HUMAN INFLUENCE

As content becomes easier to create, trust becomes harder to earn. Two years ago, the internet had a content problem. Today, it has a credibility problem.

The cost of producing content has collapsed

For more than a decade, the challenge for brands was straightforward: produce enough content to stay relevant. Creating social content required time, creative talent and significant investment. The brands that could consistently produce high-quality work had a clear competitive advantage.

Generative AI has fundamentally changed that equation. Today, almost anyone can create campaign visuals, write copy, generate product photography or produce short-form video within minutes. The cost of producing content has collapsed. For marketers, that’s remarkable progress, but abundance changes value.

The new scarcity: belief

When content becomes easier to create, content itself becomes less distinctive. Consumers are exposed to more posts, more videos and more advertising than ever before, making attention increasingly fragmented and trust increasingly difficult to earn. The challenge facing brands is no longer creating content. It’s creating belief.

Creator marketing is moving beyond experimentation toward measurable business impact, stronger governance and long-term partnerships. Future growth will depend less on producing more content and more on building brands people trust.

This is where creator marketing enters a new phase. Not because creators produce more content than brands. But because they produce something AI cannot manufacture. Relationships. Communities. Trust.

Community is not generated. It is earned.

AI as an assistant, not a replacement

This is also why we believe the debate around AI replacing creators has largely missed the point. AI is an extraordinary creative assistant. It can help creators brainstorm ideas, edit videos, translate captions, accelerate production and improve workflows.

The creators who embrace AI will almost certainly become more efficient. But AI cannot replace the years of consistency required to build a loyal community. It cannot replicate shared experiences between creators and the people who choose to follow them. It cannot manufacture credibility every time a recommendation is made.

People follow people

We’ve already seen this play out in practice. Virtual influencers periodically generate headlines and demonstrate what’s technically possible, yet few have built communities comparable to those of human creators.

Even in Belgium, experiments such as Hurae’s AI influencer Bobbi Lee generated curiosity and valuable discussion within the industry. Yet they also reinforced a broader truth. People may admire technology. They choose to follow people. That distinction matters.

As AI continues to lower the cost of producing content, the value of genuinely trusted creators will continue to rise. Not because their content is impossible to imitate. Because their relationships are.

There was a time when creator marketing was easy to evaluate: a creator posted, the campaign generated reach, the brand paid a flat fee and the campaign was complete. Those days are quickly disappearing.

From reach to business outcomes

As creator marketing matures, marketers are asking different questions. Not “How many people did we reach?” but “What did this campaign actually deliver?” The industry is moving away from buying exposure toward buying business outcomes.

Creator marketing is no longer competing for a small innovation budget. It’s increasingly competing with paid media, brand campaigns, and performance marketing.

That evolution changes how brands should think about creators. Creators are no longer just media inventory. They’re commercial partners. But something else has changed too. The creator economy isn’t growing up. It’s starting to own what it creates.

From community to company

Across the world, creators are launching beauty brands, investing in consumer products, taking equity stakes, and building companies that compete with established players. MrBeast built Feastables. Emma Chamberlain built Chamberlain Coffee. Hailey Bieber transformed Rhode into one of the fastest-growing beauty brands in the world.

We’re seeing the same evolution in the Benelux. Average Rob didn’t stop at building one of Belgium’s strongest communities. He co-founded Tout Bien, turning community into a consumer brand. In the Netherlands, Gisou, founded by creator Negin Mirsalehi, has become an internationally recognized beauty brand rooted in years of trust and consistency. More recently, STËLZ strengthened its position by bringing Monica Geuze on board as a strategic partner rather than simply the face of a campaign.

Why creator-led brands work

These creators aren’t succeeding because they have followers. They’re succeeding because they’ve spent years understanding the communities they’ve built.

Traditional brands often start with a product and then look for an audience. Creators increasingly do the opposite.

They build a community first; they listen, they learn. And only then do they build products and businesses that naturally fit the people who already trust them. That changes the relationship between brands and creators.

Beyond the flat fee

Flat-fee collaborations aren’t disappearing. But they are no longer the only model. We’re seeing more brands combine fixed fees with affiliate partnerships, creator codes, revenue-sharing models, and long-term ambassador programs. Rather than paying purely for exposure, brands are increasingly rewarding creators for the business value they create.

