👯‍♀️ ARE WE ALL JUST CREATOR-MAXXING? 

The World Cup has never been more star-studded (covered in a previous Culture Wire), as Capital-F Famous People from across fandoms converge to celebrate one of the biggest global cultural events. So imagine the size of Unilever’s content creator Rolodex as the official personal care brand of this year’s World Cup announced it’s adopting a “Super Bowl every two days” marketing strategy. The brand has partnered with 50,000 creators worldwide across online and offline activations and campaigns, ranging from big-name athletes to micro-creators.

Once viewed as simple amplification channels for whatever direction agencies were hired to push, creators now seem to be center stage, with a seat at the table at the start of a brand’s creative funnel. Is this the dawn of a new era?

 💡 OUR TAKE

Have we really arrived at Creator 2.0? Maybe the more interesting development is not that brands are just talking about creator-maxxing, but that heavy-hitters are investing in and scaling more diverse voices in communities and fundamentally retooling the marketing production process to bring creators to the drawing board. 

Unilever operationalized this with a Cannes Lion stamp of approval in the creative process for the 2025 Bronze Lion-winning Part of the Game with Arsenal Football Club.  The campaign message was completely overhauled based on the input of Arsenal Women’s athlete-creators, which speaks to the trust placed in the creators as the credibility sign-off. Unilever Global CMO Leandro Barreto stated that this new SOP, in which creators are recognized as voices of authenticity, double-team with agencies, and don’t just act as spellcheckers, required a shift in “relationships [and] control”. This might be an understatement, as the company now works with 30x more creators versus just two years ago, with a roster of 300,000 creators.

Brand-building has always meant partnering with different stakeholders: the classic celebrity spokesperson for clout, and a movie tentpole or IP for scale and to get the word out. As the new generation of YouTube talent gains name recognition and starts commanding dollars, these creators are now celebrities to which proximity is coveted (however mundane-seeming).

A big name doesn’t always equate to credibility, though. Celebrities and mega-influencers can be seen as Too Big To Trust. Brands are increasingly engaging with micro-creators and voices in micro-communities to build trust with consumers from the ground up. Nano-creators (1K-10K followers) in APAC are spotlighted for having higher engagement rates across platforms than macro-creators, with trust and authenticity cited as the top reasons consumers engage with creators in the first place. Visa even terms smaller creators as micro-SMBs, a fast-growing category in the USD 135.2B (2023) APAC creator economy. 

Sports brands are especially active in doing so by engaging with amateur and niche sports communities. Nike, in its battle against growth headwinds, is tapping into smaller-scale creators and communities to reposition itself and build influence. In fact, Nike and other previously entrenched multinational brands already face heightened competition in China, where key local brands are seen as more culturally connected and anti-generic. In South Korea, the popular Private Road Running Club positions itself as a community “for not only running but Korean culture across the board”, and brands must engage with it in ways that feel authentic and enrich people’s daily routines. As even these communities become more diverse, there’s growing demand for non-sports and non-performance-based brands to engage with these running groups in accessible ways.

The ways brands and creators work together are ever-evolving and increasingly corporatized, but one thing remains evergreen: how can one stay relevant and build in the culture? One marketing strategy doesn’t guarantee lasting cultural stickiness. Which communities has your brand been engaging with, and how are you crafting the brand story together?

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

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