“The creator economy is worth about 250 billion right now. That’s set to almost double in the next two years.”

Our guest this week on The Persuasion Game podcast is an expert in one of the most exciting areas of marketing at the moment.

Creator marketing is big business and there are huge opportunities for brands that get it right. But there are also potential pitfalls.

Fiona Hughes has spent over 10 years leading creator marketing across some of PR’s biggest agencies. She shares some of her experience in an area that is seemingly only going to grow and grow.

We discuss what makes a successful creator-brand collaboration, how new channels are opening up genuine two-way conversations between brands and their customers, and why you might need to check your risk appetite before diving in.

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Want to know more about us? Visit our website here: thisistheforge.com

This is an 18Sixty production for The Forge.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:18) Understanding the Attention Economy

(05:58) The Role of Creators in Brand Communication

(11:25) Courting Controversy

(15:15) In-house Content Creation

(18:59) AI and Authenticity in Creator Marketing

The Persuasion Game is available on all your favourite podcast apps: https://link.chtbl.com/PersuasionGame

Episode transcript:

Fiona: The creator economy globally is worth about 250 billion right now. That’s set to almost double in just the next two years alone. Marketing spend in creator marketing is increasing even when other marketing spends are going down.

Adam: Hi, Laura, how are you?

Laura: I’m very excellent. Excited about today.

Adam: Me too. It’s a very relevant guest that we’ve got today considering some of the briefs we’ve been receiving recently. So, we’ve been hearing a lot from clients who are legacy brands or brands that have been working in a category for some time.

And what they’re seeing is new entrants, new startups, disrupting the category, disrupting the conversation. And one of the things that they do really well is use the creator influencer community in a really strong, powerful way. And we’re going to be speaking to someone today who can help unpick some of this and give us some advice as to what to do about it.

Laura: Yes. And I think it’s not just something that people are thinking about. We see Unilever actually putting 30% of their budget into creator led content. So, who better to talk to than someone that is an expert in working with creators. Fiona Hughes has got over 20 years in PR, but more importantly, over 10 of those years actually working with creator led marketing.

So, it’ll be really fascinating to hear what she has to say.

Adam: I can’t wait.

Laura: So, Fiona, before we get into the nuts and bolts, perhaps you’d be kind enough to introduce us to some of the lingo we’ll be talking about today.

Fiona: Actually, starting right at the beginning with all the different words for creator: influencers, creators, key opinion leaders, ambassadors, brand ambassadors, content creators.

I think for simplicity we should just say creator, because that’s what creators themselves prefer to be called. 

Going to the next level of detail is the different ways in which creators can be classified. One of the things that tends to cause a bit of confusion is the size of creator. Certainly, in the UK a nano influencer would have say, 2000 to 10,000 followers.

A micro influencer, 10 to 50,000. A mid is 50 to 250 and then megas, you’re really going into that social celebrity status of over a million. All of them can be really important in the mix, depending on the job you’re trying to do.

Laura: Lovely. That’s, thank you so much for that Fi.

Adam: So, we’re here today to talk about the attention economy and how brands grow within that.

And obviously we’ve been on a bit of a journey over the last decade within the world of social influences and now creators. And what we want to find out today on this podcast is, why should brands care about this attention economy and what’s in it for them?

Fiona: So that is the million-dollar question, and I think there’s several different parts of it.

Starting with the attention economy, for me what that means is where our audience, where our consumers are giving their attention, and that is increasingly social media. Whether that is a brand’s social channels or more likely your favourite creators and you know the people you follow, their channels.

So, in order to compete for that attention, you need to be part of that conversation. And I use the word conversation really mindfully because it’s not a broadcast channel, it’s not an old-fashioned TV advert. It’s a community that you are being part of and that you want to be part of. 

So for me and for people who work in creative marketing, I think they’d agree, the attention economy is about gaining attention, but then also maintaining that attention by having a two-way conversation, which obviously as well is a really valuable, desirable thing to be able to have with your audience. So the attention economy for me is about being in social channels in a creative, innovative way in terms of, as you rightly say, how much it’s grown – I’ve been in the industry for about 10, 12 years, and the size and scale of it is honestly unprecedented. So, stats now from, the likes of Goldman Sachs and business insiders say that the creator economy globally is worth about 250 billion right now.

