Amid a volatile social media landscape marked by heated debates around the Israel-Hamas war and the upcoming U.S. presidential election, brands and influencers are struggling to strike a balance between brand safety and the genuine, unfiltered opinions from creators that have made influencer marketing so powerful.

Over the past several months, creators, agencies and firms such as Edelman have seen brands grow increasingly hesitant about inking deals with influencers whose social media content hints even slightly at their political stance. The intense online controversy around the war in Gaza, which broke out in early October, has only intensified that apprehension among brands fearful that sponsoring the wrong influencer could have lasting impacts on their public perception—and, consequently, their bottom line.

Many creators who rely on brand deals as a revenue stream have, in turn, eliminated any trace of their political leanings across their social media posts in hopes of preserving their existing sponsorships and remaining in the running for new partnerships with these increasingly wary brands. 

“[Creators] are anxious,” said Brooks Miller, executive VP of influencer marketing at Edelman. “They’re censoring themselves. They’re not posting things that they maybe would have considered posting about, specifically about the war [in Gaza], because they’re afraid that they’re not going to be as desirable for their brands—that brands will either drop them or just not come knocking. And, frankly, it’s not an unfounded fear.”

Brands wanting to steer clear of political discussions is nothing new in the broader marketing industry. But, as many have handed more of their budgets and creative control over to creators, those efforts to remain aggressively neutral in world conflicts have similarly shifted to influencers, said Ryan Detert, CEO of influencer marketing platform Influential. Those brands are increasingly turning to platforms such as Influential or other tools to pick apart influencers’ digital footprints in hopes of spotting any content from those creators that could “alienate a portion of the population, whether that’s the U.S. or international,” he said. 

Also read: 5 influencer marketing trends to watch in 2024

Some of brands’ heightened uneasiness toward selecting—and retaining—influencer partners can be traced directly back to Bud Light’s controversial partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney last April, said Tyler Vaught, Edelman’s global head of influencer marketing. The conservative backlash Bud Light faced in response to its sponsorship of Mulvaney drove the brand into an enduring sales slump and forced two Bud Light marketing executives into (still ongoing) leaves of absence, and the fiasco “became a really tangible example of [influencer marketing] affecting sales and perception of a brand,” Vaught said.

Since then, Vaught has seen a sharp rise in the number of clients asking for assistance with incorporating brand safety precautions into their influencer marketing strategies, he said—even from brands that have been working with influencers for several years. 

“We get a lot of requests now that are just ‘Can you just come in and help us understand how we should be approaching this?’ And that’s not something we typically had before,” Vaught said. “Before, it was, ‘We feel really comfortable with influencers—can you show us some different, more innovative ways that brands are partnering with them?’ Now, it’s like, ‘We don’t really feel as safe as we did before—how do we navigate this?’

Also read: 5 ways the Bud Light fiasco changed beer marketing

Along with a fear of being caught in an internet firestorm, both Vaught and Miller also attribute part of this pivot in brands’ concerns around influencer marketing to the maturation of the still-growing industry and “brands realizing it is something they need to take more seriously,” Vaught said. The industry will be worth an estimated $24 billion by the end of 2024—an increase of roughly $8 billion from 2022 and more than 20 times the industry’s $1.7 billion total value in 2016, according to projections from Influencer Marketing Hub. Nearly 60% of marketers surveyed by Influencer Marketing Hub reported plans to up their spending on creators throughout 2024. 

“I think people are starting to understand that when your stock price can’t recover because of an influencer snafu, it means this is a really impactful industry, and they need to put all the vetting into an influencer campaign that they would put into a TV commercial,” Miller said.

Paychecks versus personal beliefs

As more brands have become aware of both the power and pitfalls of influencer marketing, a number of them are honing in on nonpartisan creators to avoid potential controversy, Miller said. One of Edelman’s clients, for example, has a strict requirement in its influencer vetting protocols to avoid sponsoring creators who frequently express political opinions, she said, even if the rest of their content or their audience aligns with the consumers the brand is trying to reach.

