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Marketing Brew

Katie Hicks

marketingbrew.com

Black influencers are still facing pay inequity

“I think this is something that we’re just now truly getting a chance to dive into,” Brittany Bright, founder of The Influencer League, told us.

Tarte and the future of the influencer trip

The beauty brand’s latest activation in the UAE was the talk of the internet—but will it have long-term implications? 

Phoebe Bain

an influencer standing behind a phone and ring light

400 creators reveal what’s most important in a brand partnership

Half of respondents cited “receiving timely payments” as a challenge.

Ring light on top of mobile phone and tripod

Influencers

A cartoon image of Kristina Monllos created by Morning Brew

Kristina Monllos

Johanna Voss wants to know why redlining is a problem.

Voss, a talent manager, regularly negotiates with brands and agencies on behalf of her influencer clients. In doing so, she’s become accustomed to redlining, or striking out, certain clauses in contracts, often in the terms and conditions section, or the “fine print,” where she says she generally advocates for more creator protections. According to Voss, it’s crucial for talent managers to be able to redline the terms and conditions, and she has often redlined contracts to reflect discussions that were part of the negotiation process she went through with the brand or agency involved.

But what was once a regular course of business is now getting pushback. Instead of being able to redline contracts like usual, Voss said she has recently been sent contracts to review after negotiations, with language that Voss can’t redline.

“The brand gets everything,” Voss told Marketing Brew. “There’s zero protection of the creator. I’ve had about four or five [deals] come over in the past couple of weeks where they send the agreement, they’re like, ‘Oh, FYI, we can’t redline terms and conditions.’”

Voss isn’t alone. In the last 18 months or so, Molly Tracy, CEO and founder of talent management shop Vrai, told us she’s gotten “a lot more pushback” on editing the terms and conditions of a contract, often being told that her agency can only edit the scope of work.

Terms and conditions are “where all this stuff is that needs to have the biggest edits,” she said. “That’s where your indemnifications are. That’s where most of your termination [agreement is], all of your usage clauses—all of that is in the Ts and Cs. That’s the part that we need to edit.”

The rise in agencies and brands limiting redlining comes as the creator economy continues to surge and as influencer marketing deals become more commonplace. Some marketing experts say that limiting redlining could be a simple efficiency play as investment grows and as marketers have more contracts to work through. But talent managers told us it’s causing friction in the negotiation process, all while putting them in a difficult position.

“It’s starting to become really problematic,” Samantha Hicks, managing director at Shine Talent Group, said. “We will agree to specific terms…and then we get the contract, and it’s completely different from what we’ve agreed to, and they won’t accept redlines. That obviously puts us in a tough spot because we can’t accept that.”

Major brands are doubling down on the creator economy—or, in the case of 

, planning to hire 20 times more influencers. Overall spending on influencer marketing in the US is expected to reach $10 billion this year, according to 

 from the World Federation of Advertisers, 54% of brand marketers said they plan to increase their influencer spend this year.

As marketers continue to scale their investment in influencer marketing, there are more contracts to negotiate, and to limit costs, it could make sense to adopt a no-redlining policy, at least in some cases, said Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing shop Village Marketing.

“We have clients where we’re spending $20 million, $30 million a quarter in the influencer space—and we’re not paying any influencer individually, on average, more than $25,000,” Segar told us. “When you do the math on that, we’re doing hundreds of thousands of agreements, invoices, you name it. What doesn’t make sense is when you’re paying a creator $1,000 and you have a back-and-forth legal contract where you’re spending five hours of legal money on redlines. There is a proportionate structure that needs to happen with deals.”

Marketers haven’t always found the ideal process to manage the volume. “When you’re working at scale, the legal hours can really rack up,” Mae Karwowski, founder of influencer marketing shop Obviously said (although she noted that her shop still allows for redlines). “Maybe it’s a cost-savings measure on the part of some of these brands, or they're just saying, ‘Hey, there are enough creators—we know we’ll get someone to actually sign this.’”

