Creator marketing has become a major part of the advertising mix, giving brands new ways to reach audiences through content that feels natural to the platforms where people spend their time.
Creator content is also attracting a growing share of advertising investment. According to the IAB, US creator ad spend reached $37 billion in 2025, up 26% year over year. As brands put more money into creator partnerships, understanding what makes this content effective (both at capturing attention and building brand connection) becomes increasingly important.
And while creator content can certainly be effective at capturing attention, getting people to remember the brand behind it is another challenge.
Our recent State of Creative Effectiveness report highlights this tension. Across thousands of social video ads, we found creator-made content performed better than polished brand ads on ad distinctiveness, but at the same time, creator content scored lower on brand connection.
In other words, people may stop scrolling for a creator’s content without necessarily remembering which brand paid for it.
So how can brands make creator content that feels authentic, earns attention and builds meaningful connections with the brand? Here’s what we uncovered in our research.
People don't open social media to watch ads. They come to be entertained, learn something new and see what people like them are doing. They've also learned what traditional advertising looks like, making it easier to scroll past content that feels like an interruption.
Creators understand this environment. They know how to tell a story in the first few seconds, entertain their audiences and use the formats and styles that work on each platform. When brands partner with creators, they can benefit from that experience and the distinctive personality creators bring to their content.
Our research shows just how valuable that advantage can be. Creator-made content scored higher on ad distinctiveness (+0.46), while polished brand ads scored much lower (−0.53). That difference matters because an ad needs to earn attention before it can build or refresh brand memories.
But attention is just one part of the goal. If an ad gains consumers’ attention, but they don’t know who it was for, it hasn’t achieved its purpose.
On average, creator content scored lower on brand connection (−0.67), compared with +0.60 for polished brand ads. This points to a familiar challenge in advertising: a famous face can make an ad stand out, but it can’t do the branding or the selling for you.
Every creator partnership needs to serve two groups: the creators and the brand paying for the content. If the creator dominates, audiences may remember the personality but forget the product. If the brand takes over, the content can start to feel like a conventional ad, losing the qualities that made it appealing in the first place.
The opportunity for marketers is to find the balance. Great creator content feels authentic to the person making it while also giving the brand a clear and meaningful role.
There isn't one formula for effective creator content. But our research points to five approaches that help brands combine the creator's ability to engage audiences with the fundamentals of effective advertising.
Build a story around the product and the part it plays in the creator’s life: how they use it, where, and why they enjoy it. It can be functional or fun.
In the best creator content, audiences talk about the product and its benefits, not about the creator. But it’s still authentic to what it means for the creator.
The product should be part of what makes the content worth watching.
People love how much they learn from creator content. They turn to creators for recommendations, explanations and ideas they can use. Brands can tap into that by showing how their products address a real need or make an everyday situation better.
This goes beyond the traditional product demo. Rather than simply listing benefits, effective content brings those benefits to life through a problem the audience recognizes and a resolution they can understand.
Our research found that creator content showing a problem and its resolution scored 0.49 points higher on Creative Power, on average, and was twice as likely to reach the top 20% of creator ads than non-creator content.
Febreze's “Freshology” campaign is a strong example of this approach.
In a TikTok video, science creator TIL Science explains how Febreze AIR interacts with odor molecules rather than simply covering unpleasant smells with a different scent. Animated molecules help illustrate the explanation as it unfolds.
The concept works because the creator's expertise is relevant to the message, and the story is built around a distinctive product benefit. The explanation is both engaging and useful, giving viewers a reason to connect the information to Febreze.
The ad scored 5.6 on Brand Connection, 6.8 on Persuasion and 6.6 on Resonance.
For brands, the lesson is to look for ways creators can demonstrate a product's value in situations that matter to their audiences. When the benefit is specific to the brand, the content has a stronger reason to be remembered.
Entertainment is also a big part of why people watch creator content. Brands can benefit from that by finding funny, surprising or clever ways to bring their products into a creator's established style.
The key is to build on what the creator already does well. That might be a particular type of humor, a storytelling format, a visual trick or a familiar way of engaging with their audience.
NESCAFÉ's collaboration with creator Zach King for its Espresso Concentrate launch shows how this can work.
Known for videos that use visual illusions and seemingly impossible edits, King created a video built around the idea of making iced coffee from billboards. The video plays to his signature style while demonstrating the product's convenience, ending with a finished drink brought into the real world.
The creative idea feels native to the platform and gives the product a role in the entertainment. It isn't simply a conventional ad featuring a popular creator.
The result was a Creative Power score of 6.8 and an Ad Distinctiveness score of 6.9.
However, the ad's Brand Connection score was lower, at 4.0, showing that even a strong creator fit and distinctive idea don't guarantee that the brand gets the credit.
That's an important consideration when developing creator partnerships. If the entertainment would work just as well without the product, audiences may remember the joke or visual trick more clearly than the brand.
The strongest ideas make the product part of what makes the content entertaining.
Creator content can also help audiences see how a product fits into their own lives. Showing it in a recognizable setting or familiar situation can make its benefits easier to understand and relate to.
