TL;DR
CPG is one of the hardest categories to prove influencer ROI because purchase decisions happen in-store or at the end of a retailer search, not directly from a link click
Brands like Eggland’s Best, Palermo’s Pizza, and Trident prove that creator campaigns can move both brand and performance metrics when the strategy is right
The consistent factors across every campaign: creator-brand fit over follower count, platform-specific content strategies, and measurement frameworks built into the brief from the start
Table of Contents
Every CPG marketing team has had some variation of this conversation: Influencer budgets are growing, the case for creator-led content keeps getting stronger, and yet the board still wants to know where the proof is. It’s a harder question in CPG than in DTC categories, where a link or a promo code directly ties content to a sale. When purchases happen in a grocery aisle or at the end of a retailer search, attribution gets complicated.
The brands succeeding in CPG influencer marketing are making sharper strategic choices: the right platforms, the right creator tiers, and content that was built to do a specific job.
Building awareness and brand affinity at scale
Awareness is where most CPG influencer programs start. Here are two brands that built it at scale, and did it with clear strategic intent.
How Eggland’s Best built an evergreen content engine that compounds over time
Brand awareness is the biggest challenge for most CPG brands. For Eggland’s Best, product awareness wasn’t an issue. Their challenge was differentiation. Getting consumers to understand why their eggs are nutritionally and culinarily superior to an ordinary egg requires explanation, context, and authentic storytelling that’s difficult to scale with brand-owned content alone.
Rather than campaign-by-campaign creator activations, Eggland’s Best worked with Later to source creators who could produce recipe-forward content with a strong product narrative. This content would live indefinitely on both the brand’s channels and the creator’s own feeds. The “New Year, New You” consumer moment gave the campaign a compelling entry point, but the underlying strategy was about building a content library that pays returns over years, not weeks.
Later’s influencer search tool helped source creators who resonated with the brand’s target psychographics: food enthusiasts, home cooks, health-conscious families, and recipe creators whose audiences were already seeking the kind of nutritional storytelling Eggland’s Best needed.
Campaign results:
5.8M impressions
7.9x the industry engagement benchmark on Pinterest
Evergreen content library reusable for paid and organic placements on an ongoing basis
Takeaway for marketers: When evaluating influencer investment, factor in content lifespan. If you’re sourcing creators and not negotiating perpetuity rights, you’re leaving value on the table. Recipe and lifestyle content built around a clear product story can run in paid placements for years, and the upfront cost looks different when you account for that.
How Chobani used Twitch to invest in tomorrow’s consumer
Most CPG brands think about influencer marketing as a way to reach existing buyers. Chobani used it to cultivate a consumer who wasn’t quite there yet. The Oatmilk Cosmic Race campaign, which was built around a custom Roblox game, was about establishing relevance with a new audience described as younger Millennials and older Gen Zers who switch between dairy and non-dairy and are actively online. Getting in front of that audience in a way that felt native to their world required showing up where they actually spent time, especially as they decide over the next several years which brands earn a place in their consideration set.
Twitch was the right answer, but getting it right required accepting a small creator pool. Chobani needed streamers who had at least one million Twitch followers, an active Roblox history, no competitor brand deals in the prior 90 days, and the gaming credibility to carry the integration without it feeling forced. That last criterion is the one most brands underestimate. Later’s team sourced a tight cohort that cleared every bar, handled scripting and day-of monitoring, and gave Chobani a campaign infrastructure they hadn’t had access to before.
Campaign results:
80K Twitch stream views, against a benchmark of 19K-35K
16.7K unique chat messages, overwhelmingly positive
11 non-Twitch posts driving 7M impressions and 101.3K engagements
Three boosted Instagram posts adding 15M impressions, 98.3K engagements, and 39.5K clicks
Takeaway for marketers: Before briefing your next campaign, ask who you’re actually trying to reach in three years, not just this quarter. If that audience lives somewhere your brand hasn’t activated yet, the cost of showing up authentically now is almost always lower than trying to break in later.
Driving engagement and cultural relevance
Not every CPG product has built-in excitement. Here’s how two brands generated cultural relevance by getting creator and platform fit exactly right.
How Palermo’s Pizza used #NationalPizzaMonth to establish a TikTok presence from scratch
Palermo’s Pizza had no influencer strategy before coming to Later. The brand wanted to use National Pizza Month as a launchpad to build presence for its two distinct sub-brands, Urban Pie and Screamin’ Sicilian, on TikTok and Instagram. The goal was also to generate high-quality video content that could be repurposed across brand-owned channels.