Friction between brands and creators over political opinions isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. In 2017, L’Oréal fired Black transgender model Munroe Bergdorf after her Facebook post condemning white supremacy went viral—though the company rehired her in 2020, after she pointed out that L’Oréal expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement despite firing her for speaking out against racial injustice. And in 2021, Sephora terminated its partnership with beauty influencer Amanda Ensing after she made light of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But creators such as Geoff Cooper say they have seen a dramatic surge in the number of brands cutting ties with their influencer partners due to political opinions since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October. Cooper, a fashion influencer and creative director for fashion brand Sagaboi, said an unidentified brand pulled back from a partnership with him mid-campaign after he shared Instagram Stories advocating for a ceasefire in the conflict. (Ad Age was not able to view the Instagram Stories as Stories disappear after 24 hours.)

Though he was still paid for the entire campaign, the brand asked him to not post the remaining sponsored content he had been contracted to make, because “they didn’t like the association with the war” contained in Cooper’s other, unsponsored, social content. Cooper said that while he understands the brand’s perspective and its desire to maintain a neutral stance on the war, he doesn’t plan to ever partner with the brand again after having the rug pulled out from under him in the middle of working on a campaign he was passionate about.

After having his sponsorship revoked, Cooper began “really trying to make sure [his] posts were as neutral as possible,” which ultimately led him to start making fewer posts in general to avoid potentially driving away future brand partners, he said. Nearly every agency he’s worked with since the start of the war has advised him to remain silent about the conflict on social media, “because if you don’t, nobody’s going to work with you,” he said.

“The thought came to my head like, ‘What else have I not been considered for, having posted and supported the call for a ceasefire?’” Cooper said. “What that did to me is that I just stopped posting on that specific topic entirely, and then I just stopped posting a lot in general, because I just felt a bit disheartened and it really affected my interest in posting anything positive in times where my content can potentially be seen as tone-deaf.” 

Some influencers—such as Maya Soufi, Batool Massri and travel creator Nabila Ismail—have leaned further into their political beliefs and posted TikTok videos stating their intentions to prioritize their ideologies over potential lost income from suspended brand deals. 

It’s very different from how agencies and brands approached partnering with creators who posted online around the Black Lives Matter movement, Cooper added. Even though he was “very overtly sharing my thoughts and pushing for progress,” on social media following George Floyd’s 2020 murder, he didn’t have any of his brand partners—which have included Ikea, HP and Samsung, among others—pull back from their deals with him or see any drop in the number of brands reaching out to work with him, he said.

“It’s walking a tightrope, basically,  and you never know when a wind is going to come and just throw you off,” Cooper said. “It’s a massive gray area, and there’s no guidance whatsoever. No guidance for brands, and, obviously, if there’s no guidance for brands there’s no guidance for influencers.”

Some creators have even reported their brand partners attempting to give them larger sums of money in exchange for not speaking out about the war in Gaza. In a now-deleted video that has since been posted on other TikTok accounts, Cara Watson, a creator from the U.K., told her followers that a brand she had made a sponsored video for reached out after she attended a pro-Palestine protest in London. The brand, according to Watson, said it would be willing to pay her double the amount they had initially agreed on if she made a statement saying she doesn’t support Palestine and took down social posts expressing that support. 

“A brand really tried to pay me to change my opinion today,” Watson said in the video. “That’s not gonna happen. You cannot buy my morals.” 

Watson’s management team did not respond to a request for comment.

The war has effectively forced creators to choose between remaining advertiser-friendly by saying nothing about the conflict and speaking up on the war to appease their followers and other social media users demanding they leverage their platform to educate others about the conflict, said both Cooper and Molly Burke, a lifestyle creator and disability advocate. For creators who rely on brand partnerships for a living, “you can’t fulfill your social contract with your audience,” by posting about the war in Gaza, “because you run the risk of having your income restricted or literally not having an income,” Cooper said.

Burke—who has been a creator for nearly a decade and has struck deals with Google, Crocs, Lululemon, Delta Air Lines and a slew of other brands—has seen social media users regularly pressuring influencers to speak on controversial topics for the past five years, from the Black Lives Matter movement to COVID-19 precautions such as masking and vaccines. In November, for example, TikTok users began debating whether macro-influencers such as Brittany Broski should be compelled to speak on the war in Gaza due to their large social media followings despite not having any expert knowledge on the subject. 

