The secret is out

Influencer marketing is the skeleton key to dominating social media content strategies. Since the big-bang of social media over a decade ago, brands and organizations have been able to directly monitor engagement with their products on an individual level, getting previously unattainable consumer insights. Prior to the social age, the “consumer” was nothing more than a paper-locked figure on a spreadsheet. 

But, the real kicker of social media is the access that brands have to their consumers. Using the messaging tools offered by literally any social media platform worth knowing provides brands with a direct line of communication to their potential filmers. Talk about “B” to “C” communication. 

So who cares, you ask? Is this just a new way for brands to slide into consumer DM’s with pesky promotions? Not at all. It’s a way to identify and recruit real people who are already interacting with their brand as influencers. In simpler terms, its the newest (and easiest) way to construct an inevitably successful influencer campaign.

But recruitment is only half the battle…

…and previously the “easy part” of influencer marketing. At some point, you’ll need to face the music that is actually getting them to create the content you need and the right way. How is this possible if your previously identified influencers are geographically peppered across the country? Especially on a budget and a hard deadline? For Crocs, the innovator of the wildly popular and iconic foam clog, the answer was user-generated and cloud-based. 

Crocs outdid themselves with the release of their newest shoe, made from bio-based materials which make the shoe “carbon negative” without altering the look and feel of their long adored footwear. As such, an announcement campaign was in-order. Sure, they employed a traditional approach to launching the product. Fancy lighting, colorful backdrops, meticulous animation and handpicked talent made for a killer ad spot. But Crocs has long understood the value of balancing traditional production with UGC for the purposes of authenticity and establishing human connections between content and consumer. That’s where their network of digitally active influencers with their own established following came into play. 

To capture the unparalleled moment of receiving and unboxing a brand-new pair of environmentally friendly shoes, the Crocs team dispatched shoes to their influencers across the country. Leveraging a cloud-powered, remote capture tool—specifically, Cinebody—and its comprehensive shot list capabilities, influencers were guided to capture simple shots that documented the entire consumer experience, from delivery to unboxing, and everything in between.

Using Cinebody’s capability to force filming specs, influencers’ mobile cameras were controlled by project managers afar to ensure that all footage was captured using the correct resolution, FPS, and orientation so that the final product was cohesive and asthmatically competitive with traditionally shot content. But traditionally shot footage was no match for the ‘consumer’s-eye-view’ of receiving a new pair of Crocs made possible only with user-generated footage. Of course, Crocs made use of Cinebody’s automatic upload feature to monitor incoming footage in real time and provide direction to influencers to ensure that key shots were captured leading up to the final video’s climax, where influencers opened a box rigged with a spring loaded mechanism that sent colorful confetti into the air as the box was opened. Surprise!

The outcome was a visually stunning, playful, and authentic piece of social content that placed the consumer's viewpoint at the forefront. Crocs not only distributed this content extensively through their own social media channels but also tapped into the vast following of their featured influencers, thereby expanding their organic outreach and distribution capabilities.