The campaign brief required matching each brand’s distinct persona to the right creator profile. For Screamin’ Sicilian, the target was males aged 21-34 with comedic edge. For Urban Pie, the focus was food-forward creators whose content centered on lifestyle and meal occasions. Two different brands and audiences, both running simultaneously under a shared campaign umbrella. By aligning the activation to a specific cultural calendar moment, the brand team was able to generate native, contextually relevant content without having to manufacture a reason for the category to trend.
Campaign results:
12 TikTok creators produced 12 videos, generating 51.9K impressions and 1.5K engagements with a 3% average engagement rate
13 Instagram creators produced 15 Reels, generating 139.5K impressions and 8.2K engagements at a 5.9% average engagement rate
Overall positive sentiment across both platforms
Takeaway for marketers: If you’re not mapping creator selection to a specific cultural moment on your calendar, you’re making the brief harder than it needs to be. Social holidays and category moments give creators a natural reason to post and audiences a natural reason to engage. Start there, then build the creator profile backward from the moment.
How Trident proved that even gum can earn 7.7% engagement rates
Trident Pocket Packs faced a difficult brief: drive impressions and clicks to a retail store locator for a new product launch at 7-Eleven. Gum is about as low-consideration a CPG category as exists. There’s no recipe content and no visual drama. Getting creators to produce content that feels authentic and earns real engagement around a pack of gum requires serious intentionality around creator selection and creative direction.
Later and Phoenix Creative (on behalf of Mondelēz International) activated a mix of micro- and macro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram, building campaigns around highly stylized lifestyle content: fresh breath for a date, enjoying gum in the park, and on-the-go moments that felt natural to each creator’s aesthetic.
The brief required creators with youthful, energetic, family-friendly content histories and audiences that skewed toward the brand’s target demographic. Pre-vetting included screening for overly contentious content and competitor adjacency.
Campaign results:
70 pieces of content across TikTok and Instagram
1.7M total impressions
117.4K total engagements
7.7% average engagement rate for in-feed content
5,200 total clicks at an average cost-per-click of $6.11
Takeaway for marketers: Don’t let a low-consideration product category lower your engagement expectations. If you’re giving creators a lifestyle context to work with rather than a product feature to explain, the engagement follows.
Converting interest into sales
The final, and arguably most challenging, measure of influencer marketing is performance content. Here's an example of a CPG brand whose creator program converted into trackable sales.
How f’real turned organic TikTok traction into a measurable sales lift
f’real foods had an unconventional starting point. The brand first noticed that #frealmilkshake was organically taking over TikTok’s For You Page. Consumers were already making and filming their milkshakes without being asked. Rather than let that organic energy dissipate, f’real partnered with Later to understand the influencer opportunity and build on the momentum deliberately.
The approach matched high-energy, self-expressive TikTok creators to the brand’s Gen Z target demographic. The brief was built around authenticity and “freal moments that matter.” This content felt native to TikTok’s culture and resonated with the 13-17-year-old cohort the brand was trying to reach.
Campaign results:
3 videos reached viral levels, each earning over 1.5M likes
$0.82 average CPM, a 35% decrease from the $1.27 f'real had been paying for paid social ads
6% increase in awareness among 13-17-year-olds, per a Seurat Group usage study
Significant lift in unit sales since the brand’s TikTok presence was established
Takeaway for marketers: Monitor organic platform activity around your brand before you brief an influencer campaign. If consumers are already creating content unprompted, that’s your creative direction. Build the paid strategy around what’s already working rather than trying to manufacture a new behavior from scratch.
What these results have in common
Each of these brands operates differently. What runs through all of them is a refusal to treat creator marketing ROI as a volume game. Here are the takeaways enterprise CPG brands can apply to their next campaign:
Creator-brand fit: Vet creators for alignment with your product category over follower count or aesthetic. An audience that already cares about what you make is worth more than a large audience that doesn’t.
Platform-specific content: Brief for the platform your audience is on, not the platform that’s easiest to manage. If the content could run anywhere, it probably won’t perform everywhere.
Multi-tier creator mixes: Use creator tiers intentionally. Macro reach and micro trust serve different functions in the same campaign. Decide what you need from each tier before you start sourcing.
Clear objectives tied to measurable outcomes: Define what success looks like before the campaign launches because v. Vague goals produce uninterpretable results. If you can’t measure it from the start, you won’t be able to defend the spend at the end.
CPG is one of the most competitive categories for consumer attention, and purchase decisions rarely happen on the platform where the content lives. The brands building strategic creator programs now are the ones who’ll have the content, the data, and the audience relationships to compete through the rest of this decade.
If you’re planning your next influencer program and want to see what a strategic partnership looks like in practice, explore Later’s influencer marketing services.
