The practice of paying people with large social media followings to say nice things about products has been around long enough now that it has acquired something it never quite had before: a framework.

ISBA, the trade body that represents British advertisers, has joined with the Responsible Marketing Advisory to publish what they are calling the first creator economy framework — a document intended to help marketers figure out who should be in charge of influencer spending, how to measure whether it is working, and how to explain all of this to the finance department.

The timing is not accidental. Creator revenue in Britain is expected to exceed one billion pounds for the first time next year, reaching an estimated £1.217 billion, according to industry figures. That is the kind of number that tends to attract the attention of chief financial officers, who generally prefer that large sums of money be spent according to some kind of plan.

The framework offers three models for organizing influencer activity. The first, which the document calls "bolt-on," treats creators as a campaign-by-campaign add-on. The second, "channel," positions creator marketing as a permanent presence, often managed by an outside agency. The third, "core," embeds creators into the brand's fundamental approach to reaching consumers, measured on equal terms with television or search.

(One suspects most brands will say they aspire to the third while operating firmly in the first.)

"Creator marketing now commands serious budgets," said Bobi Carley, ISBA's director of media and advertising relations, "but the structures around it haven't kept pace."

That may be understating matters. According to ISBA's own research, 48 percent of brands still manage creator activity in an ad-hoc fashion, and in nearly a quarter of companies, responsibility is scattered across multiple teams. Not a single brand in the study had assigned ownership to its media team.

Alice Brady, chief strategy officer at Responsible Marketing Advisory, said the goal was not to impose a single governance model but to help brands "create the right one for their needs."

Which is, of course, what every framework promises. Whether this one succeeds may depend on whether brands are more afraid of wasting money or of admitting they do not quite know what they are doing.

Original story published in Marketing Week: "ISBA releases creator economy framework"