The Brief11th Jun 2026
Creator-First: The New Model for Growth
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The Brief is WPP Media's series, distilling isights from our Client Learning Program to give marketers the intelligence they need for intelligent growth—all in brief.
The brands breaking through right now have stopped interrupting culture and started becoming part of it. That is the core argument behind Creator-First, and the evidence is hard to ignore.
WPP Media recently brought together brand leaders and agency experts for a Client Learning Session on exactly this topic: how to build a media strategy around the voices and creators your audience already trusts. Hosted by Gillian Collison, Global Head of Social at WPP Media, the session featured perspectives from The Goat Agency alongside client panelists from Danone and 3M, and included real-world case studies from brands including Unilever, AXA, and Qualcomm.
Whether you joined us live or are catching up now, here are the key takeaways.
The Problem with Paid-First Thinking
Ad clutter on social has reached a tipping point. Where audiences once saw one ad in every 15 posts, today it is one in four. Attention is down, Meta ad return on investment has halved, and paid click traffic is declining.
The issue is not the investment itself. It is where that investment is going.
"70% of the media spend that we're putting into platforms is in those low retention environments. As a result, Meta ad ROI has halved." Nathalie Moruzzi, Global SVP of Platforms and Creators, WPP Media
The fix is not more spend. It is smarter storytelling, built around creators who already have the trust of the communities you want to reach.
Reframing Influence: From Bolt-On to Built-In
The biggest structural shift is moving creators from a campaign add-on to an integrated part of your media ecosystem. Earned, shared, owned, and paid touchpoints need to work together, and creator content needs to be planned with the same rigor as any other channel.
Think of it as building a System of Influence: a communications strategy that deliberately creates a consistent, reinforcing pattern of signals about your brand across people, platforms, and contexts. In an algorithmic era where content is served by interest and behavior rather than demographics, brands that show up coherently across that entire ecosystem are the ones that build meaningful difference over time.
The IPA recently confirmed that creator-led marketing does not just deliver short-term returns. It has a genuine accelerator effect on long-term return on investment.
"To go creator-first, we really need to start planning and activating social in the same way that our consumers experience it. Consumers aren't differentiating between ads and content anymore. It's all just sat within the same feed and judged by the same rules." Harry Kane, Global Head of Business Solutions, The Goat Agency
What Good Looks Like: Campaigns in Action
Three case studies from the session show creator-first thinking delivering real results across categories and channels.
Vaseline Verified (Unilever) turned a TikTok misinformation challenge into an opportunity. Vaseline's scientists tested viral hacks in the lab, verifying the ones that worked and flagging the dangerous ones. Creators whose hacks were tested became part of official brand films, producing a campaign that was both highly authentic and massively scaled.
AXA: Goop Therapy partnered with stand-up comedians who had openly discussed their mental health journeys on stage, resulting in a documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. A sensitive topic, handled with genuine cultural credibility.
Snapdragon (Qualcomm) innovated on measurement by tracking specific product codes across Amazon directly from the Snapdragon brand store, linking influencer content directly to purchase. The result was a strong return on ad spend and a 51% product page engagement rate.
"With Creator-First content, we frequently see an average of 3.4 times higher click-through rates." Melanie Ropp, Senior Client Director, GOAT
Brief for Outcomes, Not Outputs
The brands seeing the best results have fundamentally changed how they brief creators. Two years ago, briefs were prescriptive. Today, success comes from sharing the strategic goal and target audience, then trusting the creator to decide how to bring it to life.
3M's Command Strips campaign set out to reach new markets with the idea of "command your space." Alongside the expected home décor content, a Warhammer creator used the strips to organize his painting space - an unexpected, surprising alignment for the brand. It performed exceptionally well and opened up an entirely new audience segment.
"Today it's more about empowering the creator with the why and the who, and then trusting their expertise on the how. It's critical for a brand to define what that desired emotional resonance is." Melanie Ropp, Senior Client Director, GOAT
Creators as Co-Strategists
At Danone, creators now come in at the ideation phase, not just execution. Once creator content started driving conversion and full-funnel KPIs, bringing them in earlier became an obvious necessity. The mindset shift: move from message control to outcome control.
"We've definitely seen a big shift from creators as executors to creators as almost co-strategists for our brands. Instead of prescribing exactly what the piece of content should look like, we define the objective, message guardrails, and what success looks like, and then we let the creator shape the expression." Pauline Gordon, Global Marketing Manager of Brand PR and Influence, Danone
Measure What Matters, and Fight for It
In B2B especially, attribution is genuinely hard. A $500 welding helmet is not an impulse purchase, and a single influencer post will not close the deal. The work is in educating leadership on the compounding value of brand building at the top of the funnel, and connecting creator data to business dashboards over time.
"In the world of digital media, we've almost lost the ability to remember that marketing has never just been built on last-click attribution. There was always the school of thought that we need to build brand loyalty, and then the bottom of the funnel will come." Lucy Egan, Global Paid Media Senior Specialist, 3M
Beyond platform metrics, the session pointed to brand lift studies, sentiment tracking, and full-funnel conversion tools as the metrics that build a credible case for creator investment internally.
The Four Principles to Take Forward
Set guardrails, not scripts. Define your non-negotiables, then let creators do what they do best.
Lead with emotion. Brief the feeling you want to create, not the features you want to show.
Build long-term partnerships. The earlier creators are in the process, the better the work gets.
Reframe measurement. Engagement, brand lift and sales impact where measurable tell a richer story than reach alone.
Ready to explore what a creator-first strategy could look like for your brand? Reach out to your WPP Media contact to get started.
