Why brands should give creators more creative control

The story was almost too absurd to believe: An automotive company partnered with a creator who literally climbed a mountain to film content for their collaboration—only to request a full reshoot because they didn’t like a few words in the video. “I’m, like, ‘No—she’s not going to climb the mountain again,’” said Mae Karwowski, CEO of influencer marketing agency Obviously, laughing during Ad Age’s NextGen Marketing Summit last week. Karwowski’s client was the unnamed auto brand that had made the request. Karwowski’s story came amid a panel discussion about the ways in which brands hurt their creator partnerships by refusing to give up creative control. It was a complaint that found its way into nearly every session of Thursday’s programming, and it was echoed by creators, agency owners and marketing leads at major brands such as Marriott and McDonald’s. The stakes for brands to improve relations with creators could not be higher. In 2024, marketing budgets for creator partnerships increased 74% compared to the previous year as brands used these partnerships to connect with young consumers and sell products, according to CreatorIQ. Spending in the creator marketing category was expected to reach nearly $9.3 billion by the end of 2025, per an estimate by eMarketer. The growth rate would be higher than both social and digital marketing spend. Despite the marketing value that creators have provided, brands continue to show distrust in their creative decisions, ultimately eroding relations. Achieng Agutu, a fashion and style creator with more than 875,000 followers on Instagram, expressed a common impasse she has faced with brand partners that have requested she alter her delivery, sometimes asking her to change her word choice or speak less loudly. The issue, according to Agutu, comes down to brands forgetting that the creators know their audiences best and therefore the style of marketing that will most resonate with them. Her advice to brands: Shut up and pay up, and let her handle the rest. “You come with the money, and I’ll come with the vibes,” Agutu said during a panel about diversity in the creator economy. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here Ash Xu, a creator who specializes in filmmaking, voiced a similar opinion on the panel with Obviously’s Karwowski, explaining that brands that let partners “run wild” end up getting better content because the creators can be themselves. For example, Xu said that when Lenovo flew her out to a Formula 1 race, the tech company was mostly hands-off after giving her a brief. She ended up posting far more content to social media than she had planned, simply because she was allowed to have a genuine experience at the event. Of course, brands need to ensure that they are being properly represented by their partners at all times. Brands from Disney to Sephora have cut ties with influencers caught in controversy to stem any negative association. But avoiding all risk is just another attachment to control, and something that brands should learn to release, according to Amanda Mulligan, director of social media and influencer marketing for McDonald’s. Mulligan, who spoke during a one-on-one fireside conversation with Ad Age at the NextGen Marketing event, illustrated her point by discussing McDonald’s recent tie-up with streamer Kai Cenat, whom Mulligan referred to as “definitely riskier to work with.” Cenat has been the subject of several controversies over the years, which have seen him temporarily banned from Twitch and arrested for inciting civil unrest. Despite these events, Cenat is extremely popular with younger audiences, which made him an enticing partner to promote its new Chicken Big Mac. The fast food chain relied on trusting in Cenat’s expertise for producing engaging content for his followers—something he has reliably proved again and again. “We just had to be comfortable with the discomfort,” Mulligan said. Brands sometimes exert excessive control by being overly prescriptive about the messages or call to actions relayed in their partner’s content, said Stephanie Goldstein, senior global brand marketing lead for Marriott International. Marriott relinquished these reins for its partnership with “Street Hearts,” a matchmaking video series on social media, in which the brand built a bed in Central Park that served as a prop for the series. “We were really committed to what [Street Hearts] was doing … and we [didn’t] want to force anything that isn’t there,” Goldstein said during a panel about partnering with creators for entertainment. Releasing control is a way to demonstrate respect for a creator, but if Thursday’s panelists agreed on anything, it was that this renunciation is just one duty within a larger responsibility for brands to show goodwill toward partners who help them achieve their marketing goals. Another essential duty: Always give the creator a plus-one to branded events. “You’d be surprised by how many times brands are like, ‘Oh no, we don’t need to do that,’” Obviously’s Karwowski said. “We 100% need to do that.”

Why brands should give creators more creative control

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