INDUSTRY NEWS
If you’re on social media, you’re probably becoming quite familiar with Athletic Greens; they’re a one-product, subscription-based wellness brand that recently raised $115 million, boosting its pre-money valuation to $1.2 billion. How are they putting this money to work, you may be asking? A substantial portion towards building and scaling the brand’s influencer marketing strategy. While Athletic Greens already has many celebrity fans like Shonda Rhimes and their product name across Daniel Hemric’s No. 11 Chevrolet, they are looking to expand their customer base even more through influencer marketing.
We think that Athletic Greens is currently setting the standard in influencer marketing, from working with Gen Z’s favorite TikTok talent to leaning into UGC and leveraging podcasters. Today, we look at what they are doing and why they’ve been so successful.
While the wellness brand doesn’t create content for its TikTok account, they have mastered influencer marketing on the social media platform, utilizing Gen-Z talent to promote its products. #athleticgreens has over 86.8 million views, and #athleticgreenspartner has over 39.9 million views. These large numbers have been generated solely from influencer posts on the platform.
Athletic Greens does a great job working with creators that are a natural and authentic fit for their brand values. When building an influencer marketing strategy, pick talent intentionally to ensure reaching your target audience. Check out one of our favorite Athletic Greens TikTok influencers below:
Kate Glavan is a 23-year-old content creator living in New York City. She has built her online community (and partnerships) around her passions: Politics, Wellness, and Climate Change. Her content centers heavily around her healthy lifestyle, where she partners with brands like HOKA, Class Pass, golde, and Supergoop.
Her content feels authentic because she’s been vocal about only participating in brand deals that are a true fit for her lifestyle. As a wellness enthusiast, athlete, and proponent of living a healthy lifestyle, this partnership is no surprise. Check out an example of her content for Athletic Greens here that generated over 5.6M views.
The beauty (and genius) of the partnership is that they didn’t limit it to TikTok. Kate also shares content for the brand on her Instagram account.
UGC or user-generated content is one of the most authentic ways to showcase consumer experiences, and Athletic Greens has utilized it perfectly. The brand noticed UGC of morning routines highlighting products resonated with audiences on a human level. The content outperformed paid and organic branded posts, so they leaned into the creative direction to maximize performance.
Amy Endemann, the VP of Marketing for Athletic Greens, said, “we get a lot of green selfies, folks posting their greens in gorgeous locations and unboxing experiences.” Now it’s best practice to see this format in their influencer partnerships. Influencers detail morning routines, from waking up to working out (and always) getting in their daily dose of Athletic Greens. Here is one such example from @guttalkgirls on TikTok.
The brand reposts UGC to their Instagram stories and in their paid campaigns. A strategy so effective, The Social Standard launched a performance-creative division to help brands develop UGC campaigns & implement them into their paid media.
Start a UGC campaign by asking customers to share feedback via social media or host giveaways with customers creating content to enter. Your brand may already have UGC content, so search for relevant hashtags and tagged posts.
When thinking about influencer marketing, most brands forget about a valuable group of creators, podcasters. Athletic Greens hasn’t been shy about getting their name out there. They’ve sponsored some of the biggest shows in the world, spending over $2.7 million in March 2022 alone, including sponsorships with The Joe Rogan Experience, reaching 11 million listeners per episode. Sponsoring a show of that magnitude is guaranteed to reach audiences at scale.
In addition to the JRE Experience, Athletic Greens sponsored The Tim Ferriss Show and Finding Mastery. The brand has a proven model of why you should be spending time (and money) advertising on podcasts.The results from sponsoring these large podcasts were so positive that the brand decided to launch its show, Inspiring Lives, which focuses on performance mindsets, entrepreneurship, fitness, and nutrition. Their show performed well for customer engagement and must bring in nice wins on the acquisition side.
A forward-thinking mentality is why Athletic Greens has continuously achieved success. The Social Standard has seen the impact of podcast advertising firsthand, gaining over 10 million impressions for the dating app Hinge, utilizing pre-roll and mid-roll mentions on romance/love-related programming.
Athletic Greens is Truly Setting The Standard
From reaching new audiences through authentic partnerships on TikTok to utilizing UGC to its max efficiency, and sponsoring the biggest podcasts in the world, Athletic Greens is an excellent case study on how to scale influencer marketing in 2022.
They have mastered getting in front of their target audience and reaching new customers. Influencer marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. Test new strategies and find what works best for your brand.
Scale Your Influencer Marketing
The Social Standard is a full-service influencer marketing agency driven by setting the standard for the industry and then reaching even higher. Our team is obsessed with finding the right influencers for our partners. But we are way more than just matchmakers. We are strategists that develop effective campaigns to delight, inspire, entertain and hit business goals. From concept to seamless execution, we work with clients such as Adobe, FiatChrysler, L’Oreal, Motorola and others, positioning them as pioneers in innovative influencer marketing and helping talent thrive in the creator economy. Want to learn more about our agency’s work? Shoot us an email at partner@sostandard.com. We’d love to collaborate.
