Influence is a topic that runs through every facet of fashion, lifestyle and entertainment these days. Our the years, I’ve had a lot to say about identifying and working with influencers.

One point that I feel that is still being missed is that we have to actively seek and find individual personalities that are relevant to a brand or project that may not be the biggest names (yet), create relationships with them and nurture them to continually create great campaigns, collaborations and content.

Instead of writing another blog post on this, I’m just going to show you over the course of a week how stepping outside the box brings such fruitful results. And I am starting with stories from girls and women that may not be on your radar yet.

For the past year, I’ve worked on the MAGIC Trade Shows in Las Vegas. We collaborated with Teen Vogue, American Express and eBay Fashion. We’ve worked with well known bloggers and emerging ones on those partnerships as well. Do you know what?

The influencers that were least known or held the most targeted audiences had the best ROI; the “R” standing for reach, relevance, resonance, relationship and REVENUE.

Shot in Las Vegas in August, we built a small, intimate influencer project with the bloggers we were working on the show. We sprinkled in a little help from some very social brands – DKNY, MZ Wallace and a few Project & WWDMAGIC Trade Show Brands. In just three days, we become #8 most talked about topic on Twitter twice and generated over 200 blog posts and 1500 photos. Our favorite photos are shown in the gallery below (thank you Instagram and Pose for your mobile goodness).

The photos in this gallery center around our activities in the DKNY shops in Las Vegas and a singular garment, the DKNY Cozy. FMM has been obsessed with the Cozy and feel it’s a garment that represent any woman, any where. The bloggers styled their Cozies, they wore it and painted Vegas with the vibrant colors of who they were with it.

[nggallery id=12]

Bloggers: The bloggers featured in this project were Brittany Law & Clio De Lave of Style Republic Magazine, Diana Kang, Jennifer Margolin of Red Sole Diary, Sara Zucker, Laura Kudia for FMM, Taisa Veras, Marie Denee of The Curvy Fashionista, Sade Strehlke of The Icon Concierge, Rebecca Lay & Rene Ogaki of Styluste, Nicole Giordano of Start Up Fashion, Wendy Bendoni, Heather Petry of LA Fashion Snob, Mayka Mei, Alicia DiRago of Dismount Creative, Elim Chu of The Style Seen, Natalie Alcala Of BlackBook Magazine, Krista Peck and media partners BurdaStyle, MadisonBuyer, The Hackman Sisters of Nubry and Object Mythology.

Photos: The photos were taken by all the participants and FMM staff. They’ve been published with their permission.

Disclosure: DKNY gifted all of our bloggers the amazing piece based on their personalities and allowed us to shoot video in their store.