Brand Influencer

COML 509 - Week 4 Assignment

Victoria Garrick Browne is a social media content creator, mental health and body positivity advocate, public speaker, and podcast host.

She hosted a TED Talk in 2017 focused on mental health for student athletes leaning on her own experiences as a Division I volleyball player. Since then, she has started a nonprofit and advocacy group raising awareness of mental health in student athletes called The Hidden Opponent, #RealPost social media campaign, a weekly podcast called Real Talk, and has been an advocate for mental health and body positivity especially online.

Victoria’s socials

TikTok | @victoriabrowne | 1.3M followers | 100.2M likes Instagram | @victoriabrowne | 452K followers | 1,612 posts YouTube | @victoriabrowne | 285K subscribers | 280 videos Facebook | Victoria Garrick Browne | 3.4K followers | 2.5K likes X | @victoriagarrick | 10.2K Followers | 1,470 posts

She posts on TikTok and Instagram the most, followed by Facebook, YouTube, and X. Most of her posts across all her social media platforms are the same; however, she does post unique content to some of the apps and not others. This strategy helps connect faithful followers to consistent content and drives home her messaging; it also connects those who only follow one of her accounts to her messaging as well. She has much more reach on TikTok and Instagram due to the continued popularity of those sites to connect with Gen Z and millennials.

Victoria’s Brand Partnerships

Midol | a period pain reliever Little Words Project | a company focused on inspiring kindness amongst women through the words on handcrafted bracelets. They have a partnership with Victoria's nonprofit organization, The Hidden Opponent, to launch two new bracelets

CVS Pharmacy | retail chain that sells prescriptions and general goods. They have a campaign called Beauty Unaltered, which pledges to promote self-image to the next generation

United Airlines | major airline company

MiO Energy | a water enhancer

Victoria’s brand partnerships come from various different markets, which helps her have some versatility and reach to different consumers. As with all influencers, their partnership videos touch on the key talking points to ensure the company's mission or intent comes through from the influencer. I think one of the positive things about Victoria's partnership posts is that she appears to be genuine and passionate about the product, which is not always the case with some of the bigger influencers.

When it comes to social media, it can be challenging to capture genuine vulnerability and authenticity. It has become far too easy to put out this narrative that everything is sunshine and roses, when in fact, everyone is human and that comes with various feelings, attitudes, and problems. Some of the main strategies that Victoria leans into is being authentic and transparent. She often posts how she is feeling insecure about a body part in an outfit or how she approaches intuitive eating. Sometimes the topic can be a little heavy but Victoria approaches it with honesty which helps the viewer feel comfortable and receptive to the message.

When she launched #RealPost, an unfiltered social media campaign, one of the main goals was to portray more authenticity and realness on social media. Behind the filters and carefully curated content, people can be masking how they are truly feeling or the challenges they face and she wanted to break down those walls and encourage more humanity to the apps. Through this campaign, she made a commitment not to utilize filters or photoshop on her social media pages, which is not something every influencer does (and some will openly talk about how they use filters). This mission is in direct alignment with her partnership with CVS Pharmacy. She talks about how she is committed to #beautyunaltered and the ways she would edit photos and curate her image on her social media pages while she was in college.

Overall, I think Victoria Garrick Browne's social media influencing strategy helps her connect with followers and potential followers. She is focused on promoting positive social media habits, being vulnerable about mental health and body image, and aligns with brands who have similar missions.