Burke said she has avoided posting about the Israel-Hamas conflict not out of fear that she may receive fewer brand deals if she does, but because it’s a topic she’s not very knowledgeable about, and she doesn’t think she should “speak on things that [she’s] not super well-versed in.” She will, however, discuss topics she’s more familiar with, such as disability advocacy, racial equality and LGBTQ+ rights, and will only work with brands that share those values, she said. 

“Most people in their jobs aren’t expected to go into the office and share their opinion and speak on hot-button issues,” Burke said. “And I understand that our job [as creators] means we’re in front of more eyes, and therefore we have the power to make more change—but that also means we have the power to do more harm. And because I am a marginalized person and I come from an oppressed community, I know how it feels to see people speak about my community in an uneducated manner.”

Beauty and lifestyle influencer Ellie Zeiler, on the other hand, hasn’t shied away from discussing the conflict or her Jewish identity on social media. In January, she posted several TikTok videos of her trip to Israel, including one of her visiting a kibbutz, a type of communal village in Israel, that was attacked by Hamas, and another of her speaking with Maya Regev, a woman who was held hostage by Hamas for nearly two months. 

Though she’s heard from several beauty industry insiders that brands are “nervous to align with Jewish influencers right now” due to the potential backlash they could face from pro-Palestine consumers for doing so, Zeiler personally hasn’t seen any reduction in the volume of brand deals she’s been offered, she said. In the past few weeks, she’s posted sponsored TikTok videos from Jimmy Choo and Lancôme—both brands she has “really strong” long-term relationships with, she said. 

The brands Zeiler works with “really understand that the whole point of brands working with diverse influencers who are clear about who they are and what they're proud of is to reach their respective followers,” Zeiler said. “They really see that my connection with my followers has never been stronger and they really appreciate that. And it’s no different from why brands put so many types of other cultures in their campaigns. Working with a Jewish influencer who’s facing anti-semitism is no different than working with a Black influencer who deals with racism or an Asian influencer who's dealing with Asian hate.”

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Zeiler has received an influx of antisemitic comments across her TikTok and Instagram content, she said. Her comments are also often flooded with criticism from Palestine supporters—particularly on TikTok, where the platform's Gen Z and millennial users skew pro-Palestine, though a subset of those comments are from bots, she said. 

In November, Zeiler joined more than 30 Jewish influencers and celebrities in sending an open letter to TikTok urging the platform to combat the “rampant antisemitism” on the platform and improve its content moderation to “protect Jewish creators and the broader Jewish community.” But the recent wave of antisemitism she’s experienced online hasn’t deterred her from posting about her identity or her thoughts on the conflict, she said. 

“This is not about politics for me,” Zeiler said. “I'm Jewish, and it's something that I've talked about forever. What's most important to me is that I keep showing who I am and what I'm proud to be. I’m really proud to be an American Jewish 19-year-old girl who loves fashion and beauty and so many other things, and if I let these bots or hate comments stop me, then what kind of influencer or example would I be to girls that are just like me?”

“As a platform, we take our responsibility seriously to keep our community safe and welcoming while working relentlessly to combat antisemitism, hate speech, misinformation, and violent behavior,” TikTok wrote in a blog post several days after the letter was published. TikTok also said it “removed 100% of antisemitic or Holocaust denial content” that Fighting Online Antisemitism, an Israel-based organization that monitors social media for antisemitic content, reported on the platform in 2022.

Diving deeper into creators

Influencer marketing’s power lies in creators sharing their authentic thoughts and experiences with their audiences. More than 60% of Gen Z and millennial consumers trust influencers’ opinions to guide their purchase decisions, according to a 2023 Morning Consult survey. That’s a 10 percentage point jump from the roughly 50% of Gen Zers and millennials who told the decision intelligence company they trust influencer recommendations on what to buy in a 2019 survey.

