How to bring discipline to a creator army
Opinion
What would industrial-scale success look like for Unilever’s creator army? They will need to be deliberately organised, aligned, supplied, and deployed, writes Kantar’s chief insights officer.
Unilever is building what its CEO Fernando Fenandez recently described as an “army” of creators: a 300,000-strong group it works with to promote its brands. It’s a useful metaphor.
Creator armies have power. Otherwise, why would a net 61% of marketers have told us they’re planning to increase their creator investment in 2026?
They also move quickly. The speed of culture and how content is being created, the trends they’re shaping, the technology they’re using – all are outpacing traditional brand-building methods.
This can seem overwhelming to marketers, especially those who’ve worked with only a handful of trusted partners. But while the approach might be new, there’s actually a strong precedent to operationalising creator activation at scale: it’s very similar to running a research panel.
This is something we know a thing or two about. At Kantar, we – and our clients – rely on our panel of 170 million people worldwide.
Our research is predicated on the time these people give us, in exchange for an incentive, answering questions about their behaviours and attitudes. The intelligence they feed us powers our work, and therefore the marketing decisions of some of the world’s biggest and most innovative brands. It’s our job to keep these people happy and engaged, and to keep the panel full when some naturally move on.
What helps is looking at panellists as long-term partners. We wouldn’t run a panel without structure, and creators are the same – leaning on an influencer for a flash-in-the-pan activation is a waste of relationship-building effort.
What’s needed is management discipline: controls, systems and accountability. On a practical level, that includes a CRM to analyse rates of acquisition, engagement, and retention. It also means having clear rules of participation so that creators are active at the right moments – nurtured and engaged but not overwhelmed.
There are some differences. Both panellists and creators need to represent the broad public, but creators will be segmented differently.
The size of their reach (from full-scale to nano-influencer) is a natural starting point. Marketers also need to understand the detailed attributes that make these people relevant to their brands: their hair type, skin sensitivity, parenting status, how often they travel, and so on, so that they can call on the most relevant when trends command it.
And while both panellists and creators require a proper value exchange, the emphasis is different. Brands need to think of ways to activate creator loyalty and reward those who continually give their time and energy. The best approaches are mutually beneficial. We’ve seen brands teach their creators platform-specific skills, such as how to successfully grow on TikTok, or give them the tools they need to become better editors.
Making your creators more effective
Despite the investment in creator tactics, opportunities are being missed: we know that only 27% of creator content strongly ties to the brand it’s meant to build.
The challenge is how to align the creator without forcing them to toe your brand line, which misses the point entirely: creators are not actors who can be told what to do. The skill for marketers is learning to set the brief, then ceding control. You have to see yourself as a co-creator, not a director.
Success relies on three things. First, clear guardrails for content. Those should extend beyond marketing. Legal, for example, needs to understand that unfamiliar assets are part of a bigger picture if they’re going to grant approval at the required speed. Second, a clear brief. What are the must-haves for the content, who are you trying to reach, and how quickly does content need to be activated? Third is solid success metrics that both sides understand.
Then, let creators do what they do best. If the approach is open and fast, they will more successfully weave a brand into the cultural conversation they represent. Ultimately, it’s up to them to create the content in their own authentic way and to think about what the social hook is.
The marketer’s job is to decide when to lean on specific segments of their creator database. That might be a trigger (like a bad weather forecast, if you sell raincoats or comfort food) or it could be something in your control, like a new product launch or a special offer.
Once you have the capabilities to manage creators at scale, that can stretch to more ambitious campaigns such as content flooding (activating enough creators at once that you actually start a trend focused around your brand) or multi-brand campaigns – using creators known for one thing (say, flamboyant make-up looks) to promote an adjacent category (such as whitening toothpaste) simultaneously.
Measuring in line with new rules
The CMO’s role is to grow their brand. If creator content isn’t doing that for you, or it’s not performing well compared to other paid and owned channels, its effectiveness needs to be constantly evaluated. That includes rigorous testing to ensure creators are meeting the brief and that campaigns have the intended impact.
But you also need something that respects and understands the new rules of the creator economy. Loose metrics like engagement won’t do it. Now, there’s also brand-building potential, sales potential, ‘viral’ potential and a ‘supercharging the algorithm’ potential to consider. On top of that, brands are increasingly boosting creator content with paid media, which brings its own KPIs and metrics.
Creators don’t come cheap. But we would never invest millions in our research panel without governance, standards, and accountability, and the same applies here.
Strength is never just in numbers. If brands want industrial-scale success, they need their creators to be organised, aligned, supplied and deployed deliberately.
Jane Ostler is chief insights officer at Kantar