An interview with NIKIN AG - Influencer Marketing

In 2016 the idea for sustainable fashion was born and so NIKIN was founded, which has since established itself in Swiss online retail.

NIKIN works with various influencers and employs Leah specifically for this type of marketing.

Since influencer marketing proved to be more than just a passing fad, we got hold of Leah to ask her a few questions to give you some useful tips from a successful company.

I noticed a lot of the company’s posts were created by employees initially. Is this still the case, or do you now have the content created?

Both! We have a talented in-house video and graphics team that creates a lot of content (video as well as images). Then there are some freelance photographers and finally there are influencers.

How did you come up with the idea of working with influencers? How did you go about this? Do you work with an agency?

Working with influencers is a great way to reach new potential customers. We can reach new people and achieve greater recognition through their community. You can also “benefit” from the credibility of some particular influencers. You start by doing a lot of research: which influencers are out there, who is a good fit for NIKIN, who has a strong community and who has the time and inclination to work with NIKIN. It then depends on each specific campaign and varies based on how many influencers you want to work with. So far we haven't worked with any agencies, but our PR agency in Germany supported me with a major campaign last fall. That was a lot of help.

Do the influencers create the content themselves? Or is this partly specified in advance?

Yes, the influencers should create their own authentic content. We provide a briefing for each campaign. It specifies what to look out for when it comes to content, how much content is expected (although this is already agreed beforehand) and other details, such as what’s special about the new collection or which aspect of NIKIN you should focus on, etc. Otherwise, it’s up to each influencer how they produce their content. It’s important to NIKIN that the content is authentic. The influencers send me the content and captions for approval before publication. So far this has run smoothly.

Can you give our readers some insight into how this type of collaboration works? How time-consuming is it for you as a company?

The collaboration procedure is usually much the same. I do my research, send requests out to suitable influencers and once they have accepted and the price has been negotiated, they are briefed on content creation. The content is then sent to me for approval and finally published. The better organized I am, the smoother it goes! The bigger the campaign (i.e. the number of collaborations), the more time-consuming, since you have to coordinate a lot of different things.

I assume you also receive feedback from the influencers? Do you also receive monthly or weekly evaluations? How do you use those?

That’s right – we receive insights from the influencers after each collaboration. We get to see how many people from their community we reached, how much commitment we generated and what the feedback from our community was. We use this for our own analysis and for further collaborations, or we determine whether future collaboration is worthwhile based on the insights.

Are there any tips and tricks you can give our readers?

It’s important to build good relationships with influencers. Working with us should be fun for them – leading to follow-up collaboration. Ultimately we want to work with influencers who are a good fit for our company.

What have you learned or are you learning?

Preparation is all important! Make sure you plan enough time for research and making enquiries – this always takes more time than you think.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers? (General)

Although good planning, research and preparation are all vital, spontaneity and flexibility often provide that extra ingredient. This can apply to (influencer) campaigns as well as to everyday life.