"As creators evolve their content strategies in response to a social media environment in which video is king, aesthetic stills no longer generate the numbers they once did, with many leaving traditional brands in the dust. Instead of simply tapping creators to promote their products via one-time posts and affiliate links, brands will need to think about how to work collaboratively with talent on the strategy side, experts agree."
"This engagement will be all the more important as brands weigh when and how to use AI in their marketing strategies, says Eve Lee, founder of marketing agency The Digital Fairy. "Everyone's racing to the bottom to automate cultural intelligence, but AI can't read the room or scrape the messiness of human desire," she says. "It relies on data sets from the past to create more of the same, [and] it can't get inspiration from new things it has no reference for.""
Influencer marketing budgets will grow in 2026 while one-off pay-to-post deals lose effectiveness. Creators will shift into consultative roles, forming longer-term strategic partnerships with brands. Video-first content outperforms aesthetic stills, prompting creators to adapt content strategies and outpace traditional brands. Brands must work collaboratively with creators on strategy rather than relying solely on single posts or affiliate links. Discovery will move beyond social feeds toward community-focused channels such as newsletters and in-person meetups as creators diversify platforms. AI tools rely on historical datasets and cannot fully capture cultural nuance, increasing the importance of creators' human insight and loyal audiences for distribution.
Read at Vogue
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]