Your Weekly Creator Marketing Update🚀
09.06.2025
Before we start - I’d like to kick this week’s newsletter off with a project I’ve been working on recently.
We often talk about the importance of audiences, and the ability to track impact beyond the performance-level metrics. I’ve been working in the creator industry since 2013, and the last five have been on the brand side. I’ve often searched for tools that help me understand exactly how an audience is responding to a sponsored post. I’ve always wanted to understand whether the content is resonating, or whether it’s falling on deaf ears.
One of the issues in the creator space is that the majority is created by people that are not native to the industry - and have not run or led campaigns, let alone build out meaningful strategies, yet they build out the technology that drives the creator space.
That is currently changing, the rise of AI coding is providing a way for people with experience to explore building tools. There are big caveats, and will more than likely lead to imperfect products in the short term, but I’m having fun exploring the various tools and their capabilities.
With that in mind, I've created an audience lens tool - the idea is simple:
📈 I’ve created a way for users to input a YouTube URL into the tool
🔎 The tool will identify the relevant sponsor and its segment (if it exists) in the video
🎙️It will apply a methodology to identify relevant comment that mention the segment or the brand - and classify their sentiment
📊It will compute a simple score to help classify impact - and understand audience perception of the sponsored segment work with AI to deliver sentiment scores and
⚖️ The tool will also allow you compare “your” sponsored performance to other recent sponsored videos posted by the same creator
📣Do you work with content creators on YouTube - and interested in sentiment analysis? Click on the button below. I’m looking for a small group of people to validate & use the tool (free of charge!)
🎯Matalan’s tips on how to work with influencers
📌 TL;DR
Matalan's marketing team and influencer @ladyofthemanor77 (1.2M followers) shared practical partnership insights at Drapers Social Summit. Key takeaways: brands should give creators authentic freedom to select products that align with their style, focus on long-term relationship building over individual post KPIs, leverage internal workforce creativity, and maintain authenticity by understanding brand identity and audience needs across different platforms.
🔍 MY THOUGHTS
A lovely summary of an influencer marketing approach that is (finally?) becoming much more mainstream. Matalan is setting up some amazing core principles.
Dewhurst said Matalan does not set KPIs for individual posts: “We tend to look at posts week on week and we don’t over-analyse it.
“We have a blend of influencers we work with and we know we have a formula that works. We are lucky to have the space to measure it [an influencer campaign] in its full form.”
I’ve raised my concerns before about how there is a strong lean towards applying performance marketing metrics to content creators: you pay $30,000 and generate 2,000,000 views - the $15 CPM that then rolls out is analysed through a spreadsheet and almost in its entirety determines the value that creator provided. Dewhurst however highlights a slightly more laid back approach - and I welcome that fully.
stepping away from over-analysing and leaning into bigger trends and sentiment - and doubling down on what works is (in my humble opinion) much more valuable than buying 2 million views and filling the space with a mediocre sponsored segment, especially as we’re headed more and more towards a landscape where the algorithms are pivoting towards pushing content that users engage with, and the impact of built-in audiences is decreasing. Before jumping into increasing creator-spend, I would urge anyone to ask themselves the below:
Dewhurst said: “[When you work for a big company,] sometimes it’s about taking those shackles off and asking: ‘Do we understand who we are? What do our customers want? And what are the nuances per channel?’ and just have some fun with it.”
😲If you’re using influencers then you’re behind
📌 TL;DR
Intel's comms director argues that brands should shift from influencer-first strategies to customer storytelling because audiences are becoming more sceptical of paid endorsements. Real customers sharing authentic experiences build more trust than traditional influencer content. The recommendation is to identify loyal customers and give them platforms to share their stories, turning communications teams into "story enablers" rather than just storytellers.
🔍 MY THOUGHTS
You guys know I love a good rage-bait title. For a moment, I thought the author had intended to put the emphasis on the word using (as opposed to co-creating, etc), however, the last paragraph tells me that was more than likely not their intention.
