Who knew that a paper towel could have a cult following.
People were already using Viva paper towels for everything from taking off their makeup to decorating cakes and cleaning up their kitchens after trying to be at-home baristas. These superfans have even given themselves a name: the “Viva La Divas.”
Viva is now leaning into that fandom through partnerships with creators. Social media and influencer marketing has been growing “exponentially” at the company, according to Kim Tipton, a senior social media manager at Kimberly-Clark, which owns Viva.
“Every time I tell anyone that I’m working for brands that are paper products, they're like, ‘They do social media? They do influencer?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, why not? You see it for everything else,’” Tipton told us on Thursday’s episode of Scalable.
Tipton also works on social media campaigns for other paper products, including Kleenex tissues and Cottonelle toilet paper. These partnerships go beyond the type of ads you might expect, like blowing your nose.
For example, the company has piggybacked off of existing trends on social media, like when creators show followers what’s in their bag. Kleenex tissues appear alongside beauty products, sunglasses and wallets.
“You have allergies or your kids have food on their face or you’re crying at a wedding. What do you think about? All of those moments you think about tissues,” Tipton said. “It’s pretty easy to integrate Kleenex in the culture.”
Kimberly-Clark, founded in 1872, is another example of a heritage company to expand its influencer marketing efforts. OceanSpray has been embracing trends like “fibermaxxing,” while John Deere hired a creator to run its TikTok account for $200,000.
But legacy companies can’t always move quickly as direct-to-consumer brands because they face more internal red tape or pushback from leadership.
“We try to move at scale. It does take a little bit of time sometimes,” Tipton said. “Our products have different classifications, so different products take different levels of rigor and review.”
While the company has internal systems that aim to attribute business results to influencer campaigns, Tipton argues that social media is not a sales channel for a brand like Kimberly-Clark, which is primarily retailer-driven.
“You’re not going to get someone to go to Target because they see a social post. It’s just not going to happen,” she said. “D2C is totally different when you can TikTok Shop it, when you can direct link, when you can give influencers their own landing page.”
Tipton also discussed how Kimberly-Clark chooses the creators it works with, gave her advice on how brands should approach Reddit and outlined the company’s policy around creators using AI. (Hint: The company wants real messes, not AI messes.)
Watch the full interview embedded below or tune in on Spotify, Apple or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Big Tech on The Croisette
There have been a dizzying amount of announcements this week at Cannes! Here’s a rundown of the ones most relevant to the creator economy. TLDR: It’s all about creator marketplaces—and AI agents.
Meta Platforms announced it was combining its creator marketplace and its partnership ads hub into a single platform, which it expects to launch later this year. It will also expand its creator marketplace to include Facebook creators. More than 5 million creators currently use Instagram’s marketplace, according to the company.
Meta also launched a revamped Facebook Creator Studio, which is currently open to a small number of creators. Meta described the feature as a “standalone AI-companion app” that helps creators grow on the platform, including through personalized guidance on content and community management.
TikTok announced a feature that lets advertisers curate a pool of creators, employees, partners or brand advocates that they can send campaign briefs to or turn existing videos relevant to brands into ads.
TikTok also unveiled a new AI agent for advertisers called Symphony Agent, which helps brands with a variety of tasks, including developing ad creative from a chat and picking the right creators based on campaign goals.
Snap announced the Snap Creator Network, a new AI system that matches creators and brands. Advertisers can describe the creators they’re looking to work with, such as their niche, audience or tone.
Snap also launched the Snap Smart Assistant, an AI agent that allows advertisers to describe their goals to get automatic recommendations for campaign objectives, audience strategy and optimization settings.
LinkedIn is testing a feature that’s long been at the top of our wish list: collaborative posts. Individual users and pages will soon be able to share posts together, like they do on Instagram. (This was also one of the features we predicted would roll out this year. We’ve already used it!)
😎Soundbite: Cannes Edition
“It’s just another entry point for people to have AI wearables,” Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, told us.
Earlier this week, the company announced a cheaper version of its smart glasses, which start at $299. That is at least $80 less than other entry-level options. It also partnered with Kylie Jenner to co-create a new pair.
“This is still really early days, but it’s very much about the vision of where the next computing platform is going to be and how people will utilize the technology,” Mendelsohn said of wearables.
