Meet Akram Sharkawy, Brand Communications Manager at Mattel – influenceTHIS

Meet Akram Sharkawy. He is an accomplished marketing professional with distinguished performance in the retail world. Over the last 12 years, Akram has worked for various high profile brands on increasing revenues, driving brand awareness, and building marketing strategies through a combination of creativity, initiative, and strong leadership.

Today, he is the Brand Communications Marketing Manager at Mattel Inc, the renown multinational toy manufacturing company that produces some of the world’s top products and brands, including Fisher-Price, Barbie, Polly Pocket, Hot Wheels and Matchbox, Masters of the Universe, American Girl, and WWE.

As an advisory board member at influenceTHIS, we asked Akram a few questions on an influencer campaign he’s worked on, how it was measured, and how it relates to Mattel’s overarching marketing strategy. Here’s what he had to say:

Tell us about a recent influencer campaign that you ran?

Akram Sharkawy: In November 2018, I ran a holiday social gifting program where we surprised 27 influencers and 4 bloggers with Santa sacks filled with Mattel products valued at over $400. The plan was to leverage influencers to help increase brand awareness and sales of holiday gift-giving through fun, creative, and innovative content. We wanted to create snackable content that connected holiday shoppers through inspiring, fun, and relevant holiday-based content, and distribute it through multiple social platforms to reach the target audience.

How do your influencer marketing campaigns tie into your other initiatives ?

Akram Sharkawy: For this program, the tie-in was with social content creation, along with fan engagement. Although some of the posts were paid, the plan was to always have them seem and feel authentic, so that the influencers’ fanbase didn’t think it was being pushed down their throat. Additionally, it was very important to include a conversion piece (whether it was through the swipe up function, or with hashtags/tags), taking you to the retail landing pages.

What are some of the key metrics you use to measure success for your influencer marketing programs?

Breaking out the results by Blogger and Social amplifier touts, the key metrics were:

–       Total reach

–       Total impressions

–       Total page view

–       Total engagements

–       Total engagement rate