Cannes Lions 2023: How are leading brand marketers leveraging and building on creator economy

The second day of Cannes Lions 2023 saw the CMOs of Walmart, e.l.f. Beauty and Unilever talk about how are they leveraging the creator economy to make the most out of influencer marketing. The session was moderated by TV Presenter- Johanna Botta.

According to Kory Marchisotto, Chief Marketing Officer, e.l.f. Beauty, the secret which keeps the brand at the number one spot amongst GenZs today is to look for insights, and not mere data, from the community, and then translate the same into an actionable form to find people who already are the organic lovers of the brand.

It is through these actionable insights that one can bring the right voice or icon that stands for a respective brand and then bring it into the market in real-time to move at the beat of culture, she added.

“If you think about the creator economy which is really how we operate with creators, we find the insight and then we find the person who has that organic attachment to our brand, and we bring that to the market,” she said.

Sharing his views on what metrics he uses to gauge the success as one of the top 20 marketers who influencer the shaping of the creator economy, Samir Singh, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Unilever, stated that while the organisation is home to various 100-year-old equity brands such as Dove, Axe, Rexona and Mary Joseph amongst others, people trust a lot more what others say about these brands, as opposed to what the brand says itself, and that’s how one should really look at creators.

One can look for various parameters such as whether there is an authentic value exchange between the brand and the creator or how does the brand bring value to the lives of these creators and the system along with what their followers want or even build human and long-term relationships rather than just transactional ones.

“We are willing to let go of a bit of control because we've always been quite controlling of the messaging on these brands, and you need a bit of diversity in creative, which to me is not chaos, but that is actually authenticity. But when it comes to measurement, I think that we have invented too many small measurements that benefit a particular medium- be it driving long-term brand power, awareness, etc. because if they’re being met, I’m less worried about the click-throughs and other such metrics,” he said.

He then went on to add that one of the biggest metrics for Unilever to get on the frontline program is to be unmissable, distinctive, memorable and active. 

Commenting on what Walmart Creator is and why did the brand decide to go down this route, William White, Chief Marketing Officer, Walmart, stated that influencers and affiliates, for quite some time now, have been a core part of the brand’s marketing program and the way for going to the market 

“One of the insights that we got from the creators themselves is that they need more tools to help them be successful and therefore Walmart Creator is a beta platform that we started last year and we are scaling it to essentially make it a one-stop portal for creators,” he said.

He then went on to add that some of the things that the brand has gathered and learned from the same is that creators have easy access to products, which is essential for monetising shoppable products and the ability to publish across multiple platforms. 

“Most of these creators are living and existing and thriving in a number of spaces, and so we've made it very easy to publish to all platforms at one time. We’ve also given them the tools to see the analytics behind their posts and what they're doing to understand what's resonating and what's not,” he said.

He further pointed out that it is through this curation that each creator is able to really hone their craft and get better at it.