ICYMI: Brand Lessons from Microsoft + Alix Earle's Collab
8 takeaways for your own partnerships
Morning, if you’re on autopilot after a long weekend, this brand playbook for Microsoft’s Alix Earle collab might help! I’ve also included a few relevant headlines at the bottom to get you up to speed today — including the news that TikTok might relaunch this fall!
Microsoft didn’t just tap tech influencers when marketing Copilot (its Gen AI assistant) to a wider audience — they went straight to the top of lifestyle creator culture.
This quarter alone, they’ve worked with over 75 creators, including Oliver and Phoenix, the Kalogeras Sisters, Madeline White, and, notably, Alix Earle.
To unpack Microsoft’s partnership, I spoke with Joey Maestas, Head of Creators for Microsoft Copilot, and his agency partner, David Herman, GM at Fresh Tape Media.
From Microsoft’s spontaneous outreach to the one-page brief they sent (hear that, brands?!), this is a behind-the-scenes look at how it all came together — and what you can steal for your next campaign, whether or not you’re working with Big Al.
Trust me, you’re going to want to take notes.
ICYMI: Not everybody gets to work with Alix Earle, so that's pretty cool. What's the scope of this partnership with her?
Joey Maestas: When Alix first announced she was going from podcasts to YouTube vlogs, our team had a group text. ‘How can we become the first brand sponsor for this new, relaunched YouTube vlog that she's doing?’
We reached out to figure out, one, was interested and, two, how we could naturally integrate into her vlogs. And there was mutual interest. She was very interested in using both AI as a creator and working with an AI partner, she just hadn't found the right one yet. So we hopped on a call with her team to take them through Copilot, how it works, and different features. We really push empathy and EQ scenarios a lot. We try to stay away from the Google, Bing search cues: Where can I find a restaurant? It’s really, more mental health and different scenarios.
We were able to come to an agreement with her, to get integrated into her vlog. So you'll see there are ad reads, and also integrations in each of the various vlogs that she has. And then it also spans across TikTok and Instagram as well.
There was one that went out on her TikTok where she's in the backseat of a car on her way to an event, and she is talking to Copilot about trolls that are in her comments, saying she looks older than she is. ‘How to deal with trolls?’ And this was something that she just came up with naturally. Her team messaged us the night before another TikTok was supposed to go out. It was a, ‘Get ready with me.’ And they're like, ‘You know what? Alix feels this would be a lot more natural, and her fans would react a lot better to this one than the original one.’ ‘Yeah, this is great. Let's pivot.’
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ICYMI: It sounds like this was driven internally with you guys monitoring her availability. Who’s the Alix Earle fan?
JM: I'm an Alix Earle fan. David is. We also work with James Brownstein and Poster Child Agency and they helped us think beyond just reach. It was about finding creators who made sense for the message and could connect in a real way.
We’d been following Alix’s content, especially different brand partnerships that she had been doing, specifically her TikTok as that was driving massive numbers.
She's posting constantly and, come to find out, she edits all the content herself as well, which is very impressive.
We were on TikTok and saw her post. And we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh. We’ve got to reach out, this is our moment where we can pitch something that makes sense, and let's be part of something first.’ We're trying not to force partnerships. We want to be the first of something. We want to be a big moment in your life. We don't want to hire you just for a post and force it.
ICYMI: What’s involved with going out to Alix Earle, I imagine there are a lot of internal stakeholders involved in approving or shaping this type of partnership?
JM: We have a pretty small team of decision makers. We have a foundation of who we want to work with and why we work with someone. We really want them to care about AI and want to use it. So that gives us leeway to go out and make partnerships where we don't need a ton of approvals. It was literally just a quick Teams message with our team aligned, ‘Let's go get her.’
ICYMI: How many people are on the Creator team?
JM: On the Creator team? There's three of us.
ICYMI: Was there anything about working with Alix that surprised you?
JM: The pitching ideas and how fast they come. Sometimes, you'll have to chase different creators to get their content, or get ideas. From the start with her, we were getting three to five ideas based on her itinerary because she travels all over the place. And we would get really thoughtful use cases. ‘Here's how we think we could do it.’ We would choose our favorite and, boom, we would go. That was very welcoming and surprising.
ICYMI: Did this partnership add a level of pressure, not only for the delivery of the campaign but just how many eyeballs were going to be on this?
JM: You want to get the content right, because there's obviously a lot of extra eyeballs — both internally and externally — on this. And how she presents the app is going to push a lot of different messaging out.
But we didn't want to go away from the guardrails of how we work with creators. We have the standpoint of, ‘We're not going to give you a 10-page brief. We have a quick, one-page brief. Here are great examples of other creator content. Here are some do's and don'ts. Here's what's worked well in the past.’
We don't want to force someone into something, and we didn't want to do the same thing with her. So we just said, ‘Here's what we think. You know your audience best. Go.’ It still worked, even for someone as massive as her so we held true to that.
ICYMI: Everybody needs to pay attention to that — a one-page brief is the way to go!
