Table of Contents
Let’s start with a statement that can now officially be considered gospel.
Influencers are here to stay in the world of marketing.
Don’t believe us? Then have a read of Joe Biden’s words at the launch of the White House Creator Economy Conference, held in summer 2024. Yep, that’s right… content creators at the White House! Who would have predicted that, even just a few years ago?
Today they are considered an essential part of the mix of channels, content and strategies that businesses and brands use to communicate with their audience, They are so important at both a personal and social level that a concept was introduced a few years ago confirming their economic impact: the creator economy.
The creator economy is an emerging economic ecosystem that allows practically anyone to earn money by creating and distributing digital content.
Anyone? Really? Well, actually… no! The creator economy is also sometimes known as the passion economy: it is based around people with a special talent, to a greater or lesser degree, for doing something that will interest audiences. Another name for it is the monetisation economy.
To get a better idea of this industry, let’s take some inspiration from the latest edition (based on 2023 data) of the Creator Earnings: Benchmark Report, which is packed full of insights based on input from over 2,000 creators from all over the world.
- The creator economy is predicted to generate annual revenue of $480 billion by 2027, making it the fastest-growing trend in the digital media landscape;
- 50% of interviewees (+10% on the previous year) reported content creation as their full-time job;
- Over 90% of content creators state that most of their income comes from partnerships with businesses. Of these, the tech and business creators have the most profitable niche, earning them over $150,000 a year;
- 5% of content creators measure their personal success through their engagement levels, 32.5% measure it through turnover and 9% derive it from their number of followers. Although the latter now tells you very little, given the way that TikTok and other platforms’ algorithms work, it is still, unfortunately, a variable that corporate communication managers place a great deal of emphasis on.
The content creator identikit
So far, so good. But who are content creators today?
According to the same global report, they are predominantly aged between 25 and 34, with high levels of education and training.
They mostly ‘live’ (in media and conversational terms) on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, not forgetting Twitch and good old blogs. Interestingly, certain niche platforms are also expanding: Pinterest, for example, is very popular among design and food professionals, and it is no surprise that these two topics are among content creators’ most returned-to subjects!
Content creators’ role in the communication mix
We’ve given you an outline of who content creators are and underlined the important role they play in the mix of channels, content and initiatives at any business, and, indeed, in multi-business and business-to-business channels too!
Now for another question: why should decision-makers at companies ask content creators to help communicate with the public?
Having followed influencer marketing and customer engagement projects in recent years for businesses of various sizes and across myriad sectors, I believe there are three main reasons. Content creators assist with an organisation’s communication and marketing by:
- … providing a human face. Although many people will be shocked to read that a company would pay a content creator up to £50,000, for managers in charge of allocating budgets this is often a negligible amount. They would have spent the same amount on Facebook, Instagram or Google, and that money would end up going straight to a machine (which can be fairly murky in its operations, particularly considering recent developments in generative AI, despite everyone trying to only paint it in a positive light). It is much, much better to pay a real-life person, who you can then meet at the end of the campaign to discuss the results. It comes back once again to the psychological fact that we trust people more than robots.
- … streamlining decision-making. Keeping up with the latest trends is much easier said than done. Between the initial decision and the end result there are countless chains of command, policies, organisational structures and flows and legal and/or IT rules to comply with, which can slow the process down to a snail’s pace. Much better to ask someone else to do it for you… a content creator, for example!
- … outsourcing some of the marketing. Businesses always have a lot of binary decisions to make on many different aspects, like choosing whether to make something in-house or buy it from the market. Turning to content creators often relieves you of various activities that otherwise you would have had to do internally. Consider, for instance, how hard it is to grow your business’s profile organically, rather than interacting with other people’s profiles, which almost automatically generates viral posts, empathy and followers.
So are these content creators all sunshine and roses? You can probably guess the answer!
Following conversations with managers and decision-makers at businesses over the last few years, I have put together three reasons to be vigilant (or, even better, cautious) when using them.