That’s set to almost double in just the next two years alone. This attention economy is only getting bigger. It’s only getting faster and more frenetic, and you can really see that mirrored with spend as well. So, marketing spend in creator marketing is increasing even when other marketing spends are going down.

So, there are loads of proof points on that. Two to me, one is Unilever’s recently announced plans, I believe it was at, at Cannes Lions this year where Unilever announced that they plan to increase their spend on creative marketing by 20 times. Also, Publicis Groupe recently bought Influential creative marketing platform for 500 million US dollars.

So, both of those very recent proof points really underscore the increased strategic weight and scaling ambition within both brands and agencies to maximise the creator economy and the attention economy.

Laura: I think what you hit on there, which is so interesting, is when you talked about that kind of two-way conversation with consumers and what we’ve been reflecting on is for a lot of FMCG brands that wasn’t historically the way they were used to communicating.

Of course, brands always have their fandoms and people like to sort of have a relationship and a good understanding of consumers. But it tended to be that the biggest brand could sort of talk top down, you know, through owning the ITV slot or dominating radio, for example, and thus kind of like really punch their weight and be the sort of leader of the conversation.

And what we’ve seen, which we talked about with Nick Manning and Caroline Marshall is, you know, in the new media landscape, there’s this kind of flattening what a lot of big brands are now saying or exploring is, well, how do I get attention? Because I suddenly can’t sort of out shout anyone. And perhaps there are brands that are coming up with a new, more disruptive tone of voice and kind of really amplifying it.

So, it’s got implications beyond those that are actively engaging with it. Right? There’s people at different phases in their journey, and it feels like some brands are already, as you say, the Unilever’s, really on board and some are catching up, but everyone is being impacted by this.

Fiona: Yeah. You are absolutely right. And I think the level playing field, I mean not a fully level playing field, but a more level playing field, of social media. You are really seeing examples like that. And so for example, CeraVe now is obviously a beauty brand that’s on everyone’s lips, but it wasn’t a few years ago.

And to me, CeraVe is a really great example of a brand that really bubbled up during the pandemic by really embracing creative marketing, social media, creating content, getting out there, but really critically interacting with their fans, as you say. And fandom is a word that I’ve been hearing more and more of in the last few months and it’s a really great sort of word and great ambition that we hear lots of brands talking about as well. 

And CeraVe really rode that wave and drove it to the point where a lot of the much bigger brands at the time were measuring their social success versus CeraVe despite the fact that from a sales perspective, they were many, many times bigger, but they could see that CeraVe was dominating the space socially and were threatened by that.

So, I think that democracy was really, really interesting and you can see that across beauty, food, et cetera.

Laura: And it’s often those brands that have a kind of distinctive and interesting point of view, and they might be bringing new attributes into the category. So, we’ve done some work in various categories where suddenly sustainability might be a talking point that it hasn’t been before, or the lens of self-care on something and sort of rituals is an interesting way in.

Do you think they’re changing what people actually expect from the category overall, these disruptive brands?

Fiona: Absolutely, and I think it goes back to what you just said a moment ago as well, which is about the symbiotic relationship. I think just as brands are looking for the right creators to partner with, creators are also looking for the right brands to partner with.

And then the question that we often get asked as well is, you know, once you’ve found the right creators for your brief, how do I ensure that my content flies? And honestly, our advice on that tends to be pretty simple, which is that creators know not only their audience, but they also know the social platforms better than anyone else.

And these creators have grown tens, hundreds of thousands, even sometimes millions of followers, by understanding how the algorithms work, what makes their audience tick, how to plug into culture, how to jump onto the right conversations and add them and enhance them. How to use audio, how to use different formats.

Once that content goes live, it’s not a sort of few, thank goodness, we’ve got it approved, it’s gone live. Our job is done. It’s actually only the beginning because that’s when you go into that lovely, rich part of the process, which is the conversation with the community and that’s where you have multiple different opportunities to have a touch point with your audience.

