I went to the ANA’s (Association of National Advertisers) one-day Influencer Marketing Conference in Chicago last week, and I can’t stop talking about how great it was! Is that because it was held in the stunning Guinness Open Gate Brewery in the West Loop, which includes Guinness’ very first bakery? MAYBE. I will now be judging all marketing events by the availability of beer and bread throughout.
Aside from the outstanding food and drink options, I truly got so much inspiration from the brands who were sharing their recent influencer strategies. A few highlights:
🚗 Uber’s Clever Content Play: Matt Yager from Uber shared how Uber leverages the power of nano and micro influencers from all over the world for their bottom funnel content that converts. What struck me most was their unique approach to voice-over videos, allowing them to repurpose successful content across different markets by simply swapping the voice-over in the relevant language. Their strategy to launch all content simultaneously and keep winning pieces running (sometimes for over a year!) by periodically weeding out the least performing 10% really demonstrates efficiency without the slowdown of A/B testing.
🍬 Sweet Insights from Ferrara: A shoutout to Ferrara Candy Company’s Brian Camen (pal of the Art of Sway pod!) and Joey Rath for their genius execution of a Super Bowl ad featuring Addison Rae. By opting not to script her press conference, they captured some golden, unscripted sound bites that scripted approaches would’ve missed. It’s a brilliant reminder of the power of authenticity in marketing.
🦷 Innovative Community Engagement by ADA: Joan Podrazik and Nicole Anderson from the American Dental Association showcased their strategic use of closed social groups, tapping into the vibrant and crucial conversations happening among dentists online. Their integration of influencers into lobbying efforts and their annual conference was equally impressive, showing the strength of community-focused strategies.
Each session was honestly a terrific learning opportunity, showing how creativity and strategic flexibility can lead to major impact in the influencer marketing space.
Want to know more about the cutting-edge influencer strategies that the ANA is helping showcase? Reach out any time with questions, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cheers,
Danielle
PS: Did you see that LinkedIn recently launched games? Crossclimb, Pinpoint, and Queens can be found the News module on your LinkedIn homepage, or by updating your LI app and visiting linkedin.com/games or the MyNetwork tab. As a puzzle/word game addict, I’m so excited to have another place to play! I hope you join me for some friendly competition and/or hair-pulling commiseration.