It could come down to cost savings alone or perhaps a broader effort at making the process of working with many creators more time-efficient, Jonathan Daly, head of communications strategy for creative agency Johannes Leonardo, said.

“If you’re trying to build out a program that has 50 or 100 influencers…there’s probably an impetus to make that as efficient as possible,” Daly said. “So it’s one standard contract [that] I’m gonna send this out to 200 creators. Hopefully we get enough back, and it’s like, ‘Take it or leave it. These are the terms. This is what we want.’ It’s just about moving at pace.”

Even as marketers manage potential growing pains, talent managers aren’t all sold on the argument and told us that they won’t accept terms or conditions that could put clients in a precarious position.

To manage the pushback on redlining, some talent managers say they are asking agencies and brands for a master service agreement that supersedes the terms and conditions that they’ve been told they’re no longer able to augment.

“I have seen a little bit more this year of a willingness to come up with a master service agreement for agencies that we work with quite often,” Tracy said. “We know that we cannot edit these terms and conditions on every single contract, but can we come to a conclusion on terms and conditions that we find equitable for both of us that we can then use as an MSA, or a master service agreement, across the board for all of our campaigns.”

Hicks has taken a similar approach, offering master service agreements for her clients at Shine. “We do this one time and we agree on the general terms and conditions,” Hicks said. “We call that final. Then we have a scope of work that can be modified, talent to talent, based on what the deliverables are, but then we’re not spending days going back and forth redlining the terms and conditions. I think it is a fair compromise.”

That said, it’s not a fix that will necessarily work across the board. “That only really works if you’re working with that agency a lot,” Tracy said.

A hand holding a red pen crossing out words from a contract.

Limits on contract redlining are growing in creator marketing

Limits on contract redlining are growing as influencer marketing budgets expand, and talent managers say it’s causing friction in the negotiating process.

Talent managers are reading the fine print in creator contracts. They can’t always change it

We’re talking, of course, about the “dream” of content creation, posting content, gaining a massive following on social media, getting a ton of brand deals, and quitting your 9-to-5. Someone might see it as a fool’s game when watching the backlash that one creator, Connor Hubbard, or @hubs.life_, has faced over the last few months.

Hubbard, dubbed “the most boring man on the internet” last year by 

 (1.4 million) for his mundane day-in-the-life videos that, as 

 reported, drove “the internet insane.”

“Most of the world is working,” Hubbard told GQ last May, theorizing why his content 

 had become so popular. “They have to work for a living. They can’t all be influencers.”

 become an influencer. And in February of this year, Hubbard followed the now familiar trajectory, 

 his 9-to-5 to become a full-time content creator, transitioning from what had made him famous to yet another influencer without a traditional day job. (Hubbard did not respond to Marketing Brew’s request for comment.) Since then, Hubbard has faced backlash from his fans for no longer being “

.” There’s even a new content cycle from other creators, 

 what went wrong—a “downfall” that some say “

Hubbard is one of a number of content creators who’ve followed this trajectory, pivoting from a part-time influencer (who has a normal job) to a full-time content creator, dependent on brands and algorithms for income. It’s a difficult transition for any creator to manage, one they should approach with a plan to guide audiences along on the journey, according to influencer marketing and ad agency execs.

While the appeal of content creation can be a sense of freedom and the possibility to create and make money doing so, what’s happening for Hubbard is a reality check that there are boundaries—even for the creator economy.

“It’s a good reminder that if you’re a creator, if the ultimate goal is to work for yourself, you have to work for your audience,” Oliver McAteer, partner and head of development at ad agency Mischief, said. “You do have customers out there, so to speak, consumers that know you for kind of one thing. So it does kind of narrow you or limit you to how far you could go.”

McAteer has experienced limits with his own content. Two and a half years ago, McAteer started to document his experience as a first-time dad on his personal TikTok account called 

. With that page, which has 28,000 followers, he experimented in switching up the content, running a series about being a Brit in America. “Whilst [that] had a life of its own, my followership stalled, and it has stalled to this day,” McAteer said. “And that’s because I tried to change my content and do something a little bit different.”

