NEW YORK — Jewelry maker Mejuri in 2024 was presented with the type of marketing moment that even loads of media spending can’t always replicate. Watching her now-fiance play at that year’s AFC Championship game, Taylor Swift appeared sporting an heirloom signet ring from the brand, propelling the product to overnight fame as the pop star and beau Travis Kelce were photographed in a close embrace on the field.
Swift was not wearing the piece as part of a paid endorsement, but Mejuri was able to capitalize on the opportunity by laying the right groundwork beforehand and then amplifying the story through PR and owned social channels in a way that didn’t “feel very forced,” company leadership said.
“We don’t know where the product is going to end up because the celebrity will pick the product,” said Mejuri CEO and co-founder Noura Sakkijha at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show on Sunday. “The tip that I would say is really to build a community of influencers, build a community of stylists. If people love your product, it will end up in the right hands.”
Sakkijha spoke on the NRF panel, titled “Breaking through the noise: How emerging brands are capturing attention amidst a cacophony of messaging,” with representatives from two other brands, Coterie and Beyond Yoga, that are also leveraging social media to drive marketing tactics like word of mouth in more viral directions. A topic frequently brought up during the talk was community, underscoring how marketers increasingly see value not only in A-list talent of Swift’s caliber, but also regular people who comprise a larger chunk of the audiences shaping online trends.
Beyond Yoga last July launched its first major brand platform, “Seek Beyond,” that stars actor Issa Rae. While the celebrity is front-and-center in advertising, and even helped to write the effort’s anthem spot, “Seek Beyond” uses influencers and everyday customers to support a narrative that emphasizes steady progress over reaching perfection. The Sculpt Society founder Megan Roup, Hike Clerb founder Evelynn Escobar and Big Girls Who Run LA co-founder Danielle Burnett also feature in the campaign.
“We love surfacing those different perspectives and stories and seeing how people are taking our product and using it in the wild,” said Katie Babineau, CMO of Beyond Yoga. “We’ve got an always-on machine that is community content, it’s creator content, it’s influencer content.”
Combating digital overload
Establishing ties to the right creators can keep brands adaptable to platforms that are otherwise prone to change by prioritizing different content types or even storytelling formats. Algorithm tweaks have led Mejuri, originally a direct-to-consumer brand that has since expanded to over 50 brick-and-mortar stores, to rely more on creators on apps like Instagram to preserve a sense of aesthetic consistency, according to Sakkijha.
“Social is very exciting, changing every single day. [That] also makes it very difficult to set a long road map,” said Beyond Yoga’s Babineau.
Consumers, while smartphone-addled, are also growing more averse to advertising and aware of the downsides of too much screen time, putting the onus on brands to deliver content that feels valuable and personalized.
“We know that they are spending the majority of their time on social, but very much fatigued with digital overload,” added Babineau.
Fostering community is important enough that Beyond Yoga has built a dedicated in-house team, which Babineau described as “lean.” Beyond Yoga’s community team is focused on outreach to niche, emerging creators who do not yet command steep price tags. In addition, the brand is exploring ways to convert top-performing organic content into paid media, which allows for more efficient campaign production and better media rates.
“We have connected the dots between paid and organic,” said Babineau. “What we’ve seen is that what is resonating with people organically — which is not always going to be your super sales-forward message — actually does drive commercial results.”
As with many industry panels, the discussion eventually turned toward artificial intelligence, which is impacting the creator economy in myriad ways, including the rise of AI-generated personalities that are scoring brand deals. Some NRF panelists see the coming AI glut as a potential boon for the community-forward approach in which they are already invested.
“As we see more and more AI content on the feeds, I think there will be even more of a need for more human-based creation,” said Babineau. “I think we’ll crave that realness a bit more.”
