Why Tabasco continues to go all in on influencer marketing

Christina Najjar, AKA Tinx, is known as a lot of things on TikTok: dating coach, the app’s “big sister,” creator of the “box theory.”

She’s also a fan of hot sauce, and it wasn’t long until Tabasco capitalized on that. Now, the two are collaborating on a salad dressing, marking the latest step in Tabasco’s evolving influencer marketing strategy and expansion beyond sauce.

Tabasco has more than 90,000 followers on Instagram and 500,000 followers on TikTok. Lee Susen, chief sales and marketing officer at McIlhenny Company, told us working with influencers is a key element of the brand’s social strategy, which is focused on forming “direct connections with consumers.”

“We’ve experimented with, over our history, many different ways of achieving the objective: Via print, via radio, via significant investment in television, to now really focusing on the most dynamic and agile way to interact with the consumer,” he said. “From a marketing investment standpoint, social media is the most significant way that we spend our dollars.”

We spoke with Susen about why Tabasco is prioritizing social and how it approaches influencer partnerships.

Dressing on the side

Last week, the brand released its new limited-edition dressing with Tinx.

According to Susen, Tabasco has been interacting with Tinx since 2021, when the brand was made aware of her posts featuring Tabasco and the idea of “normalizing” hot sauce as a salad dressing. This, he said, was the impetus for the brand’s product expansion.

“Producing a dressing was not something that we had front of mind as a brand,” Susen said. “But to have an influencer come up with an idea and to really push us into a space, I think it [shows] the power of not only social media but the power of working with influencers who inspire you.”

As part of its release, Tabasco worked with another of Tinx’s existing brand partners, Chipotle, to offer free entrée vouchers to the first 10,000 people who buy a bottle of dressing on Amazon.

According to Susen, the primary metric of success for the dressing isn’t sales, though they’ll certainly be tracking how quickly bottles sell out. “Primarily, this is for us measuring engagement,” he said. “First and foremost, what do the fans think?”

Why social?

As a legacy brand, Susen said, “The focus is, we have to maintain relevance. If you rest on your laurels, you’ll drive the business directly out of existence.”

That’s why, he said, Tabasco is putting so much behind social media and influencers, adding that “making sure that we stay relevant with our consumers, that we understand where the trends are, what they need, what they want so that we can remain exciting…is where we focus our energy.”

Susen said the brand typically encourages creators to post unscripted content to their own accounts. From there, he said, the brand will amplify the content on its own channels. One example is Tinx’s trip to Tabasco’s headquarters last year, which appeared on both her personal and Tabasco-owned channels.

Who’s next?

The same way Tabasco found Tinx after she posted organically about the brand, Susen said the brand’s team monitors social media activity around the world, looking for people who are fans to be potential partners. After identifying them, he said, they look at the influencers’ audiences and how they speak with them. “Those three criteria have helped guide us into who we connect with,” he said.

Aside from Tinx, other influencers the brand has partnered with include Lynja, who currently has 15 million TikTok followers, and Darryl Mayes, who has 1.8 million TikTok followers and posts sports commentary-esque content for the brand.

Susen said Tabasco takes a “bespoke approach” to its influencer outreach strategy, which can include gifts as a way to hopefully woo them in. “At a bare minimum, it’s definitely making sure that they’ve tried all of the sauces that we have,” he said. “For those superfans out there, we have bedazzled bottles. And if you love Tabasco, we’ve got a gallon jug with your name on it.”

So what makes the investment worthwhile, whether it’s making a whole new product with an influencer, sending them merch, or hosting them at their HQ in Louisiana?

“I think part of it is the ongoing experimentation and looking at ways to excite our consumers,” Susen said. For the dressing specifically, he said it’s “an opportunity to learn” about what resonates with customers and whether product collaborations are something the brand should continue doing.