I’m not one to buy something just because a celebrity or an influencer recommends it. But when I see it everywhere—on my Explore page, in my friends’ Stories, in my feed—I tend to get swayed. That’s the exact kind of influence that SKIMS is banking on with their influencer seeding and shapewear marketing strategy.
In this post, I break down how Kim Kardashian partners with micro-influencers and diverse creators to dominate the shapewear market. Let’s get started.
To get a better understanding of how SKIMS works with micro-influencers, we need to completely break down the brand’s influencer marketing strategy. Micro-influencers only make up one layer of a larger strategy that leverages different influencer tiers to achieve different goals. With that said, let’s look into the brand’s influencer marketing strategy and the role that different influencers play.
SKIMS being a celebrity-founded brand gives it instant visibility, as founder marketing can be effortlessly leveraged to get the brand in front of a massive audience. But SKIMS doesn’t just rely on Kim Kardashian’s fame to market their products. They also partner with other A-list celebrities and social media personalities to further maximize reach.
So you’ll find celebrities like Serena Williams featured in their ad campaigns.
Similarly, the brand has managed to achieve cultural relevance through strategic partnerships with influencers like Post Malone, Hailey Bieber, Sza, and even Will Ferrell (of all people!)
SKIMS’s celebrity partnerships aren’t just limited to traditional media personalities. They’ve also partnered with social media influencers like Anastasia Karanikolaou, who has over 4 million followers on TikTok. These partnerships allow the brand to get in front of millions of people instantly.
With influencers still holding most of the power on social media, SKIMS also continues to partner with larger creators who have a strong social media presence. Macro and mid-tier influencers manage to reach hundreds of thousands of people through their content. Unlike typical celebrities, they create content regularly to sustain their social media reach.
This helps the brand stay top of mind for consumers and gain continued visibility in social media algorithms. While celebrity influencers generate that initial spark, these macro and mid-tier creators help to keep the fire going.
The brand has partnered with the creators behind Coffee Convos Podcast, which has more than 256k Instagram followers and 200 million downloads. SKIMS sponsored the creators, who did an honest try-on and review and provided a unique discount code to encourage their audience to buy the product.
Beyond these partnerships with larger influencers, what helps SKIMS actually dominate the shapewear market is the flood of user-generated content you see all over social media. The brand uses influencer seeding to gift products to smaller creators, who then create UGC that enhances visibility and trust for the brand.
Seeing a strong community of micro-influencers and nano-creators churning out UGC creates a sort of bandwagon effect that makes others also want to participate, regardless of whether they bought the product themselves or got it for free from the brand. As a result, SKIMS manages to scale UGC creation and organically produce social proof to enhance trust.
SKIMS times their influencer seeding campaigns ahead of drops to build up anticipation without the heavy ad spend. They will gift items from their latest collection to encourage authentic promo content in the weeks leading up to the drop.
For example, the following influencer created a video where she tried on and reviewed a sleepwear set from the brand’s Valentine’s Day collection. She shared her honest opinion about the fit, feel, and material, encouraging her followers to get the set for themselves.
Similarly, the following creator tried on and reviewed a swimwear set before the launch of the SKIMS Swim Shop.
Meanwhile, one nano-influencer got an invite to the brand’s Valentine’s Day Drop event in LA. She created a quick video showing her experience. The influencer was also gifted products, which she featured in the video to share with her followers.
What’s great about SKIMS’s gifting strategy is that it’s not limited to content creators. The brand occasionally sends special gift boxes to their top customers and supporters.
This rewards them for their loyalty, encouraging them to keep shopping with the brand. In the process, the brand manages to turn actual customers into advocates who might even create content about the products they received.
So it’s an effective strategy to foster a loyal community around the brand. SKIMS would also share videos showing the items that were included in the gift box, which entices other customers to keep supporting the brand for a chance to be rewarded.
SKIMS is a brand that’s widely celebrated for its inclusivity. This reflects in their influencer partnerships as well, which is also a major reason for the brand’s continued appeal with a diverse audience base.
The brand’s influencer partnerships transcend ethnicity, skin color, and body type, reaffirming SKIMS’s positioning as a brand for “everyone.”
This includes a partnership with T’Mani Woodland, whose dark skin and luscious curls make her an ideal representative for Black consumers. The following video features a partnership with SKIMS where she tries on and reviews pajamas from the brand’s Valentine’s Day collection.
One of my personal favorite partnerships involves YouTuber Samantha Jo, who regularly creates vlog-style content and review videos to inform and entertain her 1+ million subscribers. In her sponsored video with SKIMS, she shared her excitement about landing a partnership, especially considering that she’s a plus-sized influencer.
She tried on the products she received and shared honest reviews about her experience, which makes the content informative and relevant for plus-sized audiences who are considering SKIMS products.