So, something I would advise is to work out in advance what you’re prepared to talk about and who should talk about what. So, there might be a moment even when you’re working with a creator, that it makes sense for the brand themselves to jump into the conversation. Our audience is really savvy now. They understand how this works.

A few years ago, I would have brands asking me if it would feel inauthentic for them to jump in and comment on a creator’s content. Actually no, our consumers will understand that the brand is involved and will actually respect the authenticity and the honesty. So, knowing what are the comments and questions that a brand would answer, that a creator would answer, and really just fuelling that conversation because again, that’s where we really see that value.

Adam: What I think is so interesting about what you’re saying here Fi, and it probably was my own ignorance before going into this conversation with you, is it’s as much about insight and understanding and learning and kind of identifying like what might work, as it is about getting a message out to a group of people.

I just saw them as a channel almost to a group of people. But what you’re saying here is actually, there’s a way actually we can understand a lot about, you know, what is needed, what people want. You know what behaviours they have I guess.

Fiona: You are totally right. And I think that is all around the modernisation that the industry has gone on, of what a creator actually is and how they can work more effectively with brands.

So for me, hopefully gone are the days where a brand says, right I have fully identified the problem. I fully identified the solution. I fully identified what the piece of content looks like. Now I just need to find somebody with a hundred thousand followers to communicate, and actually the earlier you can bring a creator in on your conversation, the stronger your solutions are going to be.

So that two-way conversation is not just between brand and audience, but it’s between brand and creator. And the creator is then part of that bigger discussion with the ultimate audience. 

Laura: I think that’s so interesting, especially for perhaps with larger clients, you know, sometimes hearing those little nuggets of conversation, it can feel quite hard to measure, quite hard to sort of account for.

But actually what you are saying is it’s almost a new research tool. And actually if a creative feels like that’s authentic, it’s kind of a reflection of an area that might be emergent and we’re just not going to pick up with other data sources.

Fiona: Yeah. That’s exactly it. And I think, being able to look at, well, who is our audience, and then picking a diverse group of creators accordingly. We’ve worked, for example, on projects where creators are part of tests before brands launch into particular markets and can help on everything from, you know, a launch strategy to then the content strategy once it goes live.

Laura: I think you had a great point where you said, where the brand is sort of willing to let go and hand over the conversation and it reminds me a bit of when we spoke to Katie Evans, who’s the CMO of Burger King UK and what she was saying about the Bundles of Joy campaign, which was this new mothers sort of photographed in their real postnatal situations having a burger. It was we’d had our say and then it was a turn of people to respond. And what was interesting was she was very confident in riding the wave of initial, sort of opprobrium and sort of criticism of it as a campaign, and then a sort of counter argument, which was very much led by real mums, people who had really enjoyed and experienced that moment.

And that she sort of felt the ability as a team, they could hold their nerve and sort of let the conversation evolve without interjecting and kind of course correcting. Do you find that that is something that’s tricky for brands and maybe some legacy brands find it harder?

Fiona: I certainly receive briefs that are intentional in courting a bit of controversy, and then it’s just about, you know, ensuring that you are going into that with eyes open. 

A recent campaign, it was an Edelman campaign actually, and it was a Cannes Lions winner, was that Hellman’s were campaigning for mayo to be available with chips on the menu at McDonald’s. And they did that by creating a hack whereby they got creators to go and order McChicken with mayo. Remove the chicken, remove the lettuce, remove the bun so that they literally received a box with a squeeze of mayo in, and then order that with their fries. And there was controversy around it and some of it was contrived controversy. 

Another example, Ajinomoto worked with creators to try and debunk myths about MSG. People were talking about the dangers of MSG in soy sauce, which is one of Ajinomoto’s biggest sellers. They created a creator campaign, basically educating the Gen Z audience who are most worried about this, that MSGs are also in pizza. So if we are going to cancel soy sauce, we also need to cancel pizza. And of course, that led to outcry. So it’s all about that preparedness. 

