Special episode: From chaos to clarity – the new science of creator effectiveness

0:13Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Marketing Week podcast. My name is Russell Parsons and I am your host for this episode. Special as it's in partnership with our good friends at Kantar and that it deals with a big opportunity for marketers, creators. To state the very obvious, creator marketing is big and getting bigger. According to Kantar's latest media reactions data, a net 61 % of marketers plan to increase their spend on creator content this year. Huge marketing organisations like Udilever and Koti and many, many more are switching budget, seduced by the possibility of deeper engagement and soul that working with creators somehow will mean their messages will be trusted more.

0:56Maybe this is the case if it's done well. So how do you work with creators more effectively to unlock some of the opportunities that are undoubtedly there to build brands in the long term and drive performance in the short term? Furthermore, how do you measure it meaningfully so that marketers don't feel it's a roll of the dice and CFOs a risk? Well, luckily, I have an expert with me to unpick it all. Vera Shidlova, a global creative thought leadership director at Kantar, armed with data and insight in the form of a hot-off-the-press, very substantial report that utilised Kantar's LinkAI solution to analyse over 15 ,000 pieces of sponsored creator content across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

1:44All in pursuit of answering the key question, what drives impact? Hello, Vera, and welcome to the Marketing Week podcast. Hello, Russell. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Now, before we dive into the data, tell us a bit about your role at Kantar. Yeah, so I look after our creative thought leadership. So I actually do a lot of research on what makes creative and creator content work. And then I spend quite a bit of time talking about it. Well, that's a good start because we're going to be talking about it a lot on this podcast. Now, some, I think, view creator marketing as a bit of a tactical add-on, while others, as I mentioned in my intro, are switching to creator-first Marcom's campaigns.

2:33I think it's safe to say, fair to say even, that plenty of the campaigns produced by the net 61 % of marketers that plan to increase their spend on creator content this year will amount to ads read by faces familiar to many. But do creator-led campaigns have their own distinct creative fingerprint? Or perhaps a better question is, should they? I think the answer is that they do, but people in the industry will differ on how big that difference is. So you will have some people who think that it's a fundamentally different species, that creator content is so different from advertising, that it has completely its own separate set of rules.

3:16What we're finding in the data is that it definitely has its own fingerprint, but it's not quite a different animal in the same sense from advertising. I think the best way that I think about thinking about it it's like two types of cycling like your advertising would be your track velodrome cycling where you have everything under control you decide what goes on there out there you decide where to spend how much etc and creator content is your road cycling where you are sometimes you have to know how to deal with the elements which could be a fan with a flag or someone running along with you as a writer.

3:52And it has different, certainly different environment and brands have to engage with it differently, both from a process standpoint, but also from the output. It does fundamentally look different and has a different fingerprint. We interact differently with creator content than we do with ads. At the same time, if I was the CMO or even better, the CFO, you do need to hold them to the same standard in terms of outcomes. I mean, that's essential, isn't it? I think for any kind of marketing activity at all, that it should be based on outcomes and not outputs. And we're going to get on to talking about metrics and measurement in a short while.

4:31I suppose on that question, your report highlights that when done well, creator content consistently outperforms digital advertising, for want of a better way of putting it, norms on connection metrics. Explain what you found there in the report. Yeah, so when we look at our context lab studies, so kind of media effectiveness side of things data, we do find that creator content, again, when done well, when the execution aligns really well, does better than traditional digital advertising and driving awareness of the brand and also consideration. Now, this may also partially be down to how creators are currently used in the space, because a lot of marketers use them to drive education about brands existing and also about, you know, new product launches.

5:21So some of that might be driven by how people are currently using creators. But the data is quite clear that creators because of the trust and because of their kind of own credibility in their relative environments and communities can outperform digital advertising. Now, with that said, I would never advise clients to pit them against one another. I think it's more about thinking about how do you use each of those in your overall mix and what do you want to deliver via paid digital advertising versus where can creators be most helpful? I mean, I suppose it depends on what you're trying to achieve, really.

5:57It's never one versus the other. It's what your objective is in the first place that determines the means and method to get there, that sound advice. I mean, why does creator content, you think, naturally soften those conventional brand signals? And how should marketers think about this trade-off? so it's precisely because creators are not a channel so marketers actually have a narrow toolkit and how they show up in creator content if you think back to advertising um kind of the metaphor with um cycling again in advertising you have full control and often brands will kind of populate an ad with their furniture be it a slogan you know the color palette mascots distinctly brand assets and the entire space is theirs versus with the creator they by definition are entering a different person's space and they're entering a relationship and they cannot move in with all of their furniture they have to think quite carefully about the right balance now we find in our research that for example when it comes to branding in particular the toolkit is a lot narrower it's often about how the branding devices show up but also how well the creator interacts with the brand.

