Influencer Marketing Campaigns: 10 Real Examples and What Brands and Creators Can Copy

The influencer marketing campaigns worth copying are the ones that publish a result you can check. Chipotle's #GuacDance drew more than 250,000 TikTok video submissions in six days, and a&o Hostels turned creator videos into a ROAS of 5.44 against a target of 3.0. This guide lists ten real campaigns, seven of them European, each linked to the brand's own release, the platform's case study or trade press.

TL;DR. The strongest campaigns below share three habits: a creator brief built around one native format (a hack, a song, a personal story, a dance, a menu item), paid amplification of the creator posts that already worked organically, and one business metric agreed before launch. Brands get the playbook in the "what brands can copy" section; creators get theirs right after it.

How I picked them: I run Collabios, a marketplace where brands from any country book European creators, and I left out every campaign whose numbers only exist in agency recap decks or in listicles that quote each other. Every result below comes from a primary source. Most of the recent ones are TikTok For Business case studies, and TikTok labels those figures brand-reported and not verified by TikTok, so read them as the brand's own account. None of the ten ran on Collabios.

The seven European influencer marketing examples worth studying come from the UK, Germany and Sweden, and five of them won a 2025 TikTok Ad Award. They range from a pet-food brand working with gaming creators to a hostel chain that wrote its own song.

1. Vaseline Verified (UK, 2025). Vaseline and Mindshare UK tested popular online hacks in a lab and gave the ones that worked a "Vaseline Verified" seal, then used a TikTok Branded Mission to invite creators to share their own verified hacks. Per TikTok's UK Ad Awards 2025 winners post (Greatest TikTok), the campaign reached 8.46 million UK users, drew 44 million video views in two weeks and 419 organic creator posts, and sales rose 43% the following month. Lesson: give creators a format to fill (a hack to test), not a script to read.

2. Pedigree "Adopt, Don't Shop" (UK, 2025). Pedigree, with Brainlabs and ALMAP BBDO, built a custom EA FC25 mod featuring real Battersea dogs. Football creator Chelcee Grimes and lifestyle and gaming creators Tobyshome and Cadaea turned their Twitch gameplay into vertical TikTok stories, and Spark Ads and In-Feed Ads boosted the best ones. The same TikTok UK winners post reports over 27 million views, more than 32,000 direct clicks to the adoption site, and positive sentiment rising from 57% to 80%. Lesson: pick creators whose existing content already fits the idea, and measure the action you want (adoption clicks), not likes.

3. Gymshark's early athletes (UK, from 2012). Gymshark started in Birmingham in 2012 and sent its first stringers to lifting names Lex Griffin, Matt Ogus and Chris Lavado "in hope that they'd like them", later signing Nikki Blackketter, Robin Gallant and Jazmine Garcia. The official Gymshark story says it "wasn't intended as 'influencer marketing'", and that the Luxe Tracksuit, debuted at BodyPower 2013 and "repped by athletes", took sales "from £300 per day to £30,000 in 30 minutes". Lesson: product seeding works best with creators who would use the product anyway, and the relationship lasts longer than any single post.

4. Kleinanzeigen creator stories (Germany, 2025). Kleinanzeigen, which describes itself as Germany's largest online classifieds portal, worked with 12 German creators and real platform users, including Levi Penell and Malte Zierden, who told personal stories about encounters that started with a classified ad. The brand then boosted the top organic videos with Spark Ads, picked by watch time, sentiment and engagement. Per TikTok's Kleinanzeigen case study (Greatest Creative 2025), the campaign passed 54 million views (the headline rounds this to 55M+), including more than 5.5 million organic views and over 800,000 likes, and ad recall rose 5.4% to 52.8% in a Brand Lift Study. Lesson: stories about what the product made possible beat product demos, and organic data tells you which posts deserve paid budget.

5. a&o Hostels "Where to Go" (Germany, 2025). The hostel chain wrote its own song, "Where to Go", as a native TikTok sound, recruited creators through TikTok Creative Exchange and then TikTok One, and amplified the best creator videos with Spark Ads. TikTok's a&o Hostels case study (Greatest Performance 2025) reports 30 million-plus impressions, more than 800 bookings (820 in the headline, 830 in the body text), revenue of €190,351 and a ROAS of 5.44 against an original target of 3.0. Lesson: set a hard performance target before launch so "it went viral" is never the only result.

