#influencer-marketing

#influencer-marketing

AriZona Beverages founder Don Vultaggio touted the company's newest drink collaboration with a young TikTok star as being more successful than its inimitable Arnold Palmer on "The Claman Countdown" Thursday. "We've teamed up with a nine-year-old and we hit the marketplace, and we've seen tremendous success," Vultaggio told FOX Business anchor Liz Claman. "Candidly more so than we ever saw in Arnold Palmer at the beginning," the founder added.

Microsoft Corp., eager to boost downloads of its Copilot chatbot, has recruited some of the most popular influencers in America to push a message to young consumers that might be summed up as: Our AI assistant is as cool as ChatGPT. Microsoft could use the help. The company recently said its family of Copilot assistants attracts 150 million active users each month. But OpenAI's ChatGPT claims 800 million weekly active users, and Google's Gemini boasts 650 million a month.

Despite the AI boom, influencer brand deals are largely being written without clauses related to AI, intellectual property and copyright, which could leave creators and brands exposed, IP lawyers say. At least five creators (ranging in follower size and content type) Digiday spoke with confirmed no such clauses have been added to their brand deals this year. Those clauses could include usage rights limiting a brand's ability to use a creator's synthetic name, image and likeness, or curbing creators' AI tool usage in creative assets without disclosing use.

Gen Z may not be the AI-native generation, but it's certainly the AI-pioneering one. From studying to shopping, LLMs and other AI-powered tools have transformed how young people navigate the digital (and real) world, and the changes keep emerging. As the Digital 2026: Global Overview Report shows, Gen Z navigates the digital world like no other generation that came before it. Here are three big takeaways from this industry-leading report that every PR professional needs to have a competitive advantage in the AI age.

Why it matters: It's a cliché, but it's still true: People trust people. And employees who perform these jobs day in and day out have the real stories, expertise and insight to make content stand out. Even if your organization isn't quite ready to encourage employees to post on their personal accounts about work, it's still worthwhile to identify a group of workers with winning personalities, interesting jobs and some camera skills to take footage for you to then process and post on your brand pages.

"As the definition of talent continues to evolve, so must the systems that support it," said Andrew Ruf, Managing Partner at Paradigm. "Reign Maker Group has built a scalable process that meets creators where they are, with an eye towards where they're going. By combining our global reach with their innovative infrastructure, we're able to accelerate opportunities for a new generation of talent and the professionals who represent them."

It's a perfect recipe for complacency at a time when luxury brands are laser-focused on appealing to wealthy consumers. But Sarah Ball, who took over as editor-in-chief of WSJ. in the summer of 2023, succeeding longtime editor Kristina O'Neill, said she wants to broaden the definition of who her reader is. The magazine is profiling more Millennial and Gen-Z movers and shakers, like actress Sydney Sweeney, "Call Her Daddy" podcast host Alex Cooper and TikTokker extraordinaire Alix Earle.

But this year, I couldn't help but cringe at the interviews. Stylist Law Roach and fashion journalist Zanna Rassi hosted the pink carpet pre-show. However, their interview techniques and overall questions were markedly different. On one side, you had Rassi, who is an experienced journalist, fashion editor, and entrepreneur, conducting professional interviews that were to the point. On the other hand, you had Law Roach, a celebrity stylist, whose interviews were awkward and difficult to watch.

Influencers now sit at the center of fashion because they translate style into daily life with unusual speed and relatability. People find outfits through try-ons, GRWMs, and street photos that feel instantly wearable rather than waiting for seasonal campaigns. Due to the ease of access to price checks, size notes, and links, the journey from inspiration to purchase is shortened.

Rhode, Hailey Bieber's mega-viral skin care and makeup brand, has been intentional about advertising the "on the go" capabilities of its newest product, and its consumer base has responded in kind. Rhode has over 5 million combined followers across Instagram and TikTok-and a successful marketing strategy that encourages both influencers and niche creators to create content around its products. There are nearly 400,000 videos under #Rhode on TikTok alone.

On this week's episode, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels get into the news of Quince dodging claims from Ugg's parent, Deckers Brands, that it unlawfully copied two of its best-selling styles. Next, they discuss the announcement from cosmetics company E.l.f that it will be offering live shopping on streaming service Twitch, and the implications for the potential resurgence of streaming in social commerce.