7:10And we find that one of the big pieces that drives branding and creator content is how the creator talks about the brand in audio, yet only 50 % of creator content actually does that. So that's a big missing bit. And I think the key learning for marketers is that there is a trade off by definition. That's why you're getting the good stuff from creator content. So you cannot, you know, expect it to be 100 % like advertising. You need to learn to work really well with the narrower toolkit and finding the balance between the creator's own content and your brief. And as you say, it's a balance to be struck, isn't it?

7:47Is there a risk, though, that in pursuit of authenticity and ensuring that you don't dilute the impact of the creator, that people will watch a piece of activity that's done in partnership with a brand and not be any wiser about the brand or what the message is? Yeah, and this happens a lot, actually. And fundamentally, platforms don't exist to drive impact for brands, right? They prioritize content that's likely to be watched and that's likely to have people stay on the platform and engage with the platform. And there is some tension and actually quite a bit of difference between creator content that drives impact for the brand, whether it's short-term or long-term, and what drives engagement on the platforms themselves.

8:34So I, the good researcher I am, we compared platform engagement rate data with effectiveness data from LinkAI and we found out they align only in one third of the cases. So if you're a marketer that bases their creator content choices only on engagement data, you are likely to be making the wrong call two thirds of the time. And that's something I think you refer to was the engagement trap in the report. I mean, measurement is a key issue, meaningful measures of success, obviously a big issue generally, as I alluded to earlier. I mean, marketers love chasing views, likes and comments because they are right there in front and they're easy to attribute and count.

9:19They're easy to read, almost dopamine hit, I think, for marketers. What does the data show about platform engagement in your report? Yeah, so first it shows that it's only a part of the overall picture. So platform engagement is important, but it is not a sufficiently robust signal to predict effectiveness. And marketers need better decision intelligence to make sure that that rising spend is invested well. Now, if you only look at the highly engaging pieces of content in our data set, so only the stuff that actually does well on the platform, Fewer than one in five have strong brand building potential.

9:58And for short-term sales, it's roughly one in eight. So it's really small within those highly engaging pieces of content that you actually get strong impact, whether short-term or long-term. So something definitely to watch out for. And yeah, definitely avoid the engagement trap. Now, I do want to be fair. I think a lot of marketers have moved away from it and are recognising that as creator marketing kind of matures, that they need to also have measurement systems in place that are at pace with that. Why is the algorithms reward system such a misleading guide for business growth? Well, because I think the platforms, they're set up to promote content that keeps us as people on it and keeps us engaged with the content and they're not structured.

10:50to serve every individual brand's CFO's goals for every quarter, right? So there will always be a difference between what the platform's algorithms put forward versus what will drive business and brand outcomes for clients. But it makes it all the more important for clients to actually make sure they're briefing right so they hit the sweet spot where it's both engaging on the platform and actually aligned with whatever marketing objectives they have for a given creator campaign. They really should steer away for optimizing for the feed only because that could mean they're not backing the stuff that's actually good for their brand or even worse, they're backing a lot of stuff that people find really engaging.

11:34But as you said earlier, it doesn't necessarily leave people more aware or more interested in the brand as such. I could almost answer the question I'm about to ask you myself. Well, probably the answer is it depends. But is there an optimum measure of impact when it comes to creator? So what we'd say is that you have to do a number of things, but ultimately bring it up to the same standard as your other paid spend. So we would recommend testing all your creator assets to, for example, determine which ones you end up boosting with the spend. Also, we increasingly have more and more clients feeding their creator data into marketing mix models, again, to determine the overall role of that investment for effectiveness.

12:20So I would say at a minimum, have, you know, test all your assets, whether during or after a campaign or even slightly before to inform boosting, but definitely make sure that you have robust measurement in place to make sure that that spend is spent wisely. And to inform the next campaign, we even have some clients who are thinking about kind of measuring mid-collab to then inform better briefing for the subsequent pieces of content as part of a collab with a single creator. So there's different ways, different use cases, but definitely engagement is no longer sufficient given how much spend is going into creator.

