Developing successful influencer marketing campaigns is no easy task. If you’re looking to get your brand or company in front of consumers, you have to figure out not only which influencers to work with, but also if they can get the views and results you want.
Fourth Floor Creative manages to do all these things on a daily basis.
Boasting extensive media experience across the company, the UK-based agency creates high-quality campaigns that routinely exceed their brand partner’s expectations.
For example, from August to October 2019, video game developer Klei Entertainment earned 3.9M sponsored 7-day views (V7) on YouTube across 10 of Fourth Floor’s creators on a campaign to promote its game Hot Lava. This was 41x higher than the average V7 of 94.9K across all global sponsored gaming campaigns during the same time period!
Fourth Floor accomplishes these results by creating worthwhile, engaging content that stands up in its own right.
The company shared with us its strategy for creating winning influencer marketing content and making the most of its brand partnerships. Any content creator interested in doing the same will discover:
- Three examples of influencer marketing campaigns that scored big
- The agency’s approach to the creator-client relationship
- Data and research strategies to inform each branded content project
Let’s get to it!
What Three Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns Look Like
Fourth Floor Creative’s approach to brand partnerships is simple: it puts creative first, even before audience reach. And for three of these partnerships, this approach yielded impressive results.
Gameplay Content Earns Millions of Views and Top Sponsored Spot
For starters, Klei Entertainment teamed up with Fourth Floor in September 2019 to promote its new video game Hot Lava. The agency approached this large-scale campaign by searching for and sourcing a variety of relevant gaming creators using Tubular data.
Fourth Floor and Klei worked with around 10 different creators to create and release Hot Lava gameplay content on their channels. Creators like YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon, MoreMuselk, ItsFunneh, Also Fitz, and SwaggerSouls generated 7M total YouTube views for Klei to date.
Fitz’s video in particular became a massive breakout with 1.6M V7 sponsored views. It also was #8 in September for average sponsored V7 views on YouTube across all gaming creators in the UK and Australia.
The real success of this campaign came from its overall V7 metrics. Fourth Floor’s Hot Lava campaign pulled a 3.9M sponsored V7 from August 1 to October 31 of 2019, which was 41x higher than the average 94.9K V7 of all worldwide sponsored gaming campaigns during that same time frame.
Live-Action Production Proves Value of Influencer Marketing
Fourth Floor’s next success came from what CEO Rich Keith calls the agency’s most cinematic and complex live-action productions to date. The agency teamed with Capcom to film a live-action production in Iceland for the game developer’s Monster Hunter World: Iceborne expansion.
The campaign focused on the idea of squad-building camaraderie in preparation for the release of the expansion, ending with an “expert gamers meet noobs” in-game co-op training session once the team had bonded in the icy wilderness with real-life challenges like climbing a glacier.
Creative partners from Fourth Floor included Arekkz Gaming, Rage Gaming, My name is Byf, and MessYourself/MessYourself Gaming.
Across all the creators’ YouTube channels, the Iceborne campaign pulled in over 697K views as of April 29, 2020, showing that not all gaming content has to be based solely on gameplay or “how to” content to generate views.
Brand Partnerships Can Extend to Events, Too
Another one of Fourth Floor’s more unique campaigns was in-person gameplay events for game developer and publisher Codemasters, centered around its new racing title GRID.
The multi-stage campaign started with a London-based event, where creators were able to play and record their own videos of GRID; these generated over 983K views on YouTube as of April 29, 2020.
The campaign followed up with a similar event in San Diego to strategically capitalize on the influx of creators for Twitchcon; these capture videos earned more than 900K YouTube views since April, as well.
The Codemasters campaign then finished up with game-code mail-outs for creators who couldn’t make the events or who wanted to create more videos about GRID. All in all, the post-launch videos totalled 3.4M views across all involved creators on YouTube as of April 2020.
Both events displayed Fourth Floor’s event-wrangling dexterity on both sides of the Atlantic, alongside the agency’s ability to source the right content creators to drive content in the follow-up.
How the “Creativity Multiplier” Sets Up Creators as Partners
Some agencies focus on pairing brands with influencers who have large audiences, treating these creators merely as a way to get more audience reach.
Fourth Floor doesn’t think influencer marketing can work that way. Instead, as Keith notes, it operates on the idea of the “creativity multiplier,” which views content creators as vital creative partners more than just “influencers.”
In fact, Fourth Floor’s primary goal is to elevate creators by giving them an amplified platform to do what they do best across all their brand partnerships.
“We’re not in the business of making creators change who they are for a brand deal,” said Keith. “We’re about creating real, mutually beneficial collaborations that audiences and communities love.”
How does Fourth Floor make this happen? With the help of video analytics.
Why Video Data Is Essential for Brand Partnerships
A key element for Fourth Floor when setting up its collaborations between creators and brand clients is data and research.
Initially, the agency pulls channel data from Tubular to determine which content creators meet the requirements of the client’s brief.
This practice also helps Fourth Floor discover other insights, such as:
- Refining cross-over audiences to help widen campaign reach while maintaining relevance
- Discovering new angles of audience connection and finding in-roads to a relevant demographic that the client may not have thought of
- Solving more complex problems like how to find creators with strong audiences in specific, client-requested regions outside their native location
- Keeping on top of the evolving creator landscape (including emerging channels, channel growth, content and strategy changes, and shifting audiences)
Video analytics additionally aid Fourth Floor in reporting practices.
“Because we’re content and creator-minded rather than dealing in traditional ads, we strive to deliver complete content insights, not just performance reports,” said Keith.
Keith added that Fourth Floor wants its campaign reporting to deliver a holistic understanding of what worked, how, and why, and for it to “be able to prove our interpretations with a variety of data.”
Takeaway: A Creative-First Approach Builds Strong Campaigns
Fourth Floor Creative knows how to produce strong influencer marketing campaigns that provide real results for its brand partnerships.
These results can be traced back to the agency’s creative-first approach. Instead of focusing on the traditional influencer-reach model, Fourth Floor creates branded content that makes an impact and isn’t easily forgotten.
And when brands get the results they want from creatives who aren’t just being used for their audience reach, that’s a recipe for true influencer marketing success.
Gaming has grown exponentially during covid-19, creating a huge opportunity for brands who want to reach audiences like Fourth Floor Creative did!