Creator Marketing: What Is Discussed and What Is Still Missing

Influencer marketing, or now called creator marketing, was a big theme at Cannes 2026, underscoring the significant marketing investment that is going into this space. The choice of using the term creator, instead of influencer, is more than just a change in the term. The concept of ‘linguistic relativity’ describes the phenomenon of language not merely describing something, but that the language used also influences how we perceive and even act.

The term Influencer, assumed influence, and was better suited for the early days of social media, when influencers were genuinely interested and immersed in the categories they created content on. There was an implied sense of expertise that came from their personal experience with brands and products that others relied on for an authentic, credible perspective. 

But in the present day, when anyone with a smartphone and a ring light is willing to create content for a brand willing to engage them, not everyone has influence. And this was compounded with a lack of measurement, which gave rise to an industry built on hype.

In this context, it was good to see the learnings shared by System1 (along with WPP and TikTok) and Kantar at Cannes 2026.

What Was Shared – The What and How of Creator Marketing

There were 2 main considerations clearly called out in the presentations: 

1. Engagement metrics - Likes, Views, Watch-time, Organic reach etc – do not co-relate with marketing outcomes. 

It was good to see a clear call-out around the lack of validity around the easy-to-get engagement metrics, that all platforms report on.

“Platform engagement metrics tell you what the algorithm rewards but are on their own poor predictors of whether that investment will deliver for your business.” (Source: Kantar)

A high engagement metric score can derive from many factors – likeability of the creator, the music used in the video, the joke, the argument, or even the format – not all of which have a link back to visibility of the brand and clarity of brand message.

Brand teams need to be clear, that the crisis of attention is true for creator content also. Only 14% of creator content impressions achieve a 3 second view-thru rate (Source: CreativeX). This means in 86% of creator impressions, people watched the content for less than 3 seconds.

Even when a video was watched for longer, this does not mean people would remember the brand – this depends on what people got to see, in the time they viewed the content for. If people remember the creator, but not the brand, such creator content will not have any impact on marketing outcomes.

2. Importance of the quality of the creator content in building brand memorability

The other key learning was on creative best practices for creator content. There was a clear call out for early branding, mentioning the brand name in voice-over, the creator interacting/using the product and communicating the product benefits.

These learnings are not new and have been called out as the creative best practices for advertising content for a while now. (See YouTube’s ABCD guidelines link and Meta’s creative guidelines link)

The similarity in the creative guidelines for traditional brand advertising and creator content, is essentially saying that the creative tenets of good advertising, are the same for all content. And these depend on the content consumption behavior in the different media channels.

Whether it is brand advertising content or creator content, they are all viewed in the same media context – an Instagram Reel, a TikTok feed, a YouTube Shorts etc. And as such the content consumption behaviour is exactly the same – a low attention System 1 mode, that has a high bar set for content relevance. As such, all content, must be designed to: 

•  Catch attention
• Have a clear role for the brand
• Drive an emotional response
• Be easy to process information. 

What Is Still Not Discussed – The When and Why of Creator Marketing

Thus far, all the discussion has centered around the HOW to do creator marketing well. Key factors that are still missing, is the WHEN and WHY, brands should consider creator marketing.

In all the evidence shared at Cannes, there is a comparison being made between brand advertising and creator content. This is inherently unhelpful and exacerbates the confusion for brand teams. Just because the evidence points to better performance of creator content compared to brand advertising, does not mean brands should now choose creator marketing over brand advertising.

As with all marketing activations, creator marketing must be a deliberate intentional choice, leveraged in certain campaigns, where the creator narrative style, aids in better standing of the product features (the benefits, the superiority, the performance, the personal experience). It is not a silver bullet - the business objective, the choice of creator, the brief they are given, what they deliver - all have to be carefully considered.

In the campaigns which merit creator investment, brands must leverage both brand advertising and creator content, for full funnel impact.

• Brand advertising is best suited for upper funnel Awareness metrics (Ad recall, Brand Awareness);
• Creator content is best suited for mid-funnel Consideration metrics (Brand for me, Message Association) 
• Brand advertising is best suited for lower-funnel Purchase metrics (Intent). 

With this intentional and complimentary approach, it also makes clear the role of the creator in contributing to campaign success and helps clarify additional decisions, that brand teams need to make, which are –

The choice of creators for the campaign

Consumers are seeking an unbiased educational perspective from creator content – looking to better understand the overall product experience. This means that choice of creators should be based on the creators’ ability to demonstrate expertise, that lends to their content being testaments, and not merely testimonials [Testament = Testimonial backed with expertise].

The creative brief to the creators 

With campaigns leveraging both brand and creator content, the ask from creators also becomes clear. Their content must compliment the brand advertising content in delivering to the campaign objectives. When the brand advertising content is used to build awareness of the product and its features, the creator content educates and provides more details about it.

There has to be a cohesiveness to the campaign, with both brand and creator content, playing 2 separate but complimentary paths to campaign effectiveness.

Measuring creator marketing impact

If we are aligned on the use of both brand advertising and creator content, then we must measure the effectiveness of this approach. The approach must be a like for like comparison in the same campaign, between 2 cells - [Brand advertising only] and [Brand advertising + Creator content] - similar campaign set-up and media investment. Both cells must have brand lift studies, with the same questions, specifically including mid-funnel consideration metrics.

Such set-up is possibly to do in partnership with Meta, TikTok and YouTube and brand teams must leverage this capability. When this is done across a few campaigns, it allows us to measure the overall effectiveness of [Brand + Creator content’, on brand life success, as well as efficiency metrics like Cost per lifted User. This can provide more confidence to the teams, as well as key learnings from the successful campaigns can help make drive success of future campaigns. 

Summary

Creator marketing is here to stay and is a key competitive advantage for Brands, when done well. But it is not a silver bullet and should not be seen as a replacement for traditional brand advertising.

Brand teams have to review their marketing goals and campaign plans for the coming 12-18 months and should make choices on which campaigns are best suited to leverage creator content, given the bigger business and marketing objectives.

Creator content serves only one part of the decision-making framework for consumers. Brands must ensure that campaigns leverage both Brand and Creator content, as two separate, yet complimentary routes to delivering overall campaign impact.

Brands will improve the overall chances of driving effectiveness from creator marketing, when they acknowledge the constraints of limited attention, channel specific content consumption behaviour, ad placement formats – all of which are the same for brand advertising and creator marketing. This requires a clear ask from creators to ensure their content adheres to the creative best practices of the platforms.