Submitted by XOMAD

#MyBurtsBees

Influencer Marketing

XOMAD coordinated 11 influencers to post personalized Burt's Bees lip balms as holiday stocking stuffers on Instagram, work the agency reports delivered 70 Million impressions.

70MImpressions
+29%engagement vs industry standard
2.29%Average engagement rate
1,100Comments
207Posts

Case in 60 seconds

Burt's Bees needed its personalized lip balms understood as a holiday stocking stuffer within a buying window that closed at Cyber Monday, because a personalized order had to ship in time to arrive before Christmas.

The campaign appears to turn on the fact that a personalized gift is bought against a deadline rather than on impulse, so the most useful thing an influencer could hand a follower was the ordering cutoff.

The organizing thesis was to present the personalized balm as the stocking stuffer a follower could still order in time, carried under #MyBurtsBees by influencers speaking to their own followers.

XOMAD coordinated 11 influencers inside a window of less than a month, and each posted multiple times to Instagram and to Instagram Stories, telling followers that balms ordered by Cyber Monday would arrive before Christmas.

XOMAD reports 70 Million impressions and 207 posts, a 2.29% Average Engagement, over 1,100 comments from just 11 influencers, and campaign engagement 29% higher than the industry standard for branded content on Instagram.

Strategy Breakdown

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

Followers of the 11 influencers, addressed as holiday shoppers looking for a stocking stuffer who still had time to order a personalized balm before Christmas.
Holiday gifting runs against a shipping calendar rather than against the holiday itself, and a personalized product narrows that calendar further, so the tension the work addressed was buying in time rather than buying at all.
Lip balm is a low consideration purchase that is rarely treated as a gift, so the personalization was what allowed a stocking stuffer argument the base product could not carry on its own.
Based on the available evidence, Burt's Bees appears in the work as the maker of a customizable object rather than as a voice, which left the influencers to supply both the recommendation and the ordering deadline.
Repeat posting to both the feed and Stories from the same 11 accounts suggests a bet on familiarity, because a follower who has already seen a creator use the balm reads the next post as a recommendation rather than an advertisement.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • Instagram Stories

Partners

  • XOMAD (lead_agency)

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
Impressions70 Millionimpressions
engagement vs industry standardThe campaign engagement was 29% higher than the industry standard for branded content on Instagram.performance
Average engagement rate2.29%engagement_rate
CommentsOver 1,100 comments were generated from just 11 influencers.engagements
Posts207output
InfluencersThe 11 influencers posted multiple times to their Instagram and Instagram Stories.content_pieces

Why XOMAD's strategy worked

  1. 1

    A gifting campaign built around a personalization lead time gains a call to action for free, because the shipping cutoff gives a creator a reason to post again rather than only once.

  2. 2

    Concentrating 207 posts across only 11 influencers suggests repeat posting from a small roster, which lets each creator build the gifting message over several exposures rather than spend it in a single placement.

  3. 3

    Engagement expressed against an industry standard rather than as a raw count reads as an argument for how the roster was selected, since a comparative rate travels further with a client than a volume figure does.

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