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Why brands should co-create with influencers

Take influencer marketing up a notch by co-creating products.

3 min read

Brands & Campaigns

Influencer collaboration

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Co-creation — the collaboration between influencers and brands on sponsored products or content — is a valuable resource for brands engaging in influencer marketing. Here’s why:

It gives your brand a fresh take

Bloglovin’ Research & Insights

Co-creating with an influencer allows you to receive a fresh, outside perspective on your brand and your products.

These fresh ideas can result in an inspirational campaign or a hot product that gets consumers talking about your brand. In turn, this chatter can create buzz about your brand among the influencer’s audience and their connections that kickstarts the customer journey.

Take, for instance, indie beauty brand, Morphe Cosmetics. Known for its make-up brushes, Morphe is partnering with an influencer to promote awareness of its lesser-known products — including eyeshadows, lip colors, and other cosmetics.

Most recently, the brand launched a massive eyeshadow palette collaboration with YouTube beauty influencer Jaclyn Hill. Jaclyn came in and made the collection her own, offering Morphe a variety of eyeshadow shades, textures, and quality that they had not yet explored.

The collection made waves among Jaclyn’s audience of nearly 10 million strong and the larger beauty influencer community. Jaclyn’s launch video debuting the product amassed over 2 million views in less than 3 weeks, while more than 50 of her fellow Youtubers published their own review videos and garnered millions more views. As a result, The Jaclyn Hill Palette sells out within a matter of minutes each time it is stocked.

It builds trust

Having influencers leverage their audience to sell their products is one thing, having influencers leverage their audience to sell their own is another. If an influencer truly represents your brand, co-creating with them allows you to deeply focus in on their audience, your target customer.

The main advantage influencers provide to brands that collaborate with them is that their audiences trust them. Thus, the influencers’ opinions when it comes to sponsored products can hold strong weight with their followers.

Co-created products can deepen that trust because the influencer is involved in the product and can attest to its value.

An influencer’s credibility is more on the line when promoting co-created products than when promoting typically sponsored goods. This gives them every motivation to really go that extra mile to ensure that the product is everything that they envisioned and everything that their audience will love. It also encourages them to dedicate more promotion to ensure that as many viewers see their co-creation as possible.

It gives influencers an incentive to work with you

Target x Who What Wear collaboration

Do not assume that compensation is the only factor influencers consider when working with your brand. While compensation is certainly important, many brands vie for influencers and offer attractive compensation. Co-creation as collaboration can set your brand apart.

Co-creation is the “something extra” that brands can offer influencers. It allows influencers to put their name and stamp on a product and push their business as an entrepreneur.

Your brand benefits, too, as co-creation fosters long-term relationships with influencers and turns them into brand ambassadors instead of one-off collaborators. Partnerships like these are also attractive to influencers as the deeper partnership usually offers them continuous work.

Samone Wheeler is a New York City media professional in the influencer marketing space. She is a Yale University alumna and the research and insights associate at Bloglovin’. Email to learn more.