Marcus Johnson (00:05):

Hello, and welcome to a special edition episode of the eMarketer Podcast, Behind the Numbers. I'm Marcus Johnson, and today I'm introducing a special episode recorded at the eMarketer Creator Trends 2026 Virtual Summit. In this episode, Emmy Liederman, Analyst at eMarketer, hosts a panel discussion about creative video and how it's opening new territory for brands on CTV. Nicole Marcus, Manager of Influencer strategy at DICK'S Sporting Goods, and Alison O'Keefe, Senior Manager, Influencer and Creator Marketing at Best Buy join the discussion. I hope you enjoy.

Emmy Liederman (00:40):

So I am joined by Nicole Marcus, who is the Manager of Influencer Strategy at DICK'S Sporting Goods, and Alison O'Keefe, who is Senior Manager of Influencer and Creator Marketing at Best Buy. Thank you both so much for being here.

Nicole Marcus (00:53):

Thank you. Excited to be here.

Emmy Liederman (00:55):

So let's get started. I think a good place to start would be to just talk about what you look for more broadly in creator partnerships and how your brand's approach to those partnerships have changed over time as influencer marketing and the creator economy has evolved. Alison, do you maybe want to take that first?

Alison O'Keefe (01:17):

Yes, happy to. Best Buy strategically partners with creators of all tiers, from micro to mega. We really have to support a variety of product categories that tap into different influencer niches. So we work with lifestyle to gaming, to tech reviewers and college students. Our kind of north star strategy is that we look to pair the right partner with the right product at the right time. And so our approach has really evolved to not be one-size-fits-all, and lean into the nuance that our customers and also the influencers' audiences are really expecting. So how this has evolved over time is we do have less upfront partnerships for the year, given that we just have seen our business product needs and even product innovation that happens really evolves at the speed of retail throughout the year.

(02:11):

So when we get a brief, we look for who's the right partners, what is the right influencer mix to bring that to life? But at the same time, we also have top-performing partners and returning partners that may work with us for several campaigns and several moments during the year. As you can imagine, being a CE retailer, we definitely work with some key tech and gaining influencers that frequently talk about products at Best Buy and our long-term brand partners and advocates.

Emmy Liederman (02:39):

[inaudible 00:02:42]

Alison O'Keefe (02:41):

To bring this to life ... Oh.

Emmy Liederman (02:43):

Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

Alison O'Keefe (02:45):

I was just going to say to bring this really to life of the nuance of the types of partners, we might need to work with a console gamer who's super into gaming on one type of console and even one type of game. So we know we're only going to be able to work with them kind of for a specific campaign need. But other times we're working with influencers with a much wider gen pop audience when we need to be tapping into lifestyle parents who can talk about a new computer for their kids during back to school, and then pivot into supporting a different product for holiday gifting. And I would just say the common thread is that they're really strong storytellers, they're skilled video creators, and then they also naturally love and showcase tech and tech products on their feeds.

Emmy Liederman (03:29):

So it sounds like you're leaving room for the fact that the creator economy evolves so quickly, and it's hard to have a very upfront heavy strategy and say, "This is exactly what we're going to do for a year," because you need to keep up with the speed of the internet. What do you look for in these long-term partners? If I was a creator, what would I need to do to win over Best Buy's approval for a long-term partnership?

Alison O'Keefe (03:58):

So there's two ways that we work with influencers in a really long-term capacity. One is our creator program, which really allows always on affiliate links, and they can create their own storefront here with Best Buy and they're also able to level-up their partnership with us throughout the year. Once they're in that program, we really help identify top creators and bring them into our influencer partnership ecosystem. And then the second piece is, when we're investing in the mega or celebrity realm, that's where we are looking to a longer term engagement, not just a specific campaign activation, to really get the ROI out of that partnership. We have kind of a partnership framework based on our tentpole and brand priorities that we have loose deliverables. And then we really, on each campaign opportunity, re-plan them in partnership with our creative and media cross-functional partners to take shape, and make sure that we're still being really planful for the nuances of things that may change between January and June and June and December.

