YouTube represents the birthplace of online content creators and influencers as we know them today. From the Brit Crew of the 2010s (led by Zoella, Tanya Burr, Joe Sugg and others), to influential gaming creators like Pewdiepie, this is where the term “social media influencer” really came to be recognised as not just a career, but a huge marketing channel.
Now, YouTube is still home to some of the internet’s most longstanding and loyal creator-led communities. And as we covered at Goat’s recent Raised on Social London event, “LET’S TALK YOUTUBE”, the platform never stops proving itself as a growth chamber for all sorts of emerging content styles and trusted new voices across a variety of niches.
Brands who weave themselves into this influencer landscape have a lot to gain – not least the opportunity to feature in videos that last forever, growing in reach and authority, long after paid content and their budgets have run dry.
Unlike most other guides to YouTube influencer marketing, we’re not just going to talk in general terms. We’re taking a critical look at examples of the best YouTube creator campaigns to grace the platform in recent years, picking out the nuts and bolts of their success.
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to see what makes a YouTube creator-led campaign tick and be ready to apply that knowledge to the growth of your own brand journey on YouTube.
Contents
- How YouTube creator campaigns have evolved
- How brands are working with YouTube creators
- A Goat YouTube creator campaign case study (World of Warcraft)
- How brands can approach YouTube creator campaigns and partnerships
- Concluding thoughts
How YouTube creator campaigns have evolved
YouTube played a revolutionary role in online advertising, and can really take credit for the birth of professional content creators themselves – an action which laid the first groundwork for today’s multi-billion influencer marketing industry.
Two years after its founding in 2005, YouTube launched the world’s first revenue sharing program for content creators. By paying creators 55% of revenue generated by ads on their videos (a novel concept at the time) YouTube recognized the mutually beneficial relationship between platforms, creators and marketers.
Over time, the increasingly direct connection between brands and creators has come to define YouTube marketing strategy – rather than relying solely on ads in parallel to organic content, companies can directly engage influencers to feature or review their products, do brand takeovers, or develop lasting relationships as sponsored creators or ambassadors.
The platform has continued to innovate in developing content and revenue generation opportunities for creators which, in turn, has unlocked a swathe of partnership options for savvy brands.
How brands are working with YouTube creators
Channel 4
Channel 4.0 is a digital-only brand created by Channel 4 in 2022. While you’ll find it across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, YouTube is the natural home base for its full-length videos and series content.
With over 680K followers on the platform and views into the millions on its most popular videos, plus the ‘Best Entertainment Channel’ accolade in the 2023 Digital Broadcast Awards, it demonstrates how wildly successful creator-led media can be.
Squarely targeting the 13-24 demographic, Channel 4.0 isn’t shy about collaborating with the biggest digital names and giving them the space and tools they need to produce premium content. 4.0 is chaotic, incredibly energetic, and delivered in the modern diction of Gen Z and socials.
Superstar influencers have become Channel 4.0 household names, from Chunkz (3.7M subscribers) and his food competition series ‘Secret Sauce’, to Harry Pinero’s (800K subscribers) ‘Worst in Class’, where digital A-listers face up against kids on school-level trivia, and ‘Tapped Out’ – an all-female prank show featuring Nella Rose (935K subscribers) and friends.
e.l.f Cosmetics
e.l.f Cosmetics are undisputed trailblazers when it comes to social media marketing, year after year. The reward? They’re the single most popular makeup brand among Gen Z in the U.S.
Innovative creator partnerships on YouTube are an important and growing pillar of this approach. The brand is leveraging YouTube’s strength in longer-form content through impactful campaigns like ‘Show Your(s)e.l.f.’, which are dedicated to the personal stories, empowerment and self-expression of inspirational figures in partnership with e.l.f.
These beautifully crafted videos explore the origins, achievements and wisdom of ‘bionic artist’ and musician Viktoria Modesta, Nobel Peace prize and future astronaut Amanda Nguyễn, and non-binary artist Chella Man, among others.
e.l.f. also became Channel 4.0’s first branded partner in 2023, establishing themselves as the ‘Official Beauty Partner’ and featuring in 4.0 series like ‘Ready or Not’ – a show where contestants tackle “the craziest challenges” after making sure they look their best with e.l.f. Products.
Learn more about e.l.f. Cosmetics’ social media strategy here.
Sky Sports
Sky Sports Premier League run a creator-led series called Scenes, working with leading YouTube talent to take viewers behind the scenes of Premier League Football. Unlike your usual sports fare, Scenes revels in riding on the energy and creativity of its influencer hosts and stars: they get silly, play games with interviewees, and focus on the fans as much as the players and managers. In place of ‘legacy’ faces that younger audiences may not be familiar with, Scenes partners with the likes of Specs Gonzalez, PK Humble, Morf, Danny Aarons and others, getting involved in everything from comedic commentating to vox pops on city streets, or even racing Sky pundits across football pitches.
Hosted on the Premier League YouTube channel itself, each episode of Scenes regularly tops 500K views, garnering millions of views a year and building an incredibly loyal following among the next generation of Premier League fans.
Sky Broadband
Sky Broadband has a mission to become the leading broadband provider for gamers. To catch the attention of gamers and build lasting affinity with the brand, Sky realised it needed to become a living, breathing part of the gaming community.
To that end, the brand developed an entire new Fortnite map – ‘Sky City’ – with creative design and support for multiple game modes. The intelligence of this move is severalfold: firstly, as a brand, Sky are actively contributing new content and playable experiences for their customer base, rather than just advertising to them. Combined with the subtle, unobtrusive brand references throughout the level, Sky City is a demonstration of authentic commitment to the gaming scene – something that is sure to be valued by their target audience.