What makes this authentic review possible is that inclusivity and diversity are baked into the brand’s overall strategy instead of being just a campaign slogan. They prioritize diversity in marketing their products as well as in their actual product offering.
Consumers can actually find products that comfortably fit them—regardless of their size and body type. So influencers can be honest about the comfort and fit of the products even if they aren’t paid to promote the brand. As such, the review doesn’t feel forced or dishonest because influencers don’t have to pretend to like something for the sake of a sponsored video.
SKIMS partnerships also transcend influencer categories, which further helps the brand to maximize reach across different audience segments. Fashion influencers are an obvious choice. But the brand doesn’t just stop at that. They also partner with creators across multiple segments to reach an even bigger audience.
For instance, they’ve even partnered with Jina Kim, an Instagram creator known for her food-related content. Although she does the occasional lifestyle content, most of her followers tune into her content for the recipes and food reviews.
So even with her SKIMS partnership, she doesn’t do a full-blown video reviewing the product. Instead, she does her usual recipe video while wearing a T-shirt from the brand. In the beginning of the video, she briefly mentions that she’s wearing SKIMS and expresses how much she loves it.
The partnership is subtly incorporated into the creator’s usual content style without being completely invisible.
While influencers are a core part of the brand’s publicity strategy, they’re not just ad placements. Instead, they function as distribution partners who help drive actual customers for SKIMS.
When influencers feature the brand’s products in their content, they do so with authentic reviews and essential information that could ultimately guide buying decisions. Instead of simply showing what the product is, creators will take the time to discuss the material, fit, and feel. They’ll even mention what size they’re wearing, giving people a reference that will help them understand how the product might look on someone with their body type.
Influencers will also share discount codes or affiliate links to further streamline the buying process, making it easier for SKIMS to ultimately win over actual buyers through influencer-generated content.
In addition to massively scaling UGC creation, SKIMS closes the loop by reposting some of the best content from influencers. The brand reuses influencer-generated content to strategically scale their TikTok publishing efforts.
While their Instagram feed is more focused on professional shoots and promo content, TikTok is where the brand reposts high-quality content from their influencer partnerships. This allows them to keep up with the high-volume demand of maintaining a strong presence on a fast-moving platform like TikTok.
At the same time, the brand is still selective about the kind of content that graces their feed, allowing them to maintain branding consistency.
The SKIMS example serves as a lesson in strategic influencer seeding with micro-influencers. Let’s look at some practical takeaways that you can replicate for your strategy.
What stands out the most about SKIMS’s influencer marketing strategy is the multi-layered approach to creator partnerships. Instead of choosing just one type of influencer, the brand works with different influencer tiers, each serving a different purpose.
You can replicate this strategy by working with influencers of all sizes to achieve unique goals. For example, an example multi-tier approach could look like this:
How you layer influencers for your own campaign will vary depending on factors like campaign goals, brand size, and budget. But the goal is to generate social proof and gain trust with the help of smaller creators while larger influencers give you an instant visibility boost.
If you want to reach a diverse audience, your influencer roster must be equally diverse. Depending on the products you sell, this could mean working with influencers across different ethnicities, skin colors, ages, body types, and categories.
This will allow you to effectively reach audiences who identify with those influencers and whose needs and pain points align with theirs. For example, a mature influencer could help you reach an over-50 demographic that’s interested in age-appropriate styling where your products make perfect sense. Or a plus-size influencer could help you showcase your inclusive size offerings.
Similarly, you could extend your partnerships across different influencer categories for a more expansive reach.
Use a platform like Influencity to check your brand’s share of voice along with the interests of audiences who are engaging in conversations about your brand. This will make it easier to identify the influencer categories you should include in your partnerships.
As you gear up for a product launch or a drop, influencers can help you build anticipation through authentic reviews and UGC. Time influencer seeding campaigns ahead of these events to gradually build interest and excitement. So when the drop actually happens, you already have an eager audience of people who are looking to buy.
As we could see from the SKIMS strategy, influencer seeding doesn’t have to be a disorganized chaos of sending out products to creators who might not even end up creating content for your brand. Pair it strategically with other influencer partnerships to ensure better results and an endless loop of authentic UGC to fuel your marketing efforts.
Celebrity seeding is when brands seed products through celebrities to gain publicity.
Influencer seeding helps to generate authentic word-of-mouth buzz and secure credible social proof to win over new audiences.
According to Indeed, SKIMS pays influencers an average of $94,444 per year. However, smaller influencer partnerships may involve product gifting vs. actual monetary compensation.
While there’s no guaranteed step to get on the SKIMS PR list, creating authentic, high-quality content is a great start. Occasionally featuring the brand’s products and sharing how much you love them will also help you get their attention.