Best Buy teams up with influencers and YouTubers for holiday campaigns, including ‘Hot Ones’ and ‘Binging with Babish’
Best Buy is leaning into the influencer ecosystem on several different fronts for its holiday campaigns this year.
In addition to its traditional holiday campaign that will run on platforms such as connected TV and linear television, the company has also planned tactics aimed squarely at the influencer market. Those include sponsorships on popular YouTube channels and a connected TV ad spot featuring an influencer for the first time, as well as content partnerships with creators both inside and outside of its creator program.
“We are a brand that is really trying to continue to stay relevant, and I think one of the best ways to be relevant in consumers’ lives is [to] show up where they’re at: They are tied in with influencers, they’re using social media,” said Jennie Weber, CMO of Best Buy. “It would be foolish to ignore the creator economy. This is a very significant shopping channel, and it’s a really important place for us to be, from a business standpoint.”
“We’ve partnered with influencers in the past, but we’re … partnering with them even more this year,” Weber added.
The content sponsorships will appear on two YouTube shows with large audiences: “Hot Ones” and “Binging with Babish.” Weber said the company worked closely with these influencers, brainstorming ideas with the creators themselves.
“They’re a step beyond just being influencers; they are really hosting media platforms,” Weber said. “We are taking a passion point of customers and then parlaying that into a way to really meet them and show up in a relevant way.”
Sean Evans of “Hot Ones” will create custom content about Best Buy that he will feature within his programming and channel, tapping into his audience of 15 million subscribers ahead of the Hot Ones Holiday Extravaganza special in December.
On “Binging with Babish,” host Andrew Rea will make themed dishes around properties like Minecraft and SpongeBob and show how he uses Best Buy technology like small appliances or Ninja products to do so. “It really is showing how integrated technology is with his life,” Weber said.
The company, for the first time, is also incorporating an influencer into a CTV ad spot. Jenny Reimold, a designer and former publicist with about 414,000 followers on Instagram, will be in a connected TV ad spot where she will show how technology helps her family have the best holiday season.
“It’s from her perspective, she integrates her family into it, and she’s showing a couple things: One, what an amazing gift technology from Best Buy is, and then, secondly, how technology really helps them have the best holiday season. It’s super cute,” Weber said. “I love that we’re going to be able to bring that into CTV and lean on her story in that way to bring Best Buy’s story to life.”
Michael Ghossainy, senior strategist for influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy, said this reflects how retailers and brands have noticed an appetite from creators and influencers to exist beyond social channels.
“Also, there’s just an incredible amount of monetary value, return on investment as well as shared equity from bringing a lot of their influencer partners into some of the spaces they otherwise weren’t occupying, like CTV, in-store, point-of-sale displays and so on,” Ghossainy told Modern Retail.
These aren’t the only ways that Best Buy plans to work with influencers this holiday season. More than 1,000 influencers have signed up for Best Buy’s Creator Program, which it launched in April. As part of the program, influencers can also create a storefront to highlight their content and earn a commission on sales of products in their tailored collections with no commission cap. Just over 200 of them have done that so far, according to Best Buy.
Some of the first influencers to join the program included Linus Sebastian of the YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips, Judner Aura of UrAvgConsumer, and tech and lifestyle creator Jenna Ezarik.
The storefronts, which launched as part of the creator program in April, show off the technology creators use, and the creators can link to them from their YouTube channels or Instagram profiles.
The company will feature storefronts from the creator program on its website’s Gift Center holiday landing page. The storefronts will include those from Judner Aura, Jenna Ezarik, Just Josh Tech and Julia Crist, among others. For example, Aura, a consumer tech reviewer and content creator, set up a storefront he links to on his Instagram that includes a holiday gift guide with products like AirPods, a game controller, a smart music frame, an ice cream maker and an arcade game cabinet.
“This is our first holiday with storefronts and really having a focused and intentional creator program,” Weber said. “That brings a whole new level of intentionality and meaning to working with influencers.”
Outside of the creator program, the retailer has partnered with about 200 additional influencers on brand partnerships. Influencers will share how they’ve giving tech products from Best Buy to loved ones, how they’ve used them to treat themselves or how the products are their must-haves to survive the holiday season. “A lot of brands will do [brand partnerships], and we’ve done some of that before, but we’re really leaning in quite a lot this year,” Weber said.
“They’re making multiple touchpoints, which is something that is smart because they can test the waters and see what works,” Nicla Bartoli, vp of sales at The Influencer Marketing Factory, said in an interview. She said she will be interested to see whether the company continues these programs at the same pace following the holiday season. “With influencers, you need to always be present and active and nurturing that community in order to be relevant as a company and as a brand.”
Bartoli said she has seen more brands or retailers focus their influencer partnerships around seasonality. Influencers this year, she said, are talking more about what shoppers can find on sale during the season than in the past. Previously, Bartoli said, brands or retailers would work with influencers on more evergreen promotions — just promoting where customers can find which products, rather than anything related to seasonal deals.
She said it’s important that Best Buy continues to build a roster of both creators who understand the technicalities of the products and lifestyle influencers who can reach a broader audience.
“The thing to keep in mind is always to talk to every single audience that could be your customer,” Bartoli said.
Weber said the power in working with influencers is that it can show off the positive impact of Best Buy and the technology itself while leveraging the voice and credibility of the creators.
“It’s not as if we’re requiring our influencers to read a script that’s exactly like what we put in our TV spots,” Weber said. “We want to have something that’s authentic to the channels they’re in, and we also want it coming from their voice.”