The panel at Advertising Week 2024 brought together industry leaders to discuss the confluence of the Creator Economy and brand marketing. Creators are entering the starting line up for brands, and brands are realizing there's lots of learning and potential to unlock.
This lively panel covers the importance of authenticity, emotional connection, and effective measurement in creator marketing. You'll gain strategies and insights to effectively tap into the Creator Economy and measure your success.
Led by industry stalwarts, Jo Cronk - NA President at Whalar, Jasmine Enberg - VP & Principal Analyst at EMARKETER, and our very own measurement John Wayne, Hamish McPharlin - Managing Director at Element Human.
The conversation kicked off with a clear acknowledgment of the Creator Economy's rise. Creators and influencers are no longer just a side note in marketing; they are now central figures driving business growth - even Deloitte says so, so it must be true. The panelists emphasized that brands must adapt to this shift and recognize the power of creators in reaching their target audiences.
This magnum opus of a study is brought to us by our friends at Suzy. It's an examination of the role creators play in the lives of consumers, and the influence they have in the consumer decision making process.
Yasmin Enberg from eMarketer shared insights on the current state of the market. She noted that 2024 is shaping up to be the year of legitimacy for influencer marketing, as brands are becoming increasingly familiar with the fundamentals of creator marketing. With over 80% of marketers expected to collaborate with creators, the industry is moving towards a more structured approach. However, there remains some hesitance among brands, primarily due to concerns about measuring the effectiveness of these partnerships.
Hamish from Element Human highlighted the need for better measurement tools in the creator space. He pointed out that while many brands are eager to work with creators, they often lack the data to justify their investments, constrained by the limitations of vanity metrics. The focus should be on understanding how creator content impacts brand goals, not just on reach or engagement metrics.
The panelists agreed that emotion is a key driver in successful creator campaigns. Creators are master storytellers who can evoke feelings that resonate with their audiences, a crucial driver of memory in advertising. This emotional connection not only enhances engagement but also fosters long-term brand loyalty. Brands that leverage this emotional storytelling can achieve better results across the marketing funnel.
This study explores how social media influencers influence affects the consumer behavior and purchase intentions of young people within the fashion and beauty industries. The researchers examined the relationship dynamics, trust, perceived credibility, and ethical concerns surrounding influencer marketing.
As the discussion progressed, the panelists touched on the increasing investment in influencer marketing, which is projected to reach $10 billion by 2026. This growth reflects a shift from using influencers solely for brand awareness to driving conversions and sales. Brands are now looking to both top-tier creators and smaller influencers to diversify their marketing strategies.
One surprising revelation was that the influence of creators is not limited to younger audiences. Data showed that older demographics are also engaging with creator content, often with even higher purchase intent. This effect is discussed further in this overview of the creator economy from Sprout Social. This shift indicates that brands should not overlook older audiences when crafting their marketing strategies.
To effectively collaborate with creators, brands should:
The age of creators is here, and the transformation is already underway for brands. As brands navigate this new landscape, embracing authenticity, emotional engagement, and effective measurement will be key to unlocking the full potential of creator partnerships. The future belongs to brands and creators who understand their audiences and tell compelling, authentic stories that resonate across all demographics.
The Creator Economy: Navigating Growth, Opportunities, and Impact - Ad Week 2024
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Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: [00:00:00] Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. Before we kick off what I know is gonna be a passionate and dare I say fun, entertaining panel hands up who has anything to do with helping brands grow their business. Good news. You're in the right room. So over the last two days, I've been to a number of panels.
And for the first time, I've heard the word creator far more than I've heard AI. And Dan's right. It is, this is the creator revolution. And finally, creators are influencers. They're taking up spaces that they should have for a very long time. From Cannes to DC, they are center stage. And the reason for that is simple.
Creators drive business results. Creators and influencers, they have impact on helping brands grow their business. So that sets the scene for the conversation we're going to have over the next 25, 30 minutes. My name is Jo Cronk and I am for sure a very lucky individual because I get to lead Whalar. Whalar is a incredible collective of creatives, of folks that think about things in a slightly different way.
