Micro-Influencer Branding Campaign: #BYOBeachVibes

As the marketing intern at Reef, my central project was to own Reef’s first brand-focused influencer campaign from start to finish. I devised the #BYOBeachVibes campaign, set concrete goals, selected 30 influencers to participate using the MAVRCK tool, sent out product and tracked results. Here’s a breakdown of the project:  

• Business challenge:  Reef’s new Beach Freely campaign encourages anyone, anywhere to embrace the spirit of the beach, however, our content to date does not show how to embrace that feeling off the beach. How might we use influencers to create content that showcases how to Beach Freely in everyday life to show that anyone, anywhere can Beach Freely.

• Strategy Intro: To keep costs down, maximize content delivered and incentivize micro-influencer participation, I designed the campaign to work as a competition amongst the influencers. For a total of three weeks, influencers would have a chance to win $1,000 in a weekly challenge. The challenges were bring the beach to work, bring the beach to your neighborhood and bring the beach to your outdoors environment.

• Process of selecting influencers: Using MAVRCK, I was able to select 30 influencers that represented Reef’s inclusive brand image, as well as met certain numerical qualifications, such as followers and average engagement rate. I set each influencer a pair of Reef sandals, Reef towell, beach ball, sunglasses and other “props” to help them bring the beach vibes off the beach. I also sent them weekly newsletters with reminders, rules and winner announcements. I found that maintaining positive relationships with the influencers was important in incentivizing better content results.

• Content Results: The campaign surpassed every, single goal I set for it. Not only did the content produced from the campaign statistically exceed all expectations, but the content created was repurposable and found valuable by the Reef marketing team.  I devised a spreadsheet system to keep track of the influencer’s content, and invented the “Resonance” metric. I calculated the Resonance metric by dividing the engagement rate on our sponsored post by the influencer’s average engagement rate. This metric was important to me because if it was high, it meant the influencer’s typically active audience found value in the post. When considering every post from the campaign, I found a Resonance rate of 260 percent, meaning more than double of the influencers’ audiences engaged with the posts. My goal was 75 percent, as sponsored content typically receives less engagement. This impressive result was the most exciting part of the campaign and truly marked its success,

Check out some of my personal favorite content results from the #BYOBeachVibes campaign above.

Micro-Influencers, Macro Impact

On top of my main project using micro-influencers to spread awareness of the new Reef brand mantra, Beach Freely, I submitted briefs for and tracked the results of product-focused micro-influencer campaigns. Different product lines had different stories attached to them, so the challenge at hand was deciding how to leverage influencers to tell those stories. We overcame this challenge by aligning the ask of each campaign with the appropriate product story, as well as by selecting influencers using the MAVRCK tool whose content already aligned with the product story. This execution demanded specific, detailed creative briefs.

Aligning Macro-Influencers with Product Stories

In addition to micro-influencer, Reef leverages macro-influencers to tell product stories. I was tasked with finding macro-influencers on YouTube and Instagram that would align with the various upcoming product story launches and then pitching options to the manager of public relations at Reef.

I selected influencers based on their follower account, engagement rate and growth rate, but just as importantly on what they stand for, the aesthetic of their content and other product partnerships they have completed in the past.

Above is an example of an influencer profile that I would create. I included important metrics to our campaign, as well as creatives from the influencer that align with the product story we want to match.

Once I pitched options to the manager of public relations at Reef, based on her feedback, I coordinated with the influencers or their agents, sent them product to try out, and started the process of reaching agreements on content and pricing.