AUSTIN, TEXAS — Influencers have long played a role in brands’ bids at relevance with young consumers. What happens when they climb to the top of the strategy agenda?

Executives speaking at South by Southwest (SXSW) over the weekend detailed how influencer marketing is expanding to impact everything from campaign casting decisions to experiments with new shoppable ad formats. Looking ahead, some see the potential for the tactic to command a greater share of budgets once reserved for more conventional forms of advertising — the latest sign that industry decision-makers are shifting to a social-first mindset as channels like linear TV decline and Gen Z’s career aspirations turn further toward internet stardom.

“The way that we look at reach is going to be different. You look at your reach through your digital media, and I see us shifting more dollars from digital ad media to influencer or creator media,” said Julia Melle, director of brand and content for Southwest Airlines, during a panel discussion with marketers from Instacart and Crocs. “We’re proving that we can achieve the same reach goals with more efficient budgets, quite honestly.”

Spending on influencer marketing in the U.S. is forecast by eMarketer to climb 14.2% year over year in 2025 to reach $9.29 billion, a rate of growth outstripping the larger social media and digital categories. While influencers build their followings on social apps, where they appear and how they activate for brands is increasingly varied.

Instacart, for instance, deployed celebrity-focused and local interest accounts like @deuxmoi and @whatisnewyork to seed hype for a Super Bowl campaign studded with brand mascots, capturing icons such as the Pillsbury Doughboy in a paparazzi fashion in the lead up to the big game. Southwest last spring launched a brand campaign that, for the first time in the carrier’s history, featured a segmented upper-funnel media buy, one targeted at Gen Z. The ads, which promoted perks like no flight change or cancelation fees, starred content creators such as the gamer FaZe Swagg. The airline also ran regional ads in key markets including Chicago, where it highlighted local hot spots like the restaurant that inspired FX’s “The Bear.”

“The thing that I think is most impressive is that this campaign launched in April of last year, and in just three months, it drove six points of consideration increase,” said Kate Rush Sheehy, senior vice president of strategy and insights at GSD&M and the moderator for the Saturday panel. GSD&M is behind Southwest’s “The Big Flex” campaign.

Southwest has also ramped up its efforts on TikTok, the preferred app of Gen Z and one that has reshaped the mold for brand and influencer content. The airline enlisted a roster of influencers aligned around different interests, such as food or music, for a recent program Melle titled “Shopifly.” Each influencer partner posted content from a location relevant to their passion points, with the video closing on a “book now” call-to-action button pre-populated with details about the featured destination.

The format is part of TikTok’s mounting social commerce initiative and represented the ByteDance-owned app’s first shoppable ad product centered around a service versus a product, according to Sheehy. Results were successful, but could use further refinement.

“We realized that it worked better than our traditional digital ads, but at that time, we hadn’t quite applied pixel [tracking],” Melle said. “We couldn’t track it to conversion, but we look forward to doing that in the future.”

Cult status

Leveraging influencers to secure Gen Z’s loyalty could be crucial for Southwest as it tries to overcome business challenges that recently led to the first mass layoffs in the 54-year-old company’s history. Die-hard customers might be a powerful marketing asset in the fight to preserve a cult status. Community management is becoming a stronger discipline within marketing organizations, in line with other aspects of social media marketing, according to several SXSW panelists.

“Although Instacart is really an 11-year-old brand, we really have only taken a disciplined approach to building the brand over the last three and a half years. Around the same time is when we started our own community management efforts,” said Glenda Garcia, director of brand strategy at Instacart. “It’s really interesting to also think about ... proactive engagement with creators, but then also mining your community for opportunities to react to what's bubbling up in culture.”

Southwest and Instacart were in the company of other brands with tribal followings on the panel. Crocs, known for its porous foam clogs that can be decorated with charms called Jibbitz, is nothing if not a controversial brand, with many consumers put off by its footwear’s chunky design. Crocs has lovingly dubbed its loyalists #CrocNation and leaned into them as it tries to widen its appeal and grow revenue.

“We knew that if we did traditional marketing, there was no way we were going to convince [doubters] to go buy Crocs,” said Kelly Molnar, vice president of global marketing at the footwear brand.

Crocs’ influencer strategy has been led by collaborations that have converted a product once perceived as ugly into a fashion icon. The marketer’s first big “get” came in the form of music artist Post Malone, who in 2018 tweeted “u can tell a lot about a man by the jibbits [sic] on his crocs,” leading to a series of meetings that would begin Crocs’ upward cultural climb. Subsequent partnerships included celebrities like Justin Bieber and Bad Bunny, along with appearances on the runway for high fashion labels Balenciaga, Christopher Kane and Simone Rocha.

The pivot to relying on organic brand fans large and small to build awareness has been a boon for Crocs, which promotes a mission of “come as you are,” but also required a change in mindset. Handing off the keys to influencers carries risks, but Molnar explained that there are still ways to create a brand-safe environment without falling into a micromanagement trap.

“We don’t control a lot of the content,” said Molnar. “We ensure the briefs are tight enough to give them the parameters, but the power in the community of this Croc Nation that we’re building is that they show up authentically as themselves.”