My Experience: Influencer Marketing

I wanted to be a fashion designer since the age of 9 - so as soon as I graduated high school, I enrolled in a 2 year fashion design school. After graduation I interned for large companies and worked as an assistant designer for various small to large fashion brands. As one company went de-bunked, I'd take on what we know call 'side-hustle', working for a magazine, producing photoshoots, writing local fashion pieces for a local fashion magazine and working full-time for in sales/marketing for a fitness company. But eventually at 29, I had had enough of the hustle, it seemed I wasn't as passionate about what fashion design really is - and I decided that design on Adobe Illustrator was not what I was meant to do and it was ruining my love for fashion. And if I'm really honest, it wasn't using enough of my true skills - marketing.

Shortly after coming to that difficult decision, I enrolled in an intensive public relations program which coincided with the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Our course offered internships during the Olympics, so I worked with a local agency, picked up experience in media relations, social media marketing and event management.  Then post-school, I worked my way into agencies, from traditional to digital - hoping to work hard enough to land a job at a brand, a place I could call 'home'.

A few months later and a random ride-share at a TED talk, I was inspired by a company called Vega. I researched everything about Vega, watched videos on health and wellness created by the formulator, Brendan Brazier and was hooked. So I went after a PR job at Vega pretty intensively and after landing the role, I discovered that my passions and strengths were not in design by Illustrator, but rather the promotion of product. Social media marketing, public relations, blogger pitching - and zero budget to pay for advertising had me thinking on my feet. And since blogging was becoming an industry in 2011 - I started reaching out to health and fitness bloggers, sending free samples in return for content creation and social media promotion. This was/is influencer marketing, but at that time was just a low-cost, PR tactic to get people to promote our brand. It also should be noted that this tactic coincided with the beginning of the health industry boom in 2011, which was fueled by experts engaging and posting content on social media platforms - mainly Twitter and good ole' organic Facebook. 

So working at Vega from 2011 - 2014 was an exciting time for everyone working there. What a thrill it was even for me to build a brand on social media, be the only person growing and developing strategies to organically growth Vega's fan base. 

Later, in 2015, at SHOES.com - the social media influencer became industry norm and I was finally able to balance my design experience and communication skills to create and build a group of ambassadors for SDC. See below for more on who we worked with and how. 

Pillars of Influencer Relationships

• Relationship Management - creating strong and honest relationships with influencers, they are creators and the good ones deserve respect for their work. Once you have that bond- they will go out of their way to provide high-quality content that's unique and honest.

• Choose the channel - Build specific campaigns with influencers that have the most engagement on particular target channels. (Instagram Photo/Instagram Video/Youtube/Snapchat/Twitter)

• Seasonal brand campaigns - Put the influencer on your homepage - make them part of your campaign. Use their reach to drive exposure on a major homepage campaign

• Content creation and development - Always starving for fresh content - brand can utilize influencers for their knowledge. Create entire campaign pages with shoppable content, content/blog takeovers and the major kicker - sponsored content on major fashion publications.

2011 - 2015 ->

I launched and developed Vega's influencer program, working with over 600 North American health & fitness bloggers to help grow social channels, built content and support major product campaign launches. 

<-2015 - 2017

Developed two major influencer groups: fashion-focused and outdoor adventure, to create social, affiliate and homepage campaigns for various brands under the SHOES.com umbrella. The very idea of these programs - even in their inception changed the perception of our brand. As I started reaching out, influencers started proactively messaging us - and I didn't turn down the little guys. I just narrowed this list down over the years to the ones who had the best ROI, top content and were good people.