3 Notable CGI Influencer Marketing Campaigns on Instagram

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Instagram is the social network where influencer marketing is ubiquitous. This is because influencer marketing, generates the highest revenue on Instagram.

So, more and more brands are making the most of it while reach and engagement remain high. And now a new and more affordable type of influencer marketing is in town and more businesses are trying it out.

This is CGI influencer marketing where businesses and agencies are working with influencers created using CGI (computer generated imagery). Some businesses seem to prefer it because it is even cheaper than traditional influencer marketing as the influencers are owned by the business themselves or an agency. So, a business needs to invest in fewer people to execute the campaign.

If you are looking for some ideas on how to run an Instagram CGI influencer marketing campaign, make sure you read this entire post. I have listed the best CGI influencer marketing campaigns I have come across on the network…

Lil Miquela and Samsung

The biggest CGI influencer out there is probably Lil Miquela. She has over 1.6 million followers and generates a healthy engagement from her posts. She has also worked with a lot of brands. One of them is Samsung.

Her campaigns with Samsung include this simple photo…

https://www.instagram.com/p/By6Sl-2ntxx/

…to this video

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz8uJMgHlHG

What I really like about this campaign is that they aren’t just using pictures, but also videos. Many influencers/businesses shy away from using videos because they take more time to create, but what they don’t know is that video drives more engagement on Instagram.

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If you are looking for a way to get maximum engagement from your CGI influencer I recommend that you try creating more video content.

Creating videos with CGI influencers might seem like a hard task, but it is actually very easy. You mainly need to get the right tools and CGI influencer designer of course.

Bermuda and Lil Miquela:

This wasn’t a partnership between a brand and a CGI influencer, but it is worth mentioning for its uniqueness.

As aforementioned Lil Miquela is a big CGI influencer. She has posted hundreds of pictures. Some of them were in partnership with brands like Prada and Samsung.

But in April 2018, her account was hacked and several of here pictures got deleted. And they were replaced with pictures of another CGI influencer, Bermuda.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsHJYyjBSg9/

Bermuda confirmed that she hacked Lil Miquela’s account.

A caption on a new photo on Lil Miquela’s account read, “Hi guys! Bermuda here. Soooo… you’re being lied to by a fake a*s person. Literally who is buying this for one second? Apparently a lot of you. …Sorry, Miquela. I tried to DM, I tried to call but you ‘stay curving’ me. You brought this on yourself, girl 😘 Leave me a comment if you care about the truth, k? 😘 Go follow @bermudaisbae.”

Bermuda was talking about the fact that Lil Miquela, despite being a CGI influencer, pretends to be human. Whereas Bermuda, herself is open about being a ‘not-real’ influencer. She was trying to expose Lil Miquela for what she really is.

This feud between the two influencers got a lot of coverage. It was covered on top outlets like The Cut, Elle and Vice.

It was a big taking point on Instagram, so much that when Lil Miquela gained back access to her account and she published a post about what she had been through, it drove a ton of engagement.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhwuJcmlWh8/

But what many people didn’t realise back then was that this feud was staged. As discussed in the article on Verge, it is similar to what happens on wrestling shows.

Lil Miquela and Bermuda are owned by the same agency. They staged this feud to drive up controversy and attract more attention towards both these influencers. And it worked very well. As you can see above, the post from Miquela got over 200,000 likes. Both influencers also grew their follower counts.

This sort of unique campaign where controversy is driven in a controlled environment worked because both influencers are CGI influencers. Real influencers will never partake in something like this as they wouldn’t want to delete pictures they worked so hard to create.

This shows that there are endless possibilities with CGI influencers. If you brainstorm campaigns like these, you should be able to achieve quick growth for your accounts. So, don’t be afraid to think out of the box and do something controversial on your account.

But it has to be controlled controversy. You don’t want to say something that is offensive to people and ruin your brand reputation. Several influencers are still suffering from this.

Shudu and Ellesse:

Shudu is the world’s first ‘digital super model’ who has worked with brands like Balmian and Fenty Beauty. She was designed by Cameron James Wilson who has done a great job as she looks pretty realistic.

I like the campaign where she teamed up with Ellesse. The main thing I like about it is that they didn’t just focus on the visuals here. The pictures look great. But they also made sure to put some effort into the other parts of the post.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtwFHHshvHJ/

An example is the above one. As you can see, they tagged people in the photo and in the description. In the description they write about all the details you need to know like who took the photo, who helped with posing and design and more. They also included several hashtags which can help drive up engagement on Instagram.

When people venture into CGI influencer marketing, they place an emphasis on creating better visuals. Visuals do matter on Instagram as it is a visual social network. But you shouldn’t forget about the other aspects like the caption as what you write here can play a key role in the amount of engagement and sales you generate from Instagram.

Conclusion:

These are the 3 best CGI influencer marketing campaigns I have come across so far on Instagram. If you are planning to create your first influencer campaign or are trying to build on your previous ones, I recommend that you use these for inspiration.

Each one of these campaigns provides a useful lesson. So, make sure you study them carefully and take notes.

What do you think about CGI social media influencers? Have you ever run a CGI influencer campaign? Please share your insights below.