As the creator economy is mainstreamed into media plans, marketers need to learn how to “borrow trust” from creators to engage consumers with their brands in ways that benefit both.
Marketers need to build a clear framework to work with creators across the lifecycle of the relationship, much as they had to learn how to exercise discipline and rigor over the use of programmatic buying a decade ago, says Toni Poulain, senior vice president of media operations at Goodway Group.
The independent strategic connected commerce partner for retail, multi-location, QSR and CPG brands, connecting what she calls “the unglamorous operational layer” between a media plan and what happens in-store.
“Creator partnerships are a way that a brand can actually turn that dynamic in its favor,” says Poulain. “These creators have already earned credibility inside a community, and that partnership between a brand and a creator lets the brand borrow that trust that they’ve earned with their community.”
Brands shouldn’t confuse creator partnerships with a transaction where brands can simply buy reach by paying to connect with their audiences. It cuts deeper, says Poulain.
“It’s really much more than that,” she says. “You’re borrowing standing, you’re borrowing a reputation.”
And that “reputation transfer” goes both ways, which is a risk brands need to factor into creators, says Poulain. “There’s a reality check that comes with them. It’s a borrowed asset, and you can’t manage a borrowed asset the same way that you manage your own assets.”
Authenticity versus “creator risk”
Brands can’t exercise too much control over creators, because consumers will see right through it and the authenticity will wear off. But as recent controversies have shown, even popular brands and creators will misstep, Poulain said.
She noted just in the last two months, Callaway Golf and Neutrogena have found themselves on the defensive over creator content. Callaway’s partnership with Good Good Golf was rocked when Good Good published a co-branded ad that showed one of its founders shoving a woman to the ground. In less than a week, the reaction led Callaway to cut ties.
Neutrogena had two incidents in a month, first when brand ambassador Tate McRae posted a video where she appeared to mime applying the skincare products, instead of using them. Two weeks later, the death of actress Hayden Panettiere surfaced excerpts of her memoir, where she claimed Neutrogena canceled her endorsement contract after she spoke about her postpartum depression. Calls for a boycott rose over 5,000% and parent company Kenvue’s stock dipped.
“Creator risk is durable,” says Poulain. “Years later, things can come back.”
Brands are aware of those risks, but this is still a developing practice, notes Poulain.
“The industry is learning as we go,” she says. “Most brands are not going into it completely unaware, but I think that they need to be really thoughtful and really learn from some of the recent headline-grabbing things that are happening.”
One key learning is that oversight of creator partnerships should be a team effort across the whole marketing organization. Creator partnerships are often apart from the media plan and more closely managed by creative departments, but this diffuses the responsibility to monitor and respond to controversies and slows down reactions. Agencies and marketers need to build a shared sense of responsibility into their culture, says Poulain.
“We all have a responsibility, regardless of where you are in that food chain, to ensure that the brand’s best interests are looked out for and that risk is mitigated,” says Poulain. “We are agents on behalf of these brands, and we need to be paying attention, even if it’s not within the scope of our remit, because what is in the scope of our remit is ensuring success for the brands that we operate with.”
Some brands sacrifice discipline because creator content needs to move fast to be authentic, or so they believe. But there are tools that move at the speed of digital media, says Poulain. Artificial intelligence can create synthetic audiences to test responses quickly at scale, without slowing the process or adding significant new investment, she says.
“We have progressed far enough that that old excuse for skipping the gate is no longer valid. It’s gone,” she says. Thanks to the social listening tools available today, there is no excuse to fail at monitoring responses, because it will snowball fast on the Internet.
“Even if you’re just doing media, you should be deploying social listening tools on behalf of your client, because it impacts how your media is performing,” says Poulain. “We will get better in terms of the amount of governance and tools around it, but we are good enough now to be without excuse.”
Poulain draws an analogy between the state of programmatic media buying as it developed a decade ago and the maturing of the creator economy. Programmatic upended media buying, but soon revealed it carried risks of waste, fraud and brand safety, with ads appearing along with inappropriate content. This led brands to apply some rigor around the practice, and the same is now happening with creators, she says.
Five key questions
“There’s some real due diligence that needs to happen,” says Poulain. A framework can be boiled down to five main questions, she says.
First, ensure content review authority, says Poulain. “There’s got to be basically a sign-off gate for any content that goes out, and that it can’t just be a verbal or a courtesy review. It needs to be a contractual gate, and the practice of testing should be part of that gate,” she explains. With help from AI, that review need not slow thing down, she says.
Second, audit that the creators are actually using the product they are promoting. Content is often repurposed online and reedited for other platforms, so a strong social listening practice should monitor how things appear online and the response.
“We look at the benefits of content creation for speed, yet many brands are not properly considering what that also means in terms of your ability to respond when something goes wrong,” says Poulain.
The third factor is often overlooked, says Poulain: Offboarding protocols when the relationship ends. As creators and brands evolve, brands need to have carried out our risk assessments and set down contractual guardrails for when the relationship ends, such as non-disparagement clauses. Influencer contracts are also subject to Federal Trade Commission disclosure regulations, a fourth consideration to keep in mind.
And fifth and last, but also crucial, is crisis response. The brand needs a framework to respond to controversy and someone in charge of quick response, says Poulain. Some recent controversies involving creators have seen days go by before brands responded. With today’s tools, there is no excuse.
“It’s about having the right tools, the right governance and contracts, and all of us taking real responsibility on behalf of brands,” says Poulain. “I definitely am enthusiastic about creators. I just think that we have to work within the risks that come with them. Brands shouldn’t retreat, but they should proceed with risk mitigation.”