- They present a huge risk to brand equity. For decades, advertising and other brand-building initiatives have generated iconic and resilient brands with their own unique language and status. A few months ago, I was talking to the publishing director at a global sportswear brand, and he told me they had recently hired a leading content creator. As he saw it, it would have been a mistake to share guidelines on the brand’s tone of voice with him and so direct him towards the brand’s world; he thought he should do the exact opposite, i.e. allow him to use his own style, to ensure that as many people as possible came into contact and absorbed he brand. While this seems perfectly acceptable at first glance (as otherwise they probably wouldn’t have needed the creator at all), in the long run it could be lethal to brand equity, with the business’s key elements and unique features being overshadowed by the content creator’s, who, I am always reminding people, is a brand too…
- The discourse surrounding the brand and its own communications become dumbed down. For the reason given above, creators are hardly ever interested in the brands they work with – they are much more interested in making a living themselves. By definition, they need to reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. And when something becomes popular, it tends to reduce the complexity of the content, which has to become as understandable as possible to everyone. And if a content creator ends up as part of your brand voice, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that your language and messages could end up being simplified and trivialised. 👽
- The communication and marketing department becomes an empty vessel. This is a real risk if all your marketing manager ends up doing is orchestrating market resources. Marketing turns into fleeting and short-term micro-marketing. And once this has happened, to echo the name of one of my favourite agencies, who will build the big brands of the twenty-first century?
Finally, the content creator could end up being ‘too human’: content creators are still people, and people can make mistakes. The scandal that rocked Italy in 2022 involving influencer Chiara Ferragni, who was hired by the food manufacturer Balocco to communicate on its behalf, but ended up accused of misleading advertising, should lead businesses to reflect on the need for clear and authentic rules, mostly in order to protect people.
One of the maxims of the creator industry is if the human fails, resort to digital.
Hence the constant stream of new virtual creators (CGI avatars) and even AI-powered influencers, most notably the omnipresent Lil Miquela, who is styled as an activist. Some people call them brandfluencatars, a combination of the words ‘brand’, ‘influencer’ and ‘avatars’. These meticulously planned, specially designed fake creators sometimes behave in ways that are more human than real humans.
Nevertheless, these profiles are still managed by humans, and not all of them simply want a chat or have others’ best interests at heart.
Take Emily Pellegrini, for instance: a creator whose appearance and adeptness in the digital universe led many followers (including some famous faces) to practically lose their minds. She managed to accrue a wide follower base and plenty of acclaim in just a few months, before revealing that everything was fake, including the images and visuals, which were created (or at least touched up) using generative AI. If you look at her profile today, the majority of the photos of Emily have been replaced by content on AI and digital business.
The need for regulation
The cases of Chiara, Emily and others have led various institutional bodies to start looking at the creator economy from a regulatory perspective.
In Italy, between Christmas 2023 and early 2024, the Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) drew up a series of regulations to protect people and consumers, which will be binding for content creators. These rules equate content creators (assuming they meet certain criteria regarding their follower base, operations and ability to stimulate their audience) with audiovisual content producers, and state the need for communicating transparently, fact-checking before content is published, and protecting the most vulnerable groups. You can read them in this article.
Various other countries are gradually regulating this world too – like the UK’s CAP Code and CPRS and the FTC Guidelines in the USA.
While these rules have different names, they all share the goal of increasingly protective, sincere and respectful communication. The rules are not always followed, and it isn’t always the creator’s fault. For example, a few years ago, an influencer trip to Guangzhou in China, sponsored by Shein, turned into a nightmare for the brand, leading to more and more criticism and damaging its reputation.
There’s a saying in the business world: the USA invents, China copies, Europe regulates. This seems to apply to the creator economy too: as we wait to see how things develop, good luck with involving creators in your business’s communication and ‘influence’ projects – and remember, make sure you always put your customers’ needs first.