The End of Excessive Influencer Gifting: Why Brands Must Get More Strategic

You'll never guess the distasteful PR package one Tiktok influencer recently received, and the immediate backlash that she gave the popular makeup brand... A lesson to all brands doing influencer marketing👇

As creator Olivia Marcus revealed in a recent TikTok, she was bombarded out of the blue with a jumbo lipstick full of confetti and 19 lip products from MAC. No note. No warning. Just excessive products she neither wanted nor needed.

PSA to all brands - sending influencers random boxes of unwanted stuff needs to stop. Excess waste helps no one. Olivia called them out publicly not to shame MAC, but to highlight a wider problem.

This spray-and-pray approach many brands still rely on shows zero respect for the very influencers they’re trying to connect with. It damages trust and hurts our planet. The days of wasteful influencer overload are over.

As an industry, we have to do better by moving away from lazy mass gifting to more meaningful, personalized experiences. Smaller gifts tailored to specific creators have a bigger impact and strengthen relationships. Add a personal touch with a handwritten card or note. Treat influencers like partners - not just promotional tools.

The results speak for themselves - huge organic reach without any waste or backlash. Brands like Poppi execute this well by sending 9 different flavors of Poppi flavors to a select few creators. Why this works well is because the lifecycle of that entire Poppi PR package can be only a handful of days (saying this as an avid Poppi drinker), while the lifecycle of 19 shades of lipstick could be well over 4 years (saying this as a person who wears lip products everyday).

Let MAC be a lesson to us all. Influencer marketing works best when brands nurture real connections, not blindly bombard people with random merch. Stay humble, thoughtful and intentional with every gifted product. Do that and you’ll be delighted by the positive response.

Keep ignoring creator feedback though and you risk becoming the next poster child for influencer marketing waste.