Participating in the creator economy is no longer just an option for marketers, and they need to make it a formal part of media plans, said speakers at Brand Innovators’s Creators and Culture Summit.
“Creator marketing is not going away. If anything, it’s growing,” said Sara Rezaee, head of creator marketing, North America at Edelman, which hosted the event in New York.
Creators allow marketers to join cultural conversations without needing to launch major efforts or spend on costly sponsorships, but managing those relationships will require trust and patience on both sides, said speakers.
Brands often expect to see results in a couple of months, because they’ve heard about moving at the speed of culture, said Andrew Lilien, vice president, global sponsorships at Mastercard. But building a brand and understanding a community takes time, he explained. “A little bit of patience really does pay off,” he said.
Brands have to make “a really intentional shift” away from one-off activations to ongoing creator relationships, said Elizabeth Lloyd Fletcher, director, global creator strategy & engagement at PepsiCo. “That let us make a lasting impact,” she said. “Really clocking into those communities that have authority in this space is really important.”
Marketers need to build the space to allow brands to move fast and catch cultural moments as they happen. “You have to put the trust in them and let them run,” said Kayla Skeary, influencer marketing & brand partnerships for Nestle’s Nespresso.
This will require building relationships and investing in tools in order to be prepared to execute once a moment surfaces, or risk it dying off before the opportunity can be leveraged.
Katka Renckens, head of brand development at Dutch makeup retailer Rituals
“Something that is trending is trending today. Tomorrow it might not be anymore,” said Katka Renckens, head of brand development at Dutch makeup retailer Rituals. It’s helpful for brands to set up guardrails and give social teams the freedom to participate in those moments, she said.
Sometimes it looks like brands had a viral moment “where there have been years of strategic thinking and planning,” said Nicola Heckels, global vice president of marketing, Smirnoff Trademark at Diageo. Marketers have to make small bets over time, see how consumers react and then adapt, she said.
Organizations have to be restructured to make them work better with the way the creator economy runs, said speakers. “It’s designing empowerment across the organization that is the real unlock,” said Paolo Narag, global brand director at SHEBA at Mars.
Sara Moinian, senior brand marketing manager at MoneyLion noted that in a regulated field such as financial services, her team needs to think holistically when planning any creator strategies. “Me and the compliance team are very close,” she joked. “We have to be.” Moinian also noted staying close to the customer experience team helps in the process of crafting a narrative for creator efforts.
Luz Bickert, director of social & influencer at Chili’s Grill & Bar
“It’s adding a whole new channel, seeing it as a separate channel and funding it and nurturing it,” said Luz Bickert, director of social & influencer at Chili’s Grill & Bar. The fast-casual chain has made creator marketing a key part of a successful turnaround strategy in the last three years.
It’s ok to “miss the bus”
Measurement and attribution remain an issue for the channel. Several speakers noted that attributing sales lift or increased revenue to creator marketing is still more estimation than hard figures.
Now that so many brands are coming into the sector the inherent value of influencers is becoming more obvious, said Brianna McDevitt, influencer marketing at Scrub Daddy. But she noted there are so many touchpoints involved in creator marketing that there’s no practical way to track them.
“For us on the analytics side it’s a triangulation,” said Nick Antoniades, vice president of analytics at Full Beauty Brands. He noted his team uses different sentiment signals to piece together a view of the engagements and impact of creator marketing it can show management. “You’re building momentum with your evidence to build your case,” he said.
Ultimately, marketers will need discipline to vet and trust creators to do what they are meant to do. It’s not only a matter of how much reach a creator has, but whether that person is a good fit for the brand and for the specific effort they are asked to perform.
Christopher Hunt, senior marketing manager of brand Influence & experience at Tonal
“You need a lot more rigor around how you choose creators,” said Christopher Hunt, senior marketing manager of brand Influence & experience at Tonal. “Otherwise the story will work well on their Instagram and nowhere else.”
Kat Green, director of brand marketing at Affirm noted the financial platform only works with creators who have used its services. If not “the credibility isn’t there,” she said.
“We sit in our mission and we sit in our brand. That is the lens that we use,” she said. It’s easy to jump on shiny objects but “you lose that if you start to play in areas where it doesn’t make sense from a brand perspective,” she said. “It erodes trust over time.”
Paolo Narag, global brand director at SHEBA at Mars
Conversely, speakers said marketers will also need to show discipline to know when to pass on an opportunity, no matter how good it looks, if it doesn’t make sense for the brand. “We have to have the courage as brand marketers to say: ‘We’re not going to jump on this trend,’” said Mars’ Narag, “even if we miss the bus.”