Welcome back to another week of The Curvy Fashionista's Plus Influencer Spotlight, our series celebrating the boundary breakers, tastemakers, and changemakers redefining plus size fashion and culture, like Latoya of The Fat Girl of Fashion. Each feature in this series highlights a voice that's helping shape the future of plus size fashion, one unapologetic look, one powerful post, and one bold statement at a time.

Rod Wave Elite is a popular high school basketball squad that bounces around the country playing exhibition games to crowds of rabid teens and internet celebrities. They're run by a former college hooper turned influencer, Cam Wilder, and are named after the North Star of Southern pain rap, though the Floridian doesn't seem to have anything to do with the team.

Inside a historic aircraft hangar in Playa Vista, crowds of people gathered on Thursday to browse the latest fashions from handbags to clothing and shoes as they prepared for the holiday shopping season. These weren't shoppers or retailer buyers searching for the latest products. Instead, they were YouTube video creators who were being courted by brands from Lowe's to Shark Beauty to encourage online audiences to buy their products.

As media director at CKE Restaurants, Sutton oversees both Carl's Jr and Hardee's - two brands that, until recently, shared one marketing strategy. "A few years ago, we marketed Carl's and Hardee's together," he says. "It made sense from a media efficiency standpoint. But the personalities of the brands got a little watered down." The fix? Split them apart. "It's created some challenges," he admits.

Select Management Group These three managers have a knack for growing brands: In 2020, Arias orchestrated a partnership between Sarah Cheung and incubator Gloss Ventures to launch SACHEU Beauty. Berger sold TikToker Eli Rallo's fiction debut, I Hope Eden Reads This, which releases next month. Teng signed My Sister's Skin, two sisters who focus on mature skin, when they had just a few thousand followers. They now have over 100,000.

From big brand launches to shifting perceptions and from riding fast trends to driving footfall, Influencer builds ideas with impact to deliver outcomes that drive your business forward via an unmatched client experience. Campaigns are underpinned by Influencer's game-changing proprietary technologies, which are supercharged by official partnerships and data integrations with the world's leading social platforms for real-time and accurate reporting. Influencer is an Official Global Marketing Partner of both TikTok and Meta.

E.l.f. Cosmetics wants to bring shopping to Twitch. The beauty brand has teamed with Amazon Ads to trial a live shopping element on the streaming platform that would allow viewers to purchase E.l.f. products directly through a Twitch stream, without interrupting their viewing experience. The launch is the first of its kind for Amazon-owned Twitch, which has been around for more than a decade but gained prominence during the COVID-19 streaming boom.

"AI can definitely help brands work more efficiently, for example by scaling moderation and keeping content safe," she says. "It can also support content creation, though that is trickier to navigate. To truly stand out, brands need to listen to their communities and understand what matters to them. That personal connection comes from genuine human insight, something AI can support but never fully replace."

A single-second pause over a social video can dismantle your algorithm. Even at my best, I can still hesitate over a poorly shot video demonstrating the "latest tech" that I simply "can't live without" and later learn I really could have lived without it. However, by then my feed is already filled with duplicate videos trying to push the same product.

"It occurred to me that we could build a database where PRs could find blogs like ours and others. We would charge them a license to use this database. And then we noticed that YouTube was on the rise and it wasn't just bloggers, but YouTubers. And it's not just YouTubers, it's also Instagrammers. And it was becoming clear to us that this new economy was being created,"

When the federal government declared the COVID-19 public health emergency over, eligibility requirements for various benefits including Medicaid and the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program were tightened, and many recipients were forced to reapply. That left many states in a quandary as they sought to quickly educate residents that their benefits would not auto-renew. Traditionally, state and local governments might put public service announcements in newspapers, on television and on the radio.

As part of her announcement last week, Kai attached 10 photos of her posing in different variations of the sweater throughout the grounds of the White House. In two of the photos, she can be seen holding a golf club, in a subtle nod to her other primary focus in life. With the photo shoot, however, she has been able to combine her passion for golf with her role as an influencer.

Newly filed records with the Department of Justice show that Israel's government has quietly launched a two-track influence operation in the United States, blending big-budget political advertising with grassroots-style influencer campaigns. The filings reveal that a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the "Esther Project." It is unclear if there is any link to Project Esther, a plan to combat antisemitism published by the Heritage Foundation, an American right-wing think tank.