Five years ago, influencer marketing was seen as experimental. Brands knew they needed to do it, but often didn’t know why.

“It was really tactical… We needed content, we needed to work with these folks, but we weren’t exactly sure what that’s getting us,” said Casey DePalma McCartney, chief brand communications officer at Unilever US at an Advertising Week New York session.

But now, it’s an essential part of the marketing mix.

“So much so that it’s actually probably the most powerful part of what you can do to connect with your consumers,” said Damon Berger, head of consumer digital marketing at Gap, Inc.

The end of one-size-fits-all

The days of a single agency handling everything are over. Influencer marketing now spans affiliates, niche communities, mid-tier creators, mega influencers, and celebrities, each needing its own playbook.

“Each one of those levels can have its own strategy and its own agency of record [AOR] around it. It’s a very complex world to navigate,” said Berger.

That complexity has raised the bar for agencies. “Our creator agencies need to be highly strategic, super insights-driven, and execute with excellence,” said DePalma McCartney. “The expectations are just so much higher. You can’t just be a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of agency anymore.”

What stays in-house, what goes out

Marketers are increasingly blending internal teams with external partners.

• Building long-term relationships with creators and aligning efforts to brand and business strategy often happens internally.
• But scale, meaning large campaigns, broad reach, or mass content production, still relies on agencies.

“Any of the one-to-one relationships… that tends to happen internally,” said Berger. “The scale that happens needs to happen outside of our own capabilities.”

For Unilever, the turning point was bringing strategy inside.

“Before we outsourced almost everything because we just didn’t have the capacity. We found that the programming is so much stronger, the relationships we’re building are so much better [when we bring strategy in house.]”

Ultimately, success depends on true integration.

“If I’m going to trust you to represent the brand, then you need to sit with the brand team and be part of the brand team,” said George Hammer, global head of luxury marketing at Marriott International.

The new frontier: Commerce and culture

Today, influencer marketing is no longer just about brand awareness.

“The content-to-commerce point has completely collapsed,” said Berger. “It’s not just about brand messaging. It’s about selling. TikTok Shop is a very prominent feature now… that’s a complete game changer.”

Yet commerce is only part of the story.

• Cultural relevance remains critical.
• “So much of the work we do is about getting our brands and culture right and becoming part of communities,” said DePalma McCartney. “To do that really well, you’re not doing that at scale. It’s many to many, in different communities and different opportunities.”

The bottom line: The future of influencer marketing is bigger and more nuanced. Scale matters, but so do intimacy, culture, and creativity. Agencies will continue to play a role, but winning brands will bring strategy closer to home and demand more from their partners.

• Agencies should “figure out how to be useful,” said Hammer. “Figure out the pain point of your client.”
• Meanwhile, brands must be the ones setting the expectations. “Being tight on frameworks allows better freedom for the AOR partners to actually execute,” said Berger.

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.