Avrielle Cortes has been working in the social media landscape for a decade. In that time, she has seen the rise and fall of numerous platforms, the pivot from horizontal to vertical video, and the emergence of the professionalized creator economy. All of this has led to a diversification of strategies and platforms for how brands can use social media marketing.
“The biggest shift I have seen has been the collapse of platform monoculture,” said Cortes, who joined body-care and fragrance hitmaker Sol de Janeiro as director of global influence and brand advocacy in December. “In recent years, there’s been a huge shift to TikTok, in particular. There was a social strategy that basically was like, ‘figure out TikTok’ for a while. And now, I feel like we have … not moved on from that, but the landscape is back to, in a more positive way, more fragmentation — which is fantastic.”
The Brazilian-inspired body-care brand has used social media to help it stay atop of a crowded beauty landscape, including a recent partnership with Los Angeles comedian and actress Delaney Rowe, whose parodies of Hollywood movies have helped her accumulate more than 4 million followers across TikTok and Instagram.
But staying in the conversation today means looking at much more than simple follower count and reach, Cortes said. With viewers being directed to content through TikTok’s For You algorithm or jumping between various platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, content has the chance to reach far more than just direct followers.
“The rise of non-followers has become equally as important as followers. So it’s wildly important to know who your intended audience is and what makes them tick,” she said.
During a live discussion for the new Glossy Campus creator network, Glossy caught up with Cortes to discuss Sol de Janeiro’s creator partnership strategy, how creators can get the most out of their brand deals and more. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When it comes to choosing your creators, what’s your strategy there? What does the discussion look like?
“It’s honestly dependent on what goals we have at the moment. We have a very dynamic creator ecosystem, or we like to think that we do.
We talk through all of the high points of that partnership: exclusivity windows, usage rights, whatever those may be. What I would love to see creators do is ask more questions. You should be asking, ‘What does success look like to you as a brand?’ Or, ‘How will my success be measured by the brand? What is the approval process? What am I walking into? Who has the final say on the approvals?’ All of that should go into that decision-making for you.
If you ask these questions and a brand partner comes back to you and says, ‘We want it all,’ that’s a [red] flag. They need to have a primary goal; it’s OK to have secondary or tertiary goals, but there has to be a North Star to your success, because one piece of content cannot do all things.”
When it comes to the engagement metrics, I hear a lot that brands are becoming more excited about shares. Is that something you’re excited about, as well?
“Absolutely. Some of the more traditional KPIs, like viewership rate and engagement rate, are all important. And again, it goes back to making sure you’re clear with the brand about the intent and the primary goal of the partnership. But what excites me most when I really start to geek out about the data is going layers deeper than that.
I would say share rates and save rates are really important. Because that way, you know your community is resonating with what you’re putting out there. They are super engaged. I would say comment quality is important — going in and seeing what kind of conversations you’re evoking. Are people just spamming your comments with a bunch of emojis?
So I would say, make sure you’re going a bit deeper on the KPIs. Make sure you are so immersed in your own benchmarks and analytics that you know them back and forth. Because those are also key negotiating tactics. If you can be so deep in the numbers of your content, you’re able to leverage those to the best of your ability.”
You’ve built a lot of communities in your day. For creators starting out, if you had to start from scratch, what would you be doing to build that now?
“If you’re building, specificity beats scale. The creators who are growing the fastest in today’s day and age are folks who own a narrow lane. If you are in the fitness category, at a point in time, we will sort of lump these categories of creators together. And I think there are still umbrella categories, but I would go a step beyond being known as a fitness creator and become known as a strength-training creator for women over 40, for example. Or if you are passionate about the travel space, maybe you are creating content focused on slow travel on a local salary. It’s sort of niching down within these categories.”
I feel like it maybe forces authenticity for you to have such a focus. Or, you have to get really creative in terms of not being repetitive with your content. Is it OK to be repetitive with your content?
“If you’re a fashion girl like me, you can repeat an outfit, and you can repeat a topic of the conversation or a content format. And I honestly think audiences and communities look for that, and you’ll tell based on your benchmarks and your performance, whether it’s organic or in a paid partnership capacity, what’s working and what’s not. And you should absolutely repeat what’s working because that’s what your community is there to engage with.
We work with a lot of ‘FragranceTok’ creators, so those folks have a very particular content format, and we look to them for that. And then we also work with creators who fit into broader buckets, I would say, like a lifestyle or a lifestyle-adjacent fitness [creator], and those tend to have more dynamic formats and topics of conversation. So there is a brand, a program and a topic for everyone out there. I wouldn’t be afraid to niche down because almost when it’s too general, folks are like, ‘Well, what are we standing for?'”
Do you have an example of a partnership that you’re just so proud of that you want to talk about?
“There is a partnership that we are so, so proud of that is actually dropping this week. We are working with Delaney Rowe. If you are unfamiliar with Delaney, she’s a fantastic creator. She’s an entertainment-first, comedic creator. She really rose to popularity on TikTok, but she has since diversified her community across other channels.
She’s a known brand fan, so we did a little bit of brand education. But she’s familiar with us. Of course we did product education, because we want to make sure she’s feeling comfortable and confident speaking to them. But really, she took back that brief and then re-pitched to us what her creative concept would be, and it was so fun. We were literally laughing out loud at her content in the most positive way possible.”
I hear humor is thriving. Have you guys done something that takes a humorous spin before?
“Absolutely. We really find that content should, first and foremost, entertain, and then it should either inspire or educate. So we call it ‘edu-tain content.’
You are inundated with content, whether it be organic or sponsored content. We understand that folks are scrolling endlessly, and how are we going to capture their attention in a sea of content? Entertainment is the way to do that.
I find that social platforms are the new entertainment platforms. There’s a crazy stat out there that people are on YouTube more than they are on broadcast or streaming TV or streaming movies. Talent these days is reaching certain levels where streaming services are reaching out to them, and they are the lead talent in an upcoming series. So the lines are consistently getting blurred between social, digital media and other forms of media that consumers have traditionally leaned toward. But I would say — no matter your niche, no matter your category, in a way that’s authentic to you — if you can find a way to entertain and educate your community, you’re going to be doing just fine.”
Additional reporting by Jill Manoff
