The notion that companies might cede control of their marketing messages to people who are not on staff — and who maintain their own independent relationships with their audiences — would have struck most chief marketing officers as borderline reckless not so long ago. But that, it seems, is increasingly where the industry finds itself.
At the Shoptalk Fall conference in Nashville this week, executives from three companies with little obvious overlap — a women's clothing brand founded by television personalities, a maker of kitchen appliances and vacuums, and a discount furniture chain — described variations on the same theme: the creator, once a curiosity, has become central to the marketing operation.
"It scared the hell out of me to hand over the keys of the brand to creators," Stephen Nesle, the chief marketing officer of Bob's Discount Furniture, admitted during a panel on Tuesday. Mr. Nesle was describing the company's decision to shift the second season of its shoppable series, "Til Decor Do Us Part," from everyday couples to creators with established followings. The first season generated $9 million in sales; the second, he said, is already showing 50 percent higher organic reach at the same point in its run.
(One suspects that "scared the hell out of me" is not a phrase that appears frequently in marketing trade publications, which tend toward cheerier formulations.)
At SharkNinja, the appliances company behind the Ninja Creami and an expanding line of blenders and hair dryers, creators now generate 70 percent of the brand's content, according to Michelle Crossan-Matos, the chief brand and experience officer. The company maintains what it calls a writers' room to produce daily "hook books" for creators — a level of support that suggests the line between professional marketing operation and outsourced content factory has become rather porous.
Favorite Daughter, the clothing brand founded by Erin and Sara Foster, reported $2 million in sales on National Daughters Day, double the prior year, after deploying 25 creators with modest but engaged followings. Sara Foster noted that a mother in Dallas with 60,000 followers tends to sell more product than "an A-list celebrity."
According to CreatorIQ, nearly half of brands now report a return of three times or greater from creator partnerships, and budgets in the category have risen 33 percent year over year. Emarketer projects that American brands will spend $13.7 billion on influencer marketing by 2027.
Whether the keys, once handed over, can ever be fully reclaimed is a question for another conference.
Original story published in Digiday: "'It scared the hell out of me': What brands have learned from creator partnerships"