NEW YORK — Jewelry maker Mejuri in 2024 was presented with the sort of marketing moment that even a great deal of media spending can’t at all times replicate. Watching her now-fiance play at that yr’s AFC Championship game, Taylor Swift appeared sporting an heirloom signet ring from the brand, propelling the product to overnight fame because the pop star and beau Travis Kelce were photographed in a detailed embrace on the sphere.
Swift was not wearing the piece as a part of a paid endorsement, but Mejuri was able to capitalize on the chance by laying the correct groundwork beforehand after which amplifying the story through PR and owned social channels in a way that didn’t “feel very forced,” company leadership said.
“We don’t know where the product goes to find yourself since the celebrity will pick the product,” said Mejuri CEO and co-founder Noura Sakkijha on the National Retail Federation’s Big Show on Sunday. “The tip that I’d say is admittedly to construct a community of influencers, construct a community of stylists. If people love your product, it’ll find yourself in the correct hands.”
Sakkijha spoke on the NRF panel, titled “Breaking through the noise: How emerging brands are capturing attention amidst a cacophony of messaging,” with representatives from two other brands, Coterie and Beyond Yoga, which can be also leveraging social media to drive marketing tactics like word of mouth in additional viral directions. A subject continuously brought up throughout the talk was community, underscoring how marketers increasingly see value not only in A-list talent of Swift’s caliber, but additionally regular individuals who comprise a bigger chunk of the audiences shaping online trends.
Beyond Yoga last July launched its first major brand platform, “Seek Beyond,” that stars actor Issa Rae. While the celebrity is front-and-center in promoting, and even helped to write the trouble’s anthem spot, “Seek Beyond” uses influencers and on a regular basis customers to support a narrative that emphasizes regular progress over reaching perfection. The Sculpt Society founder Megan Roup, Hike Clerb founder Evelynn Escobar and Big Girls Who Run LA co-founder Danielle Burnett also feature within the campaign.
“We love surfacing those different perspectives and stories and seeing how individuals are taking our product and using it within the wild,” said Katie Babineau, CMO of Beyond Yoga. “We’ve got an always-on machine that’s community content, it’s creator content, it’s influencer content.”
Combating digital overload
Establishing ties to the correct creators can keep brands adaptable to platforms which can be otherwise prone to change by prioritizing different content types and even storytelling formats. Algorithm tweaks have led Mejuri, originally a direct-to-consumer brand that has since expanded to over 50 brick-and-mortar stores, to rely more on creators on apps like Instagram to preserve a way of aesthetic consistency, according to Sakkijha.
“Social could be very exciting, changing each day. [That] also makes it very difficult to set an extended road map,” said Beyond Yoga’s Babineau.
Consumers, while smartphone-addled, are also growing more averse to promoting and aware of the downsides of an excessive amount of screen time, putting the onus on brands to deliver content that feels invaluable and personalized.
“We know that they’re spending the vast majority of their time on social, but very much fatigued with digital overload,” added Babineau.
Fostering community is significant enough that Beyond Yoga has built a dedicated in-house team, which Babineau described as “lean.” Beyond Yoga’s community team is targeted on outreach to area of interest, emerging creators who don’t yet command steep price tags. In addition, the brand is exploring ways to convert top-performing organic content into paid media, which allows for more efficient campaign production and higher media rates.
“We have connected the dots between paid and organic,” said Babineau. “What we’ve seen is that what’s resonating with people organically — which is just not at all times going to be your super sales-forward message — actually does drive business results.”
As with many industry panels, the discussion eventually turned toward artificial intelligence, which is impacting the creator economy in myriad ways, including the rise of AI-generated personalities which can be scoring brand deals. Some NRF panelists see the approaching AI glut as a possible boon for the community-forward approach wherein they’re already invested.
“As we see increasingly AI content on the feeds, I feel there might be much more of a necessity for more human-based creation,” said Babineau. “I feel we’ll crave that realness a bit more.”
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