Creator TATTOOS for brand collab?
Creator Conversation with Annika Lange, Associate Director of Client Services at Fohr
Welcome to “Creator Conversations,” a weekly feature on Paid Partnership where I interview a prominent creator, agent, marketer or industry professional to discuss wide-ranging topics from outreach to negotiation to content.
It’s not every day that I come across a creator collaboration that makes me think “dang, I wish I would’ve thought of that and/or even had the opportunity to execute” but scrolling my feeds a while back, I was confronted with this exact scenario.
The Hockey Guys (THG), a collective of former college hockey players turned creators, sought to memorialize their time together in the only way a 20-something knows how: Tattoos.
Little did they know at the time that their sentimental team-bonding experience would land them an award-winning brand deal years down the line.
I sat down with the brains behind the collaboration, Anni Lange, for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into:
The power of social listening
Successfully getting brands to think outside of the box
The importance of leaving space for creator ideation in briefs
And more!
Editor’s note: We may be seeing a trend, people! Right before I was about to hit schedule, I came across professional snowboarder Mark McMorris who just partnered with Dove on some VERY SIMILAR content. (I texted Mark for comment on the authenticity of the branded tattoo but have yet to hear back.)
Neil: What’s your current role and background in creator marketing?
Annika: I’m an Associate Director at Fohr, and I’ve been with the agency for four years. I actually came from a talent management background and was involved in the early stages of influencer marketing back when I was still in undergrad in Germany. I kind of dabbled in it during my time at a Fashion e-commerce start-up, where I worked with creators on events such as Berlin Fashion Week when Instagram first launched. So this really dates me, but I loved it. I loved the industry.
I also grew up in a huge sports family, especially around hockey. My dad is a massive fan and really involved with the local team, so I’ve always been around hockey stadiums. For a while, I thought maybe one day I’d combine both passions — sports and digital marketing — but didn’t really know how, especially because it felt so far from my day-to-day at the time.
Eventually, I moved to New York for grad school, which is when I pivoted from strictly influencer work to more holistic digital marketing. Being in New York was amazing because my program at NYU gave me the chance to work on real-life projects, including one with the New York Jets. It was a semester-long real-time fan engagement initiative — kind of my first real foray into merging sports and marketing, and I loved it.
While I was still in school, I also started working in-house with a creator I followed after she posted on her Instagram Story that she was looking for an assistant. I did everything from project management to photography to backend emails. I loved it and eventually joined the agency she was repped by after graduating, working on both campaign and talent management. That’s actually how I found out about Fohr — they were casting creators I worked with on campaigns. I met my now-boss, and we ended up as cross-functional partners, then work friends, and then real friends [laughter]. When I was ready for the next step in my career, he brought me in for an interview — and the rest is history.
Making the shift from the creator side to the brand side was probably the biggest pivot in my career. I got really lucky early on with a roster of clients that I personally loved and had a connection to. Marriott was one of my first and biggest clients. I actually grew up in a Marriott family — my family is super loyal to the brand — so it was surreal to work with them.
What’s been really cool is being on that account from the very beginning and getting to see how we’ve evolved Marriott’s content from very traditional hospitality shots to pushing boundaries and aligning with broader industry trends — specifically the shift from educational content to entertainment-driven content.
Neil: Can you set the stage for your work with Marriott?
Annika: When we at Fohr first started working with Marriott in 2021, the work was super education-focused — breaking down the brand architecture under the loyalty umbrella and creating specific shot lists for creators visiting properties. But obviously, unlike product campaigns, you can’t just reshoot if the content doesn’t work — you can’t send someone back to the Maldives because a shot was missing [laughter]. So we were very prescriptive about what needed to be captured.
Over time, it shifted from story-selling to storytelling. It’s something we pushed for — helping brands understand what performs well, what doesn’t, and how we can bring in our expertise to move with where the industry’s going. The pandemic only accelerated that shift. Social media became everything — how we connect with people, how we get information, how we’re entertained. So combining all of that — fun, education, authenticity — has been the key.
We started working with creators whose audiences trust them for both entertainment and recommendations. That evolution really laid the groundwork for what we eventually did with The Hockey Guys.
Neil: Take me through the early stages of discovery and social listening with The Hockey Guys - How did you find this potential collaboration gem?
