Brands wake up to new era of influencer collaboration

The creator landscape may seem like a minefield for many brands to traverse but an increase in professionalism, new production norms, changed audiences and demand for authentic ‘always on’ content are set to usher in a whole new era of brand and influencer collaboration.

That is according to a new report from global socially-led creative agency We Are Social, which sets out five new trends in the market, what is driving them and the implications for brands.

The Next Gen Influence report – available to download on We Are Social’s website – also features examples from the likes of Booking.com, H&M, and more.

Within each trend, the agency has identified a cohort of fast-growing creators that represent the next generation of influence. These range from Kahlil Greene, a Gen Z Historian on TikTok who uses his platform to rewrite our understandings of history, to John Pork, an AI enhanced Travel Influencer who happens to be a pig.

To identify the trends, We Are Social conducted a mixed-methodological approach to analysing influence, using quantitative, qualitative, and cultural analysis. Through contextual desk research, expert interviews, and using influencer identification platform Tagger to identify recent fastest-growth creators, its Cultural Insights department used thematic analysis to identify five emergent trends shaping the influencer marketing category.

The Next Gen Influence trends are:

The Right to Reinvention: Social loves a ‘journey’, but in today’s creator economy, this focus on the journey has complicated our idea of authenticity. Authenticity used to require consistency, but today – with child influencers growing up, and mainstays ageing out – audiences used to watching people change. In this context, creators are planning their evolutions to draw in new viewers.

Featured creator: Julie Vu, the first transgender houseguest on Big Brother Canada, is masterful for her glamour and her humour. But she’s really won the love of audiences for making content that tells the story and visualises ‘the journey’ of her trans evolution, as much as the destination.

Relatable Realism: Aspirational content is the bread and butter of influence. But today – with most people striving for stability, not luxury – aspiration is having to change shape to stay realistic. Now, creators peddling ‘the good life’ are having to reappraise what that life looks like to make it feel relevant for real people. This means lifestyle content that’s less about glamour and luxury, and more about calm and stability.

Featured creator: @hart_of_shetland – a former city-dweller now making ethical crafts on the Shetland Islands – shows off her enviable vistas and close-knit neighbourhood. But lifestyle content feels real and achievable to non-capital city audiences, offering alternative perspectives to urban-dominated social.

Influential Allies: In recent years we’ve seen creators engage in acts of altruism to demonstrate their ethical credentials – a trend embodied by Mr. Beast’s loud charitable endeavours. But in this context, there’s increasing concern that philanthropy is being used for the purpose of online clout. As audiences become sceptical of moral posturing, creators are swapping work that claims values for work that actively disrupts or challenges the status quo.

Featured creator: Kahlil Greene, a Gen Z historian on TikTok, uses his platform to resurface and challenge obscure or forgotten historical truths – whether that’s Mexico’s having its first Black president 200 years before the US had Obama, or the Black history of cowboys. He encourages viewers to wield this knowledge to spur real change, like showing the precedent for reparations.

Credible Creativity: On today’s social channels, a new wave of culturally impactful creativity is thriving, driven forward by creators who’ve mastered ‘very online’ modes of communicating. These approaches – from making work inspired by fanfic to repackaging vulnerability as entertainment – are pushing the creative bar higher for everyone, but especially for brands, who have to be as entertaining as their human counterparts, but without the same licence for imperfection or human charm attributed to real people.

Featured creator: Subversive undertones are everywhere on social. While brands themselves might get side-eye for poking fun at topics like addiction, partnerships with playfully risqué creators – like Marc Jacobs’ work with @sylvaniandrama – gives brands more licence to participate in irreverent, ‘very online’ humour.

Extreme Influence: The ‘dead Internet theory’ is one of many laments of how bots, trend cycles, and garbage content have thrust online creativity into crisis. For today’s creators – who find themselves wading through a sea of content that’s loud and fast-moving, but often lacking in creative merit – it’s difficult to stand out. As the next generation of creators navigate this space, they are leaning into the unusual and extreme, trying to break the Internet’s unspoken rules to make an impact.

Featured creator: To combat this sea of sameness, creators like Max Webb are pushing the broad space of sports content to its furthest extreme, with lo-fi, high-octane adventure content showcasing elaborate feats of human achievement.

We Are Social global chief strategy officer Mobbie Nazir commented: “The ‘creator economy’ is a force of industry, but it ladders up directly from the work, whims, and playfulness of individuals. The same grassroots energy that makes it so vibrant and pliable is what makes it quick to change, and harder to keep a handle on.

“One glance at the content made by today’s creators – its tone, topics, and production norms – shows a culture that’s changed dramatically in the decade since influence’s infancy. Next Gen Influence examines today’s creator economy not for its surface level shifts, but for the deeper motivations that’ll impact brand-creator collaboration in the long term.”

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