The advertising industry has spent decades debating who really owns a creative idea — the client who pays for it or the agency that dreams it up. Now that familiar tension has found a new venue: the increasingly cozy, and occasionally awkward, relationship between marketers and the social media creators they hire to reach younger consumers.
By most accounts, the power is shifting, at least a little. Brands are no longer simply handing creators a finished brief and asking them to perform against it. Instead, they are asking creators to help shape the work from the start — a collaboration that agency executives describe as a sign of the creator economy's maturation.
"It's an evolution of understanding the power, respecting the creators more and then listening to their feedback and their opinion throughout the process," said Thomas Markland, founder and chief executive of HYPD, an influencer marketing agency.
Consider bubly, the flavored sparkling water brand owned by PepsiCo. For a summer campaign, the brand sought out Erin Miller, a social media personality known for content steeped in 2000s internet nostalgia, and built the creative around her existing online presence rather than asking her to squeeze herself into a predetermined concept. "We have been more recently coming with a creative thought starter on how our brand or product fits in their world, and then they co-build and co-create it with us," said Katelyn Meola, director of flavored sparkling beverages at PepsiCo.
Some agencies are going further still. Billion Dollar Boy, the influencer shop, is running creative ideas past creators in a consulting capacity as part of its 2027 planning, according to Piet Southey, the agency's managing director.
Still, if the reins are loosening, they have not been handed over entirely. (Old habits, as they say.) Legal departments, senior leadership and the accumulated anxiety of stakeholders all tend to tighten the grip on creative control, agency executives noted.
"If you're too rigid with the ask to the creator, you then get poor engagement because the audience knows it's not a real piece of content," Mr. Southey said.
Kosterina, an olive oil brand, learned that lesson through what its founder, Katerina Mountanos, diplomatically described as "some unsuccessful posts where the influencer did exactly what we asked them to."
Spending on influencer marketing in the United States is expected to reach $13.7 billion by 2027, according to eMarketer — a figure that suggests marketers have made their peace with the medium, if not always with the terms of engagement.
Original story published in Digiday: "Who owns the creative brief? Brands and creators are renegotiating the relationship"