If you’re still betting big on influencers, but overlooking your actual users, you’re behind. The future of brand storytelling isn’t top-down. It’s community-up. Your most loyal customers aren’t just part of the audience; they’re part of the team. They’re already telling your story. The question is, are you listening?
I support the majority of the points made in this piece. Most of you know that my first endeavour (12 years ago) into influencer marketing was very much rooted in the idea that those that already love your brand should always be part of your marketing mix.
However, I do find the either/or framing limiting. It’s reminding me of the (still ongoing?) micro-versus-macro influencer debate.
Dismissing influencer marketing is not the play here - smart players are creating ecosystems where content creators, communities, and actual everyday users compliment each other and are blended into a much wider approach that spans all layers of influence.
Influencer Marketing after all is much more than just paying content creators to push out paid content - it does actually encompass all forms of influence, most just opt not to do so.
Her point about moving from "storytellers to story enablers" is spot-on though. The future isn't about replacing one channel with another - it's about orchestrating authentic voices across multiple touchpoints. Customer advocacy and influencer marketing should be complementary, not competitive.
📙Danone Is Redefining the Influencer Marketing Playbook
📌 TL;DR
Danone, working with agency Linqia, is reshaping influencer marketing by abandoning the traditional linear funnel for a "continuous loop of discovery." Their strategy embraces calculated risks and potential failure as learning opportunities, uses a green/yellow/red framework for content risk assessment, focuses on authentic creator partnerships aligned with each brand's purpose (like pairing Oikos Greek yogurt with powerlifter Anatoly), and transforms traditional sampling into engaging "person on the street" content that gamifies product trials.
🔍 MY THOUGHTS
The take on the traditional linear marketing funnel being dead is an incredibly interesting one - and there have been insightful articles talking about this recently. Highlighting the Vogue Business and Boston Consulting Group pieces in particular.
“The traditional linear marketing funnel is dead,” Bethea said, calling brand engagement a “continuous loop of discovery” thanks to the rise of social media and influencers.
“I need to make sure that our content and our brands are engaging with them at the right moment, at the right time, in the right place.”
Danone (and other brands) are starting to apply that thinking to creator marketing and focusing more on combining relevant moments with creators versus fabricating a moment and forcing an audience to travel through a funnel that they are not willing to explore.
I’m seeing a lot of paralysis when it comes to underperforming IGC - and I like that Danone’s willing to take risks and “fail” in order to learn. This is something that I would highly advise people to lean into. You can spend hours in tools & spreadsheets identifying the right content creator, pull them through CPM calculators, brand-safety and and audience demographic analyses, and develop a killer brief - but there is never a certainty that the audience will respond the way you want them to respond.
You can buy reach and fill your funnel with content creators - but you can’t buy your way into an audience and expect positive sentiment.
Leaning into the idea of experimenting and failing across various verticals will help you understand what is actually working - instead of hypothesising.
🏭Industry Headlines
📖From Authentic to Relatable: How Influencers Are Reshaping Brand Engagement in 2025
TSA’s founder/director Harry Foyle considers how influencer marketing in 2025 is being driven by relatability over perfection, with brands seeing the strongest results when they embrace unfiltered content
📖How Gamers and Category Experts Are Influencing Brands and Shaping the Creator Economy
In the world of online gaming communities, creators have options now, and that’s another telling sign about the evolution of the marketplace.
📖Hot and not: Influencer marketing – Opinion
Tied into Drinks Retailing’s Top 100 list, Tom Khan-Lavin, chief executive of YesMore drinks, considers the complex world of influencers – a landscape that presents both opportunities and challenges, with brands navigating a dynamic environment to connect with consumers.
📖Reps. Van Duyne and Clarke Launch Bipartisan Creators Caucus to Celebrate and Support Digital Content Development
Congresswoman Van Duyne (R-TX) and Congresswoman Clarke (D-NY) held a press conference to officially launch the Congressional Creators Caucus, a bipartisan effort to recognize, support, and empower the rapidly expanding digital creator economy. The Members were joined by numerous creators, including Matthew Patrick (MatPat) and Stephanie Patrick.