The Engagement Rate

An industry bulletin for marketing pros.

It’s been 3 weeks since Alexander Wang hired Walmart versions of Ariana, Taylor and Kylie to promote a new bag and I’m still getting vivid flashbacks 😭

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Even moving companies do influencer marketing…

Piece of Cake is a New-York based moving company who make over 100,000 moves a year across the U.S. with their bright pink trucks. They’ve recently delved into influencer marketing with their CMO, Najah Ayoub. 

Part of an aggressive influencer program, social media figures are posting standing in front of bring pink trucks looking like they’ve done absolutely nothing. It’s part of the brand’s finesse, sit back and viola, piece of cake. 

Speaking to the Ad Age Marketers Brief podcast, Ayoub dove into Piece of Cake highlighting the potential of all customers as influencers. However, some niches work better than others. Fitness instructors, chefs, and people with specific interests tend to drive more sales than broad beauty or lifestyle influencers. Instead of directly paying influencers, Piece of Cake offers free or discounted moves in exchange for promotion. They track success through discount codes and focus on using targeted ads to drive actual business after creating awareness through influencers.

W of the week 🏆

Roger Federer showed Zendaya what her Challengers performance was missing, JK - they’ve just secured the superstar as a brand partner of the Swiss athleisure wear company! 

How a world without cookies is impacting your ad campaign 

Apple recently shut down cookies on Safari web browsers, Google is planning to do the same for Chrome by next year and mobile devices are hiding data from publishers. As the advertising industry is going through a huge transition thanks to third-party cookies leaving the party, plus a myriad of changes happening to the infrastructure of our discovery (thank you AI), connecting with consumers is definitely taking a toll for many brands. 

Yet it’s been a pain lately - but fear not, Hearst Magazines is coming to the rescue. The company, which has 50 brands in its portfolio, including Cosmpotalian, Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar, announced a new platform ahead of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to unveil their solution to a post-cookie world. 

The solution in question is a new advertising product called Aura that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to target ads, and they say it's even better than the old way of using cookies. Hearst says Aura figures out what you're interested in by looking at your activity on their websites, like what articles you read and what you buy. They say this lets them show you ads that are more likely to interest you, and they've seen click-through rates go up by 15 to 20%. They also say Aura can even figure out things about you that cookies couldn't, like whether you're a runner or like to take family vacations. 

In a world of vast change, we hope this solution is one that sticks and who knows? Maybe your influencer campaigns hit a new peak.