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Top Brands Turn to Influencers for Promotion

Are there any influencers out there who could help promote your business?

Published

8 years ago

September 4, 2015

Trace Shelton

Top Brands Turn to Influencers for Promotion

FOR YEARS, brands have turned to TV and film celebrities to promote their products in hopes of transferring some of the actors’ public appeal. But with the rise of social media, there is a new breed of “celebrity” that brands are turning to, including bloggers, photographers, and adventurers, all made famous online. These people are broadly termed “influencers,” and some of the biggest jewelry brands in the world are hoping they can create word of mouth advertising for them.

Top Brands Turn to Influencers for Promotion

Margaret Zhang and Miranda Kerr.
Photo credit: Margaret Zhang

To promote its Calibre de Cartier Carbon Diver timepiece, Cartier enlisted the New York Times’ commercial content operation, T Brand Studio, to develop five video vignettes of outdoor adventurers entitled “Going the Distance.” The paid posts run on the New York Times web and mobile sites and feature well-known adventure enthusiasts in extreme locations in Iceland, Chile, Australia, Oman, and Norway. Included are British adventurer Alastair Humphreys, professional surfer Luke Stedman, and veteran mountain climber Joe Kinder. To see the campaign and videos, click here.

Meanwhile, Swarovski, who hired four fashion bloggers in the summer of 2014 to share tips and tutorial videos on how to create looks using Swarovski jewelry, has now tapped Instagram maven Margaret Zhang to photograph its latest creations, which were inspired and modeled by brand ambassador Miranda Kerr. Zhang, a 22-year-old law student based in Sydney, Australia, has a website called shinebythree.com and an Instagram following of 550,000 people. The self-made writer-photographer-stylist has done work for Nike, Louis Vuitton, and several other brands and has been featured in Harper’s BAZAAR, Marie Claire, Elle.com and more. Check her incredibly impressive Instagram page here.

Are there any influencers out there who could help promote your business?

When There’s No Succession Plan, Call Wilkerson

Bob Wesley, owner of Robert C. Wesley Jewelers in Scottsdale, Ariz., was a third-generation jeweler. When it was time to enjoy life on the other side of the counter, he weighed his options. His lease was nearing renewal time and with no succession plan, he decided it was time to call Wilkerson. There was plenty of inventory to sell and at first, says Wesley, he thought he might try to manage a sale himself. But he’s glad he didn’t. “There’s no way I could have done this as well as Wilkerson,” he says. Wilkerson took responsibility for the entire event, with every detail — from advertising to accounting — done, dusted and managed by the Wilkerson team. “It’s the complete package,” he says of the Wilkerson method of helping jewelers to easily go on to the next phase of their lives. “There’s no way any retailer can duplicate what they’ve done.”