Martin Fullard, Marketing & Communications Director, explores how social media creators have moved from fringe personalities to essential parts of the attention economy, acting as a living infrastructure that delivers authenticity faster and more effectively than traditional media.
For years, social media content creators were treated as the awkward cousin of “proper” media. Useful, perhaps, but unreliable. Unregulated. Too close to the audience to be trusted with anything serious.
That thinking is now badly out of date.
Walk through any major city and a leading creator will attract just as much attention as a national TV personality – sometimes more. The difference is not fame. It’s proximity. Creators don’t sit behind institutions, production companies or editorial boards. They sit inside their audience’s world, reacting in real time to shifts in mood, language and expectation.
That is their power.
The best creators are not mainstream personalities in the traditional sense – although many now cross into that territory with ease. They are not distant, polished or “other”; they are recognisable and, importantly, human. They speak with their audience, not at them. And crucially, they respond to audience attitudes far faster than conventional media ever could.
Speed of turnaround
Traditional media still has scale. Creators have speed.
This matters because attention is no longer won through reach alone. It’s won through relevance. Audiences today are highly attuned to anything that feels forced, rehearsed or engineered. They scroll past polish, but they stop for honesty.
Good creators understand this instinctively. They also understand the mechanics of their platforms. They know how algorithms reward consistency, community and credibility – and punish anything that smells like a poorly disguised press release. That’s why the strongest creators often push back on PR requests, brand scripts and over-managed messaging.
And that’s a good thing.
Because what they are protecting is the one commodity audiences value above all else: authenticity. Not in the buzzword sense, but in the very real, behavioural sense. Does this feel true; does it sound like something this person would actually say; does it respect my intelligence?
When the answer is no, trust erodes instantly.
This creates a tension for brands. Control versus credibility. Message discipline versus human connection. The instinct is often to try to manage creators like media channels. That approach almost always fails.
Creators as part of the experience ecosystem
The smarter approach is to recognise creators as part of the experience ecosystem. They are not bolt-on amplification; they are live, responsive barometers of audience sentiment. When used well, they don’t just extend reach – they sharpen relevance.
This doesn’t mean creators should operate without strategy, or that brands should surrender their values. It means collaboration needs to be rooted in mutual understanding, not instruction. Clear intent, shared outcomes, and the confidence to let creators speak in their own voice.
Because audiences can tell when someone is performing a role. And they can tell when someone is simply being themselves.
In a world where experience changes everything, creators aren’t a trend. They’re infrastructure. The question isn’t whether brands should work with them. It’s whether they’re prepared to trust the very audiences they’re trying to reach.
