If you’re one of the 19 million people who watched Lizzo’s Good as Hell music video on YouTube, you’ll know that a bag of Cheetos has a cameo right in the middle of an epic dance scene. Consumers go to great lengths to avoid ads and Frito-Lay needed a non-disruptive way to speak to its consumers and align itself with the cool kids of the music world.

To do so, four artists were strategically identified for their fit with the brand’s products and their ability to reach its young, hip target demographic.

The BEN team then went to work securing cameos for the Frito-Lay products. Each integration featured the product with an identifiable logo and a shot of the star consuming it. By the completion of the campaign, it had racked up 123 million total music video views and 1.6 million likes across all videos.

As James Clarke, senior director of portfolio media, analytics and CRM at Frito-Lay, put it: “This tactic works in complement to more traditional advertising, shoring up branded presence in ad-free ad-light environments while also adding to the consumer experience versus disrupting it.” 

The Takeaway
No one likes ads. Work to identify content that can connect with your target audience in a more natural, non-disruptive setting.

Without proper care, influencer marketing can be a gamble. Fraud and bloated follower counts have misled many a marketer and caused countless campaigns to flounder. According to cybersecurity firm Cheq, fake followers and fraud cost U.S. advertisers’ $1.3 billion annually. Another study from Mediakix found that 50% of U.S. marketers think that spotting fake followers is their biggest challenge in running successful influencer campaigns. 

But this volatile environment is no match for BEN’s AI, which has developed to a point where it can use data to predict how well a campaign will meet your KPIs. Having an idea of how successful a campaign will be before it runs enables you to make adjustments to maximize ROI. 

Being able to predict results was incredibly important to Electronic Arts in its ongoing influencer campaign for its massively successful game, Apex Legends. Because the brand decided to forgo all traditional advertising and marketing and rely only on influencers, it needed to be sure the creators could deliver. 

Using BEN’s AI, the brand analyzed the audience composition of different influencers to determine which ones could deliver the strongest results and predict which influencers were going to have a higher ROI for the campaign.

With these predictions in hand, BEN and EA invited a group of gaming influencers to play Apex Legends at an exclusive pre-launch event. On the day of the launch, all 60 influencers streamed the game on Twitch and posted about it on social.

The strategy killed it. In total, Apex Legends got 60 million views globally in post-livestream content on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter and had 25 million players in-game within the first week. It also beat Fortnite’s record for downloads and views, becoming the largest free-to-play game launch in history.

BEN’s AI continues to predict campaign views with 99.8% accuracy. For comparison, regarding the launch of Apex Legends, gaming industry experts were off by more than 5 million views. 

The Takeaway
When it comes to the big moments, don’t go in blind. Employ AI to predict if your strategy will get the results you need. If the predictions indicate that the campaign won’t meet its KPIs you’ll have time to adjust before any budget goes down the drain. 

There’s a reason why brands spend millions of dollars on influencer marketing every year—it’s because it works. But with 500,000 influencers on Instagram alone, per an InfluencerDB study, finding the right ones to work with is harder than finding that proverbial needle in a haystack.

While you can’t realistically sort through the millions of creators to find the ones who are right for your brand, AI can. 

When a major auto brand wanted to drive awareness of its new luxury SUV and cause a positive commotion in the market, it turned to BEN’s AI to find the influencers who could make a difference with its target audience.

Using predictive analytics, the AI was able to sort through thousands of influencers to find the ones with verified and engaged audiences who also resonated with the brand and target audience. From there, content creators were contracted to create custom content that showed them relying on the new vehicle to get them where they needed to go.

In total, the campaign garnered 2.1 million views and exceeded campaign view goals by 205%. 

The Takeaway
Don’t get bogged down by the massive number of influencers available. Use AI to find the influencers who garner actual engagement and have audience profiles that match your objectives.

It’s almost unimaginable to think of a consumer getting their entertainment from only one platform or channel these days. Most people split their time between multiple steaming platforms, at least three social channels and good old-fashioned TV. 

With eyeballs split between so many places, you can’t afford to only be in one. To truly make an impact, you need a strategy that hits your target consumer everywhere they are. But how can you know which shows your target audience will and won’t be watching? AI is how. 

Using over 30 months of proprietary viewership data from Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, BEN trained a deep-learning algorithm to predict the viewership of new streaming TV shows. These predictions can then be used to sort through the hundreds of shows released each year to find the ones that your consumers will be watching.

When leading spirits distributor Proximo tasked BEN with reaching target consumers via entertainment, it knew it needed to go cross-platform. In this case, that meant working with each Proximo brand to develop a strategic plan to secure product integrations in scripted content, music videos and influencer channels.

The integrations included custom content with Legendary Digital Networks and Kraken Rum, a cameo for Three Olives vodka in DNCE’s Kissing Strangers music video and amplification via influencers of Jose Cuervo’s Dia de Los Muertos themed tequila.  Meanwhile, dozens of integrations around key drinking moments within streaming TV gave the Proximo portfolio breadth and scale across all forms of entertainment.

Taken together, the integrations delivered a consistent thread of visibility for Proximo brands in the entertainment space. More importantly, they generated millions in media value, garnered 875 million TV and film impressions and received a 6.5% CTR on core influencer activations.   

The Takeaway
In our current fragmented entertainment landscape, settling for one channel or platform will severely limit your ability to make your message stick. Integrate your product and value proposition across different channels and platforms to make your message stronger and stickier. Also, don’t invest in content without being sure its viewership will meet your goals. Take advantage of AI to find the shows destined to become hits with your audience.