Annika: I discovered them back in 2020 during the pandemic. I think it was actually a TikTok that came across my FYP — it was probably one of their sing along videos, maybe they were singing Taylor Swift [laughter]. One of the things we say a lot at Fohr is that content has to be entertaining first to snag attention, and this was definitely that. It wasn’t super polished, but it was clear they had something special. I had already followed them, so I had seen the video of them getting the Marriott logo tattoos, and because I'd followed them, I also knew the lore behind it, the why. I knew that the “Marriott” was their college house, so I wasn't completely lost when asked “Why are they getting this logo of my client?” The brand team had not known about them, hadn't followed them, but obviously through social listening, their content teams got alerted that these hockey players got their logo tattooed.
I believe it was a Tuesday. We had a weekly status call come up but got an email from the brand team that we have to move our meeting or cancel it because they had a very urgent internal meeting to connect on - how they could react to these guys getting their logo tattooed.
Then I tapped my boss internally, and was like, “Hey, I actually follow these guys and I know the story behind it. I think we should probably pitch how we can work with them, and not just react in an organic way.” Being able to react more and more to real-time moments that are surrounding our brand partners has been a huge thing for us as a team. When we start working with brands we really want to support them, including with how we can activate and make a pivot where needed and be more agile, showing how we're in on a conversation.
And for this in particular, I was personally so passionate about it but was also seeing the reaction from the guys' audience and loved to see all of the comments from their followers tagging the brand and shouting for a collaboration. This was a perfect ad opportunity for Marriott and really helped us put together a quick proposal idea to say, “Here’s how we use some of the budget, let’s see if we can work with them on this to tell the story in a broader way.”
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Neil: So you concept the idea with your team, flip the script. What is the idea? And then how did the folks at Marriott react?
Annika: In order for this to work we had to move very quickly, so I essentially took this on myself rather than the usual teamwork involved across departments and workflows. So it basically started with me at midnight one night after work, going through the content and figuring out how to start making it work based on my understanding of the brand's needs and THG’s content.
Knowing that traditionally, we've done more straightforward hotel content, I wanted to figure out a way how could we marry the brand and their content needs, with what I knew the guys were already doing in their videos which resonated with their audience.
So figuring out how we could find a middle ground between the two, and do my part to make it the easiest way possible for Marriott’s internal content team to be able to sell this because there are a lot of internal reviews and counterparts that need to sign off on an idea. At the time, a more humorous content direction is something that we'd never done with them, but I knew there was an appetite on both sides to try. I knew that in order for this to get buy-in on, we needed to include visual examples for how the brand would come to life in the guys’ storytelling. I went back to when The Hockey Guys had mentioned Marriott first - using keyword search, social listening and seeing how they set up the story around the Marriott house. And they had already done a house tour of their Marriott house. So one of the ideas that we included in the pitch was, how about we have them stitch the original house tour at a Marriott hotel, and say, “Hey, we got an upgrade - our house has evolved” and then tour the hotel facilities, which the brand team really liked.
Once we got sign-off and started the briefing and execution part of the campaign, we ended up then working with Lawson and the guys on developing the second idea for the second video, which was the tattoo unlocking different aspects of the hotel.
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Neil: Genius. So you mentioned a bit of what the execution looked like. How did it go in practice?
Annika: We started talking to Felipe (THG Manager), getting on a call and doing an initial gut check: This is how we work - This is how you guys work. Here are some of the elements that we need to make sure would be included in a partnership.
Logistically, my team at Fohr handles everything for a Marriott influencer campaign. So really, from strategy, sourcing partners, contracting, briefing, travel coordination, working with the properties - that is all part of what we do. In this case, we just needed to align on knowing that this was a larger group of creators. Usually we send one person and maybe their photographer on a stay for content production. So this one was really our first time doing things a little bit differently.
With this one, we knew we needed more of a playground for them to realize their content. So working closely with Marriott Hotel’s brand lead, we actually were able to pivot to resorts [vs. just hotels] to have more options to present to them. We wanted to make sure that it aligns with their travel plans, but also what makes sense for the content - They ended up picking the Orlando World Center Marriott, which was perfect for this partnership. And from there, we work with the properties directly and the brand team, so had a call with them and aligned on an itinerary, just making sure that we could give them things to do, opt in, opt out of during their stay that would enhance the content.