Doing something different isn’t inherently bad. Creators can and do need to adjust their approach to content creation as they see fit, but their audience may have a reaction to any changes. It’s all a matter of how creators manage a shift in their approach to the content.

“If you think of it more like I’m switching up my content and I’m making a major life change—there’s always a risk with that; a lot of times, that risk pays off,” Mae Karwowski, founder and CEO of influencer marketing agency Obviously, said. “Your audience truly has a parasocial relationship with you, and they really feel like they know you really well if you’re doing a good job, so you really need to understand and be very thoughtful about how you make a transition.”

Karwowski believes that creators should think of themselves as akin to magazines. For instance, Karwowski posited that if Vogue started posting 

 out of nowhere, its subscribers would probably unsubscribe. Creators making a stark transition in content should consider a scenario like that and think about what followers might want from them, she said.

For creators, it’s not just a matter of whether or not they’re making audiences happy. There’s a ripple effect: “You as a creator should be taking cues from your followers,” Christina Goswiller, SVP and head of social transformation for Digitas, said. “Ultimately, they’re the ones who are engaging with your content, [determining] the performance of your content, which then determines brand deals and your livelihood.”

If a marketer was looking to work with a creator because of their specific type of content and the audience they’ve cultivated, but then that creator makes a change, they could end up losing out on future brand deals.

Marketers may want to “reevaluate that partnership,” Goswiller said, adding that it depends on the longevity of the relationship.

And even if a creator wants to quit what made them successful, it can be smarter to stick with what has worked, Karwowski said. She shared a parallel of a successful small-town content creator who moves to LA, and “then the lifestyle creep is so real, and now it’s just LA influencer content,” she said. “I always advise, if you don’t have to move, [don’t].”

Hubslife backlash is a reminder that audiences can be fickle

Transitioning from the content you're known for isn't as easy as it seems. 

“LinkedInfluencer” isn’t an official term at LinkedIn HQ, but that could soon change.

The Microsoft-owned networking platform created its first 

 more than a decade ago, but, as video content has become more popular in recent years, its potential as a creator platform has only grown.

In 2021, LinkedIn added a “creator mode” for analytics and sharing, and in May, it expanded its in-stream video ad program to include the option to place ads against influencer content. At the same time, it launched 

 from known business figures like fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff and Sprinkles bakery founder Candace Nelson.

Even before the expansion, video consumption on LinkedIn was growing. In its latest earnings report, Microsoft reported that time spent watching videos on LinkedIn increased 36%, and the platform’s total revenue increased 7%.

“People are creating more content…People are consuming more of it,” Matt Derella, VP of LinkedIn marketing solutions, told us. “Folks on our platform who have the most credibility around topics that really matter to people are leaning into it, and that’s opening up the opportunity for us now to work with creators in a way that can help them not only drive reach, but build their business.”

As LinkedIn becomes more conducive to creators, it’s opening up the door to new kinds of content and advertisers on the platform—but creators and agency execs say there are still some growing pains when it comes to mastering the LinkedIn algorithm, data-sharing, and monetization options.

Sara Uy, who goes by “SellingSara” online, 

 about her sales job on TikTok before expanding to LinkedIn in November 2023. Because she mainly posts casual content showing her cold-calling from home, she said she was initially worried about how it might be received on a platform like LinkedIn, which she viewed as more buttoned-up.

“I was so hesitant because LinkedIn is not that type of platform,” she said.

The results of posting on the platform, though, surprised her. “I found a community of people that were doing the exact same thing, day in and day out, and were really resonating with the challenges and the rejection that you face [in sales] every single day,” she told us.

Now Uy posts lifestyle and personal content alongside professional content, and she 

: whether the topic is a business trip, mental health, or the impact of layoffs, creators are sharing more on the platform, and 

. For Uy, it only took about seven months of posting as a creator on the platform before she inked her first brand deal.