And because of that, we are the most awarded and largest global independent creator and social agency. So I also get to share the stage with these two wonderful folks, Hamish and Jasmine. Hamish, let's start with you. Share a few words. Why are you here? Why do you care about creators?
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: Hello everyone, how we doing?
How's everyone doing? They told me it was really bright up here and it really is. It's also very,
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: very hot.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: It's hot, it's bright. But this is, this is the world of creators guys. These are our selfie lights. What do we call those things anyway? The little rings. I feel like I'm, I'm a creator myself. I need to create.
My name is Hamish McFarlane. I'm the MD for a company called Element Human. We are a behavioral AI company and we are very happy to be and grateful to be the measurement partner and measurement supplier for Whalar. We measure the power and impact of creator marketing, around the world.
We've got thousands and thousands of tests that we've done. Over five years, I think we've realized incredible relationship. And, we leverage best in class methodologies that include attention. So we look at, we use eye tracking to measure how much attention, creative content is getting in the feed, whether it's on Instagram or Tik TOK or elsewhere.
We also are huge believers in the power of measuring emotion and real human interaction. So I know we've talked a lot about AI. In a lot of presentations, we're all about real humans, real creators, and real audiences and measuring them. And we're so grateful that Wayla are real believers in that, the power of real human data, and collecting that and analyzing it to really understand what moves the needle when it comes to brands.
So we use a facial coding to measure emotion, how people are responding and reacting to content. And then we tie that together with a brand goal. So understanding just because content. worked in a storytelling perspective. Did it move the needle for the brands that are investing in it? And what is the art of incredible storytelling that gets reach, gets engagement, but also gets the brand what it needs as well.
It's a delicate balance. And every day is an adventure.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: I love it. Jasmine
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: over to you. I'm Jasmine Emberg. I am a vice president and principal analyst at eMarketer where I lead our coverage of social media and the creator economy. My job is to use data and research to provide insights and help marketers cut through the noise and really understand what's going on within social media and influencer marketing.
And I've been following the space for the past seven years or so, and there has been so much evolution, so much growth. So I am super happy to be here on stage with both of you today to talk about it all.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: We're going to start with you because I think like a lot of us at Whalar, you are talking to brands and CMOs.
Every single day. What are you hearing from the market about creative marketing and where it sits in the wider advertising landscape?
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: So I have been calling 2024 the year of legitimacy for the creator economy and for influencer marketing, and it is long overdue, but I think we're finally in this moment where every CMO understands that they have to be working with creators and influencers.
There's a lot of different reasons for this. Joe, you mentioned some of them during the introduction, whether that's the dedicated creator track, it can or the creator economy conference in DC. Or the fact that YouTube now beat Netflix in terms of watch [00:05:00] time. And it's done that primarily on the back of creator and user generated content.
And so at eMarketer, we're expecting about 80 percent or over 80 percent of us marketers to work with creators and influencers this year, which hopefully you can see up on the screen over there. I will say, however, that it's not that every CMO is rushing towards creators and influencers with open arms.
I still. do hear quite a bit of hesitancy and reluctancy, and I'm sure that resonates with many of you in this room as well as the lack of understanding on in how to build a sustainable creator and influencer strategy. But I think the difference today from years past is that that hesitancy doesn't really come from quote unquote brand safety concerns to the same extent, and it doesn't necessarily come from this idea of Creator content lacking in quality when you compare it to studio produce creative, but rather more the risk of investing in a tactic that is seemingly more difficult to measure than some of the other digital channels out there.
And that to me is sort of the next step and what needs to be solved so that the CMO can go to the CFO and tell an easier story about creator marketing and why it works.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: I completely agree. I think for us, like the CFO is as much our client is the CMO. And again, as it should be, and that's really important.
