Introduction
Imagine your favorite TikTok dancer gracing a Times Square billboard, or that hilarious food vlogger hosting a primetime cooking show. Social media isn’t the only stage anymore. Creators are conquering billboards, lighting up cinemas, and blurring the lines between online and offline.
Gone are the days of influencer marketing confined to social media feeds. “Creators are replacing creative agencies and production studios as the content engines for syndicated programs,” says Doug Borchert, Open Influence SVP. Brands are embracing this evolution, leveraging creator magic across touch points.
While social media remains the star of the creator marketing show, ignoring the other players severely limits the potential reach of campaigns.
People consume content via multiple vehicles, and a successful multichannel creator marketing campaign can enable a brand to deliver a consistent narrative and be present throughout the journey to purchase while strengthening connections and boosting engagement at the same time.
And creators can help by doing what they do best: Accompanying their followers on authentic, genuine, personalized experiences wherever your customers choose to engage.
OI Senior Creative Strategist Gem Garcin said, “While brands will continue to invest in creator channels as a core element of their marketing strategy, they will also up the ante on utilizing creators in more traditional marketing avenues—print, TV/streaming, digital, and more.”
Why Go Multichannel?
Using multiple channels lets brands reach more people and achieve maximum exposure for their marketing efforts, and engaging with consumers across those multiple channels helps them interact via several touchpoints, foster deeper connections, and provide a holistic, interactive brand experience for those potential customers.
Gathering data and insights from multiple channels gives brands a more accurate picture of their audience and enables them to sharpen the focus of their audience segmentation and targeting efforts.
Consistent messaging across all channels in a cross-channel or multichannel campaign helps reinforce brand identity, build brand trust, and provide a unified experience for consumers.
And being able to interact with the brand across all stages of the journey to purchase prompts better customer satisfaction and strengthens loyalty to the brand.
Channel Specifics
OOH
According to research from outdoor advertising giant JCDeaux, 84% of Generation Z respondents pay attention to OOH advertising, while 89% engage with it through other platforms, such as social media.
The company added that when people see an OOH ad first, spontaneous brand recall on social media jumps by 133%, and engagement on those platforms rises 52%.
Gen Z is the sweet spot for creator marketing, so adding creators to the OOH mix was a natural next step.
For example, L’Oreal’s CeraVe skincare line took over New York’s Times Square this past summer, presenting TikTok videos featuring creators on a two-screen display that totaled 10,500 square feet. One of those creators, Niamh Adkins, shared a video of her billboard appearance, generating some 2.7 million impressions.
TikTok is no stranger to OOH advertising, as the video creation application partnered with Atmosphere to bring curated streams to TV screens in businesses such as bars, gyms, and restaurants, and it also has a deal with DVD rental service Redbox to bring videos to its kiosks.
The October introduction of Out of Phone took TikTok to the next level of OOH, enabling brands and partners to leverage TikTok content (minus the audio) on screens on billboards and kiosks, as well as locations such as airports, bars, cars, gas stations, movie theaters, restaurants, and retail stores.
Out of Phone: Billboard extends existing TikTok campaigns to billboards worldwide, while Out of Phone: Cinema brings those campaigns from the small screen to the silver screen, and Out of Phone: Other Screens covers just about anywhere else where screens exist.
Speaking of billboards, they are being used for a lot more than just repurposing TikTok videos, with amplification tactics including NFC tags and QR codes to direct interested passers-by to more information, as well as scented zones and weather-triggered ads to really capture attention.
For example, hard seltzer brand White Claw installed a billboard in London that used heat-proof paint, specially designed cooling strips, and touch-activated gel-centered cooling mats to help people cool down during a heat wave in the city.
And billboards aren’t the only OOH option, with some agencies and brands turning to benches, bus shelters, furniture to sit on, kiosks, and even sidewalks to deliver their messages.
CTV
More than just “regular” television, CTV refers to the consumption of TV content via devices such as gaming consoles, smart TVs, and streaming devices, and there are currently some 238 million monthly CTV viewers in the U.S. alone, viewing movies, original content, and series through platforms including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Netflix, and Roku.
CTV is also a rapidly growing platform for advertisers, as they can use cookies and other tracking technologies to deliver their messages to the consumers who are most likely to convert based on their demographics, interests, and other characteristics. Linear TV may reach more eyeballs, but the majority are not the “right” eyeballs.
Ad technology within CTV also lets brands track the effectiveness of their campaigns in real-time, enabling them to tweak components when necessary.
Creators can opt for various formats, including ebook channels, games, movies, and series, with CTV platforms offering them wider distribution than YouTube channels, as well as the aforementioned analytics and targeting technology. They can also repurpose the videos they create for vertical social channels by adding elements such as brand tags, calls to action, or other relevant information to fill the white space.
