Influencer marketing has been steadily developing into a channel that brands look to for meaningful results, with major organisations from Unilever to Premier Foods committing significant spend to influencer-driven campaigns.
Baileys and Oatly are two brands with a history of making influencer marketing work for them; Oatly's global media director Sarah Sutton even recently told Marketing Week that the brand sees influencers as "an extension" of its in-house creative team, dubbing them "creative directors" for the brand.
At the 2025 Festival of Marketing, Sutton and Hazan Aydın Yeşilova, Head of Baileys at Diageo, discussed how their respective brands are making an impact with influencers: how influencers are playing a key role in a 'transitional period' for Baileys; why Oatly has moved from health content to indulgence in response to community insights; and how both brands tackle measurement for a notoriously difficult-to-measure channel.
Hazan Aydın Yeşilova explained that Baileys' decision to lean into social media and influencer marketing stems from a desire to meet consumers where they are spending increasing amounts of time - citing the dramatic upticks in mobile screentime and social media usage over the past few years.
"If you want to catch people's attention, then you have to switch your ways of reaching out to them," she said. "…This is where we started looking at social and how we [could] enhance our way of delivering content."
Baileys positions itself as an adult treating brand, and Yeşilova noted that a great deal of 'treating' content is shared on social media - from people showing off a cake they've baked to trying a new flavour of ice cream. This dovetailed neatly with Baileys' desire to be present on social media and also to grow the brand - which is "synonymous with Christmas" - outside of the festive season.
Baileys partnered with renowned chocolatier Amaury Guichon to launch Baileys Chocolate Liqueur, part of its positioning as an 'adult treat' and move beyond Christmas into occasions like Valentine's Day and Easter.
Most recently, the brand has embarked on a set of longer-term influencer partnerships with creators that it dubs the 'Treat Squad'. "It's still in the test and learn process … But the journey so far has been really exciting," said Yeşilova.
Oatly's influencer partnerships have also presented the brand with an opportunity to broaden its consumer perception. Sutton explained that Oatly is creating content to help people understand how they can better use its plant-based products: "It's an area that we were never truly that comfortable in - because we don't want to teach people how to drink milk.
"But I think the proof is in the pudding, really, on this. People do need a little bit of motivation for how they can use our products … and [help with understanding] the types of different drinks and foods you can create with our products."
Sutton also emphasised that Oatly tries to be purposeful and selective with its influencer partnerships in order to ensure "[that] we as a brand have a right to show up in that space.
"Do we have a right to work with these types of [influencers] that are working within these particular communities? And do we have something interesting [to say] where we can add some value?
"It's really easy to jump on the back of trends … It's much more difficult to drive culture or, dare I say, even second-guess what's coming next."
Sutton credited Oatly's community management team and their insights with shaping Oatly's evolving creator strategy.
"They will tell us what conversations are happening out there in the social space - what's happening in the sustainability space, what's happening in health … [and] how people are perceiving our products in terms of what we're saying and how we're saying it."
By taking on board data from these social insights, as well as 'cultural insights' from Oatly's social team and barista market development team - who liaise directly with coffee shops and are tapped into style and taste trends - Oatly learned that people had moved away from health-conscious eating towards 'permissible treating' and 'conscious indulgence'.
As a result, Oatly is now "pushing forward into what feels like a much more positive space", in Sutton's words, and operating less in the realm of health content, which is a part of social media that "can [often] be really negative and … really misinformed."
Measuring the outcomes from influencer marketing is a notorious challenge, with 28% of marketers in a recent piece of research conducted by agency Billion Dollar Boy citing 'measuring and proving effectiveness against business objectives' as a major hurdle in scaling influencer marketing.
Yeşilova, however, expressed excitement about measuring the impact of Baileys' influencer marketing: "We want to track everything - we want to measure everything."
Since last year, Baileys has been integrating creator content into its paid social advertising, and initial results have shown a 4.4 point improvement in ad recall, with top-of-mind awareness up 2.5 points year-on-year. "[Looking at] not only how we build our brand but how [influencer marketing] impact[s] our sales and P&L was really compelling," said Yeşilova.
She acknowledged that getting leadership buy-in for a more ambitious commitment like the Treat Squad was difficult at first. However, "there's a zeitgeist around the creator economy … and the [figures showing improved ad recall and awareness] just gave us what we needed internally.
"There's still a big test-and-learn period … but the results speak for themselves."
Conversely, the Oatly team's approach could perhaps be summed up as not trying too hard to over-think measurement. "We can only measure what we can measure," said Sutton. "We don't have econometric measurement [set up] - I'm sure it will come one day."
Instead, the team uses signals like engagement rate and cultural equity to gauge how well their influencer content is resonating.
"[Oatly is] an incredibly creative-led organisation," Sutton said. When the brand first entered the creator space four and a half years ago, there was a tension with the in-house creative team not wanting to cede creative control to influencers outside the organisation - but now, "that's completely flipped on its head.
"Everyone in the Oatly organisation wants to work with creators and influencers."
She gave the example of a recent campaign from Oatly's creative team that revolved around "using influencers without actually using influencers": in Sweden, the brand created content using 'twinfluencers' - lookalikes of famous influencers - and posted it to the real influencers' channels without context or explanation.
The campaign aimed to put across the message that Oatly's products tasted just the same as dairy.
"[The team is] just having a lot of fun, and that fun is paying off in terms of engagement rates," Sutton concluded.
Yeşilova is also excited for the expanded creative possibilities of working with influencers long-term in Baileys' Treat Squad.
"We were able to get them into brand immersion sessions, tell them what Baileys stands for - what we do. We were even able to give them training about accessibility, which is at the heart of Baileys' content: we want to be accessible by everyone - a treat for everyone.
"…That then enables us to give them creative control - because now they understand our brand much better," Yeşilova said.
Yeşilova is also positive about Baileys' moves into the coffee space and how the brand is beginning to resonate there. "I'm really excited about seeing people's reactions, because … you really feel like you're tapping into culture when people start creating content with your brand.
"Because that means people are excited about your brand and it is part of their lives."