So Hamish, like we're talking a lot about like data and how we measure this really like emerging, but also maturing media and creative tactic. I think what we're sitting on now, like over 2000 unique creative campaigns that you've measured. For us, that feels about right. So over 2, 000. First of all, talk about that sample size of over 2, 000 campaigns and then share some of like the headlines.
Like, what are you seeing across all of those incredible
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: campaigns? The macro trends, right?
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Yeah. Let's start high up.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: If we can really boil down over the years that we've worked together and the measurement, as I say, the very human measurement of how People and audiences respond to create a content.
The key to me is number one, it works. And I don't just mean it works in that, that creators can get great reach or that they can get a lot of clicks to put purchase a product. But between those two points is a huge amount of information that most agencies don't really have any, anything to say about because they're not measuring it properly.
And that is true engagement and true branding campaigns, right? Campaigns that aren't just asking you to download an app today. or, or buy something or click some kind of affiliate link, but big powerful brands that need to be communicating with the market every month, every year, those brands who are becoming involved in creator marketing, they're asking questions.
They've got expectations about the types of measurement that they're used to seeing in more traditional metrics. And frankly, I don't think a lot of agencies have an answer yet. And I think the industry really needs to kind of level up in that regard. But for those that do, I think what you do see is That, creator campaigns can work at every level of the funnel.
Yes, they can get reach. We know that. Yes, they can get clicks and conversions. We know that. But they can also really work at a branding level, in the, as we call it, the middle of the funnel. And our belief, and mine particularly over the 18 years that I've worked in the industry, is that the key to that is emotion.
And that's why we measure emotion. It's all very well that a campaign reached a lot of people. But that is really just a metric that tells you people love the story. What about the brand? What about the brand that is somewhere inside that story? Is it getting what it needs out of it? Is it able to harness the power of that creator content?
The key to that is emotion. Creators are master storytellers. That's how they became what they are. That's how agencies like Whalar recognize the power of those storytellers and bring them into the fold and start to kind of leverage the power that they give them to access those amazing intimate spaces wherever they're creating them.
What is it that they're actually doing though? They're stimulating emotion. So we need to measure that. And we've got data that shows that there's a direct correlation between the emotion that you can get out of people, that you can kind of elicit out of your audience, and brand goals. And I'm not just talking about clicks, but I'm talking about true long term memory of brands, what we would call like a mental association with a brand.
These are much more powerful, you Objectives for big brands than just clicks and, creators can do it. They can really, really do it. They like little media owners, millions and millions of them, their production companies, and they master storytellers who know their audiences and they know how to connect with them.
And that's essentially what brands are doing is that they are being invited into this incredibly intimate space that has a high level of engagement. They're being invited in to, to participate in that. And sure. You can get it right and you can get it wrong. And I'm not saying that it's always going to smash it out of the park, but I guess the point is you've got to be able to measure it.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: So I think the net [00:10:00] net, it works. We know that it works. How's that translating in terms of where media spend media investment is going?
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: Yeah. So influencer marketing spending in the U. S. Is quickly on track to approach 10 billion. And I believe you can see that chart on the on the screen again, reaching 10 billion in 2026.
And there's just been massive growth over the past couple of years. And Part of the reason for this is we've seen a shift from influencer marketing being just this splashy brand awareness tactic to really a full funnel marketing tactic. And over the past couple of years in particular, there's been a really strong rise in marketers turning to creators and influencers.
To drive lower funnel goals like sales and conversions. And that's actually led to some really interesting trends in terms of how those dollars are being divvied up amongst the creator class. So we're seeing a lot of marketers really investing more heavily into some of the top name, top echelon creators, as well as smaller and nano and, micro influencers.