One of Uy’s most successful branded posts to date based on impressions, she told us, is a recent vlog-style video created in partnership with the AI roleplaying tool Luster, in which she showcases a Chanel bag she says she purchased after using the platform to hone her cold-calling skills.

Uy has worked with a wide range of brand partners ranging from Adobe to e.l.f. Cosmetics, and when it comes to finding the right fit, she told us she’s seeking those receptive to “lifestyle crossover” content given its success with her audience.

Derella said lifestyle content can be particularly effective, even in a B2B environment. “One of the things that is clearly working is just humans talking like experts,” he said. “B2B often can be bland and boring…and people want to buy from people they know and trust.”

According to Derella, LinkedIn is seeing increasing interest from luxury brands, in addition to B2B brands. Aneesh Lal, founder of the LinkedIn creator agency The Wishly Group, said he’s also seeing more interest from retail, travel, and hospitality brands as aspirational content becomes more prominent on the platform.

“The amount of questions that we get about our creators on their routines, ‘How often do they work out?’ ‘Do they journal?’ ‘What podcasts do they listen to?’” said Lal, whose agency represents Uy and 31 other LinkedInfluencers. “These questions have nothing to do with business. They have to do with the person behind the professional, because people are like, ‘I want to get to that level.’”

As marketers grapple with brand-safety concerns, LinkedIn could be viewed as having fewer bots and more professional, less polarizing conversations, Lal said. For creators, he said it can also offer a less cutthroat environment where they can break through without having millions of followers. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right place for all nonprofessional content, and certain creators may struggle to connect with the platform’s audience.

“It has to have a creative corporate bridge to it,” Lal said. “There must be a workplace element tied to it, otherwise folks on that platform will think someone’s lost.’

Despite having nearly double the number of followers on TikTok, Uy said she considers herself to be a LinkedInfluencer first. For that reason, she continues to push brands to include the platform in all of her cross-platform partnership deals—largely because of the quality of her audience there.

“When I think of 90,000 people on LinkedIn, those are 90,000 legitimate people that have occupations,” Uy said. “When I consider 175,000 on TikTok, I don’t know who that is. I don’t even know if that is my target audience.”

Still, taking advantage of LinkedIn’s audience can be challenging. Noah Eisemann, global managing director of social and influencer at VML, told us he envisions a “massive boom” for LinkedIn— if only it would allow creators and advertisers to better utilize its network data to improve reach. (VML has a 

 with Microsoft, LinkedIn’s parent company, and the agency has also supported some 

“One of the hardest things about LinkedIn is the data you can capture and is and just how walled of a garden it is as a platform,” he said. “That’s one of the biggest things holding back its widespread adoption, how they’ve decided to gatekeep their data.”

As LinkedIn seeks to grow its influencer business and compete with other social platforms, it may have to address other potential hurdles, like content reach and measurement capabilities. Both Lal and Uy said that the platform’s algorithm can be difficult to assess week over week, and which seems to prioritize different types of posts on a rotating basis.

“I think LinkedIn is at that phase where they’ve transcended from being a job-hunting platform to a knowledge-economy platform,” Lal said. “There is a completely different narrative there on what type of content shows up and how it shows up, so I still think they’re learning that.”

Uy said she has also faced glitches when exporting impressions, and Lal said his agency relies on creators to share reporting numbers themselves due to limited visibility into metrics. Still, Lal said he’s encouraged by recent updates, like this month’s 

Derella confirmed that LinkedIn is experimenting, and he said there’s “no set playbook” on when or how to post because “every creator is different.” LinkedIn is also working on ways to improve the experience for agencies working with creators on the platform, he told us.

“We’re definitely in the market, and we’re listening,” he said.

As for creator compensation, will LinkedIn ever get the kind of built-in monetization options that platforms like YouTube or TikTok offer? Derella said he envisions a future where “there may be opportunities for [LinkedIn] to share in the economics” of creator/brand relationships and tie more content to advertising. For now, he said, the focus is on boosting the platform’s video shows and expanding from there.

