Artisan Council is a New York-based boutique marketing agency that was founded in early 2013. Artisan Council’s mission and journey is to create products and solutions that will answer, entertain, and satisfy brands’ strategic needs of today and tomorrow. The team of diverse and highly dynamic innovators at Artisan Council has made it one of the most sought after agencies in the digital marketing space.
In September 2022 Artisan Council’s client belif, a cult favorite Korean skincare brand, wanted to run an influencer campaign to build awareness for its The True Cream Aqua Bomb moisturizer. In the article below, Nick Ghilardi, senior influencer marketing manager at Artisan Council details how the agency launched a successful influencer campaign for its client with a holistic strategy, tailored influencer list, and a bit of humor.
How Artisan Council Drove Product Awareness with an Influencer Campaign
Developed creative influencer campaign messaging
“For this influencer campaign, we knew that we wanted to have community, humor, and entertainment at the center of the strategy. We’ve used this approach before and seen great success — even on hard-to-win platforms like TikTok. Once we had an idea of how we wanted the campaign to feel, we just needed to identify the theme.” — Nick Ghilardi, senior influencer marketing manager at Artisan Council
To identify the theme of the campaign, the Artisan Council team employed social listening to dial into belif’s community (the brand’s returning customers/fans). They noticed that the belif community often talked about the need to “stock up” on their Aqua Bomb moisturizer so they wouldn’t run out.
So, playing off of the common phrase “FOMO” (fear of missing out), Artisan Council decided to dub this influencer campaign “FORO” (fear of running out). The idea was to highlight how belif’s The True Cream Aqua Bomb moisturizer is an essential in any skincare routine, while also keeping things light, fun, and actionable.
Used Traackr to find influencers
“Pulling off a great influencer campaign really starts with picking the right partners. Regardless of the type of campaign (gifted or paid), you want the content to feel organic and natural. In order to do that, you need to have partners that are well matched and aligned with your brand.” — Nick Ghilardi, senior influencer marketing manager at Artisan Council
Artisan Council has had success with working with a mix of comedy, beauty, and lifestyle influencers for beauty campaigns. This influencer campaign continued to push this strategy by leaning hard into content that balances entertainment with product promotion. This resulted in comedic skits and episodic content that also promoted the Aqua Bomb moisturizer’s value and benefits.
In terms of partners, the team decided to work with a mixture of their existing roster and new comedian influencers. In order to find new influencers, Artisan Council used Traackr’s influencer marketing platform. More specifically, they looked for male and female influencers who had a combination of comedy and lifestyle content, primarily on TikTok. Due to their ability to layer relevant influencer search parameters, the team was able to identify 12 partners who were the perfect match!
Ghilardi also emphasized how critical it is for brands to pick a diverse roster of influencers. Not only is it important for representation, but having a diverse group of influencer partners also “helps you hit all your consumer targets”. This is something that many brands and agencies are deliberately pursuing. For example, hims & hers recently shared about how it focuses on finding diverse influencers in every influencer campaign it produces.
Utilized a simplified influencer brief
“So often I see brands wanting to push a lot of product messaging on their influencer partners. You must resist this instinct! Make sure your influencer briefs aren’t too heavy or restrictive. Folks don’t want to watch or read content that’s just about your products — they want to be entertained and educated.” — Nick Ghilardi, senior influencer marketing manager at Artisan Council
Once the team solidified its influencer roster, they sent out open-ended briefs with the goal of inspiring content with an organic feel. Each brief only had 3 components:
- The FORO campaign name and concept
- Talking points on the product benefits (cooling and refreshing “drink of water” for dull skin, available at Sephora and Ulta Beauty)
- Details on payment and timing
These short briefs allowed each influencer to determine how the campaign would best fit into their page, and the results spoke for themselves! The influencer campaign content turned out to be not just educational, but entertaining, with many influencers including the product in short, funny skits.
Converted influencer campaign content to traditional ads
“We made sure to purchase the usage rights for all of our influencers’ content, because we knew we would want to feature them in some of our ads. If you are thinking of doing the same thing, make sure you work that into your initial influencer contract! There’s nothing worse than having to renegotiate usage after your campaign has already launched.” — Nick Ghilardi, senior influencer marketing manager at Artisan Council
Given that Artisan Council is a holistic digital agency, the team was uniquely positioned to take this influencer campaign one step further.
In order to get the most value from their influencer campaign, the team purchased usage rights for all of their partners’ content. This allowed Artisan Council’s in-house creative team to utilize bits and pieces of that content in traditional advertising. Similarly, Artisan Council’s social team posted about the FORO campaign throughout the whole month of September.
Influencer campaign results
By leaning into a creative and entertaining influencer campaign theme, sourcing new partners with comedic potential, and keeping influencer briefs short and sweet, belif’s True Cream Aqua Bomb was a huge success!
More specifically, this campaign resulted in:
- 2,277,638 views
- 142,013 engagements
- 11 activated mega tier influencers (1M+ followers)
- 3 activated mid-tier influencers (50K+ followers)
And some of the best content came from influencers like Allessandro (@mualesandro), Jackie Aina (@jackieaina), Brooke lynn (@brooke_lynnmilne), and Snega (@skincarebysnega). This influencer campaign also helped Artisan Council and belif generate some great traditional advertising.
If you want to stay up to date on the incredible work that the Artisan Council team is doing, follow them on Instagram at @artisancouncil! If you’re curious to learn more about influencer marketing best practices from other industry experts, subscribe to our newsletter.