Submitted by ButtermilkAgency IPI Score 66/100

The Community Wears Gap

Influencer Marketing

Buttermilk built an always-on, three-tier creator gifting programme for Gap that beat its impressions KPI by 227%, its engagement rate KPI by 57%, and its view rate KPI by 224%.

+224%View rate, over KPI
+227%Impressions, over KPI
+57%Engagement rate, over KPI
7.7MImpressions KPI
6.93%Engagement rate KPI
14.5%View rate KPI

About the campaign

Gap had clawed its way back into cultural conversation through high-profile celebrity moments, including collaborations with Tyla and Troye Sivan, but those spikes did not sustain community presence between activations, leaving gaps in share of voice that a heritage brand with Gap's breadth could ill afford.

For the 2024 programme, Buttermilk replaced the spike model with a system: a three-tier creator network in which macro creators of 300,000 to 1 million followers set tone and rebuilt perception, mid-tier tastemakers of 50,000 to 300,000 rooted in music, dance, and culture supplied credibility, and a brand fan layer of 1,000 to 15,000-follower dancers, stylists, and niche producers generated continuous content volume. Rather than scripted messaging, all tiers received product gifting and an open brief inviting them to express Gap through their own passion, whether fashion, music, art, dance, or sport, with bespoke creator profiles matched to the brand's core consumer groups of zillenial men and women, families, and Gen Alpha. Distribution ran through creator-owned Instagram and TikTok channels, producing 2,400 pieces of content against a 2,000-piece target.

Buttermilk reports 25 million impressions against a 7.7 million KPI and a 10.9 percent average engagement rate against a 6.93 percent benchmark; all figures are agency self-reported.

Case in 60 seconds

Gap had rebuilt cultural attention through one-off celebrity collaborations, including partnerships with Tyla and Troye Sivan, but those spike moments did not sustain ongoing community presence between activations.

One-off celebrity activations generate short-term spikes but do not maintain brand relevance continuously; Gap needed a system that could keep it connected to culture across distinct audience segments — zillenial men and women, families, and Gen Alpha — without relying on large-name talent at every step.

Buttermilk designed a three-tier creator gifting programme — macro creators (300K–1M followers) to set tone and reach, mid-tier tastemakers (50K–300K) rooted in music, dance, and culture to drive credibility, and brand fans (1K–15K) to generate continuous content volume — each tier assigned a distinct function rather than a uniform brief.

Creators across all three tiers received open briefs and product gifting, encouraging them to express themselves through whichever passion — fashion, music, art, dance, or sport — was authentic to them, with distribution through creator-owned Instagram and TikTok channels.

Against a KPI of 7.7M impressions the programme delivered 25M, a 227% increase; average engagement rate reached 10.9% against a 6.93% benchmark; and 2,400 pieces of content were published against a 2,000-piece target. All figures are agency self-reported.

Strategy Breakdown

The primary strategy-learning section — interpretation, not a press-release summary.

Gap's target audience spanned four consumer groups: zillenial men and women, families, and Gen Alpha. Creator selection used bespoke profiles tied to each group, meaning different tiers of the network were matched to different audience segments rather than broadcasting uniformly.
Gap had returned to cultural conversation through high-profile celebrity moments — collaborations with Tyla and Troye Sivan that raised the brand's share of voice — but the brand's presence dropped between those events. The tension was between the visibility that celebrity moments deliver and the continuity that cultural relevance requires.
One-off influencer and celebrity activations are a standard industry approach but structurally produce attention spikes rather than sustained presence. For a brand with Gap's heritage and breadth of audience, relying on individual paid moments at the top of the creator pyramid left large gaps in share of voice.
Gap acted as a cultural platform rather than a broadcaster: providing product and an open creative brief, then stepping back to allow creators to express themselves authentically within Gap's brand territory. The brand's role was to supply the thematic frame — the clothing and the heritage — while creators supplied the cultural specificity.
Creators post more naturally and prolifically when briefed around their own areas of passion rather than against a scripted message. The open-brief model was designed to produce content that felt personal to each creator while remaining coherent as a Gap campaign, reducing the production bottleneck of brand-approved scripts at scale.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Creator-owned Instagram posts and Stories
  • Creator-owned TikTok videos
  • Open-brief content across fashion, music, art, dance, and sport verticals — source

Partners

  • Buttermilk (lead agency: creator discovery, outreach, briefing, and relationship management) — source

Participation mechanic

  • Product gifting to creators across all three tiers without requiring individual paid contracts at every level — source
  • Open creative brief encouraging creators to post within their own area of passion — source
  • Bespoke creator profiles matched to Gap's core consumer groups (zillenial men and women, families, Gen Alpha) — source

Creator role

  • Macro creators (300K–1M followers): set tone of voice, maximise social reach, rebuild consumer perception — source
  • Mid-tier tastemakers (50K–300K followers): rooted in music, dance, and culture; drive cultural credibility and originality — source
  • Brand fans (1K–15K followers): always-on community of dancers, stylists, and niche content producers generating continuous content volume — source

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult typeConfidence
Impressions, over KPI+227%ReachAgency reported
Impressions KPI7.7MBenchmarkAgency reported
Engagement rate, over KPI+57%EngagementAgency reported
Engagement rate KPI6.93%BenchmarkAgency reported
View rate, over KPI+224%EngagementAgency reported
View rate KPI14.5%BenchmarkAgency reported

Why Buttermilk's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Tier by function, not just by follower size. Assigning distinct roles to macro, mid-tier, and brand-fan creators allowed a single programme to serve reach, credibility, and content volume objectives at the same time, rather than treating all creator tiers as interchangeable media placements.

  2. 2

    Open briefs can increase both output volume and content variety. Allowing creators to post within their own areas of passion — fashion, music, art, dance, or sport — rather than against a scripted message contributed to 2,400 pieces of content, 20% above the 2,000-piece target.

  3. 3

    Gifting at scale requires rigorous creator profiling upfront. The programme used bespoke audience and behavioural profiles tied to Gap's core consumer groups (zillenial men and women, families, Gen Alpha). That selectivity was cited as the mechanism that kept gifted content on-brand despite the open creative latitude given to creators.

  4. 4

    Always-on beats always-spiking. The explicit strategic shift away from event-based celebrity moments toward continuous creator community building is the stated design rationale. The programme was built to maintain brand heat between high-profile collaborations rather than relying on each new celebrity activation to reset awareness.

  5. 5

    Gifting as an activation mechanism allows scale without a fully paid-partnership cost structure at every tier. The programme ran at a volume of 2,400 pieces of content by combining macro paid-or-gifted relationships with mid-tier and nano gifting, reducing the cost per piece of content relative to an all-paid model.

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