Influencers are expanding far beyond their social media channels

Ask twenty-something-year-old women what they think The Cut’s brand is, and their responses might echo what one Redditor put succinctly: “The Cut has been posting insane articles (among some very good journalism) forever.”

The publication came onto the fashion scene in 2008 as a section of New York before later expanding into covering wider women’s lifestyle topics on its website and twice-yearly print edition. These days, online chatter about The Cut often ignites when an unpredictable personal essay is published, or when it chooses a particularly poignant cover star, like Savannah James or GloRilla.

But the publication isn’t solely relying on written content to define its brand or place in culture, especially as online creators’ impact and reach continues to grow.

Enter Tefi Pessoa. The social media personality began rising to prominence in 2019, and now, just over five years later, has built up a following of nearly 2.5 million across TikTok and Instagram. Known mainly for her deep dives into celebrity relationships and pop culture, she’s cultivated a loyal fan base that Lindsay Peoples, editor in chief of The Cut, said she wanted to get in on. Earlier this year, after serving as a red-carpet correspondent at the Academy Awards for The Cut, Pessoa officially joined the publication as a special contributor, writing an advice column.She also became the host of Tefi Talks, a podcast produced by Vox Media (The Cut’s parent company) in partnership with The Cut and sponsored by Dove and Macy’s.

It’s a partnership that seems beneficial for all parties involved. The Cut gets to align itself with an established-but-still-exciting internet persona, not only signalling to its audience that it knows what’s up, but potentially gaining new audience members along the way, too. Dove, which has previously worked with Pessoa, gets to deepen its relationship with the creator. And Pessoa gets to legitimize and expand, proving to anyone that still thinks influencing is not a real career that she’s got the chops to partner with a legacy media brand and go beyond just social media.

“Being partnered with The Cut allows her to [reach] a really rich and even bigger and broader audience than what she has on her social media platforms,” Nishat Kurwa, SVP and executive producer of audio at Vox Media, told Marketing Brew.

A cut above

Pessoa’s not the only influencer branching out beyond short-form video and personal accounts. As creators look to make the jump from internet content to more traditional media via platforms like Tubi and Spotify, that mutual benefit is playing out across the board, and brands are taking note.

“As creators like Tefi increasingly branch into podcasts, live events, and broader media properties, we see tremendous opportunity to extend our collaborations into these formats,” Kevin Tolson, head of deodorants, Dove and SheaMoisture at Unilever North America, told us in an email. “This allows Dove to engage audiences across multiple touchpoints in ways that feel personal, memorable, and deeply aligned with our mission.”

For The Cut, Pessoa’s increased cultural footprint with the new podcast directly reflects back on the media brand’s own cultural relevance.

“As we came across a lot of different creators in the industry, it just felt like Tefi had so much alignment with The Cut,” Peoples said, later adding that “We try to do a really good job of connecting what she’s talking about with what we’re already blogging.”

By continuously integrating Pessoa and The Cut’s brand images together, Kurwa hopes to create a “constant back and forth” between the value of the publication’s written product and the new podcast. While she said the podcast exists as a place to deepen Pessoa’s content offerings and brings her celebrity and pop culture expertise to a new level, it also integrates The Cut’s editorial stories, all in service of amplifying both platforms and brands.

“It’s one big flywheel,” Kurwa said.

New frontiers

Pessoa’s particular platform expansion has also opened up new doors for Dove, according to Tolson. Tefi Talks marks the first time the brand has sponsored an entire podcast, and when the show taped a live episode at The Cut Cafe activation (at Bluestone Lane’s TriBeCa location) at New York Fashion Week, the partnership enabled Dove to show up at the weeklong fashion event, providing a deodorant vending machine in The Cut’s takeover of Bluestone Lane for any sweaty fashion week-goers that stopped by.

The activation marked one of the few times Dove has made inroads during the buzzy week.

“Fashion Week is a highly saturated space that often reinforces traditional beauty ideals, and we don’t often show up there for that very reason. This partnership gave us the opportunity to participate in a way that felt authentic—aligning Dove with a meaningful, body-positive conversation right in the middle of the action,” Tolson said.

Tolson said the vending-machine activation and partnership with both The Cut and Tefi has so far fit right in with the type of influencer marketing the brand seeks out, which he said aims to balance “influencer tiering with a mix of paid and earned engagement.”

“Our creator strategy is designed to evolve with the creators themselves—building deeper, multi-platform partnerships that are as dynamic and authentic as the communities they serve and inspire,” he continued.