Great products and an even greater marketing strategy.
Fashion is a community—and SKIMS has secured themselves a spot at the table.
Even if you’ve never bought an item from SKIMS before, you’ve probably seen one of
their celebrity collections somewhere in your social media feed. SKIMS has an eye for knowing
how to reach every possible audience by using both niche and macro-influencers to promote
their brand.
SKIMS has taken the rise of TikTok and used it to their full advantage. About two weeks ago, Duke University Men’s Basketball player, Jared McCain, went viral on TikTok for singing a song called “2 Days into College” by Aimee Carty. Within two weeks after he rose to fame, SKIMS hired, flew out and shot an entire college-athlete campaign, with the face of the campaign being Jared McCain. Prior to going viral, McCain was only known on social media for his achievements in basketball, but now he is seen modeling, influencing, and promoting a multitude of products.
SKIMS saw the virality McCain’s rise to fame, and knowing how fast that virality cycles,
they knew they had to execute this campaign fast. But this isn’t the first time SKIMS hit the nail
on the influencer marketing head.
On February 11th, 2024, Usher performed at the Superbowl LVIII halftime show, and you
guessed it, SKIMS launched their campaign with Usher on February 12th.
SKIMS communicates with their consumers through two main social channels: TikTok
and Instagram. In the last year, 7.8K online creators have mentioned SKIMS in over 29.5K posts
( Storyclash, 2023). The reason this is such a big deal for SKIMS is due to Instagram’s
influencer engagement rate being 3.3%, and its audience size being around 4.8 billion.
What is interesting about SKIMS influencer marketing strategy is their choice of creators.
50% of influencer mentions come from influencers with a follower count ranging from 10k-100k.
For a brand as big as SKIMS, with the company being worth $4 billion (Merced, 2023), it is
unusual to see the use of influencers with a follower count of less than 500k. Due to SKIMS
strategic focus on influencers, the brand has gained over 300,000 Instagram followers in the
past 6 months, and their total estimated media value being $5.1 million from feed posts, and
$9.4 million from story posts (Storyclash, 2023)story posts (Storyclash, 2023).
What can we learn from SKIMS influencer strategy?
There are two major takeaways we can learn from SKIMS—first is that timing matters. In
the media and marketing field, we always hear that deadlines matter; and SKIMS shows us that
they take their deadlines very seriously. The second is the growing importance of authentic
connection between a brand and its consumers. SKIMS knows what their customers listen to, idolize, love, and they get exactly that. SKIMS is constantly fostering conversations on the importance of diversity and inclusion in the world of fashion, not only by being a great example for other brands, but also creating that authentic connection with their followers in comment sections and video replies via social media. This past year, SKIMS launched a collection called “Adaptive Fits Everybody”, where they redesigned undergarments to be more accessible for disabled individuals to put on, emphasizing the importance of clothing accessibility.
Some other influencers you may have seen in recent partnerships with SKIMS include
Lana Del Rey, the Mahomes family, Alex Cooper, Cardi B, and collegiate athletes Caleb Love,
Paxon Wojcik, Hunter Dickinson, Robert Dilingham and Donovan Clingan.
As we can see from just the influencers above, SKIMS has found a way to secure their
brand in an array of fan-bases. Look out because your favorite influencer might be next!
Sources:
Skims: The marketing strategy behind Kim Kardashian’s shapewear success. Storyclash. (2023,
Merced, M. J. D. L. (2023, July 19). Kim Kardashian’s skims is now worth $4 billion. The New
York Times.
Studden, C. (2023, October 21). Inclusive Content Marketing, how skims took over shapewear.
Medium.
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