Brands can team up with creators on cross-platform efforts, including encouraging followers to engage with brands’ CTV presence while also working on videos crafted especially for CTV screens and incorporating interactive features.
A tried and true marketing avenue, email campaigns provide a way for brands to work with creators to feature exclusive promotions or sponsored content in their existing email newsletters.
Advantages to email marketing include the ability for creators to send personalized messages to their subscribers at scale, and they can effectively use the medium to connect with those subscribers on a deeper level with targeted messaging, strengthening relationships, building loyalty and trust, and driving traffic to landing pages or websites.
High delivery rates, long-term relationships, and strong return on investment promise to ensure that email marketing remains relevant.
Blogs, Communities, Forums, and Websites
“I always encourage our clients to leverage their creator content in different ways,” OI Associate Director of Strategic Accounts Erica Fernette said. “Repurposing creator content across a brand’s owned and operated channels, product detail pages, newsletters, etc. is a great way to extend the life of their content and amortize the investment, making their budget go further.”
Brands and creators can team up on guest posts, product placements, and sponsored content such as articles related to the brand or product, reviews, and tutorials.
Those partnerships can also be extended to engaging with creators or leaders of online communities and forums to create content or spark discussion about the brand and its offerings.
Podcasts
Brands can tap creators in the podcasting space for initiatives such as integrating their products or services into the content or collaborating on episodes or segments dedicated to the brand and its offerings.
Podcasts are particularly useful in business-to-business marketing, as they are relatively easy and inexpensive to produce. The long-form nature of the medium allows for complex topics to be addressed, and the episodic nature of the medium helps marketers ensure regular and frequent engagement.
Creators can play a role by promoting individual episodes or the podcast as a whole to their loyal audiences across several platforms.
Best Practices
“Creator marketing is one of the few marketing channels that has value beyond the immediate impressions and clicks: It’s also generating a huge asset library that most brands don’t take advantage of,” Borchert said. “The best actionable step brands can take to immediately see a better return on their creator spend is to contract proper usage rights into their creator partnerships, and then distribute this content on their site, paid social, digital media, email, and (where applicable) in store and OOH. Not only will this bring them massive savings on the content creation front and better performance from a media perspective, but it will also improve their brand perception with consumers who are looking for brands to be consistent with their content across social, site, and beyond.”
Best practices for cross-channel and multichannel campaigns include:
- Clearly define campaign goals and key performance indicators, such as brand awareness, conversions, or engagements, to ensure that the campaign aligns with the brand strategy.
- Work with creators who have demonstrated authentic interest in the industry or product category being promoted. Give them the freedom to produce content that features their personal style and voice, in order to preserve authenticity. Value creators’ input and be sure to support them.
- Encourage creators to promote their content across multiple channels and engage with their audiences through methods such as responding to comments, giveaways, or hosting live question-and-answer sessions.
- Be sure that creators comply with relevant regulations covering advertising and properly disclose sponsored content.
- Strive for consistent branding and messaging across multiple platforms.
- Track key metrics and analyze data to inform strategies for future campaigns.
OI Associate Account Director Bessie Muggia shared these best practices for OOH campaigns and usage:
- Share OOH usage details as early as possible during outreach and negotiations.
- Ensure that OOH usage details are outlined as clearly as possible in contracts in order to avoid pushback down the line.
- Limit the OOH usage term to what is needed, rather than grouping it with alternative usage timeframes.
- Request details regarding OOH usage plans from the client upfront, such as how, where, and when they plan to use billboard rights. Agents will inquire about exactly how content will be used, even if they’re aligned with providing those rights, and having that information on hand will speed the process.
Some best practices specifically geared toward email campaigns include:
- Remember that the subject line is the first thing that a potential consumer sees, so make sure it captures attention and is clear and concise.
- Segment the email list by criteria such as location, purchase history or topic to properly target messages.
- Content should be engaging, informative, and well-written and not include jargon or technical terms.
- A clear call to action should be included in every email.
- Be sure to personalize emails with subscriber names and content matching their interests and needs.
- Find the frequency sweet spot—usually around one email per week. Recipients will forget about brands that don’t consistently message them, but overdoing it may cause them to unsubscribe.
- Send test emails with different content and subject lines to determine which combinations work best.
- Use opt-in forms and landing pages to collect subscriber information.
The future of marketing is multichannel, and creators play a vital role. Level up your creator game with Studio OI. We take your vision to the next level with pro editing, premium capture, and scalable production, both in-feed and beyond. Ready to elevate your influence? Let’s create together!
