Tatcha built its first pop-up's meditation room, wishing tree and on-site haikus, invited influencers to create content there, and saw over 9 million social media impressions. Glossy, March 2023
  • Creator content as ads. Ads stop performing long before the product does, and no internal team can make enough of them to find the next one that works. Buying the rights to a creator's post and running it as paid advertising.
    • Buy the rights up front: Jones Road Beauty contracts some creators purely for ads with no organic post required, buying partnership rights to their content as part of the deal. the Marketing Operators podcast, May 2026
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  • Getting named in AI answers. People now ask a chatbot what to buy, and it answers out of whatever content it has already read. Building creator content around the exact questions people type into a chatbot.

    • Find what the models read: Every Man Jack found AI LLMs favor long-tail Reddit conversations, so it built website content visible only to LLMs to learn what they look for. Digiday, September 2025
    • Answer the question people ask: Pawco found buyers searching AI engines for phrases like best food for dogs with allergies, and Bouton said ChatGPT orders keep growing month over month. Digiday, March 2026
    • Watch what it says about you: HubSpot tracked its own citations in AI Overviews after Kipp Bodnar built an answer engine optimization plan, and citations improved 433% while AI-referred demand rose 1,850%. Adweek, March 2026

      the LLM robots crawl YouTube so if they pick up that answer and they cite it in the Chat GPT A rehab centre, on a sales call with us, July 2026 have an influencer come out and on our side, you know, we would choose exactly our keywords and our prompts The same rehab centre, on what it wanted us to build, July 2026

  • Selling the company. A famous face a brand rents walks away with the value when the deal ends, and a buyer only pays for what stays behind. Structuring the creator relationship so its value stays with the brand instead of leaving.

    • Give equity, not a fee: Casamigos, co-founded by George Clooney, Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman, was sold to Diageo for up to $1 billion. Diageo, June 2017
    • Hold part of the price back: Aviation American Gin's sale to Diageo held up to $275 million of its $610 million price on performance over a ten year period. Diageo, August 2020
    • Own the brand, not the person: Nike signed Michael Jordan to an endorsement contract in 1984 and still wholly owns Jordan Brand, whose revenue rose 6% to $7 billion. Sportico, June 2024
  • Product launches. A new product has no buyers yet, and word of mouth is slow to start. Finding the right creators to introduce a new product and get people buying.
    • Pick many kinds of creators: For its fall 2022 Pumpkin Spice shake, Premier Protein picked 78 creators with different follower counts, body types and backgrounds. The Shorty Awards
      • Hershey's tied a gold medal bar to the Winter Olympics, with a cyclist and a mom blogger from very different communities promoting it. Modern Retail, March 2026
    • Send product with no strings: Create Wellness sent its creatine gummies to 1,000 creators with no strings attached, and got back 350 pieces of content it could use. Kynship, the agency that ran it
      • Burberry sent its $390 B Series tees to influencers and celebrities, and at least some posted photos of themselves wearing them. The Fashion Law, January 2019
    • Run the best posts as ads: It got the rights to those posts, ran them as Meta ads, and brought the cost of a new customer to $38 against a $45 goal. Kynship, the agency that ran it
  • Major retail launches. Once a product is on the shelf it has to sell early, and it is hard to get shoppers into the store for it. Using influencers to build demand after entering retailers like Sephora, Costco or 7-Eleven, especially when early shelf velocity matters.
    • Seed creators before the shelf: Bloom sent Bloom Pop to creators and handed out cans at events, so people could taste it before they saw it in a store. Forbes, April 2026
      • Glow Recipe seeded 1,800 lab samples labeled only MUCIN to creators, getting over $500,000 in earned media value before its mailers went out. Glossy, August 2025
    • Film inside the store: Bloom CEO Greg Lavecchia says it was one of the first brands to film TikToks inside retail stores, and that it is now standard practice. Forbes, April 2026
      • 1UP Candy sends shoppers to the stores that carry it with videos FaZE Rug films in-store, some getting millions of views. Nosh, May 2025
    • Count the first weeks: Bloom Pop launched in over 4,000 Walmart stores and moved two million cans, worth $2.7 million, in its first few weeks. Forbes, April 2026
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  • Entering new markets. In a new country nobody knows the brand, and the big local creators often turn it down. Using local creators to introduce the brand when expanding into the U.K., Europe or other markets.
    • Test the city with a pop-up: In October 2024 Rhode opened its first London pop-up for just four days, and TikTok videos posted from it that day reached millions of views. Refinery29, October 2024
      • Skims opened its first European pop-up at Selfridges London, while planning its own UK and EU stores within 3 years. Retail Bulletin, June 2023
    • Get sign ups before opening: A year later, before its Sephora UK opening, Rhode said it had the most customer sign ups of any brand launch at Sephora UK. WWD, October 2025
    • Host local creators on launch day: On launch day Hailey Bieber hosted British influencers and beauty editors at a London dinner, with guests like Jessica Diner and Rochelle Humes. Desiree Design, November 2025