And that's leaving a wide swath of creators who are in the middle. Which. Is very challenging for those creators because it creates a lot of competition. A lot of them talk about there being deal drought, but on the marketer's side, there's a lot of opportunity. And I think that speaks to what Hamish was saying in terms of having, you're working with these creators in order to drive consideration, drive that messaging, that memorability, and creating that emotion and engagement that ultimately can translate to sales.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Amazing. So again, you can see from this chart, the numbers don't lie. This is an addressable market. That is getting larger and larger with every year and that trend is not going to slow down. So Hamish Khan, my next question to you is like, where is this money going in terms of not the platforms, not the types of creators, but the types of campaigns, whether it be full final, different verticals, what are the trends that you're observing at the moment?
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: It's changing, you know, and I guess it's really a, a, a signifier of the stage we're at, which is that creative marketing, I mean, we're looking at the data here, right? It's. It is, achieving that kind of, transcendence of the early adopters and the innovators and becoming much more mainstream. We talk to lots of agencies and I always ask them, you know, what is it that you're talking to and what is your argument, your sales argument?
And a lot of them, I would ask them, do you need to convince brands to try creative marketing? And as I sit here today, the answer is no. We do not need. to convince brands to try Creator marketing. They all get it. Everybody wants to do it. No one knows how to do it. Well, very few know how to do it. And so there's a real question about the art of using and leveraging creators, for the most part and getting the most out of them.
But they're not always going to be right for you. They're not always going to be right for you at a particular time and particular objectives. And so we're seeing this kind of change in the types of categories that are using the system, right? And, and working with companies like Whalar and so forth.
I think initially, there are some big obvious categories. The, we're, we're making the most of it, personal care, beauty brands, apparel, you know, fashion and sport and that kind of thing really, really makes a lot of sense. But actually I, I've seen more recently there's been an expansion now of, the types of categories are getting involved and actually one I wanted to sort of put my hand up and say, watch this space is B2B, there are B it's there are B2B influencers out there.
There are B2B companies using B2B influencers out there obviously. The stakes are a little higher there, you know, there's less sales, but bigger sales and there's kind of a story there about making that work. But I guess there's a point to be made that it's not just for Gen Z.
And actually we sort of talked about this a week ago and,
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Guys, this is a slide worth taking a photo of.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: This is a golden one. I'll explain it. So Joe turned to me a week ago and said, is it just for Gen Z? And we said, we can answer that question by going into the data. So we've been measuring the power of. Whalers, creates a marketing for a long time, I can leverage the power of that. So this is, essentially I took three slices of our data, which is, I wanted to really look at the top of the funnel, in the middle, and at the bottom.
So I took three slices. So one of them is unaided awareness, uplift. There's a lot of top of funnel metrics that we measure using different methodologies, but this is a quick and easy one. The other, the one in the middle is brand memory. So this is based on a, a psychological memory test that we do with our audiences to see if they're creating mental associations between the brand and its objective.
Right? Samsung wants to be seen as premium. Rolex wants to be seen as luxurious. Rolex And so forth and so forth. Are we, are we, I mean this is really good branding stuff. Are we able to see an uplift in that? And then the final one is, obviously purchase intent. The increased desire to purchase a product.
You might think that, you're gonna get [00:15:00] better results on the left side. The 18 to 24 year olds. This is based on, 1, 200 campaigns by the way. So this is really, really big, deep data. You can see obviously that, awareness is always gonna be higher because that's kind of the way the funnel works.
But. Spare a thought for the 45 to 64 year olds guys, this ain't Gen Z and this is working for them too. In fact, if you really look at it, it's kind of working better for them. And that might confuse you, but we think we understand what's going on here, which is that the universe of creative marketing is expanding.
It used to be, sure, the play thing of Gen Z, right? The young audiences get in there first, they get it, they get their hands dirty. It's expanding now. We have B2B, we have older audiences, we have older creators, and they're in there too, and they are making a difference. Now why is it that we've got a 217 percent uplift in awareness, for an older age group?
Why is it that we've got a 23 percent uplift in purchase intent for an older age group? I think a lot of this is. They're a little newer, right? The, you move faster when you're new. You're starting from a lower point. This is an uplift, right? So, Gen Z know how the game works. They know how this works. Their data's gonna start kind of, maturing over time.
