Nearly two-thirds of people engage with creator content, rising to 82% among Millennials and 85% among Gen Z. Creators are no longer peripheral; they are central to building resonance, relevance and results.
CMOs are recognising the shift. 89% plan to maintain or increase investment in influencer marketing over the next year, reflecting the growing importance of creator partnerships and earned attention in how brands are built and sustained.
So, what does this mean for brands? Whilst many are active in creator marketing, very few have a creator system. Flattening a world of creators into the term ‘influencers’ dilutes the impact of their outputs, and relying on organic reach alone limits the possibility of driving sustained performance.
Organic and paid social need to work together
We’re all aware of the power of creator content in today’s social landscape, but organic reach on social media is unpredictable, volatile and often short-lived. In a world dominated by an ever-changing algorithm, brands that rely solely on organic distribution will struggle to sustain visibility.
To maximise the impact of influencer marketing and creator partnerships, organic and paid social media marketing must work together. Across recent social activity for a large retail client, we used the tactic of boosting organic content as soon as it went live, supporting to amplify the content to ensure it reached a wider audience. This approach allowed the two sides of social to work in tandem, helping to make sure that the content wasn’t just seen and then lost in the feed.
Paid social also provides greater control over frequency and budget, allowing strong organic content to perform at scale and deliver sustained impact. This approach is more comforting for brands, as it allows their best-performing creator content to deliver longer-lasting impact in a way that’s tangible and manageable.
Using paid social to amplify creator content
Another approach we saw work well with a retail client was partnering with micro-influencers and boosting their authentic content with paid support to drive stronger engagement and performance. The results? We saw a considerable uplift in both views and clicks, driving successful overall performance.
When brands combine the power of authentic, organic content with paid amplification, they can:
- Reach audiences beyond the creator’s existing followers.
- Keep strong content visible for longer to drive further engagement.
- Maintain momentum after the initial organic spike.
Creators should be involved early in campaign planning
A common challenge faced across creator marketing strategies is that influencers are often brought into the campaigns too late, after the campaign idea and messaging have already been decided.
The creators themselves are the ones who know their audiences and the platforms they post on best. However, too often, creators are asked to simply execute an idea after the campaign concept and messaging have already been finalised – making them a mouthpiece for a brand, rather than the orchestrators of their own content. Consequently, this approach limits the value that creators can bring.
When they are involved earlier within the planning stage, they can help to shape ideas that feel more authentic and platform-native for their communities. This typically leads to:
- More authentic-feeling content.
- Content that performs better within social platforms.
- Stronger engagement from target audiences.
For social media marketing campaigns, treating creators as strategic partners rather than distribution channels will significantly improve results.
If you’d like to read more about this, check out dentsu X’s latest report – The Creator Catalyst – which details more about the power of creators as effective translators of culture, and how creators have moved from the margins to the centre of modern marketing.
The right creator matters more than the biggest creator
One of the biggest misconceptions in influencer marketing is that larger creators will always deliver better results. However, this simply isn’t true. We’ve often found that working with micro-influencers, who have a highly engaged audience that aligns closely with the brand or product, will drive better performance.
This is down to the fact that their communities trust them. Their content comes across as authentic, and their recommendations and partnerships are generally received more positively – leading to better engagement and results across the consumer journey.
On another previous client campaign, promoting a vegan wine, we worked with a group of micro-influencers who had a strong vegan affinity and produced ‘home-grown’ inspired lifestyle content. The creators produced beautiful assets and were able to naturally integrate the product into their regular content. Since the product aligned so well with the ‘organic’ lifestyle they’d already built up, and aligned with their audience’s interests, it didn’t stand out as an obvious ad or promotion. And this is the key to a ‘scroll-stopping’ piece of content.
Audiences now are so used to seeing ads that it takes something that feels truly relatable and personal to cut through. Promotions that prioritise storytelling are more likely to create emotional memory and will help to promote perceived popularity and trustworthiness for the brand.
The future of influencer marketing is strategic creator partnerships
As the creator economy continues to scale, brands need to think about moving beyond one-off influencer collaborations and instead look to building strategic creator marketing systems.
Successful social media marketing strategies today need to focus on:
- Using organic & paid social media in tandem.
- Selecting the right creators.
- Collaborating with creators and introducing them early in the creative process.
When these elements work together, creator marketing becomes a powerful engine for cultural relevance, engagement and overall commercial performance. For brands looking to scale their influencer marketing strategies, they should prioritise building relationships with creators and focus on authenticity, creativity and media amplification across their creator campaigns.
If you’d like to discover more of our thinking, check out our latest UK Media Predictions report where we break down the key shifts we’re seeing across the media landscape and our opinions on what brands must do to maintain impact and move beyond siloed thinking. You also sign up to our monthly mailer - The Media Edge, here.
