Influencer advertising has been steadily growing right into a channel that manufacturers look to for significant outcomes, with main organisations from Unilever to Premier Meals committing important spend to influencer-driven campaigns.
Baileys and Oatly are two manufacturers with a historical past of creating influencer advertising work for them; Oatly’s international media director Sarah Sutton even not too long ago advised Advertising and marketing Week that the model sees influencers as “an extension” of its in-house artistic crew, dubbing them “artistic administrators” for the model.
On the 2025 Pageant of Advertising and marketing, Sutton and Hazan Aydın Yeşilova, Head of Baileys at Diageo, mentioned how their respective manufacturers are making an influence with influencers: how influencers are enjoying a key position in a ‘transitional interval’ for Baileys; why Oatly has moved from well being content material to indulgence in response to neighborhood insights; and the way each manufacturers sort out measurement for a notoriously difficult-to-measure channel.
How Baileys and Oatly are utilizing influencer advertising to broaden their product positioning
Hazan Aydın Yeşilova defined that Baileys’ resolution to lean into social media and influencer advertising stems from a want to fulfill shoppers the place they’re spending rising quantities of time – citing the dramatic upticks in cell screentime and social media utilization over the previous few years.
“If you wish to catch individuals’s consideration, then you need to change your methods of reaching out to them,” she stated. “…That is the place we began social and the way we [could] improve our method of delivering content material.”
Baileys positions itself as an grownup treating model, and Yeşilova famous that quite a lot of ‘treating’ content material is shared on social media – from individuals exhibiting off a cake they’ve baked to attempting a brand new flavour of ice cream. This dovetailed neatly with Baileys’ want to be current on social media and likewise to develop the model – which is “synonymous with Christmas” – exterior of the festive season.
Baileys partnered with famend chocolatier Amaury Guichon to launch Baileys Chocolate Liqueur, a part of its positioning as an ‘grownup deal with’ and transfer past Christmas into events like Valentine’s Day and Easter.
Most not too long ago, the model has launched into a set of longer-term influencer partnerships with creators that it dubs the ‘Deal with Squad’. “It’s nonetheless within the take a look at and study course of … However the journey to date has been actually thrilling,” stated Yeşilova.
Oatly’s influencer partnerships have additionally introduced the model with a possibility to broaden its shopper notion. Sutton defined that Oatly is creating content material to assist individuals perceive how they’ll higher use its plant-based merchandise: “It’s an space that we had been by no means really that snug in – as a result of we don’t need to train individuals the way to drink milk.
“However I believe the proof is within the pudding, actually, on this. Individuals do want somewhat little bit of motivation for a way they’ll use our merchandise … and [help with understanding] the kinds of completely different drinks and meals you’ll be able to create with our merchandise.”
Sutton additionally emphasised that Oatly tries to be purposeful and selective with its influencer partnerships so as to guarantee “[that] we as a model have a proper to point out up in that house.
“Do we now have a proper to work with these kind of [influencers] which can be working inside these explicit communities? And do we now have one thing attention-grabbing [to say] the place we will add some worth?
“It’s very easy to leap on the again of traits … It’s rather more tough to drive tradition or, dare I say, even second-guess what’s coming subsequent.”
Insights, measurement, and evolving technique
Sutton credited Oatly’s neighborhood administration crew and their insights with shaping Oatly’s evolving creator technique.
“They’ll inform us what conversations are occurring on the market within the social house – what’s occurring within the sustainability house, what’s occurring in well being … [and] how persons are perceiving our merchandise when it comes to what we’re saying and the way we’re saying it.”
By taking over board information from these social insights, in addition to ‘cultural insights’ from Oatly’s social crew and barista market improvement crew – who liaise immediately with espresso retailers and are tapped into fashion and style traits – Oatly realized that folks had moved away from health-conscious consuming in the direction of ‘permissible treating’ and ‘acutely aware indulgence’.
Consequently, Oatly is now “pushing ahead into what seems like a way more optimistic house”, in Sutton’s phrases, and working much less within the realm of well being content material, which is part of social media that “can [often] be actually detrimental and … actually misinformed.”
“The outcomes communicate for themselves”
Measuring the outcomes from influencer advertising is a infamous problem, with 28% of entrepreneurs in a latest piece of analysis carried out by company Billion Greenback Boy citing ‘measuring and proving effectiveness towards enterprise targets’ as a serious hurdle in scaling influencer advertising.
Yeşilova, nonetheless, expressed pleasure about measuring the influence of Baileys’ influencer advertising: “We need to observe every part – we need to measure every part.”
Since final 12 months, Baileys has been integrating creator content material into its paid social promoting, and preliminary outcomes have proven a 4.4 level enchancment in advert recall, with top-of-mind consciousness up 2.5 factors year-on-year. “[Looking at] not solely how we construct our model however how [influencer marketing] influence[s] our gross sales and P&L was actually compelling,” stated Yeşilova.
She acknowledged that getting management buy-in for a extra bold dedication just like the Deal with Squad was tough at first. Nevertheless, “there’s a zeitgeist across the creator economic system … and the [figures showing improved ad recall and awareness] simply gave us what we would have liked internally.
“There’s nonetheless an enormous test-and-learn interval … however the outcomes communicate for themselves.”
Conversely, the Oatly crew’s strategy might maybe be summed up as not attempting too arduous to over-think measurement. “We will solely measure what we will measure,” stated Sutton. “We don’t have econometric measurement [set up] – I’m certain it’ll come at some point.”
As an alternative, the crew makes use of alerts like engagement charge and cultural fairness to gauge how effectively their influencer content material is resonating.
Embedding creators into creativity
“[Oatly is] an extremely creative-led organisation,” Sutton stated. When the model first entered the creator house 4 and a half years in the past, there was a stress with the in-house artistic crew not eager to cede artistic management to influencers exterior the organisation – however now, “that’s fully flipped on its head.
“Everybody within the Oatly organisation needs to work with creators and influencers.”
She gave the instance of a latest marketing campaign from Oatly’s artistic crew that revolved round “utilizing influencers with out truly utilizing influencers”: in Sweden, the model created content material utilizing ‘twinfluencers’ – lookalikes of well-known influencers – and posted it to the true influencers’ channels with out context or rationalization.
The marketing campaign aimed to place throughout the message that Oatly’s merchandise tasted simply the identical as dairy.
“[The team is] simply having loads of enjoyable, and that enjoyable is paying off when it comes to engagement charges,” Sutton concluded.
Yeşilova can be excited for the expanded artistic potentialities of working with influencers long-term in Baileys’ Deal with Squad.
“We had been in a position to get them into model immersion periods, inform them what Baileys stands for – what we do. We had been even in a position to give them coaching about accessibility, which is on the coronary heart of Baileys’ content material: we need to be accessible by everybody – a deal with for everybody.
“…That then permits us to provide them artistic management – as a result of now they perceive our model significantly better,” Yeşilova stated.
Yeşilova can be optimistic about Baileys’ strikes into the espresso house and the way the model is starting to resonate there. “I’m actually enthusiastic about seeing individuals’s reactions, as a result of … you actually really feel such as you’re tapping into tradition when individuals begin creating content material along with your model.
“As a result of which means persons are enthusiastic about your model and it’s a part of their lives.”