      We've spent quite a lot in Germany over the past few years. Two biggest issues: getting people to actually work with us, the big names are quite skeptical of us, and we get a lot of declining or no responses. A vitamin brand selling into Germany, on a sales call with us, February 2026 But in Toronto, there's this real guard up. You know, we're a new name, and we don't have the brand recognition that we do in the West, and people are are hesitant to even respond. A private health care company opening in Toronto, on a sales call with us, April 2026 I don't have the relationships, nor the capacity to go and reach out and convince the right influencers The same health care company, on why it wants help in the new city, April 2026 Yeah, we would want to start with Dutch influencers. And for the Spanish market, we have a local HQ there. A supplement brand selling across Europe, on a sales call with us, June 2026 In a perfect world, you would want to build the momentum around using an agency to lift it because there's a lot of heavy lifting in the beginning that that that's required. Um, and then you would want to quickly build an internal mechanism to that as fast as possible, right? ... The brand is is very new to the US. ... bringing them on to launch the brand because the amount of lifting and things that we would need to get done in a short period of time was just I mean, to be honest, it just wasn't going to work with the team we had. Dom Iacovone, CEO of The Quality Group, on launching More Nutrition in the US, on his own channel, August 2026, at 6:54

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  • Brand repositioning. The people a brand wants to reach next do not follow it yet. Reaching a new audience through creators who already have their attention.
    • Say who you want next: Mother renamed itself Poppi, and co-founder Stephen Ellsworth said the new name could widen its buyers, possibly to a younger audience. BevNET, January 2020
      • Dunkin' dropped Donuts from its name starting January 2019, to appeal to younger consumers, the company said. Quartz, July 2022
    • Make content for them: The team started making new content for Poppi's social media, which had been less of a focus under the old name. BevNET, January 2020
      • SunnyD's makeover came with new social content and influencer marketing programs aimed at Gen Z teens ages 13 to 18. BevNET, August 2018
    • Put creators in the big ad: In 2025 Poppi ran its second Super Bowl ad in a row, with the creators Jake Shane and Alix Earle in it. Marketing Brew, February 2025
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  • Celebrity partnerships. Picking the wrong celebrity is an expensive mistake that is hard to undo. Finding and vetting the right celebrity before making a large investment.
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  • New customer segments. The creators a brand already works with keep reaching the same people. Finding creators who can reach audiences your current influencer mix is missing.
    • See who you reach today: Gymshark's first creators in 2012 were big names in lifting, like Lex Griffin, Matt Ogus and Chris Lavado. Gymshark
      • UrbanStems' buyers are ages 35 to 55, much older than Laneige shoppers, so their partnership brought no sales spike, its CEO said. Modern Retail, August 2026
    • Sign who reaches the rest: Gymshark then signed women from the fitness world, like Nikki Blackketter, Robin Gallant and Jazmine Garcia. Gymshark
      • Lowe's brought YouTuber MrBeast into its Creator Network to connect with Gen Alpha long before they buy their first home. Retail Dive, March 2026
    • Give the best one a bigger role: In August 2024 Gymshark made Whitney Simmons, a partner for eight years, the first creative director of Adapt, one of its biggest women's lines. TheIndustry.fashion, August 2024
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  • Creator relationships. A creator posts once and moves on, so the brand keeps starting over with someone new. Building real relationships with creators instead of relying on expensive one-off posts.
    • Pick for fit, not size: Gymshark has no fixed checklist for its athletes, and picks them on content quality, brand fit and how their audience responds. Gymshark
    • Give them reasons to stay: In 2023 Lululemon's Creator Network asked for at least 3,000 followers on one channel, and gave creators commission, early access to new products and events. WWD, June 2023
      • Glossier started paying its most engaged customers a sales commission, and brought them into special events. Quartz, November 2016
    • Pay them on every sale: In 2019 Seed offered its vetted ambassadors a 15% base commission, and all of the profit on their sales if they belonged to no bigger network. Glossy, July 2019
      • Amazon pays influencers a commission on every sale their pick brings in, with Amazon Games titles earning the most at 20%. CNBC, June 2022

        I think there's incredible power in like working with influencers long term, and it's not just transaction or a one-off ad A fitness studio in Toronto, on a sales call with us, June 2026 I'm not the kind of person who's, like, switching on influencers every three four months. A consumer brand that has kept one creator for two and a half years, on a sales call with us, January 2026 from my personal experience, just one video, well, it cannot show proper results, so we need to test more A car history report company, on a sales call with us, April 2026 if they're based in Toronto and want to work with us longer term, they essentially would get comped classes on an ongoing basis in exchange for like certain posting requirements The same fitness studio, on the ambassador programme it wants to build, June 2026 The Chipotle Creator Class is an entirely new approach to influencer relationships that focuses on rewarding, thanking, and empowering our biggest fans Chipotle CMO Chris Brandt, launching its Creator Class, press release, 9 September 2021 Social following for the 2022 Sephora Squad grew a combined 99% over the course of the year-long program Sephora, on its year-long Sephora Squad creator programme, company newsroom, 21 June 2023 there is a very strict guideline on the type of influencer we will have. I don't care how high the ROI is on Bob, but if Bob doesn't look and feel and touch how I want it I want to be I want to be Bob. If I don't want to be Bob, then I'm not working with Bob. ... We're going to give them a huge amount of content on our books. Ross Mackay, founder of Cadence, on Open Residency, February 2026, at 1:09:13

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