The session titles during the recent Advertising Week New York festival gave a hint of where the thinking of marketers is going: The words “mass” and “general,” were conspicuously absent. Every other session touted how to participate in the “culture,” work with “creators” and engage the “fandom.”
Where once marketers created culture with Nike telling consumers to “Just Do it,” they are now taking their lead from consumers’ direct feedback and are enlisting online creators to give a voice to their brands.
“You can’t really fake it anymore. It all comes from the ground up,” said Janice Min, CEO of publisher Ankler Media. But speakers warned this evolution brings up a number of new issues of trust, measurement and collaboration.
“You’re going to be uncomfortable,” said Mark Kirkham, chief marketing officer of PepsiCo Beverages US.
Companies are putting marketing creativity and even product innovation in the hands of fans to engage a consumer that’s increasingly unreachable via traditional marketing. Stacy Carpenter, VP of global social media at Shark Ninja, noted the appliance marketer didn’t have to use paid media to support the launch of its Cream ice cream machine because of the social media virality of its products.
“Social is not just a go-to-market team in our company, ” Carpenter said. The social media team sits with R&D and product teams and they consider virality when developing products, she explained. While developing new lines, they will bring in influencers—pro cleaners for home appliances, stylists for hair care tools or food influencers for kitchen gear—to guide the conversation of how they will use the product.
“There’s no cheaper form of advertising“ than virality, Carpenter said. “When your product becomes a verb, you can’t get better than that.”
“Let them cook”
But harnessing that virality is a delicate balance of building relationships between brands and creators that let both sides get the best out of their efforts, said speakers. Authenticity and quick reaction times are the top priorities, said speakers. The fandom can be quick and brutal taking down a brand that gets the message wrong.
Once brands commit to working creators, they need to step back and let them create content that is authentic. The collaboration will collapse if the brand tries to shape the message into something that fans can see through, said the speakers.
“Consumers are smarter than ever. They see a forced message better than ever before,” said Cameron Gidari, vice president, social media & innovation at Major League Baseball.
The sports environment in particular is a fertile ground for creator collaboration, since many athletes have large, devoted followings online.
“What you’ve seen is a real maturation in the space,” said MLB’s Gidari. “They’re their own TV channel in a way.”
The creator space has evolved into a more professional sector, thanks to new tools, including artificial intelligence, which make it easier to make content at scale and manage a channel, said speakers. New tools are enabling creators to scale up to 100,000 followers far easier than before, said Jon Steinberg, managing director at Lazard.
“The content is the hard part, but everything around it is easier,” he said.
This is making it easier for brands to collaborate with creators to harness the fandom, but also brings up questions of selection and supervision. Trust will be a key currency in these relationships, said speakers.
“It comes down to trusting the creator and not trying to mess with what they do,” said Gidari. This requires organizational buy-in and trust across the marketing team. They need to trust they are investing in someone who’s brand-safe.
“Like Gen Z says: Let them cook,” said Emma Wakely, sports partnership manager of Snap.
The Math and the Magic
These relationships can create content that engages consumers where they live, cementing existing fandom and building on it with content far more relevant than what advertising can deliver on its own, said speakers. But to deliver, it needs to start with the creator and something that is unique to that person, said speakers.
Taco Bell scored big with its partnership with football player Davante Adams, after he posted he wished he had a Taco Bell at home so he wouldn’t have to leave the house. That remark led to “Davante’s House,” a campaign that included both traditional advertising, an experiential activation at SoFi Stadium—his team’s home field—and even social media posts listing a house for sale with a Taco Bell inside when he moved teams.
The effort worked because it came up from Adams’s own passion for the brand, said Nicole Weltman, head of social and brand PR at Taco Bell. The brand has embraced creators to leverage the fandom for menu items such as the Crunchwrap or Baja Blast drinks.
“Social listening to our fans is paramount,” said Weltman. “The math and magic plays a role here,” she said. The math comes from the creators having an audiences, but the magic is letting them create by giving them the information and resources to enable them to create, she said.
Measuring the ROI of creators remains a challenge, but marketers should not be put off, said speakers. The public—especially the rising number of Gen Z and Alpha consumers—is gravitating to that culture, and the best brands are tapping cultural moments or finding partners who can, said Anthony “Tony” Brown, co-founder and CEO of Breakr, a payments platform for creators.
“If brands don’t meet them exactly where they are all year round, I don’t know how they will be relevant over time,” he said.
Many marketers noted that as long as brand stewards and their management can agree on some acceptable metrics, efforts can be supported before the top brass.
Marketers know their job is to drive results, said Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase. “If we were not interested in driving acquisition we would all be making rectangles for the Internet,” she said. The bank has been tapping the culture and focusing on supporting that with experiences, especially for its Chase Sapphire card. It focuses on having the other 75% of its budget work hard so it can “de-risk” the cultural piece, she said.
Negotiating that risk is imperative for brands to have a future. They have to move forward now or risk losing their place in the market.
“You have to deal with the fact that there is imperfection in the measurement,” said Steinberg, “otherwise you’re giving up on where the audiences are right now.”