But I guess what we're looking at here, particularly as we take this slice, which is true as of, you know, four or five days ago, in terms of our measurement. The older age groups are here, and they're using it too, and it's working.
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: And I just wanted to second that too, because that's something that we've seen reflected in our research too, and it's one of the more surprising findings from one of the research studies
that I know that we're, we're gonna talk about in just a minute.
But that is always the case, right? Whenever there is a new trend, a new technology, a new sort of marketing tactic, it's always the younger generations, that adopt it first. And then there's a, you know, trickle effect, and it moves on into older generations. And that's exactly the moment that we're in now, where we're seeing older generations also being much more attuned to creator content, much more influenced by creator content.
And the evidence is right there.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: And we're seeing it all the time. I mean, one of the reasons that creators resonate so much with audiences is because they're not serving audiences. They're serving the communities that they've cultivated. Whoever you are, I'm loving this vibe. I feel like you get your channel, my man, like you get it
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: exactly.
It's
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: like exactly, but it's about the communities and communities. Yes, it's often interest based and passion based, but it trend transcends all demographics as well. There is such a rise of like, we call like the older influencers, especially on tip top. Like you think about the most amazing fashion and beauty creators on Instagram.
They've all got gray hair. And there's that movement happening at the moment, that like, age equals experience. It doesn't equal time for you to go and sit in a corner and be quiet. So finally this older demographic is having their moment as well. Which is like, leave this thought, it speaks to the inclusivity of this channel.
Everybody is represented. Everybody has a corner of the internet that they can be part of in a safe, creative, and engaging way.
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: And that's why it's such a powerful tool for marketers. Because there is a way to reach diverse communities through all these different diverse voices who participate in the creator economy.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: So, the whole point of this is to talk about brand growth, and I feel like we can't talk about brand growth if we're not talking about commerce. So, this is the piece that you've just alluded to.
This is another golden one. You might need to zoom in a bit, so apologies. But let's talk a bit about the research that you've just spearheaded and published just a few weeks ago.
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: Yes, I'm super excited to talk about this because I haven't talked about this publicly yet, but this is a piece of proprietary research that we just conducted at a market are really looking at social shopping behaviors across all of the different platforms. And so there were a couple of key findings. I think the big one.
The first big one was that among social shoppers, the type of content that most inspired them to make a purchase was creator or influencer content. It was ahead of brand and retailer content, as well as all different types of content that we measured. And there's a lot of reasons for this. I think it's really easy to say that it's because creator or influencer content is more engaging.
And it is for the most part, but also there is just so much creator and influencer content out there, and we're seeing the platforms also prioritize it sometimes at the expense of other accounts, and that can cause challenges. It's harder than ever to break through, but it also means that brands really need to be working with creators because that's the type of content that people are engaging with online and the type of content that these platforms are prioritizing.
And the second really interesting finding was looking at shoppers across the different platforms and who were most inspired by creator and influencer content. And you might think it's instagram or tiktok users, but actually it was snapchat users who came in first. [00:20:00] Of the people who had shopped on Snapchat, about 85 percent of them said they had also been inspired by creator or influencer content.
The caveat here is that they could have seen that content somewhere else, whether that's Instagram, TikTok, or another platform. But it does speak to this really strong, growing opportunity on Snapchat. Especially as it leans more into brand and creator partnerships, as well as just, you know, the opportunity within creator overall.
The one big exception to all of this, which you can see in one of the charts on the screen, is Facebook. And I think a lot of that speaks to the fact that, one, it is the biggest social commerce platform out there, but a lot of the shopping that happens on Facebook is, done on Marketplace. And so that's primarily a C2C shopping destination.
If we were to exclude that, I think And I think that that figure would be quite a bit
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: higher. Was there anything shocking
for you or when you saw the results, were you like, yeah, this like, this makes sense?
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: Yeah, I mean, I think the most surprising finding was the one about Snapchat being first. I wouldn't say it was necessarily shocking.
