Chili's Grill & Bar grew its Triple Dipper appetizer from 7% to 15% of total chain sales through influencer partnerships, the chain's social director told an Advertising Week New York audience on Monday.

The figure, shared by Luz Bickert, director of social, influencer and integrated campaigns at Chili's, shows how creator-led content reshaped a single menu item's economics. "The Triple Dipper used to be 7% of our overall total Chili's sales," Bickert said. "Through influencer partnerships, we've really grown it to be 15% of the category."

Her remarks came on a panel moderated by the creator marketing agency Influencer, alongside April Johnson, head of influencer marketing at Alaska Airlines, and Nicole Leo, vice president of creator content and partnerships at The Walt Disney Company. The discussion tracked how far the creator canvas has stretched at companies long associated with big-budget advertising.

What did the Lizzo campaign prove?

Chili's offered its strongest evidence in May, when pop star Lizzo recorded a cover of the chain's Baby Back Ribs jingle. The high-production spot landed; a scrappy follow-up landed harder.

Chili's paired Lizzo with creator Keila Pacheco for a mukbang filmed in Pacheco's car with few production frills. "That honestly performed so much better than the spot that we spent so much time creating," Bickert said. "Weaving in creators in every single cultural moment, whether paid or earned, is part of the strategy."

Mukbang, the social genre built around gorging on food, has become a regular Chili's fixture, and Pacheco now serves as the chain's "showgirl," Bickert said. The playbook started taking shape only a few years ago and now influences how Chili's thinks about menu innovation.

How deeply has Disney restructured around creators?

Just as deep. Leo said creator-led assets now stand at 40%-plus of any Disney media campaign, up from what she pegged at "under 10 five years ago." A recent corporate restructuring consolidates Disney marketing into one unit focused on cohesion and agility, letting creator ideas move between departments faster.

But Leo pushed back against the simplest version of that workflow. "We customize and tailor everything that we put forward because it's not a one-size-fits-all," she said. "If you're just sharing general lists to everyone, it's never going to feel authentic coming to the creator, and therefore, to their consumer."

A creator originally tapped for a film release can later promote a park food item or appear at D23, Disney's fan convention.

Why the shift to long-term contracts?

Budget math, mostly. "Influencers are 100% part of every single tentpole [message]," Bickert said. All influencer content funnels into paid media. "Whereas many years ago the paid content was a cutdown of the TV spot during a tentpole, it is now fully creator-led partnership or creative."

Johnson agreed. "You find way more budgeting efficiencies by contracting creators long term, and we also find that's how they really want to work with us," the Alaska Airlines marketer said. Creators recoil from conventionally structured briefs, the panelists said, and pulling them into planning early tends to deliver more output.

"It gives you the ability to figure out what personally and uniquely incentivizes that creator, and then that ends up resulting in typically more content than you even initially planned for," Leo added.

What's still hard to measure?

Buzz and sentiment, mostly. Brands continue to track purchase intent and other hard KPIs, but engagement and share-ability remain fuzzier. "You can pay for views, you can pay for impressions, but people actually wanting to engage with your content, actually wanting to share, is I think what I really strive for," Bickert said.

Advertising Week organizers expect the conference to draw more than double the creator delegates it hosted in 2025. Bickert, for one, plans to keep folding creators into every cultural moment Chili's decides to chase.