We’re back! And so is Doja Cat! 

On Sunday, Doja carried a sparkly JBL speaker as a purse on the Grammy’s red carpet. “Jibble jibble jibble,” she added (wisely) on TikTok. 

Now JBL is all we think about. Doja is a marketing machine!

In this issue:

• Anonymous influencers
• Beneration Z
• March’s most popular marketing roles

EXPERT Q&A

The power of the faceless influencer

When you think of an influencer, you probably think of someone with a face. 

Someone good-looking, who travels a lot. Almost like a living doll that marketers can pay to pose with branded products in scenic locations. 

That’s a lifestyle influencer, popular on Instagram and TikTok — but there’s another type of influencer: the faceless influencer, or “culture creator,” as Imgur puts it in a new report. 

Culture creators run meme accounts, rack up Reddit Karma, and land on Imgur’s homepage. 

They’re “less focused on who they are and instead focus on the content itself,” explained Irene Sanchez, VP of integrated marketing at medialab (which owns Imgur).

Here’s what makes them special — and why marketers can’t ignore them. 

They post relatable content.

Lifestyle influencer content skews “aspirational,” Sanchez said, but culture creators’ content is often more relatable.

Instagram meme account @Daquan, for example, has 16.7M followers — just 1M fewer than Joe Biden! — and posts accessible jokes and memes about bad haircuts and Spiderman. 

It’s clearly resonating.  Daquan gets more than 5X the engagement of Joe Biden, according to Grin. 

Their private lives are… their whole lives. 

It’s hard to have a parasocial relationship with @Daquan. No one knows who he is.  

“The goal was to create a social media content brand that is synonymous with internet pop culture, not a personality brand,” the (still anonymous) Canadian teen behind the account told Forbes. 

Creators with known names can cultivate similar brands, too. 

TikTok channel @menwiththepot (9M+ followers) is synonymous with woodland cooking — not its creators, Polish friends Slawek Kalkraut and Krzysztof Szymanski.

Same goes for Imgur creator @PaulDeGraaf, who creates pop-up cards “frequently seen in our most viral content,” Sanchez said. 

He’s not anonymous (he’s Paul DeGraaf!) but his brand is his paper sculptures. 

They’re (often) trusted more than lifestyle influencers.

Find out why — and why that matters for marketers — over on our blog. 

TWEET TREAT

The #1 growth hack for 2022: skepticism!

Take your paid social campaigns from tired to wired with this one crazy trick from Alexa Kilroy, senior manager of creative strategy at First Day!

Just kidding. This was a fleeting result when a campaign had spent $0.30, Kilroy explained.

“[A]void threads like this,”she added. 

Definitely take them with a grain of salt! Return on ad spend is an imperfect KPI, even when it’s based on more substantial spend. 

SMALL BITES

Ben & Gen Z, metaverse dining and more…

For April Fools’, Hellmann’s and Butterfinger collabed on dessert mayo.

Colorado slashed its tourism marketing budget by 90%.

The 39 best content marketing tools, according to content marketers. 

Busch Light released a pee funnel so drinkers can uh… refill empty cans.

Wendy’s opened a metaverse restaurant.

99% agree: marketing hiring and managing chops → high-impact campaigns. 

Is top-of-funnel marketing attribution worth it? Rand Fishkin says no. 

Tostitos’ sonic logo has a 20% higher recall rate than most CPG food brands’. 

Google is testing topic-based ad targeting. 

Gen Z’s favorite brand is Ben & Jerry’s, according to a new report.

DATA SNACK

March’s trending marketing roles

Which roles were the hottest at the end of Q1?

MarketerHire has some interesting data on this, as a talent platform that connects clients like Netflix and Allbirds with pre-vetted freelance marketer. 

The two biggest MoM trends we spotted:

📈 Email marketers’ share of all roles hired through our platform grew 46% MoM
📈 Content marketers’ slice of the hiring pie grew 17% MoM

We asked our team for their thoughts on why. 

Email marketers boost LTV — even in slow seasons. 

One theory on the email marketer surge: Q2 is often slower for retail, so companies  may be shifting towards re-engaging past customers and away from new customer acquisition, said MarketerHire’s head of key accounts Matt Mozzochi. 

Content marketers can create thought leadership.

Demand for thought leadership is on the rise, said MarketerHire growth manager Ashley Hubbard — especially at early-stage companies trying to build trust and fill their top-of-funnel.

That helps content marketers. 

Our takeaway? 

In March, businesses hired a fresh crop of freelance marketers to focus on the very top and the very bottom of their funnels. 

Mid-funnel some little love, too: After a two-month slump, paid social media marketers’ slice of MarketerHire’s hiring pie grew slightly in March. 

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