12:59I mean, that's good advice generally, I think, for measuring impact and measuring best practice generally. Generally, you've just set me up for my next question, which is about briefs. I mean, the briefs are generally a problem, I think, in marketing. The quality is questionable in many areas of marketing communications, particularly when brands are briefing agencies. But when you're briefing an influencer, it's obviously essential that you get that right. So you can harness the trust that they have built up with their audience. Now, I've heard some marketers express concern that giving creators guidelines will ruin their authenticity.

13:44But I believe the data in your report uncovered an incredibly simple, massive, quick win to allay such fears. What was it? So it was that to drive strong branding in a creator content, you should actually actively brief your creators to talk about the brand in audio. And at first that could seem as a little bit of like, duh. But when we actually checked how many campaigns do that, it was half of the campaigns did that and half didn't. A lot of the times when we then check the content, it was either that the brand's name was in the caption of the post, for example, or it was just visually shown.

14:21But it wasn't actually part of the creator's story of how they interacted with the brand, what it brought to them in their life. Did it make something easier? Did they uncover a new way to use the brand? And often creators work with their communities. You could be watching running content or people who love watchmaking and making sure that they actually physically talk about the brand resulted in a plus 22 percentile point lift in branding. Yet it was the least used of the high drivers in the analysis. And what can brands do here in terms of getting verbal mentions in or product interactions? What kind of advice would you give them so that they can make sure that people are left without any doubt that they have seen something that is in partnership with the brand, but that doesn't suffocate the creator's voice?

15:16I'd say they should put it in the brief that they do expect the level of interaction and narrative mention but at the same time the brief should be actually brief like it shouldn't have a ton extra on it so that the creators can then get thinking bring their own personality to it bring their own considerations maybe ideas as well so that it's not a robotic or mechanic mention of the brand as part of the story I think we can all sense when it feels scripted right like we've all seen those creators where it feels like it's so distilled and that we do feel it takes away from the authenticity. So for brands, the guardrails should be there in a brief, but it shouldn't be a 40 page brand book.

15:57And there should be very clear expectations of the brand showing up. But again, enough room given to the creator to craft their own story. Again, sound advice generally when briefing, whether or not it's agencies or creators, that briefs should be brief. And I've seen plenty of them that amount to several pages on occasion without a great deal of clarity. So thank you for that. Now talk to me, I mentioned in my intro Link AI, talk to me about how you use Link AI to predict effectiveness before campaigns even go live and how predictive AI can help brands move past some of the valetary metrics that we've alluded to already.

16:39Nina, so Link AI is a solution that you can run all of your creator content through. And it gives you predicted measures of long-term brand impact, but also impact on sales. So those would be the key measures that you would get from it. You can use that to decide which content to boost. Maybe you can also decide that to brief differently if you're working with those creators a bit later on as well. You can maybe use that as part of your evaluation of who you want to work with more in the future. But you don't get just that. you get lots of diagnostic measures as well. And we frame them in a way that's specific to creator content.

17:15So we have cultural power, which talks about how relevant the piece of content is in culture. We have viral power, which talks about how likely that content is to engage, for people to want to engage with it and share it further. And then we've got algorithmic power, which helps predict how well the piece of content will travel on the platforms. So everything is kind of rooted in that understanding of creator content working differently. But at the same time above it, you've got the brand and sales measures that are the same currency that you can use across other types of advertising. So you have one currency, even though it's calculated with some specifics for creator content.

17:56So it allows you to compare, but also reflects the uniqueness of creator content as such. I mean, it sounds like it's a tool to provide marketers, brands with confidence. And obviously, you need that confidence when you are requesting investment of your CFO or CEO or whoever it is who controls the purse strings in an organisation. Now, if I could ask you, if a CMO and many marketing leaders will be listening to this right now, what advice would you give them in terms of justifying creator investment when they are facing a board meeting or a board member or a CFO, what takeaways would you leave them with in terms of justifying that investment?

18:44Yeah, so while creator marketing has grown a lot, at the same time, I think it is still a very much live and evolving space. So I would say that to any CMO that's trying to get that spend signed off, it is okay to start a bit smaller, measure well, and then get that confidence and credibility from the rest of the C-suite to keep scaling that in ways that make sense for your business and for your brand. And I definitely say we have moved past the experimentation era as an industry, but there will be a lot of clients for whom it will still be relatively new. So starting with sound principles, measuring, boosting the right way, evaluating, and then having a good kind of learning and effectiveness culture in the organization around it so that you can use it to inform the next ask for the next budget will be key.