6. JBL with Dilara (Germany). JBL signed a two-year partnership with German creator Dilara. Under the "Made To Be Heard" theme, her content ran as TikTok In-Feed and TopFeed ads and on Out-of-Phone screens placed within five miles of retail stores, with Havas. TikTok's JBL case study (campaign year not stated) reports 5 million-plus impressions in Berlin and Munich over four weeks, a 6-second view-through rate 53% above the TikTok average and watch time 24% above it. Lesson: a multi-year ambassador gives you content you can reuse outside the app, close to where people actually buy.

7. ESSNCE (Sweden and Norway, 2025). Perfume is hard to sell through a screen, so the Swedish brand ESSNCE showed product development and production, featured its staff and worked with micro-creators, then boosted the best organic and micro-creator posts with Spark Ads before expanding into Norway. Per TikTok's Nordic Ad Awards 2025 winners post (Greatest Performance), it reached +272% year-on-year sales growth in Norway and +87% in Sweden. Lesson: micro-creators plus transparency can carry a product people cannot touch or smell before buying.

Three US influencer campaigns are still worth studying because their results come from the brand itself: Chipotle's #GuacDance (2019), Dunkin' and Charli D'Amelio (2020), and Virgin Voyages' Creator Voyage (2026). Together they cover one open challenge, one single-creator deal and one campaign with more than a thousand creators.

8. Chipotle #GuacDance (2019). On 25 July 2019, Chipotle announced a TikTok dance challenge for National Avocado Day, paired with free guac on app and online orders, and Marketing Dive reports it partnered with creators Brent Rivera and Loren Gray to promote it. Chipotle's results release (1 August 2019) counts over 250,000 video submissions and nearly 430 million video starts in six days, calls it "TikTok's highest performing branded challenge to run in the U.S." at the time, and records over 802,000 sides of guac served, its biggest guac day. Lesson: a challenge tied to a dated offer gives people a reason to join now.

9. Dunkin' "The Charli" (2020). On 2 September 2020, Dunkin' put Charli D'Amelio's usual order on its menu as "The Charli", calling her "TikTok's most followed star", available in stores and through the Dunkin' app. Dunkin' VP of brand stewardship Drayton Martin told TMZ, as reported by Tubefilter, that daily app downloads rose 57% on launch day, sales of all cold coffees rose 20% that day, and the app set a record for daily users. Lesson: a product built from the creator's real habit, sold through a trackable channel, makes the result measurable.

10. Virgin Voyages Creator Voyage (2026). Virgin Voyages ran a TikTok campaign with 1,103 nano, micro, macro and VIP creators under #SailingWithVirgin, using a Creator Led Package built with a TikTok Creative Exchange partner, and TikTok's Branded Buzz gave the brand 180 days of authorized use of the creator content. TikTok's Virgin Voyages case study (May 2026) reports more than 22.7 million views on #sailingwithvirgin, over 3,200 posts and a 696% increase in TikTok-referred traffic to the website. Billy Bohan Chinique, VP Marketing and Digital Innovation: "The benefit of a creator-led strategy is we can lean into having a huge volume of creative." Lesson: if you want volume, agree the usage window for the content up front.

Side by side, the ten campaigns split into three shapes: one creator or ambassador (Dunkin', JBL), a small named group (Pedigree, Kleinanzeigen, Gymshark), and open calls to many creators (Vaseline, Chipotle, Virgin Voyages). The table only lists results stated in each source.

Two things stand out. Creator count does not predict the result: Dunkin' moved its app numbers with one creator, while Virgin Voyages needed more than a thousand to build volume. And at least six of the ten pair creator posts with paid media, so the creator fee is rarely the whole budget.

Brands can copy five patterns from these influencer marketing examples: one native format, organic first and paid second, a metric fixed before launch, usage rights agreed up front, and relationships longer than one post. None of them depends on a famous creator.

