When social media agency Komodo, hired seven influencers with a combined following of over 5.8 million to launch Peggy Gou’s new track with Coke Studio and Universal Pictures, the campaign drew significant traction.
Four of those influencers who attended the event over-delivered on Stories, driving 43 earned pieces of content.
But in total, the campaign drove over 1.4 million engagements and 5.5 million impressions.
In our interview, Komodo’s co-founder Freddie Strange explains the benefits of collaborating with influencers and why he recommends them for long-term impact.
Who Is Freddie Strange?
For his role at Komodo, Freddie Strange combines his sporting discipline and business acumen. His leadership has been crucial in expanding the company’s global footprint, particularly through the launch of the U.S. office and when he helped diversify the company’s revenue streams. His expertise in relationship building and commercial strategy continues to fuel Komodo's international growth and success. Before launching Komodo, Freddie was a semi-professional rugby player for Esher Rugby Club in the UK.
As more brands turn to influencers, focused on longer-term partnerships and ambassadorships that reflect authenticity, Freddie predicts that this shift will lead to deeper, more meaningful brand-influencer relationships.
“Some brands often provide creators with a % of sales or equity to sweeten the deal and provide longer-term longevity and brand alignment.”
The shift toward influencer partnerships is reflected in the increased spending on global social media advertising, which was said to have reached $234.14 billion in 2024.
According to Statista, that value is forecast to jump 50% by 2029, exceeding $345 billion.
“Influencer and social are rapidly coming of age and campaigns are now highly measurable because of the tech that has been developed,” says Freddie.
“That gives clients the confidence to grow their budgets because ROI can be calculated. It means social and influencer talk the language of the boardroom.”
And this is only the beginning — Freddie believes that influencer marketing holds so much innovation and excitement. He hints at virtual influencers and new kinds of ad formats like the AI-generated Lancome ad in Saffron Barker’s vlog.
“Influencer trends are also a reflection or even a predictor of where our world is heading and people are waking up to its deeper value.
A great example is how influencer trends might have heralded Trump’s recent win better than any pollsters; Trad Wives, Mormon Wives, western wear, clean girl as well as culture more broadly, e.g. cowboy hats and boots having their time in the sun,” he adds.
Watch our video to learn about the different types of influencer marketing campaigns you could use for your brand:
At the core of it though, brands have to balance innovation and measurable results when working with influencers.
Navigating Successful Influencer Campaigns
For instance, when British perfume house Penhaligon launched its AlUla fragrance, it wanted to enter eight global markets — spanning across sections of nationalities and cultures.
So, Komodo pulled in 30 influencers from those markets that Penhaligon wanted to target — and organized a trip to the UNESCO world heritage site of AlUla in Saudi Arabia to bring them closer to the origins of the new fragrance’s inspiration.
For this campaign, each influencer shared their experience with the fragrance and the area, making something seemingly out of reach feel personal and relatable.
This is how Penhaligon managed to reflect cultural differences and connect with audiences in each market.
Freddie says this activation is a “microcosm” of how you need to perceive tailoring content.
“The professional content that supports and amplifies influencer activity needs to be adapted for each local market. The number of moving parts can be daunting and your project management skills have to be world-class.”
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And just as with tailored content, being selective with who you partner is just as important.
Choosing the Right Partnerships
According to Freddie, you can’t just rely on technology to match influencers with brands. Even Komodo has its talent management arm to give creators that human touch that audiences are looking for.
“We match this with an obsession with measurement and ROI and that is why we have invested in our own tech, Socialyze,” he explains.
Sociolyze is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform designed to manage influencer partnerships.
“We’ve also developed our own social growth formula which works for global brands as well as startups where we can turbocharge growth at the start of their journey, often the most critical time. We’ve done this for the Australian brand, Ciroa Beauty,” he adds.
To highlight just how important it is for brands to find the right influencer to partner with, he points out that Komodo doubled Ciroa’s revenue each week from day one.
“Which goes to show how the right kind of influencer/social approach can directly impact the bottom line.”
Finding the Perfect Influencer Match
For Komodo, choosing an influencer is straightforward but requires thorough due diligence.
Each brand and campaign is unique, and because the influencer world is highly personalized, the agency’s talent management arm nurtures careers and understands what drives each influencer.
“We know where they’ve delivered outstanding work for brands in the past. If you do proper due diligence on all of this, the results tend to look after themselves,” says Freddie.
However, he points out that you need extremely in-depth local knowledge to ensure that the talent or creators you choose actually represent a brand in every local market.
“How well regarded are they locally; do they also reflect the values of the brand; are they squeaky clean with no skeletons in the cupboard; if they’re part of a trip will they gel with the other influencers?”
And when initial results don’t meet expectations, it’s time to look for other ways to navigate an influencer campaign.
Navigating Successful Influencer Campaigns
Freddie and his agency continuously educate clients and look for new ways to demonstrate and guarantee ROI and impact more broadly when hiring influencers.
For one, he believes that influencer trips possess a powerful exponential “talkability factor”, which creates a greater value.
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“It’s a message we are working hard to deliver,” Freddie explains.
“When a brand can choose to spend $300K on either hiring 20 influencers where each of them posts once on their social channels or invest the same amount in a five-day trip with 10 influencers who post five times, the latter gains much better traction. Namely, during a mutual trip, the influencers gel as a team and start to tag each other and the campaign travels much further.”
Komodo also uses paid marketing to boost creator content through “dark ads,” which tend to garner more authentic cut-through, he adds.
“[This] enables us to drive impressions and bring consumers through the funnel after the content has gone live.”
Then, to understand the campaign’s cut-through in reaching and engaging audiences, the agency paid attention to positive sentiments and comments from audiences.
Making an Impact in a Competitive Space
For Peggy Gou, Komodo worked with local Italian talent to attend the event in Puglia.
“They came from a TikTok network background with a genuine love for dance music. There was a Gen Z pull to each of their profiles that aligned really nicely with the campaign.
They're authentic Peggy Gou fans, and that came across in the content, plus they were wearing the event merch and getting the temporary tattoos that were on offer, too,” says Freddie.
As Freddie points out, tapping into this talent network was a great opportunity to successfully reach Gen Z audiences through relatable and friendship-led content.
“With brand-led campaigns like this, it's important to work with energetic, relatable influencers who can take their audience with them to enjoy the brand-heavy opportunity they showcased in their content.
The brand was front and center but it was really engaging due to the chosen personalities.”
Ultimately, Freddie believes that working with influencers on longer-term partnerships and ambassadorships that are truly authentic is much better than engaging in one-off partnerships which can be transparently transactional.