19:34We do find in our data that it's the second fastest rising touchpoint in terms of brand impact. So together with streaming video creators are the second fastest rising touchpoint in the overall brand impact. So it's an important one for marketers to tap into. But at the same time, the platform data that I shared earlier shows that effectiveness is still a little bit of a toss up for many. So it is important to go in with an effectiveness mindset and measure along the way. Again, good sound advice generally. Let's talk about practical examples, if I could. I know you've done a lot of work on best practice.

20:12You've identified some really interesting use cases of brands who have worked with creators to good effect. Can you give me a few examples of what you've noticed works, which brands are doing interesting, innovative things and driving impact at the same time whilst working with creators? So first, I'll say that I find it to be a fascinating landscape because it's so diverse. It's so different how different brands choose to tap into creators. I think oftentimes we can think of creator collaborations as your one minute long Instagram story, video, whatever collab, and like some placements and tags and maybe an affiliate code.

20:54But it's so much more than that. And there are a lot of examples of creativity at play as well. I think the first one I'll mention is what we saw in Cannes this year, which was the Vaseline Marathon sponsorship, where they leaned into listening on social on how people talk about their brand. And they found out a lot of long distance runners actually use Vaseline on their nipples during race days so that their nipples don't bleed. And on the back of that, they collaborated with creators and became a sponsor, the nipple sponsor of the marathon. And so that's an example of kind of going community first and then really starting with the creator and then building from that.

21:35Another example that, while different, I also think is a good example of good practice is what SeraVe have done with the comedian Anwar Jibawi. He's based in America. and the brief was, we've got this product, it's a cleanser and it works for combination skin. So people who have dry and oily skin sometimes struggle to find the right product because their skin is of both types. And he brought the idea that he'll do one of his comedy sketches as an extreme Shakespeare parody. And instead of Romeo and Juliet, it will be Olio and Dryliet. And it will be this very humorous take on the battle of the two skin types.

22:13And the brand was, you know central in that but it did not feel like an ad and at the same time it was the creator's own idea and his own style his style of comedy that was brought to the forefront so I think you will see different ways of people showing up and I think that's the right way to do it is to explore with creativity what creators can do and which ones to work with and sometimes that will be micro communities sometimes it will be someone bigger with a big following that has a lot of creative license to bring to the partnership as well but there are ways to explore that for different brands so I'd cite these two as kind of not opposite ends but different ways of bringing creators yeah I suppose for a very practical purpose the others the latter example that you use there is entertaining and highly amusing and very much in line I'd imagine with the tone of voice that well each brand has although I have to say I use Vaseline on my nipples when I ran the marathon two years ago so I'm here Vaseline if you want anybody to partner with I do fancy myself there as a as an influencer now you've given me two good examples of good practice now you don't have to name names Vera I'm not going to put you on the spot but what should people avoid what a precautionary tales, the kind of things that are no-nos when you are working with creators?

23:35Yeah, I think sometimes, so some of the bigger no-nos, and I think we see this less and less, but we still see it, is one is selecting creators only based on follower size and using them purely as a channel, because sometimes that quite visibly isn't hitting the right tone with the audiences. They feel like they're being sold to, and while they see it, what are they going to do with that information so follower size alone isn't a good guide same over scripted briefs it does show up in the content in ways that could reduce its credibility and i would say and this is more of a like a pet peeve of mine is treating creator marketing completely as a silo or only to as a performance channel in the toolkit like there are really great ways to create synergy effects between with what you're doing with some of your big ticket campaigns and with how you're activating with creators, but making sure your teams are organized and your briefs are organized in a way to kind of create that cross-pollination effect is really important.

24:34And we've seen work from, for example, from Desperados who do have central campaign ideas, but they are done in a way that creators can be very much brought in. And again, it allows enough space for them to get involved and kind of resonating culture through their creator partnerships. One final question, if I could, Vera. I'm thinking of investing time and energy in creator-led marketing campaigns. What's the one piece of advice that you would give me? What's the first thing that I should consider? to make confident decisions and use the right intel to make them do not just go with you know who maybe your child likes online or your marketing team but really step back and think strategically what makes sense for this brand i can think of no better way clearer way to finish this podcast.

25:32Thank you very much, Vera, for taking us through a 101, almost a starter kit for those that are both thinking about and that have tried creator marketing, what the do's and the don'ts should be. So I appreciate the insight that you've shared today. Until next time on the Marketing Week podcast, goodbye from me and goodbye from Vera. Goodbye.

26:01Thank you.