Emmy Liederman (05:00):

Love it. And I think it's important to say that the mega and the celebrity creators are people that you want to have on for the long-term, because we all know that it's very easy for people of that caliber to just take on every brand deal that comes to them and then you kind of are left wondering, what do you actually use and what do you actually care about? So I think that's interesting. Nicole, I'm going to pass that question to you. What do you look for in brand partnerships, and how has that changed? I know you've been at for 10 years now.

Nicole Marcus (05:32):

Yes, I cannot believe it. It was my first job out of college, so nobody do the math on how old I am, but I feel like I've really been able to see the changes take place. I sat on the organic social team in the beginning and that was before we even had paid. Now I sit in the influencer space. And I would say really the biggest difference is that we're looking to do longer partnerships that focus on storytelling, rather than, I'd say about five years ago even we were doing a lot of one-off partnerships. So this was really the mindset that helped drive our DICK's Varsity Team program, which is our internal ambassador program. It's a year-long partnership where we hold applications for anyone who makes sport great. So we have Olympians and Paralympians, NIL talent, coaches.

(06:18):

We actually just closed applications and had 11,000 applicants. So we're currently vetting that roster down to about a roster of 50 to 60 people that we will work with for the year. So they've really become the entire ecosystem. So for a back to school campaign or holiday, we will first take a look at this roster first. Are there moms? Are there NIL talent that makes sense for a back to school moment? And obviously we know there's times and moments where we'll have to go outside of this roster to help support specific initiatives and campaigns. But I would say the biggest difference in those 10 years that I've been able to see is really us having an internal ecosystem, this roster partners, I mentioned back to school and holiday, some of our big marketing campaigns. But they are also the roster that we turn to for our DICK's Media Network. So it's honestly a really big draw for our vendors who want to partner with this elite roster of talent.

(07:12):

It's really great because we lock in this partnership and their rates for the entire year, so it allows us to move faster with them too. I will say what we look for in partnerships is probably my most asked question, and I will say there's larger celebrities. And similar to Alison, we will partner with everybody from ... We even partner with our employees. I'm a huge advocate of employee-generated content. So those employees might have a couple thousand followers, and then we partner with big name celebrity pro quarterbacks that are A-list celebrity talent. But for my team specifically, really what we try to look for is the intersection of athlete and content creator. So I frequently say, "There's influential people out there, and then there's influencers." So we really want to work with the influencers who are filming their content every day. One of the first questions we ask ourselves is, are they a content creator? If they receive a brief, can they understand it? Are they up-to-date on trends? Do they know what's going on in the social space?

(08:15):

And then beyond that, we're really looking for athletes and those that make sport great, but beyond just the highlight reel. You can watch a live game and you get the sportscasters' take and you get that really polished piece of content, but we really find people want to see the little bit of gritty side. Especially sports and storytelling, there's so many great moments that even happen in the setback. So we really want to partner with people who are taking their community on that journey. We partnered with a marathon runner who was supposed to run New York and he got injured right before, and he was defeated, but that storytelling is really beautiful and I think a lot of people and athletes can relate to that.

(08:52):

So we want to know their pregame rituals. We want to know what products they love that are helping them get in that journey, but far beyond just the highlight reel. So I'd say, are they a content creator, and then, are they building community and adding value far beyond just the highlight reel?

Emmy Liederman (09:08):

Yeah, and I think the way that you talk about the program, it doesn't seem like there's a true prerequisite of, you need to be this type of athlete, you need to have this amount of followers. It's really just people that produce original content and can get their audience interested in your brand.

Nicole Marcus (09:24):

Absolutely. There's no minimum follower account. You basically have to have an Instagram or TikTok to be able to apply to the program. When we look at our athletes that shop our stores and those that play sports, you're starting when you're two years old sometimes and that journey doesn't end. You become a different athlete when you leave youth sports and things, but your journey changes, so we really do want to partner with people of all ages. We try to cover as many sports as possible. And again, personally, this is probably another panel, but super passionate about those nano creators and even the employees. There's so much great storytelling that can happen there. So definitely we're open to any and all creators.