I was just surprised by, you know, the fact that it really did, you know, beat out both TikTok and Instagram. Um But a lot of it was confirmation for what we already know to be true, but it's really great to be able to put hard data around it and say, you know, this is working and, and here's why it
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: makes a huge,
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: it makes a huge difference.
And it goes back to that storytelling to the CFO.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Exactly. I mean, we're all accountable to a CFO, whether it's our, our direct CFO or somebody else's. So Hamish, I think like, again, it's, it works. It definitely, definitely works. From the position that you sit within the creative economy, why aren't more brands jumping in with both feet?
Some have got a big toe in, some have got one foot, but why aren't we seeing more going full force?
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: Yeah, I think that's, that's the issue of the moment, is, as I said earlier, agencies tell me they don't have to convince brands to try it, but there's very little really good qualitative data on how to use it, and brands really, really need it.
That advice. They need trusted agencies who have really good data and really good measured to be able to guide them effectively. I think every brand is terrified of falling afoul of the good opinion of the audience, right? Like, is it, is it worth it spending my marketing dollars and taking some kind of risk?
So it really does need really good measurement. And I think, you know, speaking really frankly, I think a lot of social agencies get by on really shit measurement, pardon my language, but they've got really just top and bottom, bottom of funnel stuff. Yeah, you got some reach. Yeah, you got some clicks and you got some emojis.
It's just not good enough. And if those agencies don't grow up and get real proper measurement the way other media channels are going, they're going to get left by the wayside. You need proper measurement to really understand the full length of the funnel and really being able to then effectively advise your brands on what to do and how to do it.
And you can then avoid those pitfalls. Whalar this year on trying to find new ways of kind of characterizing our reporting to really understand, you know, if you're running a campaign and you've got ten creators out there, what's
How did they work and how did they perform? So, we produced this and actually we just launched this officially yesterday, but you're getting
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: two launches here today.
I know you're getting two exclusive exclusives.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: This is called Stopping & Staying Power (SSP) framework. And this is, yeah, I know.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Isn't that sexy? Say it out loud. S S P.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: Let's assess here. So this is essentially our test. Has obviously a lot of data in it. But this takes two particular slices. That, Whalar always asks us.
Which is, is it getting attention? And then is it getting that brand into memory? And so what we've done is we've taken two particular slices. Stopping power, which is attention. That's that vertical axis. What this is basically doing is we have, you know, a gigantic data set of, viewability and attention of the data.
Create a content inside the feed, whether that's inside the Instagram feed, inside the Tik Tok feed. It's, it's kind of a table stakes. You've got to get attention first. People got to stop the scroll and look at your content. Otherwise, nothing else is going to work, right? So that's, we've got to get that one first.
Secondly, we need staying power. It's great that you told a great story, create it. You got a lot of emojis and laughs and shares and things like that. But did people walk away remembering And I can tell you, looking at the data, it doesn't always work. Just because a brand, or sorry, a creator got a huge reach score, or got a big pile of exposure, doesn't mean the brand can walk away and say they got what they needed out of that relationship.
That's staying power. So this is a test that we use to measure mental associations with the brand. You want to be, if you're a creator, in the top right hand corner of that chart. That means against our global data set, you are ranking essentially in the top quarter of [00:25:00] the top 25 percent for stopping power, which means people are stopping to look at your content and staying power, which means people are coming away with an actual genuine memory of the brand that can turn into a purchase somewhere down the track.
And don't forget, who's seen what actual click through rates look like? Hands up if you've seen actual click through rates. Anyone want to guess? Proudly. Somebody want to guess? What your average click through rate actually looks like? Anyone? No wants to guess? I'll say it. 2%. 2%? No. , my God, I could go by a yacht with 2% 0.15% 0.08.
Very few people click. Of the people that
are reached, a minuscule amount actually click. So if you're an agency like Whalar, or anyone else, who wants to be a big boy and go and work with big brands. Or Gal. Yeah, let's not judge this at all. You need to be able to tell the story in the ROI of the 99. 8 percent that saw the content and we got no data on that.
