American Eagle Scales Micro-Influencers | Fast Five Shorts

American Eagle has launched the AE Creator Community, a nationwide ambassador program with rewards based systems for content creators.

According to Marketing Dive, creators can earn points by completing weekly and monthly challenges such as posting styling videos and redeem accrued points for products, gift cards and other rewards.

Points are valued at $1 for every 1,000 accumulated and creators can earn them through challenges like posting TikTok videos or Instagram stories featuring American Eagle products.

The program is open to US consumers 18 years and older who have at least 1,000 followers on one social platform.

The goal is to amass a large number of micro influencers versus a smaller number of macro influencers.

Since launching on February 2, 911, I believe that's an exact number.

911 creators signed up to participate with over 200 migrating from American Eagle's previous Live youe Life affiliate program.

Jen, I know this one is of interest to you.

At least that's my hunch.

How unique is American Eagle's approach to micro influencing?

And now, now, have you seen other companies try to organize themselves structurally around this influencer trend or how have you seen them try to do that?

I'm the furthest from an influencer, just to be clear here.

However, we do hire marketing professionals for, for these brands and so we need to know enough about what they might need to know if they're coming in and affiliate programs are part of the plan.

So this reminds me of Rep Nation.

Do you guys know what Rep Nation is?

It's this like college rep College ambassador program that used to be big.

And when I was in college at the greatest university there ever was, Michigan State University, I was a Rep Nation brand ambassador for Ford Motor Company and, and it was set up very similar to this.

So the pay wasn't huge, but it was fun.

It was gamified.

I was earning points.

There were competitions between college campuses and you know, who knows what we won.

But something I was really excited about at 18, 19 years old, right?

So I like what they're doing with this program because I think that's, that's what they're adding.

I don't think it's wildly different than other influencer programs, but they're gamifying it.

They're adding the point system.

Who knows what they could earn.

But maybe it's even a trip to Florida, right?

And that's still a whole lot less than American Eagle was paying a major influencer.

But these micro influencers are feeling like they're at the top of the world, right?

Like they're being flown off to Florida for this Experience, so I think it's smart.

There are certainly other micro influencer programs out there.

I haven't seen one as specific as this.

Points based and sort of gamified.

You know, the younger generation, they don't want to screw up their streak.

So think of Snapchat like they've got these streaks with people, right?

And my workout app, I have a streak now.

Just, just so you know, I'm totally in.

I always thought they were crazy with their Snapchat streaks, but I am motivated by that streak and I think that's what American Eagle is trying to do here.

Right?

They're trying to say, hey, keep your streak alive.

Like, keep sharing the genes.

Share something this month.

That's more fall.

Share something this month.

I think it's cool for that college age, it looks like you have to have a thousand followers, but I feel like most young people can get to that number and they have it structured in a way that it's easy to get started and then they'll see that customer lifetime value, or I should say influencer lifetime value increase if these people stick around, could also be cool for, let's say a stay at home parent that has a little bit of time on their hands and wants to get involved but couldn't be that major influencer.

I think I, I trust my neighbor down the street to talk to me about her jeans and her American Eagle products a whole lot more than Gwen Stefani or I don't know who might be out there that might be a major influencer.

Right.

The trust level is there.

Good to know you don't trust Gwen Stefani.

I mean, I didn't mean to do that to you, Gwen.

I probably trust you with anything but.

Shots fired.

Shots fired.

She came to mind.

She came to mind.

No, but you're bringing up a great point, Jen.

I mean, it's, it's kind of why the long tail of, you know, E Commerce works in the way that it does.

And also I do want to point out that it hurts me every time you.

Michigan, you mentioned Michigan State to me because it brings back the, the horrible memories of the Rose bowl when you defeated my beloved Stanford Cardinal.

So, so yeah.

So I'm so thank you for that.

I'm going to take a step back, give and the floor here now to see what she thinks as I recollect myself.

Well, I think there's a great.

I would point our audience to a really great study that business of fashion just put out.

Diana Pearl, one of the editors there, talked explicitly about this new creator Marketplace and what this looks like and why brands are going directly to these micro influencers versus putting a huge focus on the macro influencers that we've seen for years and years.

And one of the best things that Diana said in that report, or at least one that stuck with me, is that you get more quality engagement and reach with somebody who has 10,000 followers than you do a celebrity or influencer with millions of followers.

And the way to think about that is the difference between getting engagement from purchasing a very expensive super bowl spot and having a lot of awareness but not a lot of actual purchasing happening versus looking at that 10,000 follower creator who you see real results, you have, you know, orders coming in from that person because it is the more authentic and reputable person like Jen just talked about down the street who she'd rather get, gain confidence in her purchase from.

But I think these brands are very smart in how they're approaching this because all they have to do is put these challenges out.

That costs them nothing to put together these challenges and look at all the content that they're getting and they only in some cases are having to pay for that content when a sale is made.

Because all of these are set up in a variety of different affiliate manners that really, you know, all they're, all they're getting is the upside of this.

They have tons of content being put out so that they're discoverable on any platform from Google to the LLM search that we were just talking about.

And all they have to do is put these challenges out there and see what comes to them.

My only question is how long this trend will last.

Because I do, I mean like we just talked about, we were all in on Kim K and all the macro influencers.

Now we're going micro.

What does this platform look like?

And how long is this side hustle kind of sustainable for the brands and how, like, what should their strategy be on how much they invest in this micro influencer trend?

But Chris, what, where do you land here?

Where would you add on to?

Well, I think to your last point, I think, I don't think this trend is going anywhere.

In fact, I wrote about it as one of my big takeaways from the super bowl commercials.

I couldn't believe the amount of technology companies that were advertising basically to this community.

Like, like, come start your website with us Wix and you know, Squarespace.

Everybody was like all in on that.

So I don't think this is going anywhere.

And I is just going to only make it easier because it enables you to not have the startup costs to do it anymore.

Like, you can build your brand with imagery and everything at no cost, where before that used to cost you thousands of dollars.

So I don't think it's.

I don't think it's slowing.

Going to slow down, you know, one bit.

The other point that you guys both brought up to me, which I hadn't thought about before this conversation, which is why I love doing the show, is I remember back in my days, you know, heading up home furnishings for target for target.com and, you know, just remembering the huge licensing fees we would pay to these celebrities to have them endorse our towels, for example, you know, and you get a lot of fanfare from it in the beginning, and then after a couple years, you'd be like, jesus, why are we paying these royalty commissions to these guys?

Like, how much is it really worth to us?

So, you know, I think this helps ameliorate you falling into that trap or into that position.

And so my only question to this from an executive standpoint is, you know, the more people you bring into anything, the harder it becomes to manage.

But I think the way E Commerce works, technology can make that pretty easy.

So for me, from an executive standpoint, it comes down to three things.

You got to make somebody accountable for the program.

Number two, you have to assess the roi, and then three, commit the right amount of resources to it over time.

And if you do that and you do that effectively, I think it's an idea that many, many, many more retailers should all get behind, quite frankly.