Emmy Liederman (10:08):

Yeah. Max, during his keynote was talking a lot about micro and nano creators getting more budget from influencer marketing. And I brought up the fact that TikTok is launching this local feed, and it's interesting to think about how that maybe correlates with the fact that people want to hear from creators, micro creators, people that are just in their community, people that they relate to. So I think that's just interesting product news that goes along with this trend.

(10:40):

I also want to talk about just the way that we define all of these influential people. I feel like that this is such a contested topic. I'm asked a lot, how do I define an influencer versus a creator? When does a creator become a celebrity? So I think there's a lot that the industry is sorting through right now, but I would love to pass this to you, Alison. As the lines between traditional celebrity and creator blur, how do you choose the right talent for your campaigns? And then going off of that, how does it concretely impact production and planning timelines and all that stuff?

Alison O'Keefe (11:21):

Absolutely. We definitely have slides on this internally to help educate our partners on celebrity versus creator, but I would say it's definitely blurry. There's a lot of influencers who have now become so well-recognized they are celebrities and starting to become household names, and there are celebrities who built these massive social followings. We really look at, are they well-known or do they have fame for a different job or skillset that has created that large social following? So are they an actor, an athlete, a podcast host, or a chef and then the social following became part of their fan base? So we would typically categorize that as a celebrity, and we may partner with them for social deliverables within a larger campaign, and that's where my team would come in, but often they are going to need some additional creative support, which brings us to the production models.

(12:15):

Sometimes celebrities are able to create their own content, but often they are not necessarily spending their days as a content creator. And so when we get into those types of partnerships, we really need to understand that the brand, particularly our Best Buy Creative and Production Team may be involved with helping bring the content to life, whether or not it's being shared on our channels or their social channels. And then similar to what Nicole had maybe mentioned, is that to be a true creator they must have both. They must have a social following and be able to create their own video content on their own. And again, sometimes that's blurry because you have very talented celebrities or athletes that are actually pretty skilled at content creation.

Emmy Liederman (12:59):

I think part of the reason we're having this conversation or a result of this confusion, is the fact that a lot of social content is moving beyond social media. A lot of creator content is showing up in connected TV. We're seeing all of these creators who I previously just thought were influencers, now you kind of have to second guess yourself because Alix Earle suddenly is doing a reality show with Netflix. So the lines are very blurry. And I think this really applies to sports content as well, which is typically lived in the live, streaming broadcast format, and it sounds like something for both of you is a priority with the way that you're marketing. So Nicole, I would love to hear from you about just how your team has taken these sporting events that have traditionally lived on TV and extended them through social and gotten that added impact.

Nicole Marcus (13:59):

Yes. It's definitely been interesting to watch something like sports, which is so traditionally on TV. You're used to tuning around your TV and huddling around that. And now I feel like people are canceling cable and they're not even watching the full game. They might just watch the highlight reel on social and feel like, "Hey, instead of spending two hours watching a football game, I can get the highlight reel and get in 30 seconds on social." So definitely something we're taking note of. I think we're still taking traditional approaches where we might sponsor something like the marathons. We might be an official partner of that. We might run commercials during key moments. But again, where my team is focused and where we're looking to the future is, how do we have a cultural moment there without official partnerships? And we think influencers are kind of that backdoor in. I don't want to say loophole. But I think, again, people can watch the broadcast, they can watch the highlight clips on social.

(14:54):

When it comes to live sports, we're interested in, there's a big football game recently, rather than paying millions of dollars for a big commercial and then paying millions of dollars for either a celebrity ... Or now probably need someone who is an influencer celebrity in that spot to gain recognition. Now you're up millions of dollars. How can we partner with influential people, get them on the ground? Maybe we get them a ticket, maybe they're attending events, maybe we're hosting events around these key cultural moments. So I think that's how we're exploring live sports.