Secondly, it creates rich ground for organic and engaging influencer content. To launch the campaign, gaming creators including Tubbo, Archie, LittleBunny and Sunpi clashed head-to-head in a series of livestreams during the ‘Speed Showdown’ tournament – created specifically for Sky City.
As the campaign gathered momentum, players had the opportunity to follow in the creators’ footsteps and even fight alongside them, as well as win real-world prizes from Sky Broadband for playing.
Fall Guys
BrandonB is a huge name on YouTube, building a following of over 15M subscribers with his signature style of mind-bending videos, often from a first-person perspective.
Gaming brand Epic Games brought him to create an incredible immersive video experience to mark the launch of Fall Guys for mobile. They saw the potential of his POV videos – which evoke the view of a typical first-person game, complete with distinctive arm ‘animations’ – to imagine what it would be like to drop into the frenetic world of Fall Guys.
This collaboration was borne out of excellent influencer awareness – not only in terms of the style of content they make, but the demographic of their existing audience, which is skewed towards gamers. With over 1.8M likes and 1,600+ comments on a single short, it’s safe to say it hit the mark.
A Goat case study: World of Warcraft “The War Within”
Brief
World of Warcraft challenged The Goat Agency to raise awareness and purchase intent for their new “War Within” expansion pack in the UK and Nordics.
Approach
Gaming content is huge on YouTube, but Goat wanted to look outside of just the gaming niche! Instead, we pitched a range of YouTube creators from gaming-adjacent niches including arts & crafts, music and cosplay. This way, we could also reach “casual gamers” and fans of the World of Warcraft franchise who may not necessarily engage with gaming content regularly.
We then briefed them in a three-phased approach. The first phase needed to drive awareness of War Within, with a theme being Xal’atath tempting our creators to join her side – for any non-WoW fans, Xal’atath is “an ancient and malevolent being of the Void, able to manifest in any form she chooses”!).
The second phase would then showcase The War Within natively within their style of content, and the third phase culminated in a Collector’s Edition giveaway orchestrated by the creators through their social media channels.
Results
The content resonated incredibly well with audiences with the creators’ genuine passion shining through. We had such a variety of scroll-stopping content, from Nerdforge challenging herself to paint two paintings on one canvas, to Littlejem creating an electronic “Dark Heart”.
Overall our 10 influencers delivered 72 pieces of long and short form content across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch and X, generating 631,000 engagements at a 7% engagement rate (vs 4% average). Best of all, we had a 90% positive sentiment rate across the content, with comments like “That’s how advertising should be done” and “If all advertising was like this, I’d be broke“.
How brands can approach YouTube creator campaigns and partnerships
Look beyond the classic unboxing, haul and review videos
While these product-focused videos are the bedrock on which YouTube sponsored creator content has been built, you don’t have to draw the line there. A swathe of other content types offer new opportunities to market your brand or products in entertaining, organic and engaging ways.
These include ‘day in the life’ or ‘get ready with me’ videos, as well as taking creators to events and other unique experiences, competitions, and comedy skits. Some will still feature your product, while others move them into the background while you focus on organic, authentic brand building – something that’s proving to be ever more effective with the growing Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences.
Work across the influencer spectrum
Content creators on YouTube come in a variety of sizes. Your budget, strategic objectives and niche will determine which is best for your campaign. They are:
- Nano: Less than 1K followers
- Micro: 1K to 100K followers
- Macro: 100K to 1 million followers
- Celebrity (or ‘Mega’): Over 1 million followers
The use of nano- and micro-influencers is surging in popularity: with small, highly engaged and loyal audiences, they offer high conversion rates with low costs.
Don’t feel like you need to stick to one tier, though. Many of the most successful YouTube influencer campaigns draw from across their influencer spectrum for maximum reach and connection with varied audiences.
One-off collaboration or relationship potential?
Your relationship with a YouTube creator doesn’t have to be limited to the duration of a single campaign. While some influencers will be best tapped for the marketing of single product, event or service, others may align with your brand so well that a lasting partnership would offer significant value for both creator and sponsor.
By aligning with exceptional influencers more permanently, you can build strong associations between them and your brand in the minds of your audiences. Loyalty to that influencer will naturally flow into loyalty to your brand, and you’ll be able to limit competitors from working with them.
Use a mix of short and long-form content
As we showed with our World of Warcraft campaign, Shorts is a hugely powerful channel and it’s still relatively untapped by brands. We find that partnering with creators on a mix of long and form content on YouTube can be highly effective, especially if you use Shorts in a phased or episodic format, or to direct audiences to your longer video.
Concluding thoughts
YouTube holds its own among stiff competition from rival platforms Instagram and TikTok by deftly combining long and short-form videos, all while continuing to make constructive spaces for brands, serial content, and talented creators. YouTube creators are often artists, commentators and entertainers rolled into one, and usually enjoy incredibly committed followings.
Brands are waking up to the influencer collaboration opportunities that are emerging on YouTube first. Whether it’s combining sports commentary with comedy, shows that are digital-only and social-led, or creating new playgrounds for gaming streamers to play in, the connections between influencers and their sponsors are becoming more collaborative, exciting and meaningful with each passing day.
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Are you looking for your next creator-led campaign on YouTube? The Goat Agency specializes in finding the perfect influencers for your next collaborative venture and ensuring that the results speak for themselves.
Get in touch today to kick start your next YouTube success story.