That's what this is going to do, right? It's going to give you the actual memory of that brand. So you can see here that those creators that
were in that kind of, up near that top right hand quadrant, they're the ones that were doing really well. Now if you're in the top left corner, that means you're getting really good attention.
So your story is good. It's standing out. Your first five seconds is eye catching. But if you're too far to the left, You're not getting that brand into memory. And I've seen so many examples of a really great piece of content, but they just took too long to mention the brands took too long. And when you look at attention data, attention data is a curve.
It goes down for every second that you're talking to your audience. So to admit you're losing people. So it sounds a little cynical, but you kind of got to elegantly get that brand in there pretty quick. If you want to maximize that actual reach that you're giving back to the brand. And secondly, that, that message has to have some kind of emotional weight to it.
And this is where I pay huge respect to creators. You're the master storytellers. You know how to tell a story. You don't need a brand breathing down your neck, giving you a script, right? You know how to connect with your audience. And the best campaigns are the ones that are going to have just the right balance between what the brand knows that it needs,
But giving all power to that creator to harness that, do it elegantly, do it in a way that's going to come across as authentic, and allow that true memory that comes from that emotional, arousal, sorry to use that word, scientific word, to get what we need for the brands.
Because at the end of the day, the creator economy is blowing up. We've seen some great numbers from Jasmine here. However, For it to stay up and to continue to grow, it needs accountability and it needs to prove ROI. That's what it needs to do and that's where measurement comes in.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: I did warn you I was going to be passionate and I think we're delivering on that so far.
We've talked now a lot about what is working and the fact that everything seems to be going up and to the right but what's not working? What have you seen? What have you heard?
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: Who are you asking?
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Both of you.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: What do you think, Jasmine?
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: Well, I think hearkening back to one of the points that you made, one of the big things that never works is forced product marketing.
Right? And but I think a lot of brands have learned, At least some to some degree and given more creative freedom. I think it's very scary to say the words creative freedom But I think we also need to recognize that we're at this point where being a creator being an influencer is a career These are professionals.
They're not out there To get you or to make a mistake. This is also how they learn, earn a living, right? And so they want to do a good job, and they want to help you as a brand to reach audiences and sell your products. And so I think that conception needs to change and marketers do need to give a little bit more freedom to creators to be able to tell their story and do it in a way that resonates with with the audience.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Anything to add, Hamish?
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: Plenty. We've only got one minute left. Do we really only
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: have one minute
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: left? Do we?
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Oh.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: I'm just looking at the timer there.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Sorry. Okay.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: That's alright. Okay. We were worried we were going to run out of time. Scrap
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: this. Scrap this. Okay. Really quickly, in 30 seconds each, if you're a brand, what advice would you give a brand, we're going to start with you, in terms of how you would collaborate and co create with creators to help grow their business?
Thanks.
Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst, EMARKETER: One, I think stop looking at vanity metrics and actually look at the audience first that you're trying to reach and find creators, that speak to that audience and to focus on long term relationships, bring the creators into the process early, make them feel accountable to the brand and to the campaigns that they're working on.
And I think that will help improve all the campaigns and activations going forward.
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: Hamish, you got 20 seconds.
Hamish McPharlin, Managing Director, Element Human: I will say, um Find real lovers of your brand, because I think [00:30:00] authenticity is everything. Real lovers of your brand, users of your brand, they're the ones that are going to, that authenticity is going to shine through and our data definitely shows.
Authenticity is important, I know we talk about it a lot, it really, at a scientific level, translates to real brand success. Use trusted agencies, they didn't pay me to say that, who really understand, A, how to work with creators, but also how to measure them as well. And let the, let the cooks do the cookin Let those creators do their thing.
They understand their audiences. They're the masters. Thank you
Jo Cronk, President, Whalar: all so much for coming. We appreciate it.