(15:26):

Again, going back to what I was saying, that sports is aligned so nice with influencers because I think influencers are the new storytellers. That's where you're getting your news, that's where you're getting your entertainment. They become your friends and your besties. And so they want to see that behind-the-scenes content, not just from the athletes that are on the field and playing these live sports games, but they're influencers who are fans of the game. So we're, like I said, thinking about how do we get them more involved in these cultural moments? And I think a really great example within sports, not sure if anyone's heard of the Savannah Bananas-

Emmy Liederman (15:57):

I was waiting for you to bring this up.

Nicole Marcus (15:57):

Everybody loves them.

Emmy Liederman (15:57):

Love talking about them.

Alison O'Keefe (15:57):

Yes.

Nicole Marcus (16:02):

I love them too. I literally remember it was 2020, and I first remember seeing these crazy guys in yellow playing baseball, doing tricks, and it went viral on social. And I think it's just a really an amazing use case of they started in Savannah, Georgia on TikTok in 2020 and now they are a worldwide phenomenon. Their tickets are the toughest thing to get in the world. And you look at someone like us, a big retailer, and now we're partnering with the people on their team. So we actually partner with Coach RAC. If you guys are familiar with the Savannah Bananas or have seen clips, he's the one who does the backflip and catches a ball and lands like a superhero. I don't know how that's humanely possible. But he's amazing.

(16:46):

And so now you have big retailers like us looking at these social-first athletes rather than traditional MLB players. So I think they're a really great use case of where sports is going because now they're even streaming on Hulu on Max. I'm pretty sure they're in Disney+. And so really it all started from social, and so I think they're a great use case. And that's another way we're looking to partner with these organizations. A traditional route might have been partnering directly with the team or running an ad during some of their live games on these streaming services, but we're going directly to the players and these influencers to get more of that behind-the-scenes content.

(17:25):

And Coach RAC is amazing. He has personality. He's teaching youth. So he really aligns with a lot of our brand values in addition to being an amazing athlete. Again, no idea how he does those things. And then also, just, he is so content-first and so is that entire team. So I think that's the way that sports ... It's going to be interesting to see if that trickles into other sports beyond baseball and just to continue watch that rivalry between traditional sports and this new lane of entertainment sports.

Emmy Liederman (17:56):

Totally. And it really opens up the fan base of-

Nicole Marcus (17:58):

Oh yeah.

Emmy Liederman (17:58):

... who is interested in sports. It's a totally different marketing technique. Opposed to just hoping that your target audience is locked into a game, try getting them in a different way by having someone like the Savannah Bananas athletes doing a bunch of stunts on social. So, makes a lot of sense to me. Alison, I know that you do care a lot about these big tentpole sports moments as well. What does this look like for Best Buy?

Alison O'Keefe (18:28):

Yes, well, first, I am on the wait list for my Savannah Banana ticket. It's something [inaudible 00:18:32] town, it is-

Nicole Marcus (18:33):

I can't even get them either.

Alison O'Keefe (18:34):

A hard ticket to come by, but fingers crossed. So yes, at Best Buy, sports is a huge cultural moment that we're focused on as well, because we know through our research that sports is a passion point for our customers, and the tech that we sell really enables them to have that modern fandom experience at home. So we have a longstanding partnership with the NFL as an official NFL partnership, and in the last few years, we're really doing what Nicole talked about too, is we're broadening the way that our brand shows up and engages with consumers beyond those official partnership moments and linear TV spots. So influencers are expanding into this broader football moment and football season.

(19:17):

So last fall, we had partnered with football fans, wives, girlfriends, and content creators who have a natural fandom to football, and they brought to life their at-home fan experience, how they get ready for game day using, of course, products from Best Buy. And really where we saw the gold is their humor in the rituals of the season and being a fan and getting ready for the game time experience. And so it really helped us expand and surround that TV buy and have that content live and social and tie directly to that cultural moment.

Emmy Liederman (19:53):

Totally. Again, I feel like it's examples of athletics, maybe if they felt like they were targeted to a certain demographic, just feeling more disarming and this idea that everyone can participate in some way. Alison, I know you spoke about having a strategy with influencer marketing that doesn't just stay on social, it exists on other platforms and it's really connected throughout. So I'm curious, you integrated creators into your CTV ads for the first time this holiday season. So really kind of high pressure moment of the year you decided to try this out. How did you land on this approach?

