The Next Phase Of Influencer Marketing Depends On Treating Creators As Co-Strategists

Large-scale influencer campaigns can generate significant reach and awareness, but brands are increasingly looking at how to sustain attention beyond a single moment. As Gen Z audiences become more selective about the content they engage with, the focus is shifting towards creating a steady stream of authentic, creator-led content that keeps brands relevant over time.

The single-post-for-mass-reach approach that defined the post-2020 creator economy has lost most of its pull with Gen Z audiences, who tend to read transactional brand partnerships as exactly that. The pattern is showing up in the performance data, with one-off campaigns falling short of generating real brand loyalty even when the impressions still look strong on paper. Now, brands and agencies are working around the problem by treating creators as embedded collaborators before campaigns go live. The smarter move involves bringing creators into the creative concepting phase, well before the campaign itself enters production.

Antonia Aveline, Head of Maker Bench EMEA (Content Production & UGC) at Edelman, has spent nearly a decade working through this transition from the inside. Her career spans top-tier agencies like Mother, Gravity Road, and Billion Dollar Boy, and M&C Saatchi, she has also worked brandside at UGG. Her client roster holds the likes of adidas, Coca-Cola, Heineken and more. She currently heads Edelman Maker Bench across EMEA, leading the development of highly vetted, localized creator rosters that give brands access to trusted talent with the cultural fluency needed to navigate the nuances of each market. Her advice for CMOs centers on rethinking the traditional agency-creator relationship, building more integrated partnerships that deliver greater relevance, agility and measurable business impact.

"The landscape has changed very significantly, one-off campaigns with big influencers tend to convert now and then, but does it stick around in people’s heads? Everyone’s realized that the attention of Gen Z means you have to be really crafty with it," says Aveline. The response is to start treating external makers like internal employees, with Aveline's team piloting maker certification programs and extending internal professional development to creators on the roster. The structural move is giving creators access to the same training platforms used by internal staff, which closes the gap between agency and creator and builds mutual trust into the foundation. "We need to foster these UGC makers as if they are our own employees who just aren't physically in our office. I want them to feel like they're truly part of something." Aveline explains.

The co-creative model in motion

Bringing makers into the concept stage as co-strategists gives brands the cultural fluency they need to reach Gen Z attention, with creators bringing real-time knowledge of trends, communities, and what actually performs on platform. The assets produced through that collaboration tend to deliver long-term value that outlasts short-burst scroll-stopping tactics, with brands able to license UGC content in perpetuity for owned channels and maximize the return well beyond a single campaign cycle. "Makers are almost acting as mini art directors and content consultants because they know what is trending online, they know what sticks, and they know all about online communities," Aveline notes. "UGC creators can be a bit more malleable, reactive, and quick. Content can sit on a brand channel, and the brands can use it to build their brand perception."

Treating external talent like full-time staff can sound like an operational stretch for already-thin agency teams, but Aveline keeps the model running on lightweight communication that maintains trust without overwhelming anyone's calendar. The regular contact also changes the economics underneath the partnership, since modern creators protective of their audiences actively reject transactional one-offs when the brand alignment is off and reward reliable agency partners with tangible flexibility on rates and scope. "A text takes two seconds. A roundup email at the end of a month is very easy to do," she says. "If they know someone is going to consistently come back to them with work, they might be willing to reduce their rate if a project's budget is on the low side. Creators know that person isn't rude or pushy with multiple revisions, and really trusts their craft."

The case for embedded integration eventually has to make it past the C-suite, and Aveline frames the work as a natural historical progression from print and television into the current era of social-first content. Justifying the model to leadership depends on a measurement reset that moves beyond reach, with the real return of an embedded creator model showing up in behavioral data and intent signals the older metrics could not see. "Reach and impressions are very important, but conversion is just as important. You could have a million views and sell one product, or you could have 10,000 views and sell a thousand products," Aveline explains. "There are so many other metrics you should look at. Did people save or share? Did they click the link to look at the product? Did someone just look at it for two seconds and scroll off? Sentiment analysis is also key. Are people commenting that it's a great ad and they intend to buy the product?"

Values take the lead

The strongest creator partnerships happen when brand values and creator values are pulling in the same direction, with money sometimes taking a back seat to the cultural or personal stakes underneath the work. Aveline points to e.l.f. Beauty's Coachella activation created by Micah Jesse Koffler and his team as one example, where the festival itself becomes the incentive structure that no transactional fee can replicate. Brands able to anchor their creator programs in high-value cultural moments tend to see participation that no contracting structure could buy on its own. "Organically, everyone wants to go to Coachella. Incentivizing creators to do something like that is a gift in itself," notes Aveline. "Even without a monetary value, they would still want to be a part of that and align with e.l.f.'s ethos."

The same dynamic plays out when a brand's mission aligns directly with a creator's personal values. Aveline points to Hourglass Cosmetics' Unlocked campaign featuring model SouKeyna Diouf, whose advocacy for malaria awareness and global health aligned with the brand's partnership with United to Beat Malaria. "She aligned with that brand because it believed in the same ethos and values that she did. Of course, she was going to jump on and be a part of that campaign, regardless of contracting and money. She genuinely wanted to be a part of that," she concludes.