Before we start, I think it's worth clarifying something important.
Unilever has increased its creator budget from 30% to 50%. They are still spending the other 50% on "traditional" advertising. I mention this because after reading Ritson's piece, I was left with the impression that Fernando Fernández had personally decided to spend $0 on traditional advertising while making it his personal mission to upset the author by redirecting their full brand and marketing budget (+/-$9 billion) entirely to content creators. This is in fact not the case, but the article was still written.
I also wanted to share some thoughts with you that I had while reading the article (in no particular order):
- He is really trying (and sadly succeeding) to rage bait influencer practitioners.
- Surely I'm not the only one that's getting "tell me you haven't worked in the creator marketing industry without telling me you haven't worked in the creator marketing industry" vibes?
- Is this post sponsored by the Ehrenberg-Bass institute / Byron Sharp? Where's the disclosure?
- I wonder if he's aware of the amount of "influencer marketing is dead / is going to die" articles that exist?
- So he's generally okay with content creators working on Vaseline but draws the line at mayonnaise and condiments?
- He has very clearly never experienced #cleantok
- Why can't content creators co-exist with other forms of advertising!?
- Yep, he's definitely rage baiting.
IS BIG BRAND ADVERTISING DEAD?
The author has taken Fernando Fernández saying that "the times of big corporate big brand messages are gone" as quite an affront - and one that seemingly can only be countered with full on retaliation.
He goes straight for the creator marketing jugular in a way that seems to contradict his integrated marketing communications ideals. In less than 200 words he:
- Notes that there is no evidence to support that creators outperform traditional advertising for "brand building"
- Says that creators are brilliant at deepening engagement with existing fans, but "considerably less good" at reaching non-buyers
- Puts it forward that the general case for creator-led content in skin care, where demonstration and peer testimony matter enormously, is generally proven - as opposed to let's say mayonnaise, or condiments, apparently.
- Sarcastically comments "good luck driving sales of Domestos using toilet influencers sharing various flushing videos across TikTok"
ON THE LACK OF EVIDENCE
First things first, let's find out what Ritson actually means by brand building. It is a phrase coined by (surprise?) Byron Sharp. Google's AI overview tells me that it can be defined as:
"the scientific, evidence-based process of increasing a brand's market share by enhancing its mental and physical availability to all potential buyers."
Source
The definition is fairly clear. With the definition in hand, I decided that if I can't find any evidence that supports the idea that content creators are able to outperform traditional advertising in regards to brand building within 10 minutes - I'll stop writing this article. Here's what I found:
- New research finds using creators for brand building drives long-term equity and short-term sales, outperforming traditional digital advertising.
- Influencer marketing ROI 'outperforms' linear TV and paid social, study finds
- WPP forecasted social media ad revenue — including creators — would hit $413 billion for the year, eclipsing traditional media.
- Nielsen's Brand Impact service, which measured nearly 200 influencer campaigns, found that an average of 80% of influencer ad viewers recalled seeing the brand featured. Influencer ads also drove a 9-point increase in both brand affinity and purchase intent compared to consumers who didn't see the ads.
- Nielsen's UK research found that influencer marketing is four times as memorable as traditional digital content, with average uplifts of 12% in awareness, 15% in favourability, and 17% in brand consideration — all higher than traditional digital display and video benchmarks.
To be fair, none of these sources are by the Ehrenberg-Bass institute, so I can see why he dismissed the idea that any evidence does exist.
ON PENETRATION AND REACH
I have a positive note here. I too think that content creators are good at deepening engagement with fans who already love you(r brand). But I also know - from my own experience - that creators are heavily underutilised to that end. We know that the main use case for content creators is influencer advertising: a pay-to-play mechanic where the focus is heavily on bringing in new buyers.
I could also talk about how the marketing funnel has changed. That consumers seem to prefer hearing from content creators than brands directly, and how social media channels have the ability to compress the entire consumer journey into one singular environment, from discovery to purchase. However I'm assuming he already knows all of these things.
ON CATEGORY LIMITATIONS
A compliment! The author notes that there is a use-case for creator-led content in skincare (and compliments the work done with the Vaseline brand). He does draw quite a hard line at utilising content creators in the world of mayonnaise, food condiments, and toilet products.
What's interesting to me is that a few weeks ago, an agency that worked on the Vaseline brand said:
"Consumers weren't using Vaseline in the way we assumed they were using Vaseline. Rather than say 'stop using it in your eyebrows' we leant into it. We didn't actually create an awful lot of influencer content. What we did was we used what existed, it's an incredibly cost-effective way of working. We used what exists on the platforms and stitched it in a very native platform-friendly way."
Source
And to limit the use case for creator-led content to skincare, while omitting the majority of the beauty category there, the entire gaming industry, the existence of influencer-led brands such as Gymshark, etc.
But what stands out most is his sarcastic comment about "good luck using toilet influencers" - as it is a clear tell that the author has quite possibly never spent time on TikTok.
But Unilever has.
In 2023, TikTok 'cleanfluencers' sparked a trend for cleaning white trainers with Cif Cream. This created a unique opportunity for the team to join the conversation and contributed to a 38% uplift in UK adults under the age of 28 buying the brand.
Source
ON THE REAL ISSUE
I want to close on the fact that I think that the author is right about something. Prescribing a singular doctrine across 400 brands is not a good idea. Using influencer advertising as a stand-alone channel is also not a good idea.
However, the difference is that true integrated creator marketing is not a channel. It is infrastructure.
If we continue to prescribe to the idea that creator marketing equals influencer advertising, and we can only evaluate its efficacy against traditional advertising, if we continue to decide whether creator marketing fails or thrives only by that comparison, if we continue to treat content creators as media channels, a non-human distribution channel - most creator marketing programmes will fail.
Influencer advertising isn't designed to scale efficiently. The CPM race is a race to the bottom, more investment does not automatically mean higher returns.
When we think of creator marketing as infrastructure, you don't have to play the either/or game anymore. It stops being a channel that competes with traditional advertising. Instead, it has the potential to turn creator marketing into a true influence distribution system.
Building Creator Marketing Infrastructure means developing the means to think beyond short-term influencer advertising:
- Building always on-frameworks (not just campaign-thinking)
- Focusing on driving long-term brand-equity (not just short-term metrics)
- Harnessing earned, owned & paid influence (not just paid advertising)
- Building easy-to-repeat content loops (i.e. content creator programmes)
- Minimising admin-work (are you still handling the creator management process manually?)
When we start to think about creator marketing as infrastructure, we can start talking about the function as a meaningful content and influence distribution system.
To conclude, I think we should be more grateful that there are CEO's out there that are trying to future-proof their marketing approach, and are integrating content creators in a meaningful way while still spending literal billions on traditional advertising.
However, I have the sneaking suspicion that there are far too many CEOs that are more aligned with Ritson's way of thinking.
At least Fernando Fernández gives off the impression that he might whip out his phone at a party and show you what #cleantok is all about when asked.