The Film & TV Influencer Marketing Playbook: 7 Campaign Strategies Driving Results in 2026

What Is Film and TV Influencer Marketing?

Studios and streaming networks regularly partner with social media content creators to promote movies and TV series, as well as the platforms themselves.

This content can take all sorts of forms, from reviews and trailer reactions to exclusive event coverage and creative crossovers.

This isn’t the same as a celebrity endorsement: while a film or TV star offers broad reach and undeniable cultural clout, influencers integrate that awareness generation and trust building into their regular content. 

The reason it’s become a central part of entertainment marketing in 2026 is simple. It brings discovery right to where users are looking to discover new things, be entertained, and bond with others over their tastes. It’s a natural recipe for growing viewership.

Why Influencer Marketing Matters for Film and TV Brands

Creators Influence What Audiences Watch

Creators have come to be the most trusted entertainment curators, responding to a simple and eternal need from audiences: to find something good to watch quickly and without wasting previous time.

Audiences often trust recommendations from the creators they follow, simply, because they’ve already selected those creators based on shared values, lifestyle, or interests. More importantly, creators have the opportunity (and desire) to deep dive into these shows and films, sharing trivia, unpicking the production process, and giving passionate reviews. Why? Because they’re just as much a fan as their viewer. 

This influence has given rise to a huge creator community of review creators, pop culture commentators and fan accounts, responding to audiences’ desire to discover more and go deeper on their favourites.

The ‘what should I watch next?’ behaviour is native to pretty much every platform, whether it’s TikTok, YouTube or Instagram. It’s so powerful that it has spawned an entire film & TV review social platform – Letterboxd – and is a dominant topic on long-read platform Substack.

Social Platforms Have Become Discovery Channels

If you’re of a certain age, you might have fond memories of walking into Blockbuster to find your next watch (and if you’re younger, well – you’ve probably heard about it). Either way, it’s clear that socials have stepped into the void left by the Blockbuster experience, while giving viewers a far more convenient way to browse and make decisions.

Despite the legacy, finding something to watch on socials is more often the result of algorithmic encounters rather than an active search. TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have transformed entertainment discovery, with personalisation of content combining with short-form content to introduce users to exactly what they’re interested in.

This discovery mechanism has become even more powerful with the integration of short-form content into streaming apps themselves, as Netflix introduces more clips, behind-the-scenes material and PR coverage content into its main spread.

Now it’s trailer reactions, reviews, memes and clips that are the main drivers of new media’s awareness. The examples of this are piling up, from Barbenheimer to The Odyssey and Obsession.

Entertainment Marketing Is Increasingly Community-Led

In the world of TV and film, it’s fandoms what have taken the reins in shaping cultural conversations. These passionate communities have a niche focus, strong opinions, and frequently blur the divide between viewer and creator in voicing them.

The powerful voices of niche communities cut through, shaping opinion across broad audiences until it becomes part of the zeitgeist – sometimes with incredible speed.

Whether it’s BookTok, film TikTok, gaming communities or genre-specific creator spaces, campaigns that engage and galvanise these hardcore, ultra-enthusiastic audiences stack the odds massively in their favour.

But that means more than just trailers and titbits. Community activation is about providing audiences with something to discuss, share, or build upon themselves.

Our work with Odeon showcases this in action. We used an influencer-first strategy to increased Odeon’s TikTok presence and get people excited to go to the cinema again post-pandemic. The Goat team realised that what audiences were really missing was not just the chance to see a new movie, but the complete sensory experience of going to the cinema.

Basing the creative idea around #FeelsGoodToFeel, we brought the sensory experience of the cinema to life through creator-led content that would educate, entertain or excite.

We enlisted much-loved creators such as Max Balegde to support the campaign (Max took over the ODEON TikTok channel, fronting a hilarious “Bottom of the Popcorn Lobby Chat” interview with cinema-goers). We also enlisted family and parenting creators for activations such as a “Family Film Closet” in which they could dress up as the characters from current movie releases, and create content around this.

Read the full case study

How 3 studios have worked with influencers in the US to drive movie/series anticipation

Lionsgate:

The newest instalment of the legacy franchise ‘The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping’ activated their community to drum up interest pre-film launch. Lionsgate transformed standard studio casting announcements into interactive fan-casting contests on social media. They invited popular movie-buff influencers and fans to create video arguments for who should be cast, and even hosted an open social media casting call where fans submitted short videos across TikTok acting out scenes in exchange for a small roll in the film.

Warner Bros:

To drive anticipation of ‘The Flash’, Warner Bros partnered with fashion creator Wisdom Kaye to craft outfits inspired by the historical editions of The Flash, from the original 1940’s costume to the costume depicted in the latest 2023 screenplay. Tapping into the layers of nostalgia the franchise holds, Wisdom was able to personify the movie and translate it into his vertical. In doing so, he bridged fashion with fandom in a way that felt both culturally fluent and creatively unexpected, and reinforced his ability to reimagine the iconic WB hero.

