SharkNinja Turns Its Own Engineers Into Its Newest Marketing Department

SharkNinja launched two creator programs on October 20 built to recruit customers, employees, and unlikely creators to sell its appliances ahead of the holidays, supplementing rather than replacing its existing celebrity and influencer deals. First Fans turns the company's more than 4,100 global employees, engineers, R&D staff, and test-kitchen workers included, into a trained, paid content pipeline. SharkNinja Storytellers is the consumer-facing version, an affiliate program with tiers from "everyday creators" earning 8 to 10 percent commission up to invitation-only VIPs earning 12 to 15 percent, open to anyone in the U.S. with at least 1,000 followers.

The company says it is chasing stories over stats. One video from an oil-field supply vessel worker with 460,000 TikTok followers pulled over 10 million views for a facial device; a video featuring the engineers behind its CRISPi microwave pulled 2.9 million views in its first week. "The shift we're making is actually away from categorizing people by their following," said Stacy Carpenter, SharkNinja's SVP of global social media, noting that high-reach creators "might not drive sales." SharkNinja's content generated more than 19 billion impressions across 200,000-plus posts this year, by its own count, though it has not disclosed sales tied to any individual video.

The bet is that an engineer talking about spills on the test-kitchen floor converts better than a polished influencer who has never touched the product. Whether that holds up past the holidays is the actual experiment here, not the follower count.

Source: Glossy

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →