The default approach for brands working with creators is broken. Too many marketers approach creators with a transactional mindset, where the process (and the outcome) is akin to purchasing media. It’s ad-buying via creators.
This type of creator marketing almost always emanates from a brand’s media budget—not creative, culture or brand—and filters through the brand’s media agency.
Typically, marketers instruct media agencies to work with influencers as part of their overall media plan. Media agencies ship RFPs to a set of influencer marketing agencies. The brand then chooses an agency based on who can offer the most views, impressions or engagements for the least amount of budget. Briefs are sent out to creators, an Instagram post or TikTok is created, and voila, the transaction is complete. Creators are commoditized as units of media.
The result is a series of one-off engagements at scale, and over the last several years this approach has unfortunately become the norm. Check off the influencer box and move on to the next bucket in your media plan.
But there are limitations to this approach.
As we know, viewers grow weary of this type of transactional brand behavior, especially when it’s the norm. In an era of on-demand entertainment, viewers can easily tune out brand messaging that isn’t delivered thoughtfully or with respect for its audience. Marketers increasingly express concern about whether the transactional approach to creator partnerships is actually driving long-term value or is capturing the attention of audiences for more than a moment.
This dynamic is also not exclusive to the creator economy. There are parallel debates actively occurring in more traditional venues: Brands like Airbnb are struggling to balance their investments in creative storytelling and brand-building with performance media and channels like search. After an era where brands had been increasing investments in performance media across the board, they are seeing diminishing returns—and brand-building and storytelling are fighting back.
The limitations of the transactional approach to creator partnerships were best illustrated through the lens of perhaps the most well-known brand and talent partnership of all time. What if Nike had approached Michael Jordan the way many brands approach influencers today? Wear our shoes for this one game, appear in this one commercial, stand next to our logo this one time. Unquantifiable brand value and equity would have been lost. Just like with traditional advertising, brands that invest in deeper, longer, creatively driven, strategically rooted relationships with creators will win.
The best marketers will think about creators the same way they might approach higher-funnel brand-building or partnerships with traditional talent: How can we tell a more meaningful brand story? How can we create a deeper connection with our audience? How can we align ourselves on a more substantive level with this new generation of personalities and tastemakers?
The savviest brands are already pursuing this approach. The briefs originate from the brand marketers themselves, who view creator partnerships as a top-of-the-funnel, brand-building opportunity.
And they are going directly to partners that specialize in this space and can help them define and realize their vision for collaborating with creators—content agencies focused on the creator economy, talent management firms that understand how to work with brands, publisher partners that have in-house creative and talent departments.
And they’re going many levels deeper on the type of content, partnerships and strategy they are bringing to the creator space.
So don’t treat creators like units of media. They represent the biggest opportunity in marketing today for brands to reach a new generation of viewers who tune out traditional media. If brands don’t approach creators with the right mindset, they shouldn’t be surprised when a creator builds their competitor’s brand instead.
This story first appeared in the May 2023 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.