And what I would imagine happened is that this important audience for the brand, I imagine there was some sort of listening and two-way conversation about the ways in which this audience would be receptive and that that led to the confidence to go ahead and do this campaign, but then it’s one of the elements is potentially going to be some backlash and some pushback. So how are you going to handle that? 

And I think understanding that you can control, you can’t control the conversation, but it can move on to the next level. You can still get all of the benefits. It just may be a slightly bumpier ride.

Laura: What I love about those as examples, is yes, they are provocative and yes they are, you know, in some ways a little bit controversial, but also they’re all about a brand encouraging people to reframe the context in which they’re operating.

Mayo already exists on the menu. It’s just not there. Or, well if you’re taking us out, you have to take pizza out too. You know, it’s a really interesting way of saying, rather than my point of comparison being other sauces, like let’s look at the wider world of food, for example, and see where we sit.

That kind of ability to challenge what you stand for or the business you are operating in, rather than just my direct category seems really like a common theme.

Fiona: Exactly. You know, your audience might want to and need to talk about something in a way that you directly as the brand wouldn’t choose to talk about.

So rather than necessarily focusing in on a new product or a very specific product benefit, or a very specific ingredient story, it’s something that is a very real life thing, so, you know, I can’t eat my fries the way I want. And a creator is really well placed to have that revelation and to drive that conversation.

Adam: I’m sure a lot of our listeners will have been faced with the question about whether to work with creators externally, or to try and do some of this stuff in-house? It must be quite difficult, right? For a brand to get this right. What are some of the things that they have to think about in this?

Fiona: What you’re talking about is interesting to me in a number of levels.

One is that we are increasingly seeing brands looking at how their employees can be creators. And to me that also just shows the maturation of our audience. You know, they understand that this is not creators organically posting. This is an industry, and as long as it’s done authentically and as long as it’s fun, they’re on board with that. So yeah, I think we’ll be seeing more and more of that.  

Another thing I think that is interesting and at times problematic is making sure your offline presence, as far as possible, lines up with your online presence.

Laura: It’s almost like those disruptive sort of online first brands had the advantage because they can essentially create a universe of experience that, you know, it’s often a D2C model and so your interaction with the consumer is fairly discreet. 

What’s interesting is when a D2C brand then has to move into a retail environment and perhaps play a different game where they’re, you know, on shelf up against big competitors, or perhaps they’re looking to scale and they don’t quite have the ability to create that experience in the same way.

And I suppose that’s where the chickens come home to roost and it’s an area of opportunity for brands that are more established across all of those different channels.

Fiona: Exactly that. And, you know, I think it’s even more challenging for brands that then aren’t within their own retail environment.

So, you know, for example, a lot of FMCG brands that exist then within another retailer. So there’s an even further step and I think that’s where it’s just, it’s so valuable to have that, not just content, but also the comment box opportunity. Because where you don’t have the D2C retail opportunity, you have at least got the D2C conversation and engagement opportunity.

And I think leaning into that is really important.

Laura: And of course what we’ve seen is it’s not just about creators working with established brands. They’ve also got enormous power in moving into their own brands, some of which have really gone stratospheric.

Fiona: I would say that when you think of a creator, you are actually thinking of a business in their own right.

They are small business owners. So, a lot of those challenges that marketers would have to face and brands would have to face in terms of, do I know my audience? Am I doing the right thing? Am I creating the right content? You know, am I doing things at the right time? Am I ahead of the curve? How are my competitors getting on? These are all things that they are focusing on, which therefore it’s no surprise that creators are increasingly moving beyond their social feeds. 

So that said, various studies do show that brand deals are by far the most important thing from a creator, from a financial perspective.

So while those other ventures are really important, and I think really help, at the moment, at least solidify their sort of social status and credibility. It is still brand deals that are the most important and that sort of symbiotic relationship of creators are really important to brands. And brands are really important to creators.

Laura: And so what we’ve seen is this is changing so rapidly and what might be true now and next year will probably not be the case in five years. Looking into your crystal digital ball, what do you imagine some of the key emergent things people will be seeking from the world of creators?

Fiona: I would be tempted to look at where we are now and how that will continue to gather momentum and pace.