“What we’re doing now is focusing on nailing it before we scale it,” he said.

Despite the growing pains, Lal said he remains bullish on LinkedIn, comparing the current moment to the early days of creator/brand partnerships on other platforms.

“Imagine Instagram 15 years ago, and you got to be like, ‘Who would I scoop up today?’” he said. “[Brands] now have the chance to do that on LinkedIn.”

Photo collage of a business man behind a ring light.

How LinkedIn became a breakout platform for content creators 

The networking site is courting creators who say they can find engaged audiences on the platform, but there are still kinks to be worked out. 

Jennimai Nguyen

Tom Holland probably isn’t toasting his recent engagement with champagne. Instead, the actor’s non-alcoholic brew brand, Bero, seems to be a likelier choice—and if we somehow get invited to the royal wedding, we’ll be sure to investigate how he and Zendaya are stocking the bar.

Holland is one of the most recent celebrities behind non-alcoholic beverage brands, following in the footsteps of Bella Hadid’s Kin Euphorics, Katy Perry’s De Soi, and Blake Lively’s Betty Buzz (though there is also a boozy version, called Betty Booze). It’s a marked pivot from A-listers of yore who in the past threw their might behind alcohol brands, á la George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila or Ryan Reynolds’s Aviation gin.

Bethenny Frankel, most well-known as a cast member on 

 is no stranger to the beverage industry, either. She founded Skinnygirl Margarita back in 2009, and now she’s taking her libations expertise to the non-alcoholic sector as both an investor and spokesperson for Mingle Mocktails.

Though Laura Taylor, founder of Mingle Mocktails, “eats, drinks, sleeps, breathes this whole space,” she sees a partnership with Frankel as an opportunity to take Mingle to the next level.

“On my vision board, I have Bethenny Frankel images twice,” Taylor told Marketing Brew. “Why would I not leverage the success she’s had in business in my own?”

Business in the NA space is booming. The global non-alcoholic liquors and mocktail market was valued at $6.16 billion in 2023, and is projected to more than double to $12.79 billion by 2032, 

 market research company Market Research Future.

About four years ago, Mingle, which was founded in 2017, began looking for a celebrity partnership—but Taylor said it went beyond finding a famous face to partner with the brand. She had previously explored opportunities with other celebrities, Taylor said, but decided they weren’t the right long-term fit.

“Personally, I put great importance into entrusting my brand with anyone, and if it’s a celebrity, there must be a direct alignment from a personal and professional standpoint,” she said. Then, a TikTok video from Frankel that Taylor described as coming “out of nowhere” sealed the deal.

“Bethenny had done a TikTok review of three non-alcoholic products,” Taylor recalled. “One of them was the Mingle Cucumber Melon Mojito, and thank goodness that the review was very positive. So I took that as my gut told me I should reach out to her team, and that’s what I did.”

After some discussion, Taylor said that she and Frankel’s team felt “there was something there.” And more importantly, Taylor had always been inspired by Frankel’s business sense—namely, with her own beverage business, Skinnygirl Margarita.

“She was an absolute disrupter,” Taylor said. “With Skinnygirl, she demonstrated success in business. She has a strong social presence with our demographic. And I think most of all, I loved her honesty.”

One might think that the face and founder of an alcoholic brand like Skinnygirl would be at odds with the core purpose of a non-alcoholic brand like Mingle. But Taylor said she views Skinnygirl as just one step of Frankel’s business journey—a journey that is now tied to Mingle’s, as well.

“She saw a gap in the marketplace, filled it at the best time ever, and sold it at the peak of the market, so I would argue that I want to do what she did in the non-alc space,” Taylor said. “I like that people make that connection because they’re, like, ‘Oh, this makes sense. She did this for alc, she can do this for non-alc.”

Beyond that, Taylor said that Frankel’s audience aligns with Mingle’s core demographic of women ages 25 and older (though the brand is also looking to expand its reach towards Gen Z). When it comes to promoting Mingle on her social media, Taylor said she lets Frankel take the lead.

