Social & Influencers

TikTok’s best-dressed comedian ‘got it from Nuuly’—and landed a brand partnership

Social listening led to the clothing rental service's partnership with Sabrina Brier, and resulted in its most-engaged influencer content to date.
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Screenshots via @sabrinabrier/Instagram

· 4 min read

If you look in the comments on any TikTok from creator-comedian Sabrina Brier, one thing is usually clear: People really want to know where her outfits are from.

On Instagram, there is an account dedicated to sharing what she’s worn in her posts, and interest in her wardrobe can be seen in conversations on TikTok, Reddit, and X. If Brier doesn’t directly tell people in the comments where she got something, then viewers who know are often quick to jump in to share that many of her outfits can be found on Nuuly.

Morgan Rehbock, senior brand marketing manager at Nuuly, told us that the clothing-rental company discovered Sabrina from tags on her TikTok videos early last year. After seeing the amount of organic interest in her outfits, “we jumped on the opportunity and reached out to her agent,” he said.

Since then, Brier has participated in Nuuly’s first ambassador program this fall, as well as a holiday campaign and a Valentine’s Day campaign. Since Brier has created some of the brand’s most-engaged content during that time, Rehbock told us the brand has no plans to stop working with her in the coming months.

That friend who…

Brier has accumulated more than a million followers across TikTok and Instagram combined, mostly for POV videos that put people in relatable scenarios with characters like “that friend who always has an analysis” or the “wedding guest who dated the groom in high school.” Her comedy and her style, which are as evident in her organic posts as they are in her paid content, have likely contributed to her success as a Nuuly brand partner: She drove 20% of all influencer traffic to Nuuly’s website in 2023.

“We like to give our creators a lot of freedom, especially people like Sabrina who have such a distinct point of view in their content,” Rehbock said. “We really like them to come back and propose what the narrative looks like, making sure that they hit the key points, the CTA, and whatever the objectives are for the campaign, but we really like to lean on their creative point of view.”

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A paid post from September in which Brier plays a friend who’s always overdressed saw the most engagement of any Nuuly influencer post to date, racking up more than 84,000 likes and more than 5 million views, both paid and organic, on TikTok. Multiple commenters on the post say they didn’t realize—or didn’t care—that it was an ad.

“What was really compelling to me is the number of saves and shares that her content on TikTok got,” Rehbock said. “For a brand post, that’s so unusual that someone actually loved the content so much that they wanted to share it with their friends.”

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According to Rehbock, a key aspect of Nuuly’s work with creators is finding people who can “authentically speak to Nuuly and what clothing rental looks like in their daily life” no matter what that lifestyle or style of content is. Beyond Brier, he said some of the most successful creators in last year’s fall ambassador program included chef Meredith Hayden (aka Wishbone Kitchen) and musician hemlocke springs.

“We really see that creators who transcend the mold of influencer resonate with our audience,” he said.

When the brand sees a creator who has mentioned the brand and seems to be making an impact with their followers, he said they’ll reach out to gift a Nuuly subscription first before looking to potentially evolve it into a paid partnership. He noted that Brier continued posting about Nuuly organically even before they made their paid partnership official.

Those organic mentions remain an important part of Nuuly’s work with Brier. While it has yet to collaborate with her fan-run wardrobe-tracking accounts, he said Nuuly has made it a point to appear in the comments sections of her videos, answering people’s questions about where, exactly, she got that outfit.

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