Bath & Body Works is dramatically increasing its investment in creator and influencer partnerships as part of a broader effort to reposition itself as a global brand.
Speaking during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Daniel Heaf said the retailer plans to increase spending on influencer activity tenfold, making creators a central pillar of its brand transformation and Consumer First Formula.
“This is really what I mean by moving from being a specialty retailer to being a global brand,” Heaf said. “We expect to see a roughly tenfold increase in how we leverage content creation so we can show up in social media in a way that is modern and relevant.”
The strategy signals a major shift in how Bath & Body Works approaches marketing. The company plans to scale creator participation significantly, recruiting thousands of influencers to share content about the brand and its products across social platforms.
According to Heaf, a key performance indicator for the initiative will be the sheer volume of creator posts, with influencers encouraged to feature the brand in their own voice and style. The company believes this approach will help generate more authentic and culturally relevant content at scale.
“Our expectations for our business and our brand are high and this work will take time,” Heaf said. “But we are confident that we have the platform, the plan and the team to win.”
Creators are expected to play an especially important role in reaching younger consumers, including women between the ages of 25 and 30. Heaf noted that influencer-led content will also help modernise the brand’s social media presence and allow it to show up in ways that feel native to the platforms where consumers already spend time.
“We are really looking for those thousands of influencers that we recruit to be posting their content about our product and our brand in their voice,” Heaf said.
Bold creator moves like these aren’t uncommon in 2026. In fact, just over a year ago, Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez announced that the company would be hiring “20 times more influencers” in an ambitious move.
Fernandez had previously said that creating marketing activity systems where others can “speak for your brand at scale” was “incredibly important” to him. “Influencers, celebrities, TikTokers - these are the voices that matter.”
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