When Nike wanted to transform Times Square into a creator-powered celebration for Air Max Day, they weren’t just looking for social media posts—they needed a partner who could seamlessly blend digital influence with real-world impact. 

Behind this campaign was Influencer.com, a company that has transformed itself from a social media platform into an architect of sophisticated creator marketing campaigns for global brands.

As brands started investing heavily in creator marketing, Influencer.com recognized a critical gap in the market. Self-service platforms proliferated, but enterprise clients needed comprehensive strategic support to effectively manage complex, multi-channel campaigns.

“When Caspar [Lee] and I founded the business back in 2017, we were very much focused on trying to scale Influencer both as a self-service platform as well as an influencer marketing agency,” co-founder & CEO Ben Jeffries says, adding that this dual approach led to a pivotal insight: technology alone wasn’t enough to meet enterprise needs.

The realization sparked a decisive shift in 2019, backed by Series A funding from Puma Growth Partners. “We decided back then that we were going to double down on being an agency,” Ben explains, “and rather than having any self-service element to our business, we were going to build technology that really supported our team internally.”

Building a Global Service Infrastructure

With offices across London, Germany, Riyadh, Dubai, and New York, Influencer now serves clients worldwide. “We’ve seen that by having this large geo presence, we’ve been able to support our clients in their global strategies,” Ben shares. “It’s not just supporting our clients with their UK or German strategies. We can support our clients on their overall global influence marketing strategy with actual local on-ground resources in key regions.”

The company’s global expansion builds on proprietary technology supporting every aspect of service delivery. Their platform manages “everything from creator discovery through to how they were contracting with creators and improving the overall client experience,” Ben notes. “When it came to content approval, creator approval, and reporting, we doubled down on building the best technology possible for our team and their clients.”

From Social Posts to Comprehensive Marketing Solutions

Since 2021, Influencer’s service offerings have expanded significantly beyond traditional creator collaborations. “Back in 2021, we would have been very busy just doing what was probably deemed organic creator work. Now we’ve expanded so much further beyond that,” Ben shares. This expansion reflects their understanding that creator content can drive business results across multiple channels and formats.

The company now covers the following core service areas:

Content Enhancement and Distribution 

Influencer maximizes creator partnerships through sophisticated content strategy and paid distribution. “We can help brands reach lookalike audiences, help scale their campaigns by putting media behind it,” Ben explains. 

Their internal production team optimizes content for various platforms: “We’ve built internal production capabilities to help remix various content. So, say a creator produces content on TikTok, and we can turn those assets into paid optimized creatives for any other platform out there using best practice.”

Strategic Creator Partnerships 

The company builds long-term creator relationships based on true audience engagement. “When you’re working with creators, you want to have creators who are the ones who are responding to comments,” Ben emphasizes. “You want to have creators who are going and actually asking questions on their Instagram stories and responding to those sort of things where the creators really have that strong connection.”

This approach extends to forming dedicated creator councils for brands. “What we are seeing is it’s not just about using micro influences at scale; it’s also having the rise of a creator council, your group of creators who are almost your ambassadors across the course of the year.”

Demonstrating Impact: Nike Air Max Day Campaign

The Nike Air Max Day campaign showcases how Influencer’s comprehensive approach drives measurable results across channels.

First, Influencer carefully selected creators whose genuine connection to sneaker culture resonated with Nike’s target audience. These creators produced original content highlighting their personal Air Max stories across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

The campaign’s innovation came from its integration of digital and physical spaces. “We had the creators not only post on social to their audiences, but the creators’ assets were then also up in Times Square,” Ben explains, adding that this strategic placement transformed Times Square into an interactive celebration of sneaker culture.

The real impact emerged through organic community engagement. “What that meant was that the followers of the community of the creator not only engaged with the content on social, but then they went to Times Square and took photos and videos of their favorite creators on these out-of-home adverts, and it obviously got a further wave of social sharing because of how overjoyed that they were.”

The campaign generated significant results across multiple dimensions. Creator content organically reached millions of users through social media posts, while the Times Square placements sparked thousands of user-generated photos and videos. 

This triggered a secondary wave of social sharing that amplified the campaign’s reach far beyond the initial creator audiences. Most importantly, the campaign strengthened authentic connections between Nike, creators, and the sneaker community.

Measuring Business Impact

This integrated approach requires sophisticated measurement beyond traditional metrics. “Measurement within influencer marketing has expanded significantly,” Ben notes. “Social metrics are very much like your baseline metrics. They help compare creator A to creator B. But actually, we want to show brands whether these creators have driven sales. Have they driven in-store visits? Have they driven wider brand awareness?”

The focus on business outcomes has transformed how brands structure creator marketing initiatives. “What you’re seeing is various, particularly in larger brands, different people from different teams then become more integrated in conversations,” Ben observes. 

“Previously, you might have just had a social team involved. Now you see that you also have a social team, a performance team, an affiliate, and a commerce team involved. They’re all giving a budget towards spending on creators and influencers. So obviously a seismic change.”

The Next Phase of Creator Marketing

Looking forward, Ben sees commerce playing a central role: “Huge opportunities are with commerce creators. What we’ve seen now is a new wave of creators who are able to do TikTok Shop, for example, where they’ll go live, and they’ll be able to talk to audiences and sell products very QVC style shopping networks.”

Success in this new phase requires brands to fundamentally shift their approach. “Brands need to think like a creator,” Ben advises. “And the only way that you can possibly think like a creator is to get creators involved in your creative briefing process.”

“For us, it’s about continuing to be independent and to support our brands agnostically and our creators agnostically… for us, it’s about remaining independent as we continue to scale up.”