Tell us more about your day-to-day role at Andie Swim.
My position serves the Growth Marketing team and I work really closely with all teams including Brand, Product and our Growth Marketing agency partners. So much of what I do is recruiting and cultivating influencer relationships and planning content around campaigns and inventory needs.
What makes Andie Swim different from other swimwear brands? How do you differentiate through messaging?
Andie Swim’s key differentiator is that is serves a broad range of women in terms of sizing and also age and fit needs. We have an incredibly active community and we really differentiate messaging through what I call “quiet inclusivity.” It’s really important to me that we don’t tell women how to feel in a swimsuit - we show them how they can feel, and hopefully we take the pain associated with the swimwear shopping experience - which can be an incredibly vulnerable one.
One way we do this is through the use of social proof - we have an amazing network of influencers and content creators that help us deliver an authentic story to our community and we use influencers really across all channels because they really do it best!
How do creators factor into your overall marketing strategy?
Influencers are a major part of our marketing strategy and that really started to become true when we tested the whitelisting space in 2020. Paid social marketing is a major revenue driver for the business and whitelisting often account for half or more of that marketing spend.
We do this by working with a lot of micro and nano influencers and Lumanu makes the process easy by having a really creator-centered mindset. It’s super easy for our team to access the content and accounts needed with the help of the Lumanu tool and creators feel like they have a resource in Lumanu, which is a really key factor in building healthy long-term relationships with the creator community.
What is the hardest part about working with content creators?
The hardest part about working with content creators is really in the communications process - because we work with a lot of micro and nano influencers, they’re often trying whitelisting for the first time when working with Andie and talking them through the process; what it is, if it’s a safe and reasonable option for them, how it could potentially serve and grow the community they are trying to build on their own channels, etc and Lumanu really solves all of it for us. In addition to being an incredibly accessible support team, they’re an amazing resource for creators to be able to explore and learn about whitelisting and what it could do for them. I really wouldn’t be able to scale our program without the help of a tool like Lumanu and it’s been really key to helping our business grow exponentially in the last couple of years.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who works with creators?
One piece of advice I would give to someone working with creators is to really bring your empathy to the table - realizing that creators are the lifeblood of our marketing program and they hold a great deal of value for the brand is humbling. They really carry the brand voice, but also bring so much of themselves to the process.
You have to remember why they do this kind of work as well and they are all really looking to get something out of it - experience, brand alignment, growth, maybe some money for themselves - you really have to meet them where they are and know that they are very human and that things can change along the way. I love that being a female-led startup really aligns with the business they are trying to grow for themselves as well. Our partners have been incredible entrepreneurs right alongside us.
I hope that our creator partners feel a lot of compassion and support when they work with Andie!
What are some of your favorite creator content campaigns you have run with Andie Swim?
Andie is really unique in that we don’t run traditional campaigns around launches - when we work with creators, we kind of work with influencers on a rolling basis and often have women create content with the intent that it can be used in the future to serve inventory needs.
A more traditional campaign that we did in 2020 was in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, we worked with a series of creators from the Bachelor series and because they were running concurrently and had similar audiences, we were really able to test different product and key words with those ladies. We learned a ton from that campaign and it was super successful in terms of performance - so all around we were happy with it!
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