As pop culture and internet culture become increasingly synonymous, creator partnerships have become essential for brands aiming to remain (or become) relevant to Gen Z and millennial consumers. Younger consumers look to influencers for guidance on everything from fashion to entertainment and often turn to them first when exploring new products or brands.

Influencers are also shaping internet trends and slang terms that regularly jump from social media feeds to real-life conversations. During the summer, beauty influencer Jools Lebron made the phrase “very demure, very mindful” practically inescapable both online and off, while Kamala Harris embraced the “Brat Summer” craze in her campaign for president. Creators are a gateway for advertisers attempting to get on the radar of Gen Z, or those born between 1997 and 2012. 

Below, Ad Age’s picks for the top five brand-creator partnerships of 2024:

5. Marc Jacobs and Nara Smith

Within the first few weeks of 2024, it was clear Nara Smith would emerge as one of the year’s standout creators. Her excessively complex “from scratch” recipes for bubble gum, Cheez-Its and other snacks—paired with her impractical high-fashion outfits while preparing them and her hushed narration—captivated TikTok users and propelled Smith to internet stardom. By April, the model and influencer had secured over seven million new followers across TikTok and Instagram, according to influencer marketing platform Captiv8 (she’s amassed an additional six million followers since then, as of this writing).

Smith’s newfound online fame naturally made advertisers eager to partner with her. But among her flurry of collaborations with brands from Aritzia to K18, her partnership with Marc Jacobs undoubtedly captured the most attention. Smith and the brand leaned into the slew of memes poking fun at her ability to seemingly create anything from scratch, centering the collaboration on a video of Smith “making” a red Marc Jacobs purse by adding red food coloring to dough and popping it in the oven. 

The video has garnered nearly 17 million views and 2.5 million likes since it was posted in late July, along with hundreds of social posts discussing the marketing move. But Marc Jacobs faced a wave of backlash for the collaboration after another creator, Mary-Korlin Downs, accused the brand of plagiarizing a video she had made for the brand months prior. At the time of the allegation, Marc Jacobs declined to comment on the similarities between Korlin-Downs’ video and its collaboration with Smith.

4. Eos and Stacy Thiru, Serena Kerrigan, Victoria Paris, Madeline Argy, Avantika Vandanapu and Chelsea Miller

Despite the controversies surrounding influencer trips, they remain a popular strategy for brands looking to connect with their top creators or flood social media feeds with posts from groups of influencers on these trips. Eos ventured into the space with its first influencer trip over the summer—but rather than a luxury resort or a music festival, the skin care brand flew six creators to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The brand hosted the group—which included creators Stacy Thiru, Serena Kerrigan, Victoria Paris and Madeline Argy, as well as actor Avantika Vandanapu, who appeared in the “Mean Girls” reboot, and Chelsea Miller, co-founder of the youth-led civil rights organization Freedom March NYC—in a villa a few minutes from the Croisette and encouraged them to attend panels and other events connected to the festival’s new “Lions Creators” programming track. 

Influencer trips may not be a particularly innovative way of working with creators, but the Eos trip (along with Amazon’s simultaneous influencer trip to Cannes, and the festival’s first creator economy programming track) symbolized the growing role and legitimization of creators in the ad industry. 

3. Kai Cenat and McDonald’s

Fast food restaurants are increasingly teaming up with creators on menu items, from Chipotle’s partnership with Keith Lee to the MrBeast Box at Zaxby’s. McDonald’s, however, extended its collaboration with streamer Kai Cenat beyond a limited-time meal and a single sponsored post to announce it. The chain tapped Cenat to not only announce the launch of its Chicken Big Mac with a series of Instagram posts but also promote the chicken sandwich in several of his wildly popular livestreams—which draw 91,500 concurrent viewers on average, according to data from TwitchTracker. 

Across multiple streams, Cenat sampled the Chicken Big Mac and debated whether the sandwich truly qualified as a Big Mac with a slew of celebrity guests, including John Cena, Serena Williams and Miranda Cosgrove. The fast feeder also invited Cenat to step into the role of a McDonald’s employee in an additional 12-minute sponsored video that alone has amassed over 3.2 million views on YouTube. Wieden+Kennedy was behind the partnership.

2. Four Seasons Hotels and Kate Wise (aka “fully conscious baby”)

When a video of Kate Wise and her sister excitedly raising their hands and shouting “Me!” in response to her mom’s question “Who wants to go to the Four Seasons Orlando?” swept across TikTok in May, it essentially handed Four Seasons the opportunity for a buzzy brand deal. The hotel and resort company—with the help of We Are Social Canada, the social agency of record for Four Seasons Global—quickly reached out to the Wise family and coordinated a luxurious three-day for them at its Orlando location. 

Four Seasons embraced TikTok users’ nickname for Wise as the “fully conscious baby”—due to her surprisingly mature response to her mom’s off-camera query—by outfitting Wise in a custom tuxedo and serving her luxurious meals such as gold truffle pasta or a bottle of milk on a silver platter. Wise’s aunt Stefanie O’Brien, who posted the original viral video, shared several TikToks documenting the family’s stay at the Four Seasons Orlando, and Four Seasons posted a video with highlights from the collaboration that amassed 8.3 million views and 1.4 million likes. 

But the partnership didn’t end there. In September, the Wise family traveled to two Four Seasons hotels in the U.K.—one in London, and the other in the British countryside. 

1. CeraVe + Haley Kalil, Bobbi Althoff, Caleb Simpson and Dr. Muneeb Shah (and Michael Cera)

CeraVe’s viral Super Bowl spot revolved around the question of whether actor Michael Cera was the true mastermind behind the skin care brand due to their similar names. But that ad was just one piece of a far broader Super Bowl campaign involving more than 450 influencers that CeraVe and WPP (led by Ogilvy PR North America) recruited to build up an elaborate false narrative painting Cera as the brand’s founder. The fleet of influencers played various roles in CeraVe’s effort to convince viewers of a connection between Cera and CeraVe over the three-week social media campaign leading up to the Big Game, from unboxing videos featuring packages wrapped in tape patterned with Cera’s face to “Cera-spiracists” who theorized about the actor’s possible involvement in the brand. 

Four influencers, however, were at the core of CeraVe’s influencer push—Caleb Simpson, who’s amassed nearly 8 million TikTok followers by asking people how much they pay for rent and asking to tour their homes; Bobbi Althoff, host of “The Really Good Podcast” who went viral last year for her intentionally cringeworthy celebrity interviews; Haley Kalil, a beauty influencer who kicked off the campaign with a video of Cera next to a display of CeraVe products at a Brooklyn pharmacy; and Dr. Muneeb Shah, a dermatologist with more than 18 million TikTok followers. Each featured Cera himself in their CeraVe-sponsored content. 

Ultimately, the multiple layers of influencer partnerships, all laddering up to CeraVe’s Super Bowl spot, weaved a compelling narrative that generated over 6 billion impressions before the Big Game ad had even aired.