Clorox Establishes Influencer Advisory Board, Tapping Hundreds To Bolster YouTube Presence

Clorox, the noted cleaning and consumer products brand, is looking to deepen its ties in the influencer world with the establishment of a new advisory council.

The council will comprise hundreds of influencer partners, per Digiday, who will participate in branded Clorox content. They will also collaborate with the company to conceive content suited for their viewers. Ensuing sponsorships will be focused on YouTube, with the aim of being “more human, more authentic, and less obvious in our approach towards driving demand,” Magnus Jonsson, Clorox’s U.S. VP of its cleaning division, told Digiday. “With millennial consumers, we’re recognizing that they fundamentally do not want to be advertised to, which means we need to develop less obvious advertising.”

Recent influencer partners for Clorox have included comedic couple vloggers Matt and Rebecca Zamolo (3.9 million subscribers), as well as family vlogging superstars The LaBrant Fam. (10.8 million subscribers). The concept of one of the ads is a ‘one-wipe challenge’ — undoubtedly inspired by the sorts of viral challenges that are proliferating on TikTok

— whereby the above creators competed to see who could clean the most surface area with a single Clorox wipe (see below).

Digiday reports that Clorox spent $9.6 million in total advertising in the first three quarters of 2019 — a noted drop from the $15.2 million it deployed in 2018 over the same time period. Today, across all of Clorox’s brands — including Burt’s Bees, Glad, Hidden Valley, Brita, and Pine-Sol — roughly 60% of the company’s ad spend went to digital outlets, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, and Walmart.

Jonsson declined to comment on what ratio of Clorox’s ad spend goes to digital, but told Digiday that TV advertising still delivers good returns for the brand.