And I mean, that's been a huge factor for my team to really build out how we work with the hotels directly once looped in by the brand, to make sure that we give the best conditions and background. We always say that our creators are using the hotel as their stage. So this one in particular, the team was amazing. I think the guys had an amazing time at their huge, beautiful room, and also enough to play with to make the content brand focused, but also entertaining and in line with what they were used to creating. It also gave them the environment that allowed for them to shoot and post a ton of organic bonus content in real time, and one video on the water slide [below] of the resort during their stay even went viral - which for the brand and property was of course appreciated additional exposure. Once that original itinerary was in place, The Hockey Guys put together their ideas and their shot lists and their planning for what they wanted to capture on which time of this day and how it was all gonna come to life. And then we sent them on their way to Orlando!
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Neil: The content comes back - how did it perform? What was the response?
Annika: Both my team and the brand team all loved the content off the bat with only a few very minor edits. One thing that also helped a lot, which is part of our standard process, is that we were in touch with The Hockey Guys while they were on site, so they could ask real-time questions, send through clips or snippets or get feedback, because, again, they obviously can't fly back [laughter].
One of our ‘rules’ that we hang our hat on as Fohr is: In your creator partnerships, like a stock portfolio, you have to have safe bets and big swings. I didn’t know it at the time, but this partnership was bound to become a key example of a big swing that we often reference to this day. Everything got approved pretty quickly, and then the content was rolled out. As I mentioned earlier, the second video was the guys showing different parts of the hotel and showing their tattoos off to get access - which was the perfect way to hit on key services and areas of the hotel that we need to ensure are shown in our content, while also staying true to the guys’ fun storytelling. This resort for example has a speak easy bar that we really wanted to highlight, so one of them showed their tattoo to a Marriott associate and then the door opened, kind of like entering a hidden vault. Another example to show the heartfelt service Marriott Hotels are known for was the staff helping them with their suitcase once they showed the tattoo - it was so cool and a different way to bring those brand pillars to life.
It ended up being our best performing campaign of that year for Marriott, so the results both organically and in paid media were amazing. It performed really well and the sentiment to this day are some of my favorite comments. I think their audience really was just excited that there was so much support for them to work with the brand, and then for it to actually happen, felt so cool and rewarding.
Equally as exciting was that it ended up winning the 2022 Silver HSMAI Adrian Award in the Digital Platform - Social Network category, where it was picked out of 600 entries for hospitality and travel content. To this day, one of the coolest things I've ever worked on, and such a huge testament to brands really trusting creators and their agency partners to try something new and tap into an organic moment while still highlighting the key takeaways they want their audience to walk away with. I think that a huge element of the success of this was that it was so entertaining and fun, but you could still see every element of the hotel that we otherwise would have wanted to highlight, just through a different lens.
Neil: Well done, indeed. Any other tips or kind of learning lessons coming out of the experience (other than just finding creators that have tattoos of the brand that you represent haha)?
Annika: There needs to be love or story - if you only have the story, then the love can follow. Something that really stuck out for me from this partnership is how we approach casting and educate brands on the partners that they work with, going beyond vanity metrics or the content that you've seen from them.
I also believe that in our industry, there's probably a lot that can get automated or narrowed down to numbers and metrics, but the human element of what we do will never really go away. This goes back to what you were saying when we first connected about your own experience of finding new partners through asking your network and friends about who they like to follow.
In this particular case, the guys shared a story that was personal to them, and it resonated with their audience to the extent that they felt compelled to tag the brand and advocate for them to work together. And from there, someone on the team responsible for the brand's creator partnerships (in this case me) just so happened to already be a follower and fan who was able to add more context to help get this over the line behind the scenes. So for creators, I would always recommend considering the possibility that their followers - beyond just being an audience - can be real advocates for them in rooms where decisions are made.
Neil: Final thoughts?
Annika: This is something that I would recommend to anyone really - be loud about things you're passionate about and advocate for ideas that you believe in. I'm a huge believer that if you're talking about the things you love organically, at some point you will have the right audience for it. That can go for both creators sharing things they love in a non-sponsored way, but also when you look at it from the angle of pitching an idea on our side of the business. I'll always be so grateful that both my managers and my counterparts on the brand side (shoutout Steph) trusted my initial gut feeling to turn an organic conversation into an official partnership. Now that I'm a manager myself, I will always do my best to extend the same trust to my team when they pitch ideas or introduce me to creators that they follow who could be a great fit for one of our brand partners (even if they don't have the brand logo tattooed on them - yet)!