That commercial maturity is already visible in the Benelux. Creator marketing has become a mature media channel with corresponding expectations. Average creator CPMs are now around € 30, although the category makes a significant difference. Beauty and fashion typically range between € 20-25 CPM, while alcohol, fast food, technology, and automotive collaborations often reach € 35-40 CPM due to greater production requirements, specialist audiences, or stricter regulations.

That means the conversation can no longer be only about negotiating lower creator fees. The bigger opportunity is to design smarter commercial partnerships. Package agreements with leading talent agencies can reduce operational complexity, while hybrid compensation models, including affiliate partnerships, creator codes, and social commerce, create stronger alignment between creator success and business performance.

Social commerce is accelerating the shift

TikTok Shop is accelerating this evolution. In markets such as the UK, the US, and across Asia, creator-led commerce has become a proven growth engine, particularly in beauty and fashion. Brands have demonstrated that when discovery, trust, and purchase happen in the same environment, creators become more than storytellers. They become part of the commercial journey. Whether the same model will develop at the same pace in the Benelux remains to be seen.

The Benelux market has different shopping habits, stronger retail traditions, and lower levels of impulse purchasing than many Asian markets. We expect beauty, fashion, and digitally native brands to lead the way, while categories such as FMCG, automotive, and premium consumer electronics will likely adopt social commerce more gradually.

The direction, however, is clear. The creator economy is maturing from endorsements to entrepreneurship.

Creator partnerships are community-first

Creators introduce brands to communities they’ve spent years building. Their content is designed around their own story, personality, and relationship with the people who choose to follow them. The product supports that story.

UGC is product-first

UGC works differently. Its purpose isn’t to reach an existing community. Its purpose is to make branded content feel native to social media. The product becomes the protagonist. The creator simply helps explain it in a way that feels genuine, relatable, and platform-native.

That’s why UGC has become such an effective format for owned channels, paid social, and retail media. Not because UGC creators necessarily have influence themselves, but because their content feels more human than traditional advertising.

Why the distinction matters

Confusing these two disciplines often leads to disappointing campaigns. Brands sometimes invest in creators with highly engaged communities when what they actually need is a scalable stream of creative assets for paid media. Others expect UGC to generate the same organic credibility and community impact as established creators. Neither approach delivers its full potential.

The strongest strategies combine both

Creators generate awareness, trust, and conversation. UGC extends the life of that idea across owned channels, paid campaigns, and performance marketing. Together, they create a far more efficient content ecosystem.

As buyout costs for creator content continue to rise, we’re seeing more brands adopt this model. Rather than paying premium licensing fees to repurpose influencer content across multiple channels, they increasingly separate the objectives: creator partnerships build influence, while dedicated UGC production delivers scalable creative built specifically for advertising. It’s a smarter division of roles and ultimately, a smarter investment.

Brands often ask how they can become more culturally relevant. The answer rarely starts with a campaign. It starts with who gets invited into the room.

Inclusion makes representation real

Inclusion means listening beyond the usual circle. Making room for different lived experiences. Recognizing that no community is one single point of view. And understanding who people already trust. Representation is what becomes visible when that inclusion is real.

In the people who appear. The stories being told. The references that feel true. And the voices trusted to tell them. Because communities are not audiences waiting to be reached. They are people with their own humor, histories, rituals, tensions, and ways of seeing the world.

Relevance follows respect

Creators and communities shape what gets noticed, discussed, trusted, and shared. That influence cannot simply be borrowed at the end of a campaign. It grows from relationships, understanding, and respect built much earlier.

When brands leave voices out, they do not only miss part of the conversation. They miss part of the culture they are trying to be part of. And that matters for brand relevance too.

Because the brands that understand more of the communities around them are better equipped to create work that feels relevant, earns trust, and resonates beyond the campaign moment.

Inclusion is not a shortcut to brand relevance and growth. But without it, it becomes harder to sustain.

The Sephora Belgium lesson

We saw that during Sephora’s first Belgian store opening. The arrival generated excitement, but criticism around the creator event quickly became part of the story. Several Black creators felt their communities had been overlooked, shifting the conversation from a flagship opening to a broader discussion about representation in Belgian creator marketing, leading to a 44% negative sentiment score around the launch week as measured by Brandwatch.