Alison O'Keefe (20:38):

We are always innovating in holiday and always innovating, of course, with our influencer team, but we really identified through research that customers are looking for more lo-fi, relatable content across screens. And that's kind of just how popular social media is now, that how do we make that premium environment feel a little bit more lo-fi and native? And so we started very, very early with exploring a test and learn approach. And so we started fairly small. So we took a portion of our budget and we identified one long-term influencer partner who could bring to life more holiday gifting message, but through the lens of her family. And so she created an incremental video that we ran in our CTV placement.

(21:25):

So it was the first time we'd had an influencer create it at home. There was no traditional production shoot. We were not on set with her. It was a standard remote partnership and a content review process. I want to be clear that we didn't just take her social video and place it on CTV. She created that asset based on our brief inputs. And then to ensure that we had the right type of video for the CTV environment, we added branded bumpers on the front and the back of her video because we needed the video to, of course, perform well in that environment. So we really started small and we were strategically partnered with our creative and media team to make sure that we were all working really cohesively on the same timelines, against the same brief with the same product set. And then this influencer asset just became one of the creative rotations we ran during holiday.

(22:20):

I will say it's early results. We're not quite fully through debriefing holiday, but I have early indications that it was on par with our other CTV assets that ran during this time. So we do think it's a fruitful territory for us to explore and think of going bigger and evolving into other moments throughout the year. I would say that it's just very interesting and different than social to be in this non-skippable media environment, where audiences on social maybe a little bit more lean back, swiping through content, and on CTV it is really the moment for the video to shine and a little bit more attention leaned in.

Emmy Liederman (23:01):

Totally. And I like that you said that you didn't just take the social assets and put it on CTV, because I'm sure some people that hear that you should be connecting the two are like, "Oh, that's just a simple exercise," when I'm sure it's anything but that.

Alison O'Keefe (23:13):

No. She was part of this overarching holiday campaign and she created her standard, regular content and also shared that. So she had her social content and then she also had the CTV asset, and it was part of a collection of ads that ran during holiday.

Emmy Liederman (23:32):

Gotcha. Unfortunately, we are nearing the end of our time, but would love ... Last question for Nicole, as social streaming and live TV continue to merge, how is DICK'S staying ahead of the curve?

Nicole Marcus (23:44):

Great question. I think we're staying ahead by being social-first. And that would be my advice to anybody is, even though we're talking about CTV, it's always a social-first mindset, meet people where they are. So for us, this means, like I've been saying, showing up and prioritizing live events, cultural moments, real life moments where people want that connection. I think it's also in how we design content. And it's obviously social-first, but to Alison's point, I think having partnerships work harder for you. So are there additional deliverables and can we extend to e-comm? There's other avenues and channels for us to extend those partnerships beyond, maybe even longer form content going forward as something we're exploring in additional channels like LinkedIn and YouTube.

(24:30):

And I think third, a really big focus for us, especially knowing social is so trend-based and sports happen fast, style happens fast, so for us, how do we move fast but also maintain brand safety? And I think for us, having those long-term partnerships definitely help build the trust and partnerships. And they're able to understand your brand. There's a level of trust that's built there. And same thing with employees. I know I keep mentioning them, but they know your brand, they know the products better than some people probably working at corporate because they're the ones in store selling it every single day. They're the ones using it.

(25:07):

And also, I find our employees are our fastest-generating content. So definitely an avenue that we're continuing to look and build is, beyond just those celebrities how do we partner more? Emmy, you brought up local level. We open stores in some obscure locations across the US and there's not always large influencers to partner with, so definitely looking more at a nano level at that, in where we're opening up new store locations.

Emmy Liederman (25:36):

Totally.

Nicole Marcus (25:36):

Think social-first.

Emmy Liederman (25:38):

Yeah. Yeah. And I love the idea of checking yourself and saying, "How much do I actually know about this stuff? And where can people that are actually doing the work fill in the gaps?" So I think that's all we have time for today.