Brands need to recognize that many influencers will take sides and share their opinions on hot-button issues, and many consumers expect that from their favorite creators, Miller said. After all, “the whole purpose and the whole reason to believe in an influencer is their humanity, and we can’t expect a human person to not weigh in on things that matter to them,” she said.

Several brands have asked Vaught and Miller about how to approach influencer marketing in an election year, specifically, as this will be the first U.S. presidential election since many brands began embracing influencer marketing, they said. They anticipate many brands will adopt a similar stance on the election to the one they’ve adopted surrounding the war in Gaza and avoid working with creators who express support for any presidential candidate in their social content, Miller said. 

While the political environment this year is especially polarizing, this tension between brands and creators is the “new normal” for the influencer marketing industry, Vaught said. Online debates and controversies “are always going to be there,” and brands can’t simply pretend not to notice them or expect the majority of influencers to remain completely neutral on each controversy that arises, he said.

In fact, influencers are only growing more vocal about their political opinions online as social media algorithms, particularly TikTok’s, “demand more intimacy and vulnerability from creators,” said Jennifer Quigley-Jones, CEO of influencer marketing agency Digital Voices, in an email.

TikTok creator Reesa Teesa’s 50-episode, eight-hour-long video series thoroughly describing the deterioration of her marriage, which has collectively amassed roughly 200 million views, is a recent example highlighting social media’s infatuation with the personal lives of creators. 

“Brands (sometimes reluctantly) realize the superpower of creators to engage their audiences and effectively sell products based on their humanity,” Quigley-Jones wrote. “Some more open-minded brands are understanding that their role is as a guest on a creator’s social media. Influencer partnerships should be about reaching a target audience through engaging and creative content, with the aim of selling products. A partnership shouldn’t equate to a brand endorsement of an influencer’s lifestyle or views.”

Marketers may be hesitant to associate with creators who discuss politics or controversies with their audiences, but Quigley-Jones believes “over time, the public and brand perception of a creator partnership as an endorsement of someone’s views will change.” After all, she said, brands rarely pull their commercials from specific streaming services or TV channels based on the political views of those platforms’ executives.

Rather than side-stepping working with influencers to avoid the possibility of getting caught in a social media controversy, brands should develop comprehensive crisis management plans when working with creators and thoroughly research creators and their content before inking any deals, Vaught said.

Some brands may rush to partner with big-name or trendy influencers to appear “cool” to young consumers without doing a deep dive into their background or who they are beyond their social content, which can open those brands to being blindsided if the creator begins sharing political opinions, Miller said. Before entering into a partnership, brands should map out potential social media conversations that could arise from working with that influencer and formulate responses to those possible controversies, she said.

“I think the crux of this is that these brands have to have an audit of what they believe and feel and what they’re comfortable with,” Miller said. “Like, if you’re a really conservative, non-risk-taking brand, then don’t take risks with your social media influencer. Work with people that make you feel comfortable—but also be honest about what makes you feel comfortable.”

She pointed to The North Face’s Pride Month partnership with drag queen Pattie Gonia last year—and the brand’s unflinching support of her when hateful comments began to roll in—as an example of a brand extending its values to its work with influencers.

To help brands vet creator partners, influencer marketing platform Influential leverages AI to analyze influencers’ social media content and hunt down “every possible bad word they could have said; every political word they could have said; [and] every piece of nudity,” Detert said. Flagging those potentially controversial opinions and content allows marketers to make better-informed decisions on picking partners that align with a brand, especially if that brand wants to avoid any association with politics, he said.

Digital Voices, too, works closely with brands to establish distinct guidelines, such as recommending to brands that they develop a well-defined list of internet communities they want to engage with and lay out specific topics or types of creators that “are off the table for them” including creators who post content containing firearms or other weapons, influencers whose channels are “explicitly political” or creators who are minors, Quigley-Jones said. “That way, we can vet influencers to ensure they are safe according to the requirements of that individual brand,” she said.

“The influencers you work with should be an extension of your brand values,” Vaught said. “If you’re not approaching it in that way, then you aren’t really entering into an authentic relationship. Even if the aesthetic or the audience you’re trying to reach may be right on, [an influencer] probably is not a good fit if they’re someone who takes a very vocal stance on things and your brand does not.”