Creator and Influencer Trends Brand Marketers Need To Know About Right Now

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Arby’s and Trisha Paytas: YouTube star Trisha Paytas has heavily featured Arby’s in her videos over the past seven years, as she herself highlighted in a recent Instagram post. Last week, Arby’s leaned into that connection between Paytas and the restaurant chain and cast her as the star of a new social media ad promoting its Jamocha Shake. The self-referential spot nods to several memes involving Paytas, such as jokes around the unconventional names she’s given to her children—including her one-month-old son, Aquaman—and a viral clip of Paytas struggling to hear what someone is saying to her.

Creative agency Juxtapose Studio was behind the campaign, which also features actor Vinita Khilnani

Lucky Brand and Addison Rae: Star-studded denim ads have been dominating the social media news cycle since late July, when American Eagle rolled out its controversial campaign with actress Sydney Sweeney. Social media has been buzzing about Gap’s collaboration with girl group Katseye since its debut last Tuesday, for instance. Now, Lucky Brand is joining the fray with a campaign fronted by influencer and pop singer Addison Rae, who co-designed its new style of low-rise flare jeans.

Rae was also the creative director for the Lucky Brand campaign promoting the new jeans.

Sweetgreen and Dan Drake: Sweetgreen’s latest influencer campaign doesn’t feature a social media star like Paytas or Rae. Instead, the salad chain teamed up with goat dairy farmer Dan Drake on a short film and several social media posts highlighting his California farm, Drake Family Farms. Sweetgreen also flew Drake to New York, documenting the experience (and Drake’s excitement at seeing his farm displayed on a massive screen in Times Square) in a video that has garnered 2.3 million views on TikTok.

The partnership with Drake is the second installment of Sweetgreen’s “Faces of the Farm” content series, which spotlights the farmers who supply fruits, vegetables, cheeses and other ingredients to Sweetgreen.

Naked Juice and Coco Gauff: The US Open tennis tournament kicked off in New York last week, and Naked Juice leveraged the occasion to launch a new pineapple orange smoothie with tennis star Coco Gauff. Gauff, who became Naked Juice’s “chief smoothie officer” in June 2024, was also the focal point of the brand’s bodega-inspired Nolita pop-up over the weekend.

The brand invited several influencers to meet Gauff at a “Coco’s Corner Store” pop-up, including Katie Feeney, who ESPN recently signed as a sports and lifestyle content creator, and creator Khadim Thiam, a college student who explores New York with his friend group.

Eos and Paul Fino, Funmi Monet, Soraya Raji and more: Fragrance remained the fastest-growing beauty category in the first half of 2025, partially fueled by content creators sharing their favorite combinations of lotions, perfumes and other personal care products. Eos leaned into the “FragranceTok” phenomenon last week by hosting 10 creators in the fragrance content niche (such as Paul Fino, Funmi Monet and Soraya Raji) on a New York brand trip. During the three-day trip, the creators visited perfume labs, participated in a fragrance layering masterclass and attended a panel discussion with two perfumers from fragrance manufacturer Robertet (moderated by Ad Age).

Social media screenshot

Instagram streamlines content series: With lengthy video series such as “Who TF Did I Marry?” and “I Fell in Love with My Psychiatrist” increasingly captivating the internet, Instagram is rolling out a new tool enabling users to sort their reels into series. The “link a reel” feature, announced last week, helps users drive viewers to the next video in a series via an on-screen link at the bottom of their reel.

TikTok connects college students: As the school year gets underway, TikTok is introducing a new “Campus Verification” feature to help students connect with other students who attend the same college as them. After confirming their school enrollment through UNiDAYS, a student verification platform, students can add the college they attend and their graduation year to the top of their TikTok accounts.

Meta AI expands access to its auto dubbing tool: Anyone with a public Instagram account—as well as any Facebook user with at least 1,000 followers—can now leverage Meta AI’s Translations tool, Meta announced last Tuesday. The AI-powered tool automatically dubs videos into other languages and modifies the movement of the user’s lips to match. Currently, users can only employ the tool to translate from English to Spanish and vice versa.

Industry updates

Acceleration Community of Companies hires a creator-in-residence: Agency network Acceleration Community of Companies (ACC) last week onboarded Cosette Rinab, a creator and digital strategist with an online following of more than 2.6 million, as its first-ever creator-in-residence. In her newly created role, Rinab will help guide creator strategies across the agencies in ACC’s network, including experiential studio Pink Sparrow, data-driven marketing agency Stripe Theory and PR firm DKC. She will also help brand clients across ACC agencies develop social commerce strategies, craft creator-led experiential activations and more.

In a press release, ACC CEO Michael Nyman said Rinab “embodies the new model of creator-led strategy” that will “help [ACC] clients show up with relevance on the platforms that matter, in the tone that resonates and with the creators who drive culture.”

TikTok of the week

As previously mentioned, Gap’s commercial starring Katseye remains in the social media spotlight, thanks in part to the playful choreography performed by the denim-clad girl group and backup dancers to the throwback hit “Milkshake” by Kelis. Hundreds of “Eyekons” (a nickname for Katseye fans) are posting videos across TikTok and Instagram of themselves dancing along to the beginning of the Gap ad, whether in their homes or in Gap stores (as in the above TikTok). The trend accelerated over the weekend after Robbie Blue, who choreographed the commercial, shared a tutorial for the dance.

This article was originally posted in Ad Age: HERE