“What I encourage her to do is incorporate Mingle in her lifestyle, and when she’s moved to talk about what a great product it is, I want her to do that,” Taylor said. “I let her do her thing, and I’ve learned that works best on social media.”

Frankel’s celebrity and business status have also helped Mingle land itself in more retailers, according to Taylor, who said Frankel’s credibility helps validate to retailers that the brand is “a safe bet.”

Frankel, Taylor said, “gives us the extra oomph that separates us from other brands.”

Spotlight on two mocktail drinks clinking together.

Celebrity-backed non-alcoholic drink brands are on the rise 

One brand, Mingle Mocktails, partnered with Bethenny Frankel because “she was an absolute disrupter,” the founder told us.

After a spate of celeb-backed booze brands, NA drinks with star support are on the rise

Jasmine Sheena

In the influencer space, one word gets repeated a lot more than others.

“Take a shot every time we say ‘authenticity’ today; anytime anybody says ‘authenticity,’ at this point,” Lizzy Bilasano, VP, head of creative strategy at the agency Whalar, said onstage at Marketing Brew’s Perfecting Your Influencer IQ event in New York on Tuesday. “It’s become such a buzzword that I think it’s lost its meaning.”

Authenticity is indeed something that brand marketers often say they are looking for when working with influencers, but a successful influencer partnership can take a lot more. At the event, panelists had plenty of tips for marketers looking to meaningfully partner with influencers in a crowded and rapidly shifting landscape. We compiled a few of them below.

One way for brands to stand out when reaching out to creators is to pay attention to their content, Kit Clementine Keenan, a creator who spoke at the event, said. As a creator, she said she appreciates when a brand goes beyond just sending her a brief on the sort of content it’s looking for. Recently, the oat-milk brand Planet Oat reached out to her to collaborate after seeing posts about coffee recipes on her account, which she cited as one example of a brand paying attention.

 It’s crucial for those in the influencer marketing space to keep tabs on what is current and trending online, Melissa Dunn, EVP, marketing and communications at consumer insights platform Suzy, said onstage.There are tools that can help companies track search-term data and other information, but there’s also a ton of data to be gleaned from influencers and customers, she said.

“We had a really big alcohol brand testing celebrity ambassadors and really talking to current customers as well as prospective customers, to say, ‘Is this the type of celebrity that I want?’” she said.

 Perhaps going against conventional belief, Hitakshi Shah, global influencer marketing manager at Duolingo, said that influencer posts shouldn’t necessarily convert to sales right away. In her own job, Shah uses influencer content to help build a fanbase for Duolingo, but she said the brand focuses more on entertaining potential customers than trying to track immediate returns.

Christopher Douglas, senior manager of strategy at the agency Billion Dollar Boy, said onstage that, when talking to brands about how to measure virality and success, he often emphasizes the importance of having clear goals.

“We’re not delusional girlies here,” Douglas said.

Kit Keenan speaks onstage at a Marketing Brew event

 ICYMI: Marketing Brew’s Perfecting Your Influencer IQ event

Execs and creators talked authenticity, ROI, and being realistic. 

Make it personal: our takeaways from Perfecting Your Influencer IQ 

Longtime viewers of influencer Emma Chamberlain’s YouTube channel know she loves her coffee. So when talent agency UTA was looking to build its next talent-led brand five years ago, Chamberlain Coffee

“You have to have a product that is true to the talent for it to really cut through,” Jeumana Jaber, interim CMO and employee No. 1 at Chamberlain Coffee, who also works for UTA, told us.

Since its inception in 2019, the brand, which began selling coffee beans and drink accessories, has expanded into flavored matcha and ready-to-drink canned coffee. In the past year, Chamberlain Coffee has also branched out from its own e-commerce platform to other retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

“We’re trying to get as many cans in hands as possible,” said CEO Chris Gallant, who told us that “a big chunk” of the brand’s revenue this year will come from sales of its ready-to-drink beverages.