The lesson was not that brands need longer guest lists. It was that inclusion starts long before the invitations go out. It starts with understanding who already shapes the conversation.

Who communities trust. Whose perspective is missing. And who should be part of the process before the campaign goes live.

Representation is what people see. Inclusion is how brands make it real.

For years, brands believed the most important thing they could do on social media was publish more content. Increasingly, that’s no longer true. Because the value of social media no longer lives in the post. It lives in the conversation around it.

Reputation lives in the replies

The strongest creator campaigns no longer end when the content goes live.

That’s when they begin. Every comment, every recommendation, every reply, every discussion. Together, they create something far more valuable than engagement. They create reputation.

That’s why we’re seeing a subtle but important shift in creator marketing. The most successful creators don’t just publish. They participate. They reply to comments. They answer questions.

They continue conversations. They nurture the communities they’ve spent years building. Brands should think the same way.

Community management becomes strategic

Community management is no longer simply a customer service function. It’s becoming a strategic marketing discipline.

We’re increasingly encouraging brands to involve creators beyond content production alone. Whether they’re long-term ambassadors, campaign partners, or UGC creators, inviting them back into the conversation creates a far more authentic dialogue than asking the brand to answer every question itself. People expect brands to communicate. They appreciate it when people communicate.

AI Search changes discovery

But the importance of conversation goes even further. The rise of AI search is changing how brands are discovered. Marketing teams across the world are increasingly asking how they can improve their visibility in LLMs such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The instinctive response is often to create more content. We believe that’s the wrong starting point.

Large language models don’t simply repeat what brands publish about themselves.

They increasingly synthesize information from trusted third-party sources, product reviews, community forums, creator content, and the conversations people have across platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and X.

In other words: Tomorrow’s AI visibility will increasingly be influenced by today’s community conversations. That’s a fundamental shift.

Creator marketing becomes reputation marketing

For years, brands focused on optimizing content for search engines. Increasingly, they’ll also need to think about how communities experience, discuss, and recommend their brand online. Because that’s the information AI increasingly learns from.

Creator marketing has traditionally been viewed as a content discipline. Increasingly, it’s becoming a reputation discipline. Not because creators publish more. But because they generate the conversations that shape how brands are perceived, recommended, and discovered.

Content creates visibility. Conversation creates credibility. The brands that understand this won’t simply publish more. They’ll participate more.

For years, brands have been optimizing for screens. More content. More impressions.

More platforms. More visibility. Yet something unexpected is happening.

Offline moments become more valuable

As our digital lives become increasingly crowded, real-world experiences are becoming more valuable. Not because people are spending less time online. But because the moments worth sharing increasingly happen offline.

We’re seeing a clear resurgence of creator events, community experiences, and brand activations across the Benelux. But the objective has changed. The best events are no longer designed for the people in the room. They’re designed for everyone who will experience them afterward.

Events are becoming content hubs

Events are no longer just experiences. They’ve become content hubs. The event itself is only the starting point of professional photography, social-first video, creator content, behind-the-scenes moments, owned media, earned media and community conversations.

The strongest events are designed as complete storytelling ecosystems that continue to create value long after the last guest has gone home.

Capture is part of the strategy

We’re increasingly seeing brands invest as much in capturing experiences as they do in creating them. Not simply for their own social channels. But because those assets enable creators to tell richer stories across their own platforms as well. The result is stronger storytelling on both sides.

Creators capture authentic moments through their own lens. Brands provide premium visual assets that extend the campaign far beyond the event itself. The event is no longer the campaign’s peak moment. It’s where the storytelling begins.

Optimize for longevity

That’s why the most successful creator events no longer optimize for attendance alone.

They optimize for longevity. The real audience isn’t the 100 people invited. It’s the hundreds of thousands who experience the event afterward through creator stories, community conversations, and earned media. The strongest activations continue to generate visibility for days, and sometimes weeks, after the event itself.

Shared memories are scarce

Digital fatigue is making real-world experiences more valuable precisely because they create something AI can never manufacture: shared memories.

In a world where almost any image, video, or campaign can be generated, genuine experiences have become one of the last truly scarce forms of content. That’s why we believe offline is becoming one of the most strategic investments brands can make online. Not because offline replaces digital. Because it gives digital something real to talk about.