• Brief a format, not a script. Vaseline gave creators a hack to test, a&o Hostels gave them a song, Kleinanzeigen asked for a personal story. A format leaves room for each creator's voice, which is what their audience follows them for.
• Let organic posts pick the paid ones. Kleinanzeigen chose which videos to boost by watch time, sentiment and engagement; ESSNCE and a&o Hostels also boosted their best organic and creator posts. Budget a reserve for amplification instead of spending everything on creator fees.
• Fix the metric before launch. a&o Hostels set a ROAS target of 3.0, Pedigree counted adoption-site clicks, Dunkin' watched app downloads. Pick the one number that would justify the spend and track it from day one.
• Agree usage rights in the contract. Virgin Voyages secured 180 days of authorized use of creator content. If you plan to run creator posts as ads, say so in the brief and pay for it; the content usage rights guide covers how to price it.
• Think in years, not posts. Gymshark's athletes and JBL's two-year deal with Dilara show the compounding version: the creator becomes associated with the brand, and the content keeps working off-platform.

To size the budget before you brief anyone, the free influencer campaign budget calculator splits creator fees from amplification. For the step-by-step process, see how to run an influencer marketing campaign, and use the influencer campaign checklist before launch. If what you need is content for ads rather than reach, hiring UGC creators is a separate route worth comparing.

Creators can learn that the best influencer campaigns rarely need a huge following: Virgin Voyages recruited nano and micro creators, ESSNCE built on micro-creators, and Kleinanzeigen cast real platform users next to known creators. What gets a creator picked is fit with the idea and a format the brand can picture.

Pitch a format, not just your rates. Brands in these examples briefed formats: a hack to test, a story to tell, a sound to use. When you pitch, describe the video you would make for that brand in one or two sentences. A brand that can picture the post is much closer to booking it than one reading a media kit.

Your organic performance decides your paid upside. Kleinanzeigen, ESSNCE, a&o Hostels and Pedigree all boosted the creator posts that did best organically. If a brand wants to run your post as a Spark Ad or a partnership ad, that is paid usage of your content, and it should be priced separately from the post itself. Ask how long they want to use it: Virgin Voyages' window was 180 days.

Long-term deals come from genuine fit. Gymshark's first athletes were people who already liked the product, and JBL's deal with Dilara runs for two years. A single sponsored post pays once; an ambassador deal pays every month. Turn down briefs for products you would not use, because your audience can tell.

Disclosure is on you too. The FTC's guidance for influencers states plainly that the responsibility to disclose is the influencer's, not the brand's or the platform's (details in the next section). A brand that skips the label in its brief does not take the risk off you.

Keep your engagement honest. Brands that pick which posts to boost by watch time and sentiment are reading your real numbers, not your follower count. If you are a European creator who wants international brands to find you, you can create a free creator profile and list your own packages and prices.

Every paid or gifted influencer post has to be labelled as advertising, and a campaign running in several countries has to meet each country's rules.

In the US, the FTC's Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers says to disclose any financial, employment, personal or family relationship with a brand, including free products; to place the disclosure with the endorsement where it is hard to miss; to use plain words like "ad" or "sponsored" rather than vague shorthand like "spon" or "collab"; and, in videos, to put the disclosure in the video itself. In the UK, the ASA's Influencers' guide to making clear that ads are ads (third edition, March 2023) sets the equivalent best practice. EU countries each have their own rules and label wording, covered country by country in the EU influencer ad disclosure guide.

For a multi-country campaign like a&o Hostels' or Virgin Voyages', write the required label into the brief for each market, so no creator has to guess.

On Collabios, brands from any country search creators in 26 European countries and book a creator's listed package directly, with no subscription. It suits campaigns built on a handful of creators in a few markets, closer to ESSNCE's or Kleinanzeigen's shape than to Virgin Voyages' 1,103.

• Browsing is free. You filter by content type, followers, location, price and gender, and every creator shows public package prices, with a €50 minimum.
• Brands pay a 10% service fee on top of the creator's price when they book; creators pay a 15% fee when an order completes and keep 85% of their listed price.
• Payment is taken at checkout and held until you approve the delivery. If an order is declined, expires or is cancelled before delivery, the brand is refunded in full.
• Pre-hire messaging is coming soon. For now you book first and chat with the creator inside the order right after booking, which is where you share the brief and the disclosure wording.

The honest limits: Collabios does not audit creators' audiences. A profile goes live once the creator verifies an email and connects a Stripe payout account, so check engagement on their recent posts before you book. It is also not a tool for coordinating a thousand-creator open call or buying TikTok ad placements; for that, TikTok's own Creative Exchange is the route Virgin Voyages and a&o Hostels used.

Brands can browse European creators for free. Creators can list their packages for free and get found by international brands.