To date, the brand’s focus has been primarily on Gen Z, Chamberlain’s primary audience, who 

 cold beverages like cold brew. But as Chamberlain Coffee grows its product lineup and expands into retail, the brand is aiming to appeal to a broader demographic, as well as build brand awareness outside of Chamberlain’s nearly 30 million online followers.

“A big challenge with this brand is, ‘How do we age up the brand with [Chamberlain] and with our audiences as they grow?’” Jaber said. “And in general, how do we become more relevant to millennials and Gen X, since we are going into retail?”

Perhaps fortunately, the brand has already done this once. Around two years ago, at the direction of Chamberlain, Jaber said the brand changed its tone of voice to be more age inclusive and “have a more elevated feel with some collections.”

“Emma was, like, ‘I don’t want to just be a brand for Gen Z,’” Jaber said. “‘I don’t want to use Gen Z language that maybe my mom, who might love the product because I told her about it, doesn’t understand.’”

Efforts to appeal to a wider consumer set are evident elsewhere in the brand’s identity. The products’ packaging and colors are intentionally demographic-agnostic, and aside from Chamberlain’s name, don’t heavily feature the creator, a decision intended to help the brand “stand on its own,” Jaber said.

That doesn’t mean Chamberlain’s touch isn’t there behind the scenes. “She has a final seal of approval, she tries every single product before it goes into market, she approves every piece of packaging, she has the final say on it all,” Jaber said. ”She has a very good sense of what’s going to work.”

When the brand decided to create matcha powder, for example, Jaber said it was based “purely on Emma’s gut” and her experience among friends; now, matcha is one of its best-selling products. Pop-up retail arrangements and a smoothie collab—Cold Brew Cookie—with upscale grocery chain Erewhon also stemmed from Chamberlain’s input, Jaber added.

Jaber attributes much of Chamberlain Coffee’s growth to word-of-mouth, which she plans to continue to leverage as the brand works to broaden its audience. One way, she said, is through sampling, which this year will be a “big priority.”

Last month, Chamberlain Coffee appeared at a 

 for luggage company Béis, where Jaber said they handed out more than 1,000 cans of coffee, including to some millennial women who, the brand ambassadors at the event told her, weren’t previously aware of the brand.

Beyond getting cans in hands, events present an opportunity for customer observation and feedback. In addition to running social surveys and quizzes, Jaber said the brand sends emails to its top-2,000 customers asking about their preferences and new products they hope to see, which can also help build brand affinity.

“We want to involve our community,” she said. “We want them to feel like they’re heard.”

That extends to Chamberlain Coffee’s Instagram and TikTok comments: “When we brought out our chai and our hot chocolate, we made sure that they were made with oat milk because that’s something that we were told time and time again on social,” Jaber said, adding that it was doubly fitting because Chamberlain doesn’t drink dairy.

The brand also collects insights on its customers through user-generated content. To Jaber, the number of views on UGC matters less than the content itself: “We’re really collecting a library and using that as a little bit of a research point of, like, ‘How are people making things? What are they mixing it with? What flavors are they putting in? Can we bring out something similar?’”

Jaber said the brand will remain focused on “listening to the consumer, analyzing the data,” and releasing new products that are authentic to the brand’s namesake—even if not everyone knows who she is.

“It’s gonna take us some time to…get the word out there so people know, ‘Hey, there’s this brand. I like what they’re doing. I don’t know who Emma Chamberlain is, but I like the coffee.” she said. “That’s totally fine with us.”

Emma Chamberlain posing with a blue Chamberlain Coffee travel mug in front of a navy blue background

How Chamberlain Coffee is ‘growing up’ with its founder

The brand, named after influencer and founder Emma Chamberlain, is looking to expand beyond its younger demographic base. 

When creator Olivia Marcus was surprised with a giant, lipstick-shaped PR package from MAC Cosmetics filled with confetti and 19 lipsticks, her reaction was not one of delight.