Paramount:

One of the most successful among TikTok-first movie campaigns is Smile. Paramount placed acts in public spaces such as baseball games making the iconic ‘smile’ face and captured reactions of the public, sharing them across TikTok. The creepy faces mirrored the supernatural curse from the film and went instantly viral on TikTok, X, and news outlets, driving massive box office awareness.

6 Film and TV Influencer Marketing Strategies Driving Results

1. Creator-Led Press Tours

While traditional press tours are unlikely to reach every audience anymore, creators provide the perfect amplifier to any such PR campaign or media blitz. Influencers connect actors directly to highly engaged communities through podcast appearances, creator interviews and other social-first content.

Creators like Thomas Duke have made this the core of their output, making a name for themselves as the go-to people on socials for fun and meaningful interviews that drive huge reach and engagement.

2. Exclusive Screenings and Premiere Experiences

The film premiere has always been a staple of movie promotion, but it’s taken on a whole new depth in the creator era.

Exclusive screenings are incredible influencer opportunities, giving fans a window into the premiere experience through genuine first reactions and experience-based content at preview events.

Whether it’s red carpet creator activations (e.g. Devil Wears Prada 2), or giving fans themselves the chance to get in on some of the earliest screenings, it’s a rich source of high-impact social content.

Fandom-First Creator Partnerships

Modern media is defined by its fandoms. Creators coming from the fandom often outperform broader lifestyle talent because they are a member of their own audience – their passion, knowledge, and relevance to the changing conversation makes it so.

IPs and studios that focus on niche communities over mass reach are certain to reap the results. Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is a prime example of this, triggering an avalanche of buzz and fan-made content by offering those fans a chance to have a minor role in the new show if they made TikTok audition content.

Cast and Creator Collaborations

Putting actors and creators together is a recipe for magic. Bringing in digital talent breaks out of the rigid junket format and allows for far more natural content, like challenge formats, casual interviews, and candid behind-the-scenes moments. In short, the things that people really want.

The star power of cast members combines with the trust and reach that creators have with their audiences. Creators like Reece Feldman take their viewers onto the set of blockbusters like The Odyssey, sidestepping the usual ‘studio behind the scenes’ feel and instead allowing users to live vicariously through Reece as he explores a one-of-a-kind moviemaking moment.  

5. Experiential Activations That Generate Social Content

If you want to make noise offline, social sharing needs to be baked into the DNA of your real-world experiences. Immersive pop-ups (like this recent one for the Elle TV series) and interactive moments create an entry point into the world of a show or movie, making for enthusiastic sharing instead of turgid PR moments.

6. Winning the Conversation on Letterboxd

Letterboxd has become one of the internet’s most influential film discovery platforms. Last year alone, Letterboxd users published more than 143 million reviews and logged nearly 900 million films.

During the Oppenheimer era, NBCUniversal chairperson Donna Langley even went so far as to dub young moviegoers “the Letterboxd generation”, crediting the platform with boosting repeat viewings of Oppenheimer attendance.

It’s clear that capturing the cultural conversation can do just as much, if not more, than promotional messaging – helped in large part by the rise of film creators whose content extends beyond Letterboxd onto TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

What Makes a Successful Film and TV Influencer Marketing Campaign?

Audience Fit

Audience fit doesn’t mean finding an audience for your piece of content – it means putting that audience at the heart of your content creation process. 

You should identify your core and secondary audience, mapping those audience interests and behaviours and how they intersect with genre-specific communities. 

Prioritising audience alignment over vanity metrics like views will ensure your campaign actually penetrates the discourse, rather than hovering around the edges.

Creator Selection

If you want to connect with the fandom, you need creators who have credibility in that community. While their followings are typically smaller, you can still affect large scale results by identifying creators with natural audience overlap. Whatever your creator lineup, it’s always about prioritising engagement over reach. The best results often come from balancing macro, micro and niche creators according to your goals and recognising the targeted firepower offered by niche influencers.

Creative Freedom

A common refrain from us at The Goat Agency, but it always bears repeating – especially when marketing in an industry that lives or dies by its creativity.

Give your creators freedom to create. 

What does that mean? It means letting them adapt your messaging, being flexible with brand objectives where beneficial for creator creativity, making content that actually fits the platform you’re working on, and letting genuine reactions and emotions shine through.

Community Relevance

Last but not least, don’t forget who you’re ultimately serving: your consumer community.

Create content that sparks conversations in relevant fandoms and interest-based communities, encourage discussion and sharing, and work hard to leverage the cultural trends emerging each day, hour and minute.

Community is the engine of a campaigns in 2026.

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Film and TV are an increasingly competitive markets – ones where fandoms, niche creators, and commentators have ever greater sway over whether a production is a hit or a flop.

If you’re looking to find, activate and collaborate with the passionate consumer/creator communities that are out there, we can help. 

For the latest tv and film influencer marketing analysis, check out our ‘Raised on Social’ Substack for more…