So the push for authenticity has obviously been gathering pace and rightly so, and I think that is at a really interesting time when we also look at the prevalence of AI. And AI has so many useful things for people in my industry in terms of being able to look back at creators, the kind of the vetting and the brand safety piece I was talking about, the effectiveness of that.

I speak to creators and know that they are using AI to help them sort of plan their content schedules and so on. But I think that where that’s going to go next is in this sort of move towards AI creators, how that marries effectively with authenticity. And at the moment, you know, you can see everything through from sort of good, bad, and ugly.

So for example, the Coldplay gig, the poor much maligned couple caught on the kiss cam and the amount of sort of fakes that you saw after that content going viral that supposedly was from the man’s daughter. He doesn’t have a daughter, evidently from his wife. It was not his wife. The fake voices, the fake people.

All the way through to actually the really interesting examples that the creator who posted that she’d been to Wimbledon and hadn’t actually been to Wimbledon, but it was a really positive moment for her from a career perspective, and it launched, led to a fashion deal. So I think there’s examples of it sort of going well and not so well. But what I think is going to be really important in getting that right, is owning it and being authentic with it. 

So do I think there will be AI creators? Yes. Do I question why we would want an AI creator when actually we’re trying to celebrate humanity? That’s something I can’t quite get my head around, but what I do think is that it’s going to be very important, certainly from a brand perspective, that if you’re working with an AI creator, it’s all very owned and very labelled, so I think that will be big. 

I do think news creators are one to really watch. It’s feeling sort of new and emergent right now, but that will change pretty quickly when we think about how the industry moves. And when you look at the majority of Gen Z gets their news from social media. So when you’re getting your news from social media and you like listening and you believe in creators, it’s a natural fit. 

And then finally, something I think that’s really exciting and I’m seeing emerging already is creators not just as individuals, but as communities. So communities of influence. I saw some content the other day where a celebrity posted that she loves a particular vitamin, and then immediately under the first comment, another celebrity commented and said that she also loves this vitamin. To me, that was really interesting because to me that’s two brand deals. One is to create the content and one is to comment on the content.

Laura: Yes. 

Fiona: First of all, it’s a great indicator of the importance of conversation and the importance of interacting in the comments. But I think there’s going to be an opening up of what those deals could look like. And so not just contracting a creator to create content, but actually just a comment.

Laura: That’s really interesting.

Fiona: Which I think’s going to be really interesting.

Adam: Well Fiona, thank you so much for coming on. That’s been absolutely fascinating. I, for one, I’ve learned a lot on this. I’m sure everyone listening has learned a lot too. I think even for our own, you know, growing the podcast, I think there’s tons in here that we need to re-listen to and think about.

Laura: We’re about to be all over the comments sections in various other conversations.

Adam: Absolutely. If you start seeing big celebrities in our comments feed, you know why that is.

Laura: There you go.

Well, I really enjoy talking to Fiona as ever, but Adam, what did you think?

Adam: That was so interesting, wasn’t it? I think it’s clear that the old ways of marketing, the top down marketing, this is our brand and this is how you will respond and use our brand, are over. I found this idea that, you know, you have to release something into the world and let it be, and you can’t have total control over what happens once you’ve released it.

I thought that was a really interesting kind of paradigm shift in how we think about our brands and what we do with them. How about you?

Laura: Well, obviously as a researcher, I would be biased here, but I loved hearing what Fiona thought about the sort of symbiotic relationship that you can have with creators.

I think very often we go in with a sort of, oh, they could broadcast to this audience, but actually what they know, what they hear, their connection with consumers is so real and is so specific to needs and is a brilliant way of anticipating and understanding signals perhaps before we are going to see them in data.

So I think it’s a really fascinating way of expanding that world of what we mean by experts and a really good way of keeping that kind of human centricity perhaps without doing hundreds and hundreds of qual studies.

Adam: It’s so telling, isn’t it, that the first thought you have or we had, having worked with a lot with legacy brands, is that it’s a mechanism for broadcast and actually not about conversation.

Laura: That’s a great point. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks so much and I will see you next time.

Adam: Thank you. See you soon.