Whitepaper: Running out of Influence

In the aftermath of influencer-driven content and marketing, a brand’s creative prowess has been shoved back under the spotlight.

The shift away from influencer marketing can be attributed to any number of factors. The most significant shift is psychological: the general feeling among viewers that our favorite avatars have become overnight, evangelical salespeople for DTC brands like Crap Sunglasses. Our parasocial friends aren’t our friends for free!

So if we’re scrolling past our influencer exes, feeling a little hurt, “what’s stopping the scroll”?

Brands have reacted to this shift with a return to higher touch, higher production, conceptually thoughtful content–be it a spunky and clever stunt or a conceptually-driven, low-touch social play, or even an expensive, old-school brand video.

Click on the exhibits to see the examples.

Exhibit A:
While it’s not news that Prada’s look is high-touch, there is clearly a master-plan that is driving these visually cohesive, star studded yet conceptually rich pieces.

What’s working now is solid creative, driven by potent and relevant insights. Creativity has always been part of a brand’s equity, but the bar has lately been raised across the board, which makes most “creator brief” style content look lazy and low brow.

The rise of the celebrity brand is the apex of the influencer marketing era and a good example of this shift. While most celebrity brands that rely entirely on persona and fan loyalty crash and burn (e.g., whatever Mark Whalberg is doing), the ones that thrive are based in decks on decks of creative and strategic work (e.g., Skims).

Exhibit B:
This highly produced spot from Throwing Fits x CP visualizes a punchy, hilarious insight: all the hullabaloo about menswear is for the sake of having beers with the people you hangout with anyway.

This is perhaps the realization of a slow metamorphosis from Advertising into the Creative Industry. This shift calcified after the covid era–the proverbial Big Bang. Mass layoffs means unemployed creatives, which means new things. The behemoth old-world advertising machines broke up like Pangea–into nimble, lean, gig-friendly style shops that could get work out the door without the sign-off of ECD’s that had been in the industry long enough to be nostalgic for late nights on the Marlboro account. In the beginning of this phase, money was scarce and production was risky, which was another boon to the oversaturation of influencer marketing. Now, new and in-the-know shops are leading the revival of high-octane brand content to meet ever-evolving consumer appetites.

Exhibit C:
If ever there was an example of this shift in consumer trust of online personalities, it’s the supplement market. “I drink green juice and you should too,” isn’t hitting like it used to. AG1’s “Morning Person” series is a low lift, insight-driven move that seeks to match the brand to consumer identities.

The meat of this paradigm shift: running a not-so-elaborate psy-op via parasocial relationships is OUT. And thank god. Beyond luxury, the current consumer fancies themselves a creative director of their personal brand and therefore needs more wooing. In a world where product choice is driven principally by perceived aesthetic alignment, brands need to push their creative output into overdrive.