Fit Check: Why Belonging Beats Reach When Working with Creators
Think the best creator for your brand is the one with millions of followers, the one commanding six figures for each sponsored post, the one who books dozens of brand partnerships a year? Quite possibly they’re the one who might overshadow your brand, rather than support it.
While many marketers today are obsessed with follower count and engagement rate, The Creator Effectiveness Playbook from WPP Media, System1 and TikTok reveals some new hard truths around paid creator ads and what actually makes them work.
Spoiler alert: creator fame isn’t the most impactful lever, though it is one we explore in the research. And we qualify it as recognition, not follower count. It’s whether the audience actually knows the creator and their world.
Belonging beats reach. A smaller creator in the right world has greater potential for your brand than a bigger creator if the brand is “bolted” onto their content.
So, it’s time for a fit check. Understanding how brand fit comes into play, why it’s so important and how you can combine the best creator for your brand with creative quality to drive brand memory.
Fit Over Fame
Brand Fit, alongside Creative Quality and Creator Fame, is a key consideration for brands that want their paid creator work to resonate long after the audience scrolls away.
Brand Fit is whether your brand feels like it has a credible, natural role in the creator’s world. Just because a creator is recognizable doesn’t mean your brand will fit with them. In many instances, you’ll find that creators with smaller followings are the best match for your brand, its messaging, products and audience.
The analysis reveals four quadrants of driving brand memory lift with Brand Fit and Creator Fame.
Brand Fit is so important that the Playbook emphasizes that if you can only manage to get one right between Brand Fit and Creator Fame, opt for Brand Fit. Budget limitations often restrict how big brands can go on the Creator Fame lever, so this is good news for those without deep pockets.
When considering whether a creator will deliver Brand Fame, make sure to:
- Audit creators for fit, not just reach. Ask “does the brand have a believable role in this person’s world?”
- Look for existing, repeatable formats. These take priority over greenlighting bespoke concepts that may not fit in the creator’s world.
- Let the creator’s device lead. Don’t overwrite it with brand-first scripting. A Social Device is a creator-owned shortcut that brands are sleeping on. Let’s take a closer look at what it is and why it’s such an effective tool when brands execute it well.
The Social Device
We define the Social Device as a Distinctive Creator Asset: a recognizable repeatable format (a place, prop, persona, phrase, sound or behavior) that audiences can immediately process even before the content unfolds. It’s especially effective when used consistently, driving both creator recognition and attention.
Looking for inspiration? How about Jordan the Stallion’s direct-to-camera how-to videos, which are often filmed in front of his bathroom mirror and end with him throwing his glasses across the room. Or Alex Haddon’s “People Watching” and “Matching Songs” series. And Bemi Orojuogun (“Bus Aunty”) capturing content in front of red London buses.
Importantly, the Social Device is not a brand asset. It’s owned by the creator. The brand has permission to enter it and benefit from it.
And perhaps even more importantly, don’t forget the points raised above on Brand Fit. A creator with a Social Device is useful, but the brand should be able to fit into the creator’s recurring format. If it feels forced, audiences will see through it. Not every creator you work with will leverage a Social Device but if you take the proper steps to find creators with high levels of Brand Fit and they’re the owners of a Social Device, you have a exceptionally strong place from which to start.
Why is the Social Device good for brands?
It signals entertainment and helps elicit emotion. It supports early branding, ensuring that the emotional response actually drives memory structures for the brand, not only the creator. It also helps the brand secure Platform Fit because the work feels native. It’s aligned to what audiences are accustomed to seeing from the creator, with the brand woven it. Rather than interrupting a creator’s content, a strong Social Device keeps the audience watching while the brand finds its way in.
Putting On a Show with Creators
Our Playbook reveals that creator size is not the biggest predictor of whether a creator builds brand memory. Rather it’s how entertaining an ad is. That’s great news for advertisers, especially those without the budgets required to partner with creators with millions or even hundreds of thousands of followers. Even micro and nano influencers can be an exceptional Brand Fit.
Entertainment builds the foundation of creative quality. To effectively entertain with creators, remember to:
- Drive an emotional response. The more feeling a creator ad generates, the higher the level of Brand Memory.
- Lean into showmanship. Leverage stories, characters, recognizable places and spontaneous changes in facial expressions.
- Deliver something out of the ordinary. Social media users are accustomed to skipping ads in their feed, but the right branded content from creators can make them stop and stay. In our research, this was the most impactful example of showmanship.
But entertainment isn’t the only thing to consider. Entertainment must be distinctive. Almost half of creator ads use zero early brand cues. More paid creator ads need to be leveraging distinctive brand assets.
The next layer of creative quality is, to no surprise, distinctiveness. We don’t want your creator outshining your brand! Consider these tips:
- Mind the sweet spot. This is 2-4 DBAs in the first two seconds.
- Use the hardest working DBAs. Logo in context, spoken brand name, written brand name and sonic assets are especially powerful. We found product shots and brand colors are overused and underperform.
- Say it. Show it. Early branding isn’t just a visual consideration, it’s an audio one too. Brief your creators to both say and show the brand so that ears and eyes connect with the brand in the first few seconds.
- Leverage the Social Device. When you can, leverage the Social Device to achieve both entertainment and distinctiveness with content that feels native to the creator and the platform.
With both entertainment and distinctiveness covered, you can combine Creative Quality with Brand Fit to make a greater impact with your creator partnerships.
Create with Confidence®
The Creator Effectiveness Playbook from WPP Media, System1 and TikTok is your guide to getting paid creator work right. We studied 1,217 paid TikTok ads, across eight markets: US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico. Measuring how 182,550 TikTok users felt about the create and connecting these emotional responses to in-market brand lift data from TikTok.
Want to see how your paid creator assets perform with social users? System1’s Test Your Ad Social platform gets your creative in front of audiences to uncover how they feel and whether they recognize your brand. We’ll help guide your team on the assets that deserve media investment and give you best practices to consider for future creator partnerships, based on learnings from your own creative.
Contact our team to get testing and download The Creator Effectiveness Playbook to access all the insights.