When was the last time you actually watched a creator bring a brand story to life? Not just another paid post sliding by in your feed, but a moment where you saw someone take a product and make it feel like part of their world?
It’s in those moments that you can truly see the transformative potential of creators.
Creators shape what’s popular, change consumer buying habits, and shift how people see brands. The creator economy is growing 4x faster than the total media industry, with ad spend alone expected to hit $37 billion in 2025, according to IAB research. If you’re running marketing for a major brand, simply hiring a few influencers and hoping for a spike won’t cut it.
You need to tap into genuine stories for real growth, instead of just checking off the influencer box.
That’s where the Creator Flywheel model can help by forging real partnerships that build energy and keep your brand moving forward so you can see measurable results and create momentum that grows over time.
Lesson 1: Moving From Transaction to Relationship
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: A brand pays for a post, gets a quick spike in numbers, then watches as the excitement fades away. If you’re stuck in a repetitive rut with a creator strategy dependent on these short-term bumps, you might end up with some nice stats, but it won’t turn your brand into something people want to talk about or believe in.
Creators can be so much more than another channel to boost impressions. Brands that understand this focus on building real relationships, not just buying up posts. When you see creators as partners, not just vendors, your work connects more authentically with your audience and puts you in position to generate more ROI.
Collaboration was the secret sauce in Chef Reilly Meehan’s campaign with Pace. Pace watched Reilly’s videos, trusted his approach, and let him show the product in a way that felt right for his real life. In this Instagram post, you can see exactly what that looks like—Reilly in his kitchen, cooking with Pace queso the way he actually would, cracking jokes and making it feel completely natural. His audience saw a chef genuinely enjoying the product, not just ticking boxes for a paid campaign.
“That just makes it so much easier on my end when I know that the brand knows who I am. It’s so much more comfortable and gives me the creative freedom that I need, and that at the end of the day is gonna resonate best with my audience because I know them best.” – Reilly Meehan
So what can you learn from brands doing this really well?
Brands winning at creator marketing all share some common strategies you can treat as a sort of recipe of your own:
- Prioritizing creators who genuinely align with brand values and audience interests, rather than focusing on short-term trends or raw follower counts
- Moving toward always-on programs and ambassador models to support more consistent, authentic storytelling over time
- Nurturing long-term creator relationships by making them part of a holistic budgeting approach
- Using performance metrics like sentiment and engagement trends to better understand ROI from creator marketing
This is what keeps the flywheel moving. A real story catches people’s attention and drives action: Statistics from Meta indicate that influencer content delivered via paid channels drives a 53% higher click-through rate and is 19% more cost-efficient than branded ads alone.Your brand becomes part of the conversation, more stories pop up, and the cycle builds from there.
Lesson 2: Speed of Culture vs. Speed of Compliance Causes Friction
Creators move fast, jumping on trends the moment they start to catch on. Large brands tend to slow down when projects get stuck in rounds of review and drawn-out sign-offs. In the gap between the two, friction builds and momentum fizzles.
If content has to run a long gauntlet of edits and legal hoops, it loses the energy and freshness that make it work.
To keep up, start trimming the extra layers:
- Maintain required safety and compliance checks, but streamline approval workflows to avoid unnecessary review cycles
- Empower a small, designated team to make timely decisions and keep projects moving forward
- Provide creators with clear, concise guidelines that outline what matters most
- Reduce overly prescriptive instructions and trust creators to execute effectively within mutually agreed-upon boundaries
We tell the brands we work with the same thing our therapists tell us: Set your boundaries, then let go of the rest. In this case, that means trusting people who know the trends and audiences to shape the message so it rings true. The creators you’re working with are true creative collaborators who are experts in their content, platform, and audience. (And if you’re not sure how to find creators who check those boxes, talk to us—our deep network of creator relationships lets us find the real deal every time.)
Lesson 3: Not Everyone Is a Creator
Here’s the tough part: Most people who call themselves creators aren’t actually making an impact. You’ll find plenty of “influencers” who care more about making a quick buck than actually working with your brand. They aren’t interested in building anything real, and their audiences usually sense that lack of authenticity right away.
Look for creators who care about their craft, use your product, and want to work with you because they believe in what you do. Building real partnerships with people like this matters much more than chasing a crowd of creators in it for the paycheck. When you focus on a few strong, long-term relationships, the impact lasts.
When brands commit to ongoing creator programs instead of chasing quick one-off partnerships, they see a genuine lift. According to our benchmarking, ROI can rise 25% to 40%. The process gets smoother because you’re working with people who already know your brand. You get past the busywork, and your audience notices when creators actually believe in what they’re sharing. A good example of this is the partnership between Gymshark and Whitney Simmons. Whitney became a Gymshark athlete and wore the brand everywhere—daily workouts, vlogs, Stories. Sometimes paid, sometimes not. Over a few years, she started co-creating collections with them. Her 4M+ Instagram followers didn’t see promo codes. They watched Gymshark become part of who Whitney is. Now Gymshark owns women’s fitness wear in a way that’s hard to replicate. Whitney’s audience keeps showing up because the partnership feels authentic. That’s what you get when you stop buying posts and start building relationships that actually last.
Lesson 4: Technology Is an Accelerator, Not a Replacement
AI is a game-changing efficiency play when it comes to clearing up the repetitive parts of creator marketing. But while it can save time, it can’t do the things that make your brand feel real.
In fact, if you’re not careful, AI can be a reputational risk. You might have seen that “slop” was Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year, a sign of the growing backlash against low-effort AI content. So, while AI influencers have already arrived, using AI in influencer marketing is still a high-wire act that takes deep familiarity with the technology—and a renewed focus on the things that make your brand appeal to humans.
Securing Your Edge for 2026
The creator flywheel extends far beyond social media. Leading creators appear in paid ads, podcasts, play a key role in affiliate sales, run live events, and help your brand make an impact anywhere it shows up—whether that’s through email, on your website, or even in search results.
If you start building real relationships with creators now, your brand stays relevant and part of what people care about. Waiting too long gives others the chance to build deeper audience connections and shape the culture before you catch up.
Want to see how your creator strategy stacks up?
Our team works with 100+ brands to build creator programs that drive measurable growth. We can show you where your current approach is working—and where you’re leaving momentum on the table.