This is one reason testimonials and reviews can be valuable. In our research, they appeared in 16% of consistent brand builders, compared with 4% of the rest.
The important thing is to make the content feel credible and relevant to the creator's audience. A product recommendation should fit naturally into the creator's world rather than feel like a scripted endorsement.
For brands, that means thinking beyond the product itself: What occasions does it fit into? What routines does it improve? What needs might it meet? And how can a creator bring those situations to life in a way their audience recognizes?
The more naturally the product fits into the story, the easier it is for audiences to see its relevance.
An effective creator video needs somewhere to go. After earning attention and building a story, it should leave the audience with a clear payoff.
That could be a problem solved, a product benefit demonstrated or a satisfying final moment that makes the experience feel complete.
Our research found that ending on a positive resolution was worth +0.69 on Creative Power within creator content. Ads with this characteristic were 3.8 times as likely to reach the top 20%.
These findings reinforce the importance of creative fundamentals. A strong opening may persuade someone to stop scrolling, but the story still needs to deliver something worthwhile.
Think about what the audience should take away from the final seconds: What has the product helped the creator achieve? What benefit has been demonstrated? What makes the experience satisfying?
A clear, positive resolution helps connect the entertaining content to the product's value.
Even when creator content earns attention and tells a compelling story, brands need to make sure audiences know who is behind it.
The solution isn't to apply traditional advertising conventions to every creator video. Large logos, prominent pack shots and end cards can make branding obvious, but they can also interrupt the experience and undermine the native feel of the content.
Instead, branding should be built into the story from the beginning.
Here are five ways to do that.
Say it, don't stamp it. Creators often talk to their audience, so the brand can show up the same way — named in passing, explained, recommended or even joked about. A spoken brand name feels like part of the conversation, but a logo on screen can feel like an interruption. It also reaches people who are half-watching or scrolling with the sound on. Have the creator say the brand name early and naturally, in their own words.
Put the product in their hands, not on an end card. Branding within the scene works, but branding pasted on top doesn’t. The product being used, opened, poured or talked about is branding the audience accepts.
Brand early, but through the creator. The brand needs to register before viewers move on. Pushing a pack shot or logo to the front, though, drives people to scroll past. The way through is for the creator to carry the early branding: naming the brand as they start talking, or with the product already in shot as part of what they’re doing.
Make the product and its benefits the story. In the best creator ads, people talk afterwards about the product and what it does for them (meaningful or fun), not about the creator. When the product does the work in the story, the brand gets the credit.
Weave distinctive brand assets into the narrative. The pack, a jingle, a tagline, a mascot or a signature ritual can all work. They just need to appear the way they would in the creator’s world — on the pack in their hand, sung, said in passing or playing a part in the story. Used like that, the assets tell people whose ad it is without making it feel like an ad.
Chipotle's “Behind the Foil” campaign is a good example of how creative freedom and brand recognition can work together.
For the campaign, Chipotle invited creators to film the restaurant's morning food preparation. Stop-motion animator Ben Treat brought his own signature style to the execution, building a burrito frame by frame using footage from a real Chipotle restaurant.
The creator had freedom over how to film the content, but the food and restaurant remained central to the story. The result scored 6.7 on Brand Connection and 6.6 on Ad Distinctiveness.
The example highlights an important principle: creators don't need to sacrifice their individual style for the brand to be recognizable. The brand needs to give them a meaningful role in the story.
And it didn’t stop there for Chipotle. They’ve truly leaned into creator-made content, recently handing over their cameras to 100 creators, which included partnerships with battle rapper Anderson Burrus and ceramic artist Emme Zhou.
In each of these instances, Chipotle found a natural way to connect their brand with the creator’s while staying true to the creator’s own style — ultimately making every one of these ads stand out and still connect back to Chipotle.
Their approach serves as a good reminder that every creator brief should answer two main questions:
Both matter. If the brand is invisible, it misses an opportunity to build memory. If the creator's style disappears, the content risks losing the qualities that made it stand out.
These principles also have implications for how brands approach creator briefs.
A brief needs to establish what the content should achieve without dictating every detail of how it should be made.
Brands should be clear about the product benefit, the message or association they want to build and the role the product needs to play. And creators should also have room to determine how to bring those elements to life in a way that feels natural to their style and audience.
A useful creator brief should:
Brands should also remember that not every creator post needs to do the same job. Some content can focus on earning attention and encouraging participation, while other pieces can work harder to communicate product benefits or persuade audiences. The broader goal is to build a portfolio of content that adds up to a recognizable brand.
Creators give brands a powerful way to connect with audiences through content that feels natural to the social platforms where they spend their time. But remember, earning attention is only part of the job.
The challenge is to strike the right balance between preserving the creator’s style and making sure the brand has a meaningful role in the story.
Give creators the freedom to entertain, explain and connect with their audiences. Then build the product, its benefits and the brand into the content in ways that feel natural rather than forced.
When those elements work together, creator content has a better chance of helping people remember the brand, understand its value and take that memory with them beyond the feed.