JM: We go back and forth about this, because there'll be teams who say, ‘OK, we need to put this, this and this in the brief.’ It gets too much for a creator, and then they start thinking about the brief rather than thinking about their content. And we don't want that. We really want them to see, ‘OK, boom, boom, boom. Let's go create.’
ICYMI: Was there a conscious decision in terms of blending a consumer-style influencer with an AI-powered productivity tool?
JM: This has been going on since last year, when Copilot became an app. We've been blending more lifestyle creators because it's something we've seen success across the other different brands. Surface is using more lifestyle creators versus straight tech creators.
Our first real big one was actually last year with Kristin Juszczyk and Libby Dunn. Kristin became popular when she made Taylor Swift the jacket she wore for the playoff game. That was one where we thought, ‘How can we work with her on using AI to create some sort of new fashion item?’ And Libby was going to the Olympics, so we partnered with both her and Kristin on a collab where Kristin was using AI to get ideas to design her a blazer to wear during the Paris Olympics. Since then, we've worked with Brooke Monk on a few different ones. We've been working with Rickey Thompson.
ICYMI: What is the mindset shift in thinking beyond tech creators? What spurred that?
JM: The followers for a lot of these beauty and lifestyle creators, they're not familiar with Copilot. AI was still, ‘What is it? How do I use it?’ Seeing people in the comments of these lifestyle creators say, ‘Oh, wow. I can use it for that? I had no idea this even existed.’ Where sometimes with some of the tech creators, there's already a familiarity, so there's a different content approach. This was really starting upper funnel where people are like, ‘Oh, I had no idea this even existed or this was a thing that I could do.’ There are teachable moments there to people that normally wouldn't be familiar with some of these tools.
ICYMI: You mentioned there was a get-ready-with-me video in the works, but it got replaced. Will that GRWM ever see the light of day?
JM: Oh, it did, actually. It went through her Instagram stories instead.
ICYMI: Will it ever make the feed?
David Herman: I know Joey mentioned this a little but something that's been a real focus for us this quarter — not just with Alix but with everyone we've worked with — is we're in full test mode. We're testing every platform, every medium of distribution and understanding what's really working on a macro level, but then also what's working individually for each creator.
It's not like we're learning this from scratch, but from a Copilot-specific perspective, what content is resonating through what medium that's going to help us achieve the goals, which is ultimately people downloading and using Copilot.
Next quarter, I think you'll see more direction from us with someone like Alix — I'm not saying Alix specifically — but we're going to go with an Instagram story-only deal because we know from our testing that we're converting the most on a story perspective from that creator.
ICYMI: You say you're in test mode, what are you tracking?
DH: Number one is downloads and usage of the product. We’re not just in this for people knowing what it is from an awareness perspective. We want people taking an action, downloading and using it, and actually sending a chat via Copilot.
We're seeing great success not only with downloads, but the percentage of people that are using the product after they are downloading it from one of our programs is exceptionally high, comparatively. The fact that the influencers and creators we're partnering with have so much built-in trust with their audience that their followers are taking the step to actually try it out. That is our number one metric.
But of course, the AI space is crowded right now, and there's always going to be an element of awareness and understanding of, ‘What is this Copilot thing and how does it fit in within Microsoft?’
Third, it's not really a stated KPI, but it's important to note and the reason we had Alix on the panel in Cannes last week, we want Copilot and Microsoft to be cool and relevant for people. It's not just Word and Excel, it's a true consumer lifestyle product that can be relevant for absolutely everyone.
ICYMI: Are there any lessons you can share in terms of working with a lifestyle creator on a tech campaign and or working with one of the biggest creators in the world on a campaign?
JM: Honestly, it's really showing them the product and how it is relevant to them, doing your research on them, and different things that they've created in the past, or things that they've talked about, and then showing them how that can work in their own lives. Showing them those use cases, specifically.
ICYMI: Can I slip in one last question? Did you use Microsoft Copilot to figure out what you were going to say to Alix Earle?
JM: Oh, one-hundred percent. Yeah. It helps us with our brainstorming. We have definitely done that. It's a creative sounding board. We’ll use it to test ideas, play with tone, or get unstuck when we’re too close to something.
*This interview has been lightly edited for length
💡🔑 ICYMI: MORE BRAND PLAYBOOKS
👀 ICYMI: JUST THE HEADLINES
TikTok plans to launch a new TikTok app, known internally as “M2,” to U.S. app stores on September 5, ahead of a planned sale of the app to a group of investors -The Information
TikTok lays off more employees working on TikTok Shop US -TechCrunch
Threads launched DMs, separate from Instagram messaging -Adam Mosseri
The tech bros are beefing: Sam Altman slams Meta’s AI talent-poaching spree: ‘Missionaries will beat Mercenaries’ -Wired
Walmart launched Create-it Studios — a creative production space in a Walmart supercenter in Tennessee -Walmart
Amazon is doubling commissions for influencers during Prime Day -Adweek
Great interview and insights, Lia!
Such an insightful interview Lia! Intrigued that she edits her own content - kinda makes sense and also wonder if it slows her down OR if she's so zippy and speedy with it to nail her voice, personality, vibe etc she just can't outsource it.