Social Media Analysis: Skims Expands Influencer Marketing Dominance to the WNBA
Through tactful influencer marketing partnerships and strategic campaigns, Kim Kardashian’s Skims has emerged as a leader in the fashion industry. In October of 2023, the brand announced a multiyear partnership, making Skims the official underwear partner of the NBA, the WNBA, and USA Basketball. Through a data analysis leveraging Captiv8’s comprehensive insights, we’ll uncover the insights behind Skims’ latest breakthrough into the WNBA market.
Reaching Untapped Markets Through Past Partnerships
In November of 2023, Skims made global headlines for their influencer marketing partnership with Brazilian soccer superstar Neymar Jr., along with NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and NFL star Nick Bosa. This foray into athletics activations came on the back of Skims’ multiyear partnership deal with the NBA, WNBA, and Team USA basketball highlighting their breakthrough into the world of sports. As a predominantly female-followed brand, with over 86% of their Instagram following being female, Skims tactfully began taking strides into the untapped market of male athletics.
More recently, Skims once again dominated headlines during the 2024 March Madness Men’s College Basketball tournament for their wide-scale partnership with 17 different college basketball players taking center stage in the tournament including Kentucky’s Rob Dillingham, Duke’s Jared McCain, Arizona’s Caleb Love, and UNC’s RJ Davis among many others.
Capitalizing on Peak WNBA Interest
Through their March Madness activation, Skims showcased that they are hyper-aware and capable of capitalizing on trending moments and peak interest. Once again, Skims showed exactly that with their latest splashy activation in partnership with WNBA athletes ahead of the upcoming 2024 season. With WNBA interest arguably at an all-time high, as seen in the Google Trends chart below depicting over a 6x spike in interest from the previous highs over the last five years, Skims launched their first-ever campaign with WNBA athletes. Skims partnered with WNBA legend Candace Parker, WNBA All-Stars Kelsey Plum and Skylar Diggins-Smith, along with second overall draft pick Cameron Brink, and DiJonai Carrington to showcase their “Fits Everybody” underwear collection.
Analyzing Campaign Performance
So how did the campaign perform? Through Captiv8’s comprehensive insights, we found that the campaign as a whole had an incredible average engagement rate of 10.75%! However, there were undoubtedly two standout performers in this campaign. Notably, Kelsey Plum and Cameron Brink generated an unbelievable 15.4% and 22.91% engagement rate respectively on their sponsored content!
Conclusion
In conclusion, Skims capitalized on all-time high interest in the WNBA and the start of the WNBA season to launch their first WNBA influencer marketing activation. Skims partnered with WNBA legend Candace Parker, WNBA All-Stars Kelsey Plum and Skylar Diggins-Smith, along with second overall draft pick Cameron Brink, and DiJonai Carrington to showcase their “Fits Everybody” underwear collection. The campaign was met with overwhelmingly impressive engagement rates, smashing Instagram sponsored content engagement rate benchmarks!
About Captiv8
Captiv8 is a full-service influencer marketing solution that redefines end-to-end, inspiring you to think bigger, enabling you to plan smarter, and empowering you to execute better. Additionally, through our intuitive workflow, brands can uncover actionable insights on trends, discover and vet influencers, seamlessly activate campaigns at scale, amplify branded content across the digital ecosystem, and prove business impact through our measurement dashboard. Our platform gives you the tools you need to build relationships and effective content, while our teams lend experiences and strategic services to steer you clear of common influencer marketing pitfalls. Interested in learning more? Take a platform tour today!