Instead of posting what the makeup brand may have hoped would be a fun unboxing video, Marcus instead 

 how “wasteful and gluttonous” unprompted influencer gifting can be, along with the annoyances of “glitter bombing.” (MAC did not respond to Marketing Brew’s requests for comment; Marcus declined to comment.)

Conversations around influencer gifting and wastefulness have been ongoing for 

, but they have perhaps found even greater resonance at a time when people are being told to 

” are happening. Tarte recently received 

 for sending influencers products ahead of a paid brand trip, and earlier this year, one creator was criticized for a video showing her 

concerned about the costs and waste from sending products that don’t get posted or resonate with creators, Holly Jackson, global professional services director of influencer strategy and measurement at influencer marketing platform Traackr, said.

“It’s almost like the creators and the brands are questioning the strategy around product seeding and gifting that has been in play for years now…but from different angles,” she told Marketing Brew.

Emily Brown, senior manager of strategy at influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy, told us that overall, influencer gifting has “gotten less popular, but more intentional,” which could end up being a good thing for everyone.

“The surprise and delight—I feel like most influencers are kind of over it,” she said.

Sending out PR packages en masse without checking with creators about whether they want to receive the gift is “on its way out” as a strategy with most brands, Jackson said. (That particular approach is what Marcus said was the case when MAC sent its package to her unprompted—and to an old address.)

At BDB, Brown said brands are advised against cold gifting and encouraged to “make sure that [creators] actually want whatever they’re being gifted.” For Heineken’s 150 campaign in Germany last summer, BDB reached out to creators and, after receiving approval, sent Tripp suitcases to 14 of them that featured removable stickers and recyclable packaging inside. The influencer campaign led to more than 2.2m organic impressions on Instagram for the brand.

“Make sure [when] you’re reaching out, if there’s any sizing or shade-matching or anything like that, you’re being very intentional,” Brown said.

Reaching out to creators beforehand could come with benefits beyond limiting waste, helping brands form long-term relationships with creators and better understand the products they’re more likely to feature in content, Brown said.

Social listening and research on past creator content, as well as looking at data to see who’s mentioned the brand in other posts, can also help inform decisions around gifting, Jackson added.

Once brands and creators connect, Jackson advises keeping a feedback loop open. In the case of MAC, Jackson said if “their next set of packaging is all eco-friendly, recyclable materials, that could do a lot to repair that relationship with that creator”—both from an environmental perspective and to show that the brand is listening.

Cutting down on the quantity of products sent out can also potentially create an exclusivity effect.

“Poppi, the soda brand, did a really big campaign where they sent a lot of new Poppi flavors to certain influencers, and I saw other influencers making videos like, ‘I’m the biggest Poppi fan, and I didn’t get them,’” Brown said. “Intentionally gifting can create buzz around the brand that sending it to all influencers in the category might not.”

In other cases, personalizing gifts, while possibly more expensive, could lead to a higher payoff. “Sometimes creators will take a picture of the letter that came with a product and share that on social,” Jackson said. “That is always something that audiences are interested to see like, ‘How did this brand make a connection? Do they really care about this creator? Do they know what they talk about?’”

As Jackson pointed out with a recent Charlotte Tilbury 

, brands can look to provide experiences rather than products—especially ones that help influencers do their jobs making content.

Whether that means sending a smartphone car attachment to a creator who films in their car, or the perfect shade of lipstick for a creator like Marcus, being intentional can lead to long-term payoff and, ideally, organic product appearances in videos months down the line, Brown said.

Cold-gifting and mass sends, on the other hand, could land a brand in the background—or foreground—of a TikTok, 

 just how wasteful influencer marketing can be. As Brown put it, “You don’t want your big box of things…to be front and center in that type of video.”

TikTok creator @olivialmarcus holding a lipstick-shaped PR package from MAC cosmetics, and TikTok creator @darcymcqueenyyy sitting in front of dozens of packages she said were from brands.